Egalitarianism Destroyed Rhodesia. It Will Destroy America Too, If We Let it

Egalitarian Blues

The Real Purpose of the Cold War

If you believe the mythos of the Cold War, you believe it was a long-running war in which the ”free world” fought the communists in an attempt to preserve “freedom” by first containing, then rolling back, the ravenous red tide of communism. Perhaps there is some merit to that story, at least in Korea under Truman and in Central America under Reagan. However, it is a tale that quickly falls apart under closer examination.

If the goal was to fight communism, why would we destroy the political power of the only real bulwarks to communism in Indochina – the aristocracy1 and Catholicism2 – before leaving ignominiously and letting the communists gain control of it? If the goal was to fight communism, why the hostility of Franco’s Spain,3 the only country that defeated communism conclusively and one that was willing to fight it in any theater? If the goal was to fight communism, why empower the socialists in Italy4 and damn Churchill for trying to keep the communists out of Greece?5 If the goal was to defeat communism, why subvert Portugal and aid the socialists of the post-“Carnation Revolution” rather than aid it in its fights against vicious communist rebels in Angola and Mozambique?6 If the goal was to fight communism, why sanction and embargo South Africa7 rather than help it fight the communist rebels in Angola and Namibia?

And, most tellingly, if America wanted to contain communism, why did it work with the Soviet Union and Red Chinese to destroy Rhodesia?8 The Rhodesians were more than willing to serve as the West’s wall against communism in Africa, fought for a decade and a half to remain free, and fought vicious rebels who would shoot down civilian airliners and bayonet the survivors when not torturing civilians to death. Further, they had no apartheid system, were a real republic rather than a tin pot dictatorship, and had loyal citizens, black and white alike, who were willing to fight the communists.9 Seemingly, then, they and their vast mineral and agricultural wealth would have been a steady and helpful ally in the war to contain and roll back communism.

The answer is that the Cold War was not a fight for “freedom,” nor was it a fight against communism. Rather, the Cold War was a successful attempt to tear down the Old World, a land of hierarchy and tradition, and replace it with either globalist communism or globalist crony capitalism; the two were generally similar in effect, as they meant a replacement of the local aristocracy with rootless cosmopolitans that were varying degrees of tyrants, a focus on the material world rather than tradition, and a total eradication of the influence of the old colonial powers.

The Indochina Example

The wars in Indochina serve as a sterling example. There, America provided a drip of aid until the French wasted away their strength, then cut off aid and let the communists take North Vietnam. Catholics and capitalists fled to South Vietnam, and the French landowners were wiped away by the war and guerillas.10

America then proceeded to “aid” South Vietnam by sending soldiers to pointlessly die in rice paddies that were soon given back up to the communists. Meanwhile, its vast resources and technological power were used not to bring the North to its knees but rather to periodically bomb the North in ineffective and costly raids while letting all of the major fighting and destruction occur in the ravaged South. That fighting naturally turned the peasants against the Diem government.

Then, after killing Diem, an ally of the country’s Catholics, America proceeded to force “land reform” on the country.11 Such reform, as in Britain, mainly meant wiping away what remained of the aristocracy and landowner class and handing land to peasants who were socialist-minded.12 Once that destruction of the old ruling class was over, America left, leaving South Vietnam and the Catholics who had fled to it to the communist wolves.

The conflicts were pointless from a “freedom” standpoint, as the French were the kindest master the Vietnamese had, but America let them fall. But, from the revisionist perspective of the Cold War, it makes total sense. The goal of the conflict, from that perspective, was wiping away tradition and the Old World. In that view, the wars were a total success; in the end, the Catholics were gone, the aristocracy was gone, and the French were gone, leaving only communists and their reeducation camp prisoners.

The Rhodesia Example

Similarly, Rhodesia is a superb example of what the real purpose of the Cold War was. The Rhodesians, unlike the South Africans, weren’t hostile to the British. They loved their Queen, their history, and their tea. In fact, they were so devoted to the motherland that they were understood to be “more British than the British,”13 and when given an opportunity to become independent after WWII, they decided to voluntarily remain part of the Commonwealth.

Then, decolonization began, and they saw the horrors of the decolonized Congo. Particularly, they saw the orgy of bloodshed and a litany of atrocities that occurred during the Simba rebellion14 and determined that backing away from the European powers which were pushing decolonization would be wise. But, as they had propertied voting rather than mass democracy, Britain refused.15 Socialist Prime Minister Harold Wilson, the same one who raised death taxes to 90%, declared a policy of “No Independence Before Majority Rule” (NIBMAR), meaning that Rhodesia had to follow the footsteps of the Congo or try to fight both NATO and the communists.

