Why the West is the Best

Given the power and status of the European nations in the year 1400, Europe’s rise to world hegemony in the period 1400-1914 appears both unlikely and surprising. The factors that account for this development are the fodder for intense debates among historians. Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel, and Victor Davis Hanson, in Carnage and Culture offer two startling different arguments that attempt to explain the rise of the West. Outline the arguments of both Hanson and Diamond, analyze their strengths and weaknesses and indicate what argument is more credible and convincing.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York, NY: Norton & Co., 1997.

Hanson, Victor Davis. Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. New York, NY: Anchor Books, 2001.

“the race is not won by the swift, nor the battle by the valiant, nor a livelihood by the wise, nor riches by the shrewd, nor favor by the experts; for a time of calamity comes to all alike.”

Ecclesiastes 9:11

Jared Diamond
Ph D. UCLA

In 1997, Jared Diamond wrote a book about civilization. Not since Toynbee, Gibbon and Durant has a work of this magnitude informed, entertained and influenced. Sensing the influence and seeking to correct the errors of this work, another California academic Victor Davis Hanson wrote a 544 page retort to Diamond in Carnage and Culture. The comparison of these arguments make up the nexus of this question. But the question, like the arguments of Diamond and Hanson, is flawed.

Victor Davis Hanson
Ph D. Stanford

The proposition under consideration stands unmasked a false dichotomy. If we concede that the West enjoined a 514 year old world supremacy, Hanson and Diamond do not account for it. Christianity confers on its adherents the right to rule. The meek inherit the earth not the strong and not the germs. If Western Civilization is worth saving, it is only by the Catholic Church that lives and only by the Catholic Church shall it remain.

Part of the problem in explaining the Rise of the West is the question itself. Suicide by a germ or by a cold steel is still suicide. One doesn’t have to be the Archbishop of Canterbury¹ or carry colossal car note to know that very few things in life are an either or proposition. Why can’t the customer have both ketchup and mustard? Why aren’t there more tools in the toolbox besides hammers and nails? Not every problems needs a hammer or a nail - sometimes - a little glue will do. Do we have glue? Can we make some?

Yali

History is the study of facts over time. More precisely, history is the story of man over the centuries. If we judge men by their fruits, we can safely say that the study of history is the examination and valuation of the successive harvest of mankind over the generations.² It is a fact plain to Yali that the white man had so much and the black, brown, yellow, and red had so few. Why?³ Germs, Guns and Steel replied Jared Diamond. Because we are better killers said Victor Davis Hanson. Both men are materialists. When a man's spirit leaves him at the moment of his expiration, its the material that remains not the man. Good luck getting the Frankfurt School to admit this?⁴ Both Hanson and Diamond praise the soldier. And both men are wrong. Cleopatra who was no Helen of Troy doesn't tell us that might does not make right, but that might does not make might.⁵

Bryan Cranston as Walter White
Breaking Bad "Ozymandius"

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'⁶

The white man does have more stuff than the black, brown, yellow, and red.⁷ What good does it do a man to be intelligent or rich if he has no character?⁸ Even Diamond agrees. Even if to accept the premise of the question, the West enjoyed a 514 year supremacy, what good is that supremacy to the white corpse unburied in a field in Flanders? Achilles offered to trade places the black, brown, yellow, and red, but was refused.⁹ Further, the Mohammedan displaces the white man of Europe.¹⁰ The #AltRight will cry White Genocide, but they themselves don't have big families nor are they willing fight or die for their God.¹¹ Charles Martel did not wave an Atheist flag.¹²

Germs

Jared Diamond writes about big questions. His book Guns, Germs and Steel (1997) took 25 years to answer Yali’s rather racist question, why do whites have more stuff than blacks? His narrative spans over all over the planet and all over recorded history to the dawn of time. He begins with an anecdote that artfully sets the table for himself and the reader of what he believes. Jared Diamond traces the problem of ¹³Diamond’s work reflects an admiration for positivism. Positivism holds that valid knowledge (certitude or truth) is found only in this derived knowledge. He even describes “The future of human history as a science.” Diamond fills the 408 pages of his book with such examples that demonstrate his interdisciplinary gifts that promote his ambitious, novel and interesting thesis.

Guns circa 1521 A.D.

inequality between races, cultures and civilizations to one cause in three parts - luck who has and who has not guns, germs and steel. He makes considerable reference to the Neolithic peoples of Papua New Guinea, an anthropological approaches to Mesoamericans, Chinese and Africans. Jared Diamond once bragged that he could provide 35 examples why a certain phenomena is true when only 5 will suffice.

Steel

For all Diamond’s vaunted titles, Pulitzer Prize award, and 35:5 evidentiary supports, Diamond is still a historian. All historians cherry pick. For example, the magic of guns, germs and steel conquers the Incans for Spain and not the other way around. Guns, germs and steel did not help the Cordoba or Grijalva expeditions which preceded the Cortes expedition. Cordoba paid with his life. Why did Guns, Germs and Steel kill Cordoba but save Pizarro? Further, Jared Diamond's preference to speaking of history so abstractly without narrative detail impeaches his argument and his gravitas as historian. For example, he discusses the fall of the Mesoamerican peoples without blow by blow of characters, scene and story that other historians like Victor Davis Hanson trade in.

Diamond also does not discuss Hernan Cortes with the detail the subject deserves.

