The twentieth century is often described as an era of ideological warfare. Totalitarianism, communism, and liberal democracy competed with one another, and liberal democracy ultimately prevailed. The representative of liberal democracy was the United States, and the American political system was even described as the “end of history.” This phrase meant that liberal democracy was considered the best possible political system, and that political evolution had essentially reached its final form.
However, thirty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States is now experiencing conflict between state governments and the federal government, and division and fragmentation are becoming increasingly real. Why is it that the United States—once praised as the “end of history”—now appears to be heading toward collapse? If liberal democracy was not actually the ideal ideology, why was the United States able to win the ideological wars of the twentieth century?
If the purpose of this site is to design a new civilization, these questions cannot be avoided. Yet I have never heard a convincing answer to them. Therefore, I would like to attempt my own explanation.
In my view, the answer to these questions lies in how human beings are treated.
The foundation of Western civilization is Christianity, and Christ taught love—not love directed toward a specific group, but universal love. The God of Judaism loves only the Jewish people, but the God of Christ loves all of humanity. Human beings are not divided or ranked. In Christian theology, every soul has equal value before God, and this idea later developed into the concept of human rights. The United States, moreover, has historically been a Christian nation. The country was founded on Christian thought, and from the founding of the nation until the Second World War, about 95% of the population identified as Christian.
Now let us look at other civilizations. In many of them, human value has historically been ranked. India had the caste system, and Japan and China had rigid class hierarchies. In these societies, a person’s value was closely tied to their social status. Those of high rank were considered valuable, while those of low rank were considered less so. Among all organizations, perhaps none has a stricter hierarchy than the military. In the Imperial Japanese Army, senior officers could even order lower-ranked soldiers to carry out suicide attacks. Soldiers of lower rank were treated as having less value in terms of their lives. In the United States, however—where about 95% of the population was Christian—both generals and ordinary soldiers were considered equal as human beings. Even a superior officer could not order a soldier to carry out a suicide attack, nor could he simply strike a subordinate. The famous incident in which General Patton slapped a soldier and was forced to apologize after the matter became public through newspapers illustrates this point.
Next, let us examine how communism treats human beings. Communism adopted materialism, the doctrine that matter is the fundamental substance of nature. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that human consciousness and spirit are products of the brain, and that it is not consciousness that determines existence, but rather social existence that determines consciousness. They also rejected the existence of God as unscientific and described religion as “the opium of the people.” Naturally, within communism there is no concept of equality before God. In materialism, human beings are merely matter composed of water and proteins. They are essentially no different from machines, and if humans are like machines, inefficient ones are eliminated. As a result, tens of millions of their own citizens were labeled “counter-revolutionaries” and executed(Communist mass executions begin with brainwashing the people).
Next, let us consider how totalitarianism treats human beings. What is totalitarianism in the first place? Before Hitler rose to power, Germany experienced hyperinflation. The German mark lost its value, urban residents could no longer buy food, and children starved to death. At the same time, foreigners living in Germany—armed with strong U.S. dollars—lived like royalty and bought artworks and assets at extremely low prices. Erich Fromm’s book Escape from Freedom analyzed the psychology of Germans who became attracted to Nazism. The German people developed intense hostility toward liberal capitalism and toward foreigners, and this hostility eventually developed into Nazism. Totalitarianism views freedom as an enemy and regards authority as absolute. However, when freedom is rejected and authority is absolutized, this leads to the absolutization of one’s own ego and to intolerance toward the existence of others. Hitler absolutized the blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan race. People with intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, dementia, mental illness, and homosexuals were considered lives unworthy of living, and about 200,000 were executed. Similarly, Jews and Slavs were regarded as people whose lives had no value. Jews were sent to concentration camps, and Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In totalitarianism as well, the treatment of human beings was extremely cruel.
So far, I've explained that only Christianity treats people kindly and equally, while other civilizations and ideologies rank people and treat those of lower rank terribly. The United States has three faces: the face of Christianity, the face of liberal democracy, and the face of capitalism. These three elements are closely intertwined, which makes this issue complicated. Protestantism is closely connected with liberal democracy because Protestantism encourages individuals to read the Bible for themselves. At the same time, Protestantism also has a strong affinity with capitalism, since it values diligence and sees hard work as a path toward salvation. The problem lies with capitalism. While Christianity treats human beings with compassion, capitalism treats them as objects. Let us examine this point.
Have you ever wondered why governments sometimes seem to neglect their own citizens while promoting immigration and giving preferential treatment to foreigners? The role of government is supposed to be protecting the lives of its citizens, so privileging foreigners appears contradictory. However, this question becomes easy to understand once we examine the principles of capitalism. In capitalism, the most important thing is profit. Without profit, companies cannot pay interest or dividends. Eventually they will consume their capital and go bankrupt. How, then, do companies generate profit? By increasing productivity through rationalization and efficiency. If a company can provide goods more cheaply, in larger quantities, and more quickly, it survives; if it cannot, it is eliminated. For corporate leaders, efficiency becomes their mission, and workers are evaluated according to efficiency. Leaders hire only those who can work more cheaply and efficiently, and those who cannot are not hired—or if they are already employed, they are dismissed. A famous example of America’s performance-based culture and firing practices is Jack Welch of General Electric. Every year he dismissed the bottom 10% of managers regardless of other circumstances, eventually laying off around 100,000 employees. Yet he improved the company’s performance and was praised as one of the greatest business leaders. More recently, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta announced plans to dismiss the bottom 5% of employees in terms of performance. For capitalist elites, nationality does not matter. If Chinese or Indian workers can work more cheaply and efficiently than domestic workers, they will gladly replace domestic workers with them. Since the 2000s, many iconic American companies have been sold to China. IBM’s PC division and Motorola became part of Lenovo, and GE Appliances was sold to Haier. Even when companies themselves were not sold, many American patents and technologies were transferred abroad, allowing China to become a global leader in several fields. Technologies in which the United States once led—such as lithium-ion batteries, solar panels, genome sequencing technology, 4G/5G implementation technologies, and manufacturing know-how for military and aerospace industries—have been sold or transferred to China, which now leads in many of these areas. Meanwhile, the CEOs of major American companies such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, Pepsi, and Mastercard are now mostly of Indian origin.
At this point, let us examine the meaning of a word. When companies dismiss employees, the process is often called “rationalization.” The word “rational” originally means “reasonable” or “logical.” Why, then, is firing people called rationalization? Because for companies, reducing unnecessary personnel is considered reasonable. In other words, within capitalism, discarding people is regarded as rational. For ordinary people, human beings are entities with personality, culture, morality, and education. But for capitalist elites who prioritize efficiency, human beings appear no different from machines—interchangeable parts.
Now, let me give you my answer to the question I posed at the beginning. Why was America able to become the victor of the 20th century? First, communism treats people as material possessions, killing those deemed useless. Totalitarianism also kills those deemed useless. However, America is a Christian nation, and Christians do not judge people based on whether they are useful or not. They recognize the spiritual value of all human beings. That's why, while communism and totalitarianism destroyed each other, America was able to become the victor of the 20th century. So why is America on the verge of collapse just a few decades after becoming victorious? It's because Christianity declined in America, and capitalism became dominant. Capitalism, like communism and totalitarianism, judges people based on whether they are useful or not. That's why America is going to collapse. What do you think? Is this explanation convincing?
However, another question arises here. Why did Christianity decline in post-World War II America, and why did capitalism dominate America? This is a very important question, but many people haven't realized the reason. I will explain the reason in the next post.
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