Rhodesia, being a land of chivalric gentlemen rather than craven plutocrats, chose the honorable path. It chose to fight. What followed was a grinding 15-year conflict in which bloodthirsty rebels did their best to place landmines in civilian-traveled roads,16 murder farmers and farm laborers, and otherwise terrorize the civilian population, black and white alike.17 The whole time, those rebels were armed, funded, and trained by the communists.18 The Rhodesians, meanwhile, only received sporadic aid from South Africa and Israel, and were allied with the Portuguese, their most constant ally, until Portugal fell to the American-beloved socialists in 1974. Meanwhile, the rest of the West embargoed Rhodesia, with the Americans providing moral support for the rebels and embargo enforcement while the British sent the Royal Navy to blockade the port of Beira, through which the Rhodesians were importing oil.

Eventually, Rhodesia fell, as it couldn’t hold on forever while being betrayed by and fighting the whole world. Mugabe was then installed with the help of the West, particularly the British, who aided him in his voting drive, a campaign of terror that culminated in his 1980 election.19

The result was that all the freedoms the black and white Rhodesians alike had were stripped away. Freedom of speech vanished. Property rights vanished. Firearms were confiscated. Whites were driven from their homeland. Black tribes, namely the Ndebele, were genocided by Mugabe’s North Korean-trained thugs. Thus perished Rhodesia, thanks to the decades-long efforts of the “free world” and “liberal democracy.”

Why the Goals of the Cold War Were What They Were

So, why side with the communists? Why turn everywhere on Earth into a socialist-run favela?

The answer is egalitarianism. Merriam-Webster gives two definitions of “egalitarianism”: “1: a belief in human equality especially with respect to social, political, and economic affairs; 2: a social philosophy advocating the removal of inequalities among people.”25

Really, when combined, the two definitions become quite accurate. Egalitarianism is, broadly, the idea that all humans are of equal human capabilities if only those capabilities are properly developed by societal structures, and if anything stands in the way of equal outcomes that favor the more developed population, it must be wiped away with vengeance by the state. It is, put simply, the idea that all murderers could have been astronauts if only they had better calculus teachers and that any evidence to the contrary must be ruthlessly suppressed.

Notably, the term wasn’t used until the fifties, when the West was still largely sane. It then skyrocketed in use as the Cold War began, becoming a highly popular word by the time Rhodesia and South Africa were destroyed.

It is why Rhodesia was destroyed and why Imperialism generally was treated in such a hostile manner by the West and communists alike.

Rhodesia is a prime example. There, things were extremely functional. Such is what Theodore Dalrymple, a British doctor and psychologist, describes in his book “Our Culture, What’s Left Of It”:26

And condemned Rhodesia most certainly was, loudly and insistently, as if it were the greatest threat to world peace and the security of the planet. By the time I arrived, it had no friends, only enemies. Even South Africa, the regional colossus, with which Rhodesia shared a long border and which might have been expected to be sympathetic, was highly ambivalent toward it: for South Africa sought to ingratiate itself with other nations by being less than wholehearted in its economic cooperation with the government of Ian Smith. I expected to find on my arrival, therefore, a country in crisis and decay. Instead, I found a country that was, to all appearances, thriving: its roads were well maintained, its transport system functioning, its towns and cities clean and manifesting a municipal pride long gone from England. There were no electricity cuts or shortages of basic food commodities. The large hospital in which I was to work, while stark and somewhat lacking in comforts, was extremely clean and ran with exemplary efficiency. The staff, mostly black except for its most senior members, had a vibrant esprit de corps, and the hospital, as I discovered, had a reputation for miles around for the best of medical care. The rural poor would make immense and touching efforts to reach it: they arrived covered in the dust of their long journeys. The African nationalist leader and foe of the government, Joshua Nkomo, was a patient there and trusted the care implicitly: for medical ethics transcended all political antagonisms.

Unlike Zimbabwe, everything functioned well. The roads were well maintained. The hospitals excellent. The people friendly. The towns nicer than those in England. So, why did the West hate it? Why was it condemned?