Hernan Cortes

Guns, Germs and Steel does not describe the guile, the daring or the bravery of Cortes nor does it describe the caution, indecision and almost arrogant incompetence of Montezuma. Governor Velasquez changed his mind about who would led the Cortes expedition. Cortes had to navigate the new lands of the Mexican coast. He had to defend himself from attack. He had to make allies with a strange and alien peoples. Serendipitously, Cortes meets Geronimo de Aguilar, a captured Franciscan priest and Malinche, a former Indian slave girl who translate for Cortes. Guns, germs and steel do not account for these coincidences.

Francisco de Cordoba

If Diamond does not discuss Cortes at all, he attributes Pizarro's skill just to luck: guns, germs and steel. Never mind that the arquebus was a very unstable platform and that the Toledo steel can equalize a skillful opponent armed with a stone weapon. Toledo steel cannot equalize 100 to 1 odds unless the opponent has given his back. But then again, why has the opponent given the Spanish their back? Diamond chants Guns, Germs and Steel when frankly other forces are clearly at play.

Despite revisionist attempts to weaponize small pox against the Indians, parasites don’t care about the nationality of its host. It is true that Europeans developed an immunity to germs born of husbandry. But not all Europeans were so lucky. Many Native allies to Cortes and Pizarro died at the hands of these “weaponized” parasites. Thus the reign falls on both good and evil alike.¹⁴

Human sacrifice in Codex Magliabechiano, Folio 70. 

But the greatest critique of Diamond’s work is the author himself, who inoculates his argument be revealing the limitations of his geographic determinist theses. On his website, he talks about how Guns, Germs and Steel did not account for Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed¹⁵ assassination attempt against his Furher. Geographic determinism does not account for differences between North Korea and South Korea or East Germany and West Germany during the Cold War. Geographic determinism does not explain ¹⁶”

Scholars Will and Ariel Durant

“differences between the attitudes of French and German people, e.g. towards obedience, eating foie gras and frogs, and admiring Wagner’s music. These differences are viewed as products of French and German culture and history for which no plausible geographic explanations have been advanced. German as well as French geography provides geese and frogs.

The question not asked by Yali, the question inside Yali’s Big Question from 1972 disturbs the reader and the author. The silence of the author in never addressing this question disturbs with greater horror. Why? If the white man is lucky and black man is not, then why is that the case? This is where it is important to know where Hanson and Diamond agree. Diamond and Hanson reject racism. To his credit, Diamond goes

Arnold Toynbee

out of his way to express his admiration and extoll the superiority of Stone Age peoples against modern man. Both men concede that supremacy can be lost and agree with Toynbee that civilizations fail because they commit suicide. Will Durant and Hanson agree that civilizational suicide stems from moral decay. Toynbee and Diamond believe civilizational suicide stems from a

Battle of Salamis 480 B.C.

failure to solve problems. Both Diamond and Hanson dismiss religion and philosophy as periphery or ineffective factors to the rise of the West. Both Diamond and Hanson (despite both of them having never served in the military) place too much importance on the role of war and soldiery on civilizational revitalization and collapse.

Hanson responded to Diamond within 4 years. Diamond spent 25 years writing his book. Hanson uses traditional narrative style in making his points. Diamond argues from analogy comparing Oceanic peoples to peoples on the Eurasian land

Battle of Gaugamela 331 B.C.

mass. Diamond uses a lot of his interdisciplinary skills such as scientific speculation to get around the “What if” history and proving a negative that Diamond frequently engages in, practices traditional historians poo poo. That said, Hanson has the right conclusion: Western cultures enjoy a fleeting superiority. Hanson does not fortify his argument very effectively.

Hanson depends on 9 battles over 4,000 year history. Even if you buy the premise that wars decide whether civilizations die or thrive, even if you believe that cultures produce the soldiers and therefore wars are cultural products, why these 9 battles? Why only 9? Why not more? Since only 7 of the 9 battles precede 1914, we will only consider Salamis, Gaugamela, Cannae, Pontiers, Tenochitlan, Lepanto, and Rourke's Drift and exclude Midway and the Tet Offensive¹⁷.

Cannae

But before considering Hanson's arguments, look at his approach. See the dependence on causality while dismissing paradox, uncertain drama and the irony rife in reading the lives men. If a shortest distance between two points is a straight line, then why is the life of every man, even the best of men so messy, so sordid?  If the life of man follows the rhythms of an ordered clock, or the dictums of chemistry, then why didn't Napoleon win the battle of Waterloo? If Vegas could bet, certainly Napoleon had better odds than the divided polyglot Armies of Wellington. All Bonaparte needed was 15 more minutes. But in the contests of men both Hercules and Lichas play at dice.¹⁸ Thus Victor Davis Hanson's notion set battles spanning over the centuries loosely struck together does not lead to a final conclusion anymore than the collective lives of all mankind measured over a finite period of time, commonly known as history follow a Hegelian dialectic of determinist triumphalism. History zigs and zags, sometimes seeming but never really running in cycles.

Hannibal Barca circa 216 B.C.

