CULTURAL ISSUES

Politics, economics and war are all exciting, but culture is often quietly decisive. You cannot explain why France, which fought off the German invaders for four long years during the First World War, despite devastating casualties, collapsed and surrendered after just six weeks of fighting in the Second World War, on the basis of objective factors. Both the German and the French military leaders at the time thought at the outset that France had the better prospects of victory. Decades later, German and French military scholars reached the same conclusion. But the culture of France had changed between the World Wars. Hitler followed such things, and banked on the French no longer being the same when he over-ruled all the protests of his generals and ordered the invasion of France to begin in 1940, when some of those generals thought they were being sent on a suicidal mission.

Race may be visible on the surface but culture goes deep. Americans are not a race but the American culture is what has made Americans different from the various races of Europe, Asia and Africa from which Americans are derived. People of the same race will slaughter each other when they come from different cultures. Generals of German ancestry—Pershing and Eisenhower—led the American armies against Germany in both World Wars, and German cities were bombed into rubble by another American general of German ancestry, Carl Spaatz.

War is not the only arena where culture is decisive. A culture pervaded by corruption will keep a country poor, even if it has an abundance of rich natural resources. Youngsters from a culture that puts a high value on education outperform youngsters from a culture that does not, even when they live at the same economic level, in the same neighborhoods and sit side-by-side in the same schools.

Cultures are inherited, just like race, and may be nearly as hard to change. Cultural head starts have enduring consequences. Because Western Europe was invaded by the Romans, it acquired written languages centuries before Eastern Europe did and remained more advanced for centuries, as literate societies have been more advanced than illiterate societies around the world.

Cultures do change, however, and—like other changes—these may be for better or for worse. Many of the cultural changes in contemporary America, and in Western civilization in general, have been for the worse. These changes are among the many ingredients of a gathering perfect storm.