Joe Rogan: There's a Reason America Became the Greatest Human Success Story

you can't do what you want to do unless you do what I want you to do I mean Don Lemon was talking about that openly on CNN yeah don't have a vaccine can't go to the supermarket don't have a vaccine can't go to work like it's so strange that people want to say things like that like that's the thing that blows me away why do you why do people want to because they're dumb they're dumb they're dumb they don't understand history they don't understand human beings they don't understand human nature they don't understand the history of every single country that's ever existed other than the United States up until 1776 every country that has ever existed was run by dictators right all of them this is the first one where you had elected officials this is the first experiment in self-government that actually worked and it created the greatest superpower of the world's ever known it created the greatest cultural machine the greatest machine of Art and creativity and innovation right here and how did it do that it did it through freedom because when you give people Freedom you let people do whatever the they want to do they actually find ways to succeed and grow and Thrive but as soon as you put the boots to them as soon as you tell them you have to do this or you can't do that you have to listen to me now you have a mini dictator you have one step away from a king you have a one step closer you're moving one step closer to dictatorship that's what the is happening Western civiliz ation it's been around for a while but suddenly everybody is talking about it some are anxious to save it others are happy to see it go but what exactly is Western Civilization is it the great cathedrals of Europe or the Nazi concentration camps is it the freedom secured in the US Constitution or chatt slavery life-saving medicines or poison gas the left likes to focus on the bad genocide slavery environmental destruction but those have been present in every civilization from time immemorial the positives are unique to the West religious tolerance abolition of slavery Universal human rights the development of the scientific method these are accomplishments of a scope and scale that only the West can claim these aren't the only achievements that make the West special and uniquely successful as Western thought evolved it secured the rights of women and minorities lifted billions of people out of poverty and invented most of the modern world progress hasn't been a straight line of course but the Arc of history is clear the obvious proof is that the world is overwhelmingly Western and with few exceptions those parts of the world that aren't aspire to be why why has Western Civilization been so successful there are many reasons but the best place to start is with the teachings and philosophies that emerged from two ancient cities Jerusalem and Athens Jerusalem represents religious Revelation as manifested in the judeo-christian tradition the beliefs that a good God created an ordered universe and that this God demands moral behavior from his Paramount creation man the other city Athens represents reason and logic as expressed by the great Greek thinkers Plato and Aristotle and many others these two ways of thinking Revelation and reason live in constant tension judeo-christian religion posits that there are certain fundamental truths handed down to us by a Transcendent being we didn't invent these truths we receive them from God the rules he lays down for us are vital for building a functioning moral civilization and for leading a happy life Greek thinking posits that we only know Truth by what we observe test and measure it is not Faith but fact that drives our understanding and exploration of the universe western civilization and only Western Civilization has found a way to balance both religious belief and human reason here's how the balance works the judeo chrisan tradition teaches that God created an ordered universe and that we have an obligation to try to make the world better this offers us purpose and suggests that history moves forward most Pagan religions taught the opposite that the universe is illogical and random and that history is cyclical history just endlessly repeats itself in which case why bother to innovate or create anything new second judeo Christian tradition teaches that every human is created in the image of God that is each individual's life is infinitely valuable this seems self-evident to us now but only because we have lived with this belief for so long the far more natural belief is that the strong should subjugate the weak which is precisely what people did in nearly every society in all of history only by recognizing the Divine in others did we ever move Beyond this amoral thinking toward the concern for human rights democracy and free enterprise that characterize the west but judeo-christian religion alone didn't build our modern civilization we also required Greek reason to teach us objective observation that man has the capacity to search Beyond Revelation for answers Greek reason brought us the notion of the natural law the idea that we could discover the natural purpose the TS of everything in creation by looking to its character human beings were created with unique capacity to reason therefore Aros was to Reason by investing reason with so much power Greek thought became integral to the Western Mission nowhere is this more perfectly expressed than in the American Revolution in which the founding fathers took the best of the European Enlightenment with its roots in Greek thought and the best of judeo-christian practice with its roots in the Bible and melded them into a whole new political philosophy without judeo Christian values we fall into scientific materialism the belief that physical matter is the only reality and therefore also fall into nihilism the belief that life has no meaning that we are merely Stellar dust in a cold Universe without Greek reason we fall into fanaticism the belief that fundamentalist adherence to unprovable principles represents the only path toward meaning the Soviet Union communist China and other socialist tyrannies rejected faith and murdered 100 million people in the 20th century much of the modern Muslim world has embraced Faith but rejected reason it's noteworthy that when the Muslim world did Embrace Greek reason from the 8th to the 14th centuries it was a leading Center for scientific advancement so again we need both Jerusalem and Athens Revelation and reason and yet many want to reject both these people call themselves progressives ironically they want to take us backwards to a time when man was governed neither by reason nor Faith but by feeling and therefore back to a time of moral chaos and disorder of feeling over fact it would be a fatal mistake to follow the progressives stick with Athens and Jerusalem I'm Ben Shapiro editor of the daily wire and author of the right of history for Prager University