Despite Hanson's clunky tendency to redundancy, Hanson does bring new insights to battle analysis. His work on Salamis buttresses his expertise as a Classicist. The ethnicity of Persians in both the battles of Salamis and Gaugamela as representing an alien race in contrast to the European Greeks paints the blackamoor white. Xenophon would not have agreed. Further the Greeks had considerable contact with Persians who though of a different ethnic identity, religion and language shared the same culture. Geography determined in part their varying political organization. But Greeks fought both with Darius III and Xerxes as well as with Themistocles and Alexander.

The Persian defeat at Salamis (480 B.C.) signaled a triumph of free states over an imperial foreign monarchy. The same cannot be said about Gaugamela (331 B.C.) - a battle between two kingdoms. Some call the hostile takeover a marriage, others a rape. Alexander decisively defeated Darius III and spread his empire from Egypt to India. Macedonians were aware of the Greek victory of Salamis 150 years ago but how much of role did it play on their lives? How much does the role of firing of Fort Sumter play on the conscience of every day Americans? Also Salamis threatened the Peloponnese not Macedonia.   

Battle of Poitiers
732 A.D.

Hanson links the Roman empire with Greeks. But if one must strain to see the contrasts between the Persian and the Macedonian, one needs to be more flexible to discern how the Carthaginians are outside Western Civilization.  The Carthaginians shared the same religion and same government as the Romans. In many ways, they were more free as they did not have conscription among their laws. Thus they depended on mercenary armies. Originally a Near Eastern peoples, they practiced child human sacrifice - a practice odious to the Romans. Nonetheless they had more in common than later day Roman revisionists like to admit.

Battle of Lepanto
1571 A.D.

Cannae was a victory for the Carthaginians. It is true that the Romans internalized that defeat the same way a Texan would the Alamo. The defeat of Hannibal was a victory of freeborn Romans against the mercenary armies of the free and democratic city-state of Carthage. The Roman rightly puffs his chest at recollecting Hannibal's fate when he bended his knee to the rule of the Caesars or as he moved his chattels to Byzantium. Nothing lasts forever that said the transfers of culture and history from one generation to another are not addressed but just assumed by Hanson.

Polish Hussar

Hanson stands on firmer ground when he writes about Potiers and Tenochitlan. But little is known about Potiers. In describing Tenochitlan, Hanson refutes Diamond’s thesis every effectively by describing Spanish warfare and Cortes’ genius for diplomacy and war. Unfortunately Hanson’s praise for Spanish warfare and Cortes’ genius on its own does not solely support his Western values thesis of technology and reason. Cortes built an organization of men across nationalities of differing languages, religions and civilizations for one purpose the overthrow of Aztec empire. He was not a tech-head though he did employ them using their skills to construct boats and siege works. He was not a Renaissance philosopher who waxed on about free will and the church. He had a Catholic education but injured himself falling out of the window of a married woman and may have killed his first wife Catalina Suarez. In this regard, Hanson’s characterization of Occidentals being more efficient killers applies.

Siege of Vienna
1529 A.D.

The examination of Lepanto and Rourke's Drift in the course of Western civilization seem too minor to validate Hanson’s thesis of cultural superiority. At Rourke’s Drift, the British had breech loading rifles backing Jared Diamond’s trinity of Guns, Germs and Steel except that the Zulus

Siege of Vienna
September 11, 1683 A.D.

massacred the British at Isandlwana. Lieutenants John Chard and Gonville Bromhead deserve the credit for organizing and leading their men in such a way to maximize firepower and save British lives. The battle did not stop the war and it is doubtful what impact if any the Anglo-Zulu war had on Western Civilization.

Lepanto was a significant battle between the West and the Ottoman Empire. But it was not the most significant. The Turks rebuilt their fleet within a year. Second, the Sieges of Vienna are more

Zulu (1964)
this movie recreates the Battle of Rourke's Drift (1871)

important than Lepanto in rolling back Ottoman prestige. Also Hanson is silent about the French-Ottoman alliance and the alliances many Christian kingdoms had with the Ottomans. Further, geography, Jared Diamond’s pet plays a bigger part as Europe has significant borders to Islam that only now being breeched by the migrant crisis.

Count Majlath : As the years go by, the fortunes of these countries change as one becomes stronger another becomes weaker.

Helene: But why? Why can’t a strong country remain strong always?

Count Majlath: Because strength in itself is a great danger. The fact that Austria is as strong as she is today means that she has many enemies. No man wishes to be dominated by another. People become angry and resentful.

The Fall of Eagles (1974)¹⁹

Zulu (1964)
starring Michael Caine & Stanley Baker

Hanson and Diamond overrate the importance of war and under-appraise the bounty of peace – ²⁰, the deaths of bad men did not comfort me or reassure me with a sense of justice. If anything, I felt like we failed those men even if we couldn't save them from themselves. I could not help but feel a sense of loss of ache. But if we did not stop them, they would cut somebody's head off. They had to be stopped.

the author with 3rd Battalion of 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
in Halbjah, Iraq during Operation Viking Hammer circa March 2003

especially long periods of peace. Both men lived through wars albeit removed from the action by two large bodies of water. War close up is not romantic. War always demoralizes its participants. War always kills innocent people. The Catholic Church, though positing rightly the theory of just war, makes the argument that even the life of the guilty man is worth saving. I know. I have seen both good men and bad men die. When I saw Ansar al Islam die on the slabs of the mountain near Halabja in 2003

The Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus

Hanson, though not his book was wrong by the way. We still have not won the War on Terror. We killed bin Laden, but they have killed a lot of ours. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we are in retreat. ²¹

The state of Texas teaches high school students pathos, logos and ethos. Should we not apply this high school test on modern scholarship? I was in the 75^th Ranger Regiment. The 75^th enjoys a long lineage of being very efficient killers. But the 75^th Ranger Regiment cannot give birth to a child. I went to Iraq with the 10^th Special Forces too. 10^th Group cannot
teach a child the way a mother can. All great men or rather all men that other men make great started with babies feet. Too bad, the hand that rocks the cradle does not get the full credit for ruling the world.

