9/11 AND THE 10TH COMMANDMENT

Any adult in America knows where they were 13 years ago today.

In the days following the Moslem Atrocity of 9/11, if someone had predicted 13 years hence that instead of having wiped Islamic Terrorism from the face of the earth, we’d still be cowering in fear of its threat, they would have been thought deranged.  Yet we are.

How is this possible?

Let’s ask another question.  In his TTP column this week, Richard Rahn contrasted “aspirational societies” where productive work and success are not punished, with societies consumed by envy.  He sums up America’s crisis with one devastating observation:

“The United States used to be an aspirational society, but has increasingly become an envious society.”

How did this happen?

It turns out that these two questions – among the most critical questions we can ask of our country today – have the same answer.

The answer starts with our society’s failure to follow the 10^th Commandment of Exodus 20:17 –

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

In other words:  Do not envy.

The Greeks were another ancient people who forbade envy.  They, however, made a critical distinction.

The oldest Western literature was composed in the late 8^th Century BC by the Greek poets Homer and Hesiod.  Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are known to everyone.  Hesiod is known to almost no one today, but the Greeks revered him.

In his poem Works and Days, composed sometime after 750 BC, he talks of a Goddess called Eris.  Eris is the Goddess of Strife.  But there is not just one of her, or one aspect, but two:

“There is not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her, but the other is blameworthy: for they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves…

But the other is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbor vies with his neighbor as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men.”

It was Aristotle (387-322 BC), always the epitome of Greek thought, who made the distinction clear.  In Book II of the Rhetoric (1387b-1388b) he explains the difference.

Hesiod’s bad strife he calls phthonos, envy.  Hesiod’s good strife he calls zelos, emulation:

“Emulation makes us take steps to secure good things, while Envy makes us take steps to stop our neighbor from having them.”

In that one line is the essence of the difference between capitalism and socialism, between aspirational and envious societies, between what America was and is now.

And yet – neither the 10^th Commandment nor Hesiod nor Aristotle offer a solution to the Sin of Envy.  The Greeks offered the moral alternative to it – to achieve rather than destroy – but not how to defeat the evil itself.  Aristotle has the courage to explain the source of envy:

“We envy those whose possession of or success in a thing is a reproach to us.  For they are our neighbors and equals, thus it is clear that it is our own fault for having missed the good thing in question.”

We hate the successful person for achieving what we know, inside ourselves, we didn’t have the gumption or ability or smarts to achieve ourselves.

We can’t stand admitting our impotence, so instead we make up excuses justifying our envious hate:  he’s a heartless SOB, he ripped people off, he’s an exploiter of the poor, the only way you can get rich is to rip people off, and besides, no wealth is really earned and all property is theft.

So – we’ve been instructed not to envy, we have the moral alternative to envy, and we know why people envy.  Now what?   People are going to envy success and achievement anyway.  What do we do about it?

The answer is to have a Corollary to the 10^th Commandment: 

Thou shalt not fear those who covet; you shall not be afraid of the envious.

Following this 10^th Commandment Corollary is how to end such threats as Moslem Terrorism and how to become an aspirational society again.  It is applying this Corollary to the famous words of FDR’s 1^st Inaugural Address delivered on March 4, 1933:

“The only thing we have to fear is…fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Fear of the envious not only paralyzes efforts to confront them, but causes a compulsion to appease them – to apologize for one’s success and allow the envious to guilt-monger you into giving them what they want.

Have you ever owned a black slave?  Of course not.  Yet race-hustling guilt-mongers like Al Sharpton continue to get away with their relentless attempts at making every white American feel guilty that some whites owned black slaves over 150 years ago.

And attempting to make every black American feel impotent, a victim of the “white racism” that’s holding them back.

The success of America, unparalleled in history for the creation of widespread prosperity and freedom, is the world target for the envious.  The reaction of those who fear envy is to apologize for America’s existence, and make every effort to appease America-haters.

This fear is a defining characteristic of political liberals and today’s Democrat Party.

Liberalism, the mind-set that dominates the Democrat Party, is thus not a political ideology or set of beliefs. It is a psychological strategy to avoid being envied. Liberalism is the politicalization of envy-appeasement.

As such it is masochistic.  Masochism lies at the heart of both envy and the fear of it.

Envy is not simply hatred of someone for having something you don’t — it is the willingness to masochistically hurt or deprive yourself as long as the person you are envious of is also hurt or deprived.

The ultimate example is the Palestinian suicide-bomber.

Similarly, the more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy appeasement.

The ultimate example is American voters electing as their President an incompetent of no accomplishment whatever who hates them as an attempt to not have the envious call them racists anymore.

The results of this attempt are the incredible social, political, economic, and national security disasters that we are living in today.

Whatever evils there are in the world – those caused by envy, such as Moslem terrorists envious of the West or envy-peddlers like Al Sharpton, or those caused by naked aggression, such as the Putin Huilo or armed EPA bureaucrats – they cannot be opposed by anyone apologizing for being American.

As we offer a moment of solemn silence and prayer for the thousands of our countrymen murdered in the name of Islam 13 years ago, it behooves us to appropriately honor them by facing reality.

That reality is that we are still afraid of these Moslem crazies, while at the same time our American freedoms by every measure have been drastically diminished – primarily because voters insist on electing politicians, and especially this current president, on the basis of envy-appeasement.

And yes, that includes the vastly increased number of envious voters motivated by politicians’ offers of mooching on the productive.

That reality is not going to change until Americans find the courage to reject the envy of the world, the envy of political guilt-peddlers, and envy within themselves.  Until they start electing leaders who refuse to apologize for America, and who appeal to her aspirational best not her parasitical worst.

The superstition is that 13 is an unlucky number.  It is far from clear what the term “unlucky number” could possibly mean.  Nonetheless, this 13^th anniversary of the horror of 9/11 finds our country at the bottom of its barrel.

Let us dedicate ourselves to climbing out of it, so that each successive 9/11 anniversary from now on finds us more free, more prosperous, more secure, and more suffused with pride in America.

The ladder to use to do so is the 10^th Commandment – and its Corollary.

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