Christ, Not America, Is Great

Instapundit linked to this, an immigrant’s spectacular failure to understand Western Civilization in general and America in particular. He was impressed with her attitude but she completely failed to give God the credit He is due.

I Am an Immigrant and this is Why America is Great

https://medium com/@s.g.cheah/i-am-an-immigrant-and-this-why-america-is-great-5d009ae8b532

By S.G. Cheah (A female self-identifying as Malaysian Chinese. Her physiognomy is too exotic for my skills to read.)

Recently, as I was reading about a protest in Malaysia against a United Nation’s treaty on racial discrimination, I am reminded again of why America is the greatest and most moral country I have had the fortunate privilege of leaving Malaysia for.

Assuming this protest was the big one in late November, Malaysians were protesting their leader, Prime Minister Mohamed, promising to impose the globalist UN Declaration of Human Rights without the approval of most Malaysians. We Real Americans would side with the protesters here. For a quick recap, use this link:

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/malaysia-not-ratifying-un-human-rights-treaty

So, right from the start she’s speaking about America being great and moral because it doesn’t resist the UN globalist agenda. That’s a slap in the faces of Mount Rushmore.

.America is great because America is good. Alexis de Tocqueville writes. a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.

Are we using de Tocqueville’s definitions of great and good, or Machiavelli’s? De Tocqueville wrote that Christianity was an integral part of daily life in young America but the author didn’t bring that up.

A good society isn’t one with few problems or high standard of living. A good society is one that respects Christ and implements His moral code. She probably means “good” as in “wealthy decadence”. Wealth is fun but it ain’t a moral code.

I would add to Tocqueville’s observation that America is great because it exemplifies all the great ideas of Western Civilization, but with one additional aspect which most of Western history lacks. That aspect is the American ideals of individualism, demonstrated in her sanctity for individual rights. The protection of individual rights is the remarkable aspect of America and is what makes the American experiment fundamentally different from the rest of the world.

Let me count all the ways she went wrong here:

1. America didn’t invent anarchy. The Founders did not expect us to practice it. Most people in Europe had at least partial control over their lives.
2. Our individual rights are restrictions on gov’t power, not entitlements to be exploited.
3. We wanted weak gov’t because we trusted Christ Jesus as our deity of choice. Notice that atheists, every single time they build a society, empower the State to be their man-made deity.
4. America feared God and allowed her men to seek God as best he could individually determine, with no powerful centralized gov’t to “help” him. That freedom of religion was freedom to worship Christ as we individually wished, not to worship Allah or Jupiter or ourselves.
5. The American experiment is not “do what thou wilt”. It is the distribution of power such that any one wicked man rising to power will be too limited in power to inflict the usual cruelties. This was a result straight from the Reformation.

It is indeed different from my experience growing up in Malaysia because the concept of freedom and individual rights is detested in favor of collectivism through the bondage of social determinism. You see, I was born into an economically successful minority race in Malaysia (the same race as the infamous “Tiger Mom. Amy Chua), and hence my future was sealed. Racial politics argued that my race’s economic success were the results of our exploitation of the natives in Malaysia. That argument justified the subjugation of my life under racially discriminatory policies; officiated in law by the Malaysian government.

I wonder that she found America to be much different from her homeland. Were she Christian, she would not accept the American situation of persecuting a gov’t-specified minority any more than she accepted the Malaysian situation of persecuting a gov’t-specified minority. We Americans have this odd habit of believing that right and wrong don’t depend on whether we personally end up the winner… a perspective straight from Christ who gave up His Godhood to right a wrong that wasn’t even His.

Social Determinism
Social determinism claims that we are all a product of society. Since it is society which determines the course of a person’s life, it rejects the idea that personal accomplishments is connected to individual responsibility. Like others in Malaysia whom shared my race, we weren’t necessarily wealthy nor economically successful as the stereotype suggested. However, we were still subject to the discriminatory affirmative action laws in the name of “social justice., going back to when the idea of “social justice” wasn’t even part of the popular American lexicon like it is today.

The injustice was so egregious in Malaysia that Thomas Sowell wrote about it in his book, “Affirmative Action Around the World.. For instance, because of my race, I wasn’t able to attend public university despite my outstanding academic achievements. For those like me who are discriminated against, our only means of attaining higher education in Malaysia was to fork out exorbitant amounts of money and pay for private colleges that caters to second class citizens like us.