George Weigel

When Stalin asked how many divisions does the Pope have? Let us remember that a Pope that placed his empire on the ash heap of history. George Weigel when writing about Pope John Paul II noted that culture decided the course of civilizations. Culture comes from the word cult which means religion. ²² It was the collapse of the Roman Empire, the evangelization of Dark Ages, the Establishment of Christendom from the British Isles to the Ural Mountains, that philosophy that made the material successes such as the caravel, rifle and the combustion engine possible. But it is also music, novels and commerce too. A man's relationship with his God determines every other relationship. Those centuries of civilization interrupted by war, schism and plagues provided the basis of community that went beyond the city and state. This supranational community was not Jewish or Protestant, but Catholic.

Saint Pope John Paul the Great

In conclusion, the explanation of 514 years of Western dominance cannot be attributed to Diamond or Hanson's thesis, but that of the establishment and maintenance of Catholic Church which is the last and best hope for humanity.

Samuel Huntington's map of world civilizations

Jared Diamond stands a giant among minnows trapped in a shallow pond. His ambition, his popular appeal to positivism to a public uncomfortable and ignorant of religion and philosophy and its impact on their lives and the scope of his book awe anyone who dares disagree. Victor Davis Hanson refuted somewhat effectively using tradition historical methodology. Hanson deserves credit for throwing cold war on junk science. But Hanson makes the same errors Diamond makes and his evidence many times misses the mark. His argument needs the force of a Toynbee, Gibbon, Durant or Chesterton to reinforce his correct conclusion of Western cultural superiority. But the public discourse is without a champion, a champion who understands the impact of philosophy, religion, culture, love and peace. No one will pick up this cross and follow the King of Kings. Guns, germs, steel, not even in the hands of efficient killers cannot prevail against the Kingdom of Truth. Europe, the Americas, Australia and Russia too may fall under the blight of a nuclear holocaust. Who knows? The Church will live on even if that church is just the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity! What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays. The sun rises and the sun goes down; then it presses on to the place where it rises. Blowing now toward the south, then toward the north, the wind turns again and again, resuming its rounds. All rivers go to the sea, yet never does the sea become full. To the place where they go, the rivers keep on going. All speech is labored; there is nothing man can say. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear filled with hearing. What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:2-9²³

The Prodigal Son
by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
1669

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1Archbishop John Morton Morton's Fork popularized the false dichotomy in the late 15^th century England. The Archbishop of Canterbury, John Morton (1420 -1500) allied himself to King Henry VII. King Henry VII levied large taxes to restore Royal Solvency.

Morton agreed: "If the subject is seen to live frugally, tell him because he is clearly a money saver of great ability, he can afford to give generously to the King. If, however, the subject lives a life of great extravagance, tell him he, too, can afford to give largely, the proof of his opulence being evident in his expenditure."

People familiar with Morton's infamous dilemma attached his assent with forks as forks at that time had two only prongs. History instructs with further irony that Henry VII sought harmony and fiscal responsibility his successor destroyed by the Church and the Exchequer.

2Matthew 7:16: By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

The New American Bible - IntraText. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2016, fromhttp://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PVG.HTM

3Diamond met Yali in Papua New Guinea in 1972 where Yali asked, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” Cargo meaning stuff. Yali was an interesting and complicated man who served the British during the Second World War at great expense to himself. After the war, he served time in prison.

Diamond, J., Guns, Germs and Steel, (1997), Virago, 2005, p 13-15

4Diamond and Hanson do not belong to the Frankfurt School. But if Academia concedes a Marxist view of history, why not a Christian world view.

5Robert Greene makes this point in the Preface of his book. He writes: “They might also lead them astray literally, taking them on a journey, as Cleopatra lured Julius Caesar on a trip down the Nile. Men would grow hooked on these refined, sensual pleasures — they would fall in love. But then, invariably, the women would turn cold and indifferent, confusing their victims. Just when the men wanted more, they found their pleasures withdrawn. They would be forced into pursuit, trying anything to win back the favors they once had tasted and growing weak and emotional in the process. Men who had physical force and all the social power — men like King David, the Trojan Paris, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, King Fu Chai — would find themselves becoming the slave of a woman.

Greene, Robert. The Art of Seduction. New York, NY: Penguin, 2003. Print.

6Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ozymandias." The Literature Network. Jalic Inc., n.d. Web. 10 June 2016.

7"World GDP Ranking 2015 | Data and Charts." Https://knoema.com/. Knoema, n.d. Web. 10 June 2016.

8Mark 8:36 What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?

The New American Bible - IntraText. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2016, fromhttp://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PVG.HTM

9What is really startling about the theses of Hanson and Diamond is that they make no concessions to culture. At least Diamond on his website acknowledges the limitations of Geographical Determinism.   