Because its very existence served as a testament to inequality. Ian Smith’s government, in an attempt to get the West to treat it more favorably, was doing its best to better educate, train, and otherwise raise up the cream of the crop of the black population. But, though property could be bought and sold by both groups, there weren’t many real restrictions on advancement for blacks, the government invested heavily in black villages, and the society was prosperous, providing ample opportunity for men and women of talent, the whites did far better than the blacks. They were, particularly, far better off. Dalrymple describes that as well:

Unlike in South Africa, where salaries were paid according to a racial hierarchy (whites first, Indians and coloured second, Africans last), salaries in Rhodesia were equal for blacks and whites doing the same job, so that a black junior doctor received the same salary as mine. But there remained a vast gulf in our standards of living, the significance of which at first escaped me; but it was crucial in explaining the disasters that befell the newly independent countries that enjoyed what Byron called, and eagerly anticipated as, the first dance of freedom.

The young black doctors who earned the same salary as we whites could not achieve the same standard of living for a very simple reason: they had an immense number of social obligations to fulfill. They were expected to provide for an ever expanding circle of family members (some of whom may have invested in their education) and people from their village, tribe, and province. An income that allowed a white to live like a lord because of a lack of such obligations scarcely raised a black above the level of his family. Mere equality of salary, therefore, was quite insufficient to procure for them the standard of living that they saw the whites had and that it was only human nature for them to desire—and believe themselves entitled to, on account of the superior talent that had allowed them to raise themselves above their fellows. In fact, a salary a thousand times as great would hardly have been sufficient to procure it: for their social obligations increased pari passu with their incomes.

These obligations also explain the fact, often disdainfully remarked upon by former colonials, that when Africans moved into the beautiful and well-appointed villas of their former colonial masters, the houses swiftly degenerated into a species of superior, more spacious slum. Just as African doctors were perfectly equal to their medical tasks, technically speaking, so the degeneration of colonial villas had nothing to do with the intellectual inability of Africans to maintain them. Rather, the fortunate inheritor of such a villa was soon overwhelmed by relatives and others who had a social claim upon him. They brought even their goats with them; and one goat can undo in an afternoon what it has taken decades to establish.

It is easy to see why a civil service, controlled and manned in its upper reaches by whites, could remain efficient and uncorrupt but could not long do so when manned by Africans who were supposed to follow the same rules and procedures. The same is true, of course, for every other administrative activity, public or private. The thick network of social obligations explains why, while it would have been out of the question to bribe most Rhodesian bureaucrats, yet in only a few years it would have been out of the question not to try to bribe most Zimbabwean ones, whose relatives would have condemned them for failing to obtain on their behalf all the advantages their official opportunities might provide. Thus do the very same tasks in the very same offices carried out by people of different cultural and social backgrounds result in very different outcomes.

That last line is critical: “the very same tasks in the very same offices carried out by people of different cultural and social backgrounds result in very different outcomes.” Rhodesia showed that all humans don’t have equal capabilities, whatever the opportunities afforded them. Rather, some groups are better at certain things than others, and Rhodesia benefited from having a white government that could competently and honestly administer the country. Ian Smith, whatever the flaws of which he is accused, was certainly not corrupt, and his country administered the country well even when it was blockaded and attacked by the whole world.

That competence, that shining rebuke of egalitarianism that Rhodesia’s mere existence served as, was the reason it was destroyed.

The West was, as shown by its Cold War conduct, dominated by egalitarian thinking.

Aristocracies, at home or elsewhere, had to be taxed out of existence or have their land taken from them by vengeful governments in “land reform” programs.27

Colonial countries ruled by the old colonial governments were unacceptable, as they showed that European governance was more competent than that of the natives. Particularly, raising the native populations out of the Stone Age and teaching them how to use everything from the wheel to modern railroads, was “racist” and “inegalitarian” in that it showed European civilization to be of a higher order. So, the Congo was handed to the Simbas and the Portuguese chased out of Mozambique.

Yet worse in the eyes of the egalitarian West were those countries that, like Rhodesia or South Africa, were ruled by whites who had grown up there but, in their form of government, denied equal capability. Rhodesia, for example, required a certain amount of Rhodesian property (the modern equivalent is 60,000 USD) to make it on the A voting roll (which essentially controlled national elections), thus screening out the incompetent so that the country could be run by competent stewards rather than the mob. As a higher proportion of white Rhodesians managed to meet the qualifications for the A list, meaning they were overrepresented on a per capita basis, it was deemed “racist” and the basis for much of the West’s meddling. Harold Wilson, after all, demanded the destruction of such a system as a precondition of independence.28

So, all of those features of the Old World were destroyed. Aristocracies from England to Indochina were wiped away with taxes, expropriation, and murder. Colonies were given up voluntarily or otherwise as the CIA, State Department, and Soviets lurked in the background. The self-rule white states were destroyed one by one for daring to restrict voting in the name of better government, even if those restrictions resulted in a much higher standard of living and degree of prosperity for all involved, as in Rhodesia.