Again, why does she find modern America much different?

It wasn’t until I attended a class in American History (in one of these private colleges) when I understood the meaning of liberty and the importance of individual rights. America’s founding in the spirit of individualism was unprecedented in human history and unlike anything I’ve ever encountered before.

Liberty is the combination of freedom and responsibility. The freedoms are given by our Savior, Christ, and the responsibilities are defined by one’s citizenship and position in society. That position may not be of one’s choosing. It’s merely guaranteed to not be of the State’s choosing.

The idea of individual rights…built upon the idea of individual responsibility…was contrary to the idea of social determinism which the Malaysian society was built upon. The repressive discriminatory legislation against the “wealthy Chinese” were justified on the basis that since the Malaysian Chinese were predominantly more successful, it is their race’s responsibility to take care of the poorer and “victimized” groups. welfare. It’s the reason I am allegedly responsible for the poverty and pain of those I victimized with my “Chinese privilege.” My American History class taught me the opposite, for “all Men are created equal” and my life wouldn’t be bounded by the limits of my race if I were in America.

Note that’s “all men are CREATED equal”, not “all men are equal”. (I take what she says about Malaysia at face value.) If Malay Chinese are more successful then they do have a God-given duty to help the less successful. But the gov’t should not compel them on how to do it. That is what she should have meant by “individualism”… we count ourselves slaves of God instead of the gov’t. Result, we need much less gov’t than Malaysia.

Clearly, America is great, no qualms about it.

Because our gov’t has become more powerful than any other? That’s anti-America. Because we built a near-utopia based upon Christ while in conflict with the so-far largest, hardest-trying Godless, humanist empire? Absolutely we’re great. But only because we honored Christ.

Notice how quickly America has gone downhill since embracing apostasy.

Suffice to say, I worked and saved up everything I could to make my voyage to America. Immigrating to America was worth all the effort and hoops I was made to jump through. It is a nation borne of individual liberty and man’s free will, not of social determinism. Culturally, the mere thought that a person’s fate was determined by external forces divorced from the individual’s own actions and choices is detested because America was the nation of the .self-made man..

It’s all very nice to have a self-made life but here’s two hard truths: One, everybody on the planet makes their own life out of their opportunities and abilities. Two, women are dependent upon men. I would not be surprised if this female author ends up drinking herself into a cold bed every evening… at least it’ll be a “self-made life”!

There’s a massive difference between the idea that humans are fallen creatures created by God and the idea that humans are interchangeable robots with “self-made programming”. America was based on the former, as demonstrated by the Constitution distributing powers with checks and balances… and the Constitution not allowing women to vote.

Unexpectedly, it seems the current American cultural climate is paradoxical to the idea of America as I remembered from my American History class. My understanding was that Americans strongly rejected the ideas of social determinism because it’s contrary to the American spirit of self-determined individualism. As I observe today, the opposite seems to be true. American society is shifting away from individualism towards the tribalism of collectivism. You can witness this tribalism through the popular emphasis on racial and class issues like “Black Lives Matters., the rise of the alt-right, Harvard Asian student lawsuit, Latino Dreamer rights, etc.

Unexpected for an atheist. “I don’t need God to be good. I just have to choose to be good. Whoa, where did all this evil come from?”

This dreadful trend is mostly noticeable in the tendency of a person shifting blame to the wider social-political environment for their own personal failings and problems. This is a celebration of the victimhood mentality because the victims are entitled to the expiation of their victimhood from their .oppressor.” The justification behind America’s “social justice” is practically the same nightmare of social determinism that I wanted to escape Malaysia for to begin with.

Such is the consequence of free-willed women doing what they’re good at. For missing the actual persecution of white men, she gets no points for noticing the fake persecutions.

Biological Determinism

The bad news is, America is descending into a worse form of tribalism, namely that of biological determinism. If you ever wondered where today’s obsession with “race as a crucial part of a person’s identity. originated from, look no further because you can trace its roots to the idea of biological determinism.

We have more important forms of group identity such as religion and nations. But once we proved that Christ was essential for a high-quality society, white atheists have been soft-genociding white Christians by replacement migration and financial misconduct… everything short of giving us a physical target.