Homer. "The Internet Classics Archive | The Odyssey by Homer." The Internet Classics Archive | The Odyssey by Homer. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d. Web. 10 June 2016.

10Yeʼor, Bat. Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2005. Print.

11Eager, Paige Whaley (2013). From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists: Women and Political Violence. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 90. ISBN 9781409498575.

Kaplan, Jeffrey (2000). Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. AltaMira Press. p. 539. ISBN 9780742503403. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

Kivisto, Peter; Rundblad, Georganne (2000). Multiculturalism in the United States: Current Issues, Contemporary Voices. SAGE Knowledge. pp. 57–60. ISBN 9780761986485. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

Capehart, Jonathan. "A petition to ‘stop white genocide’?". Washington Post. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

Perry, Barbara. "‘White Genocide’: White Supremacists and the Politics of Reproduction." Home-grown hate: Gender and organized racism (2001): 75-85.

"'White Genocide' Billboard Removed". NBC News. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

Sexton, Jared (2008). Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism. Univ Of Minnesota Press. pp. 207–208. ISBN 0816651043. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

12Thivierge, Robert. "Atheist Revolution: Atheism and White Power." Atheism and White Power. Atheist Revolution!, 2 Nov. 2007. Web. 10 June 2016.

13Rose, B. (2013, October 20). Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, & Steel | London Real. Retrieved June 16, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rP8vkG3dmQ

14I am telling a joke. I made a pun that plays on the words reign and rain. - the reign of Guns, Germs and Steel. Matthew 5:45 - for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

15 Diamond, J. (n.d.). Geographic determinism. Retrieved June 16, 2016, fromhttp://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Geographic_determinism.html

This is the first time in my life where someone described an act of conscience as a failure. Von Stauffenberg did not succeed in the assassination of Adolf Hitler any more than the Polish Home Army in Warsaw Uprising. But we don't belittle the sacrifices of the brave just because they do not succeed. It was very much in poor taste.

Further Hitler escaped over 20 attempts on his life. Why? Neither theses from Hanson or Diamond explain this.

16Ibid.

17It must be said that the public see Hanson's argument on Midway is the strongest and Tet the weakest.

18Line 35

Shakespeare, W. (n.d.). The Merchant of Venice. Act II. Scene I. William Shakespeare. 1914. The Oxford Shakespeare. Retrieved June 10, 2016, from http://www.bartleby.com/70/1921.html

19Elliot, John. "Fall of Eagles Episode 01." YouTube. British Broadcasting Company, 16 Jan. 2016. Web. 10 June 2016.

20Schanzer, Jonathan. "Ansar Al-Islam: Back in Iraq." Middle East Forum. Daniel Pipes, Winter 2004. Web. 10 June 2016.

21ForaTv, and Victor Davis Hanson. "Victor Davis Hanson - Is the "War on Terror" Really a War?" YouTube. ForaTv, 29 May 2007. Web. 10 June 2016.

Hanson, Victor Davis. "Is the War on Terror Over?" RealClearPolitics. Tom Bevan and John McIntyre, 26 Apr. 2007. Web. 10 June 2016.

Hanson, Victor Davis. "Waging The War on 'Terror,' Vichy-style." National Review Online. William F. Buckley Jr., 14 Nov. 2015. Web. 10 June 2016.

22Weigel, George. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. New York: Cliff Street, 1999. Print.

23The New American Bible - IntraText. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2016, from http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PVG.HTM

James A. Bretney

 Norwich University, Entrance Essay

June 9, 2016

There is no Europe without Christ and His Catholic Church

Given the power and status of the European nations in the year 1400, Europe’s rise to world hegemony in the period 1400-1914 appears both unlikely and surprising. The factors that account for this development are the fodder for intense debates among historians. Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel, and Victor Davis Hanson, in Carnage and Culture offer two startling different arguments that attempt to explain the rise of the West. Outline the arguments of both Hanson and Diamond, analyze their strengths and weaknesses and indicate what argument is more credible and convincing.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York, NY: Norton & Co., 1997.

Hanson, Victor Davis. Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. New York, NY: Anchor Books, 2001.

“the race is not won by the swift, nor the battle by the valiant, nor a livelihood by the wise, nor riches by the shrewd, nor favor by the experts; for a time of calamity comes to all alike.”

Ecclesiastes 9:11

Jared Diamond
Ph D. UCLA

In 1997, Jared Diamond wrote a book about civilization. Not since Toynbee, Gibbon and Durant has a work of this magnitude informed, entertained and influenced. Sensing the influence and seeking to correct the errors of this work, another California academic Victor Davis Hanson wrote a 544 page retort to Diamond in Carnage and Culture. The comparison of these arguments make up the nexus of this question. But the question, like the arguments of Diamond and Hanson, is flawed.

Victor Davis Hanson
Ph D. Stanford

The proposition under consideration stands unmasked a false dichotomy. If we concede that the West enjoined a 514 year old world supremacy, Hanson and Diamond do not account for it. Christianity confers on its adherents the right to rule. The meek inherit the earth not the strong and not the germs. If Western Civilization is worth saving, it is only by the Catholic Church that lives and only by the Catholic Church shall it remain.

