Niall Ferguson (left), professor at Harvard and the London School of Economics, summarized his latest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest for Newsweek magazine’s The Daily Beast by stating that he is not a “declinist” but is instead expecting an imminent collapse of the United States. He wrote: "I really don’t believe the United States ... is in some kind of gradual, inexorable decline.... in my view, civilizations don’t rise…and then gently decline, as inevitably and predictably as the four seasons.... History isn’t one smooth, parabolic curve after another. Its shape is more like an exponentially steepening slope that quite suddenly drops off like a cliff."

As evidence Ferguson points to the lost city of the Incas, Machu Picchu, which was built over a hundred years and collapsed in less than ten. He notes that the Roman Empire collapsed in just a few decades in the early fifth century, while the Ming dynasty ended with frightening speed in the mid-17th century.

He tries to explain why the West, and especially and specifically the United States, is set up for a similar collapse through the use of the analogy of what made America great in the first place, computer-based “killer applications” such as competition, the scientific revolution, the rule of law and representative government, modern medicine, the consumer society, and the work ethic.

His conclusion that these “apps” were the basis for the enormous growth and improvement in the standard of living from the year 1800 on was challenged by Dr. Gary North who thinks that Ferguson has missed the primary point: the rule of law was developed out of the Great Awakenings that established firmly the rights of man as a creation of the living God with unalienable rights, including the right to his own life and the property he accumulated by exercising that right.

Ferguson’s first killer app, competition, can be explained as the natural outgrowth of human action as each individual sought his own ways to maximum his own well-being. He learned that he could prosper only by providing better goods and services to his customers than others in the same field of endeavor, and thus was driven to make those improvements or lose those customers.

The scientific revolution, according to Ferguson, mostly happened in the 17th century: breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology. This coincided with the development of the Gutenberg Press in 1436 and the rapid dissemination of information across the world over the next hundreds of years. It was not so much a scientific revolution as it was an information revolution stemming from one man’s attempt to do something more efficiently.

The rule of law and representative government sprang from the Catholic Church’s university system and the Protestant Reformation. That reformation spread to America primarily from Scotland, bringing with it the organization known as presbyteries, which were adopted by the founders of the republic.

Modern medicine was an offshoot of the scientific revolution as was the mis-named “consumer society,” more accurately described by North as the “customer society.” And the coveted work ethic grew out of the awareness that a person had the right to keep what he earned, enhanced and strengthened by the Calvinist ethic of doing God’s work for His glory.

Perhaps the biggest miss of all is Ferguson’s failure to mention the greatest creation of men’s minds in the history of mankind: the Declaration of Independence. In that single document echoes the growing understanding down through the centuries that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…"

And when the Constitution was adopted it reflected the further understanding, stated so eloquently by Thomas Jefferson, that its purpose was (and is) “to bind men down from mischief” by its chains, restrictions and limitations. 

It is unfortunate that so bright and intelligent and gifted and informed as Ferguson is that he seems to think that it was those “killer apps” that made the West the shining city on a hill, instead of the more fundamental, foundational understanding of the nature of man taught in the Holy Scriptures that made all the difference.  That, and that alone, is what has made America “exceptional.”

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HenryPoll said:

Re: Your critique is so weak and blinded by nationalism that it's almost laughable. Ferguson's book deals with the 500 year period of Western ascendancy, yet you think the main factor in this ascendancy was a document (The DoI) which pertains to a nation which has only been dominant for around 15% of the Western era. America is not the World, nor is it the West.

November 14, 2011

sixstring said:

Name any other country HenryPoll that states such an obvious truth - that rights come from God. That is indeed a good lesson to teach the world! The Declaration of Independence states that rights are endowed to all men by a Creator. The implication is that no earthly entity like a government can take them away. Our system of republicanism protects private property and that too is another great leap forward that nations throughout history could learn from America. America taught the world that a monopolistic bureaucracy was totally unnecessary; that the free market can regulate itself and of the key importance of protecting private poperty. Yes America can still teach the world about the success of the republican model but first we must again teach our children about it and find ways to circumvent the socialist historians that refuse to present the truth. Republicanism can outshine any other system; it can enable man to keep the fruits of his labor and in so doing he has greater opportunity to give far more to charity, dwarfing government's puny contributions with all their bureaucratically managed welfare schemes that impoverish everyone except the top managers. True Republics allow individuals to use their talents to their full potential unhampered by government. Man is restrained from harming his fellow man by moral codes. The Great Declaration of Independence states that rights come from God and you would think by now that adults would learn the lesson: throughout history man has been conned into believing that government grants rights. The west, in particular America, was indeed well on its way to showing the world the error of accepting the falacious notion that kings, and various forms of dictators were above the law. Once the atheist professors got their monopoly on teaching erroneous history the example of a republican form of government fell out of favor for the fraudulent system called democracy.The founders knew that democracy was a form of despotism that "exhausts itself."

November 16, 2011

Wesley Mcgranor said:

... They gave the U.S. the Magna Carta--awhile back.

November 28, 2011

Eric Rachut, M.D. said:

... This is a very good article. I would add that the concept of the hospital originated in the Middle Ages as an adjunct to a cathedral (that is, a religious and specifically Christian foundation). Granted that America's founding was basically Scotch-Irish in character, the perspective that work in the secular world can be as God-pleasing as that done in a monastery has Lutheran origins. The Calvinist idea of the Protestant work ethic had, I understand (not being a Calvinist), the idea that material success in this life was evidence of one's being of the elect. But a great article.

November 30, 2011