The reason such horrors happened is egalitarianism. Each of those features served as a rebuke of egalitarianism, as they implied that some are better than others through the lens of human capability, and that is deemed unacceptable.

In each and every case, what followed their destruction was awfulness. England has been a backwater known mainly for “grooming gangs” ever since it destroyed its aristocracy. Whereas Rhodesia was known as the breadbasket of the world, Zimbabwe is known mainly for famine and hyperinflation. While the Belgian Congo was a jewel of Africa with a high standard of living, it has been wracked by famine and civil war nearly since independence, at the cost of millions dead.

Inequality meant prosperity and success, as talent and capability aren’t equally distributed. Egalitarianism meant utter destruction in every way and a worse life for all involved.

It’s Coming to America

While egalitarianism was awful for Africa, it’s far from the only place affected by the ideology. In fact, having destroyed everywhere it was able, from the blood-stained fields of the Cultural Revolution to the veldt of Rhodesia, from the formerly grand estates of England to the now-blackout-ridden and crime-covered cities of South Africa, now it has come to the heartland.

It would be inaccurate to say egalitarianism is entirely new to America. For example, in 1971’s Griggs v. Duke Power, the Supreme Court banned the use of intelligence tests and high school diplomas as employment requirements. Why? Well, it’s “offensive” to suggest that some people might be better for a job if they’re more intelligent, particularly given racial differences in IQ.

That general opinion lurks in the background, but by far, the even more invidious form of American egalitarianism is the idea of “disparate impact.” Disparate impact is, broadly, the American legal concept that a test for employment, housing, etc. is illegal if it tends to screen out one “protected category” (minority groups, women, gays, etc.) at a higher rate than others, even if the test is entirely neutral.29 Effectively, that means that it is impossible to test for strength or intelligence, as gender differences in strength and racial differences in intelligence. That is, for emphasis, illegal even if the test is entirely neutral, and discrimination wasn’t the intent.

That idea is essentially the egalitarian reason for Rhodesia’s destruction – whites tended to pass the neutral test for voting rights at a higher rate than blacks, despite the requirements being equal for every racial group – and that was deemed unacceptable by the powers that be.

Now that has come to America, and it is being ruthlessly enforced. For example, the test to become a Maryland State Trooper was found “discriminatory” by the DOJ under disparate impact testing because black women failed it at a higher rate than other groups30. The supposedly discriminatory questions included basic arithmetic math questions, which are now apparently illegal. Similarly, the DOJ has gone after other, similar organizations for much the same reason, finding that basic math and reasoning questions an average kid in elementary school could answer are “discriminatory” and, so, illegal.31

That is a civilization-killing idea. If basic questions cannot be asked, if basic tests of compatibility with the job and competence cannot be performed, nothing will get done. Civilization requires hard work and the continual maintenance of complex systems. The excellent infrastructure seen by Dalyrymple in Rhodesia, from roads to hospitals, is now mostly gone. Similarly, such things are long gone from the Congo, from Mozambique, and even from South Africa. They were, if not destroyed for the fun of it, not maintained, and now it all rots. The same will happen in America without competent people in charge of building and maintaining the highly complex infrastructure on which we rely.

Sadly, such a degradation of everything looks increasingly likely. Our modern form of egalitarianism, disparate impact, as it is enforced with the ruthlessness of Cold War egalitarianism, will mean everything is destroyed, as happened in Rhodesia.

The American Tribune

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_South_Vietnam#Land_reform_during_the_Vietnam_War

Diem was the representative of and defender of the country’s Catholics, and his death was a disaster for ant-communist efforts in the country : https://www.jstor.org/stable/26786338; https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/01/19/when-the-u-s-abandoned-a-catholic-president/

https://squamish.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S49C119905135

After the war, the King abdicated and three parties were in the running, one of which was socialist and another communist. The socialists ended up being in control for much of Italy’s post-war history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Italian_Republic#Birth_of_the_Republic_(1946%E2%80%931948)

Churchill records this in his own history of WWII; see also, https://jacobin.com/2017/05/greece-world-war-two-winston-churchill-communism

See generally: https://www.flad.pt/en/the-path-to-democracy-u-s-portugal-relations-during-the-carnation-revolution-and-beyond-may-8-at-flad/;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_apartheid

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https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/indochina-1st-indochina-war/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Vietnam#The_Viet_Minh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_South_Vietnam

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https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/you-rhodesians-are-more-british-than-the-british-the-development-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simba_rebellion

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