Part of the problem in explaining the Rise of the West is the question itself. Suicide by a germ or by a cold steel is still suicide. One doesn’t have to be the Archbishop of Canterbury¹ or carry colossal car note to know that very few things in life are an either or proposition. Why can’t the customer have both ketchup and mustard? Why aren’t there more tools in the toolbox besides hammers and nails? Not every problems needs a hammer or a nail - sometimes - a little glue will do. Do we have glue? Can we make some?

Yali

History is the study of facts over time. More precisely, history is the story of man over the centuries. If we judge men by their fruits, we can safely say that the study of history is the examination and valuation of the successive harvest of mankind over the generations.² It is a fact plain to Yali that the white man had so much and the black, brown, yellow, and red had so few. Why?³ Germs, Guns and Steel replied Jared Diamond. Because we are better killers said Victor Davis Hanson. Both men are materialists. When a man's spirit leaves him at the moment of his expiration, its the material that remains not the man. Good luck getting the Frankfurt School to admit this?⁴ Both Hanson and Diamond praise the soldier. And both men are wrong. Cleopatra who was no Helen of Troy doesn't tell us that might does not make right, but that might does not make might.⁵

Bryan Cranston as Walter White
Breaking Bad "Ozymandius"

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'⁶

The white man does have more stuff than the black, brown, yellow, and red.⁷ What good does it do a man to be intelligent or rich if he has no character?⁸ Even Diamond agrees. Even if to accept the premise of the question, the West enjoyed a 514 year supremacy, what good is that supremacy to the white corpse unburied in a field in Flanders? Achilles offered to trade places the black, brown, yellow, and red, but was refused.⁹ Further, the Mohammedan displaces the white man of Europe.¹⁰ The #AltRight will cry White Genocide, but they themselves don't have big families nor are they willing fight or die for their God.¹¹ Charles Martel did not wave an Atheist flag.¹²

Germs

Jared Diamond writes about big questions. His book Guns, Germs and Steel (1997) took 25 years to answer Yali’s rather racist question, why do whites have more stuff than blacks? His narrative spans over all over the planet and all over recorded history to the dawn of time. He begins with an anecdote that artfully sets the table for himself and the reader of what he believes. Jared Diamond traces the problem of ¹³ Diamond’s work reflects an admiration for positivism. Positivism holds that valid knowledge (certitude or truth) is found only in this derived knowledge. He even describes “The future of human history as a science.” Diamond fills the 408 pages of his book with such examples that demonstrate his interdisciplinary gifts that promote his ambitious, novel and interesting thesis.

Guns circa 1521 A.D.

inequality between races, cultures and civilizations to one cause in three parts - luck who has and who has not guns, germs and steel. He makes considerable reference to the Neolithic peoples of Papua New Guinea, an anthropological approaches to Mesoamericans, Chinese and Africans. Jared Diamond once bragged that he could provide 35 examples why a certain phenomena is true when only 5 will suffice.

Steel

For all Diamond’s vaunted titles, Pulitzer Prize award, and 35:5 evidentiary supports, Diamond is still a historian. All historians cherry pick. For example, the magic of guns, germs and steel conquers the Incans for Spain and not the other way around. Guns, germs and steel did not help the Cordoba or Grijalva expeditions which preceded the Cortes expedition. Cordoba paid with his life. Why did Guns, Germs and Steel kill Cordoba but save Pizarro? Further, Jared Diamond's preference to speaking of history so abstractly without narrative detail impeaches his argument and his gravitas as historian. For example, he discusses the fall of the Mesoamerican peoples without blow by blow of characters, scene and story that other historians like Victor Davis Hanson trade in.

Diamond also does not discuss Hernan Cortes with the detail the subject deserves.

Hernan Cortes

Guns, Germs and Steel does not describe the guile, the daring or the bravery of Cortes nor does it describe the caution, indecision and almost arrogant incompetence of Montezuma. Governor Velasquez changed his mind about who would led the Cortes expedition. Cortes had to navigate the new lands of the Mexican coast. He had to defend himself from attack. He had to make allies with a strange and alien peoples. Serendipitously, Cortes meets Geronimo de Aguilar, a captured Franciscan priest and Malinche, a former Indian slave girl who translate for Cortes. Guns, germs and steel do not account for these coincidences.

Francisco de Cordoba

If Diamond does not discuss Cortes at all, he attributes Pizarro's skill just to luck: guns, germs and steel. Never mind that the arquebus was a very unstable platform and that the Toledo steel can equalize a skillful opponent armed with a stone weapon. Toledo steel cannot equalize 100 to 1 odds unless the opponent has given his back. But then again, why has the opponent given the Spanish their back? Diamond chants Guns, Germs and Steel when frankly other forces are clearly at play.

Despite revisionist attempts to weaponize small pox against the Indians, parasites don’t care about the nationality of its host. It is true that Europeans developed an immunity to germs born of husbandry. But not all Europeans were so lucky. Many Native allies to Cortes and Pizarro died at the hands of these “weaponized” parasites. Thus the reign falls on both good and evil alike.¹⁴

Human sacrifice in Codex Magliabechiano, Folio 70. 