Biological determinism, as the name infers, is the idea that a person’s thoughts and action are determined by the person’s biological makeup. It is the idea that a white person can’t help but act in accordance to his white race, an Asian to their Asian race, the African to his African ancestry and so on. It is perhaps the most unadulterated form of determinism, since an entity’s action is determined by the entity’s biological composition. Biological determinism sets the foundation for today’s identity politics.

No. Rejecting religion and nations as group organizations set the foundation of group identity to the most simple, least deniable form: skin. This author herself, she came to America but doesn’t consider herself an American. She never speaks of loyalty to her new country, never mentions the debt America owes Christ even while quoting de Tocqueville. Perhaps she was merely that badly educated but the fact remains, she came to America to be selfish, not American.

But credit to her, she bothered to learn English.

The ideology of biological determinism is how the regressive haters of Western civilization belittle the achievements of Western history. By arguing against the self-determinism of an individuals. free will, identity politics can section out a group of people and simply call that intersection “dead white males.” This work to discredit the individual accomplishments of great men like the American Founding Fathers, the Enlightenment thinkers and the Western philosophers whom inspired them. Without free will, man is essentially denigrated to the level of an animal and thus incapable of bettering themselves. This is the “Return of the Primitive” as noted by novelist Ayn Rand.

Wrong again. Individuals seeking their personal benefit is not how America prospered as a nation. It was seeking Christ and family, God and Country, no king but Jesus… and Jesus was our King.

Free Will

Come on, female. You had free will back in Malaysia. You used it to decide to come to America in the first place, remember? Nobody made you do that.

A lot of the misconception against “free will” began from a mistaken translation of the original phrase in Latin liberum arbitrium which actually translates as, .free judgement. (a subject for another essay).

I see no significant difference between “free to do as you wish” and “free to decide as you wish”.

The reason why it is supremely important to unify the concept of human nature to the idea of free will is because as Ayn Rand stated….Dictatorship and determinism are reciprocally reinforcing corollaries: if one seeks to enslave men, one has to destroy their reliance on the validity of their own judgments and choices..

Rand was wrong. To enslave men, encourage their women to rebel. Original Sin: works every time.

It never matters what people say you’re capable of, only what you actually are. Which might easily be less than you would wish.

Determinism is a breeding ground for dictatorship because determinism naturally revokes a person’s autonomy, along with his individual liberty. If America is to remain free, her defiance against tyranny must be fought against the erosion of individual rights. The battle of ideas lies in defeating the corruption of America by leftist identity politics because the act of placing individuals into differing groups, clumps the individual onto a collective where it undermines the principles of individual rights.

The author’s own Malaysia does not appear to be a dictatorship. One does not become a dictator of Africa by noticing Africans have low intelligence.

When the Leftists decided to corrupt America, our churches were a primary target. You can reverse the damage and ingratiate yourself to the True and Living God at the same time!

Most damagingly, identity politics is contrary to the principles of individual freedom. Identity politics was the reason I was desperate to escape my situation in Malaysia and emigrate to America. I understood America to be a land where a person can forge his own destiny and not be bounded by his given group identity. It is the reason America is exceptional in it’s uniqueness. The principle of individual rights being paramount and protected in America is the virtue which makes America great to me.

I suspect the truth is this female didn’t want to be low on the group identity totem pole and changed countries to where she’d be high on the totem pole. First she had responsibility without power, now she has power without responsibility. Both are great evils but only one of them is great fun.

In America, as I happily live my life as an individual with the liberty to exercise my free will, I am reminded often of how there is such a thing as greatness and goodness in this world…as Tocqueville stated. And as I celebrate Christmas this year, I shall also celebrate the greatness of America.

IS she going to celebrate Christ’s birthday? When she didn’t even credit Christ for America’s greatness? I’m sure she will enjoy the gift-giving, which symbolizes Christ’s gift of eternal life to us, and the Federal holiday off work, a many-times-removed symbol of God commanding the Israelites to hold holidays–holy days–in His honor, but like America’s individual liberties, she seems to have a cargo cult mindset about it all.

Many Godless people do. Many Godless people expect America can/will continue as a great nation without them bothering over the slanders against God incited by entryists, globalists, witches and their useful idiots. It will not happen, any more than a light bulb can shine without energy.

Lord Jesus, Light Of the World, happy birthday! We thank you for the kindnesses you have shown our nation and only wish we could rekindle the devotion our neighbors once had for you. Know that Your absence is sorely felt, Our King and Savior.

And to all humanity, a Merry Christmas!