But the greatest critique of Diamond’s work is the author himself, who inoculates his argument be revealing the limitations of his geographic determinist theses. On his website, he talks about how Guns, Germs and Steel did not account for Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed¹⁵ assassination attempt against his Furher. Geographic determinism does not account for differences between North Korea and South Korea or East Germany and West Germany during the Cold War. Geographic determinism does not explain ¹⁶”

Scholars Will and Ariel Durant

“differences between the attitudes of French and German people, e.g. towards obedience, eating foie gras and frogs, and admiring Wagner’s music. These differences are viewed as products of French and German culture and history for which no plausible geographic explanations have been advanced. German as well as French geography provides geese and frogs.

The question not asked by Yali, the question inside Yali’s Big Question from 1972 disturbs the reader and the author. The silence of the author in never addressing this question disturbs with greater horror. Why? If the white man is lucky and black man is not, then why is that the case? This is where it is important to know where Hanson and Diamond agree. Diamond and Hanson reject racism. To his credit, Diamond goes

Arnold Toynbee

out of his way to express his admiration and extoll the superiority of Stone Age peoples against modern man. Both men concede that supremacy can be lost and agree with Toynbee that civilizations fail because they commit suicide. Will Durant and Hanson agree that civilizational suicide stems from moral decay. Toynbee and Diamond believe civilizational suicide stems from a

Battle of Salamis 480 B.C.

failure to solve problems. Both Diamond and Hanson dismiss religion and philosophy as periphery or ineffective factors to the rise of the West. Both Diamond and Hanson (despite both of them having never served in the military) place too much importance on the role of war and soldiery on civilizational revitalization and collapse.

Hanson responded to Diamond within 4 years. Diamond spent 25 years writing his book. Hanson uses traditional narrative style in making his points. Diamond argues from analogy comparing Oceanic peoples to peoples on the Eurasian land

Battle of Gaugamela 331 B.C.

mass. Diamond uses a lot of his interdisciplinary skills such as scientific speculation to get around the “What if” history and proving a negative that Diamond frequently engages in, practices traditional historians poo poo. That said, Hanson has the right conclusion: Western cultures enjoy a fleeting superiority. Hanson does not fortify his argument very effectively.

Hanson depends on 9 battles over 4,000 year history. Even if you buy the premise that wars decide whether civilizations die or thrive, even if you believe that cultures produce the soldiers and therefore wars are cultural products, why these 9 battles? Why only 9? Why not more? Since only 7 of the 9 battles precede 1914, we will only consider Salamis, Gaugamela, Cannae, Pontiers, Tenochitlan, Lepanto, and Rourke's Drift and exclude Midway and the Tet Offensive¹⁷.

Cannae

But before considering Hanson's arguments, look at his approach. See the dependence on causality while dismissing paradox, uncertain drama and the irony rife in reading the lives men. If a shortest distance between two points is a straight line, then why is the life of every man, even the best of men so messy, so sordid? If the life of man follows the rhythms of an ordered clock, or the dictums of chemistry, then why didn't Napoleon win the battle of Waterloo? If Vegas could bet, certainly Napoleon had better odds than the divided polyglot Armies of Wellington. All Bonaparte needed was 15 more minutes. But in the contests of men both Hercules and Lichas play at dice.¹⁸ Thus Victor Davis Hanson's notion set battles spanning over the centuries loosely struck together does not lead to a final conclusion anymore than the collective lives of all mankind measured over a finite period of time, commonly known as history follow a Hegelian dialectic of determinist triumphalism. History zigs and zags, sometimes seeming but never really running in cycles.

Hannibal Barca circa 216 B.C.

Despite Hanson's clunky tendency to redundancy, Hanson does bring new insights to battle analysis. His work on Salamis buttresses his expertise as a Classicist. The ethnicity of Persians in both the battles of Salamis and Gaugamela as representing an alien race in contrast to the European Greeks paints the blackamoor white. Xenophon would not have agreed. Further the Greeks had considerable contact with Persians who though of a different ethnic identity, religion and language shared the same culture. Geography determined in part their varying political organization. But Greeks fought both with Darius III and Xerxes as well as with Themistocles and Alexander.

The Persian defeat at Salamis (480 B.C.) signaled a triumph of free states over an imperial foreign monarchy. The same cannot be said about Gaugamela (331 B.C.) - a battle between two kingdoms. Some call the hostile takeover a marriage, others a rape. Alexander decisively defeated Darius III and spread his empire from Egypt to India. Macedonians were aware of the Greek victory of Salamis 150 years ago but how much of role did it play on their lives? How much does the role of firing of Fort Sumter play on the conscience of every day Americans? Also Salamis threatened the Peloponnese not Macedonia.

Battle of Poitiers
732 A.D.

Hanson links the Roman empire with Greeks. But if one must strain to see the contrasts between the Persian and the Macedonian, one needs to be more flexible to discern how the Carthaginians are outside Western Civilization. The Carthaginians shared the same religion and same government as the Romans. In many ways, they were more free as they did not have conscription among their laws. Thus they depended on mercenary armies. Originally a Near Eastern peoples, they practiced child human sacrifice - a practice odious to the Romans. Nonetheless they had more in common than later day Roman revisionists like to admit.

Battle of Lepanto
1571 A.D.

Cannae was a victory for the Carthaginians. It is true that the Romans internalized that defeat the same way a Texan would the Alamo. The defeat of Hannibal was a victory of freeborn Romans against the mercenary armies of the free and democratic city-state of Carthage. The Roman rightly puffs his chest at recollecting Hannibal's fate when he bended his knee to the rule of the Caesars or as he moved his chattels to Byzantium. Nothing lasts forever that said the transfers of culture and history from one generation to another are not addressed but just assumed by Hanson.

Polish Hussar

Hanson stands on firmer ground when he writes about Potiers and Tenochitlan. But little is known about Potiers. In describing Tenochitlan, Hanson refutes Diamond’s thesis every effectively by describing Spanish warfare and Cortes’ genius for diplomacy and war. Unfortunately Hanson’s praise for Spanish warfare and Cortes’ genius on its own does not solely support his Western values thesis of technology and reason. Cortes built an organization of men across nationalities of differing languages, religions and civilizations for one purpose the overthrow of Aztec empire. He was not a tech-head though he did employ them using their skills to construct boats and siege works. He was not a Renaissance philosopher who waxed on about free will and the church. He had a Catholic education but injured himself falling out of the window of a married woman and may have killed his first wife Catalina Suarez. In this regard, Hanson’s characterization of Occidentals being more efficient killers applies.

Siege of Vienna
1529 A.D.

The examination of Lepanto and Rourke's Drift in the course of Western civilization seem too minor to validate Hanson’s thesis of cultural superiority. At Rourke’s Drift, the British had breech loading rifles backing Jared Diamond’s trinity of Guns, Germs and Steel except that the Zulus

Siege of Vienna
September 11, 1683 A.D.

massacred the British at Isandlwana. Lieutenants John Chard and Gonville Bromhead deserve the credit for organizing and leading their men in such a way to maximize firepower and save British lives. The battle did not stop the war and it is doubtful what impact if any the Anglo-Zulu war had on Western Civilization.

Lepanto was a significant battle between the West and the Ottoman Empire. But it was not the most significant. The Turks rebuilt their fleet within a year. Second, the Sieges of Vienna are more

Zulu (1964)
this movie recreates the Battle of Rourke's Drift (1871)

important than Lepanto in rolling back Ottoman prestige. Also Hanson is silent about the French-Ottoman alliance and the alliances many Christian kingdoms had with the Ottomans. Further, geography, Jared Diamond’s pet plays a bigger part as Europe has significant borders to Islam that only now being breeched by the migrant crisis.

Count Majlath : As the years go by, the fortunes of these countries change as one becomes stronger another becomes weaker.

Helene: But why? Why can’t a strong country remain strong always?

Count Majlath: Because strength in itself is a great danger. The fact that Austria is as strong as she is today means that she has many enemies. No man wishes to be dominated by another. People become angry and resentful.

The Fall of Eagles (1974)¹⁹

Zulu (1964)
starring Michael Caine & Stanley Baker

Hanson and Diamond overrate the importance of war and under-appraise the bounty of peace – ²⁰, the deaths of bad men did not comfort me or reassure me with a sense of justice. If anything, I felt like we failed those men even if we couldn't save them from themselves. I could not help but feel a sense of loss of ache. But if we did not stop them, they would cut somebody's head off. They had to be stopped.

the author with 3rd Battalion of 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
in Halbjah, Iraq during Operation Viking Hammer circa March 2003

especially long periods of peace. Both men lived through wars albeit removed from the action by two large bodies of water. War close up is not romantic. War always demoralizes its participants. War always kills innocent people. The Catholic Church, though positing rightly the theory of just war, makes the argument that even the life of the guilty man is worth saving. I know. I have seen both good men and bad men die. When I saw Ansar al Islam die on the slabs of the mountain near Halabja in 2003

The Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus

Hanson, though not his book was wrong by the way. We still have not won the War on Terror. We killed bin Laden, but they have killed a lot of ours. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we are in retreat. ²¹

The state of Texas teaches high school students pathos, logos and ethos. Should we not apply this high school test on modern scholarship? I was in the 75^th Ranger Regiment. The 75^th enjoys a long lineage of being very efficient killers. But the 75^th Ranger Regiment cannot give birth to a child. I went to Iraq with the 10^th Special Forces too. 10^th Group cannot
teach a child the way a mother can. All great men or rather all men that other men make great started with babies feet. Too bad, the hand that rocks the cradle does not get the full credit for ruling the world.

George Weigel

When Stalin asked how many divisions does the Pope have? Let us remember that a Pope that placed his empire on the ash heap of history. George Weigel when writing about Pope John Paul II noted that culture decided the course of civilizations. Culture comes from the word cult which means religion. ²² It was the collapse of the Roman Empire, the evangelization of Dark Ages, the Establishment of Christendom from the British Isles to the Ural Mountains, that philosophy that made the material successes such as the caravel, rifle and the combustion engine possible. But it is also music, novels and commerce too. A man's relationship with his God determines every other relationship. Those centuries of civilization interrupted by war, schism and plagues provided the basis of community that went beyond the city and state. This supranational community was not Jewish or Protestant, but Catholic.

Saint Pope John Paul the Great

In conclusion, the explanation of 514 years of Western dominance cannot be attributed to Diamond or Hanson's thesis, but that of the establishment and maintenance of Catholic Church which is the last and best hope for humanity.

Samuel Huntington's map of world civilizations

Jared Diamond stands a giant among minnows trapped in a shallow pond. His ambition, his popular appeal to positivism to a public uncomfortable and ignorant of religion and philosophy and its impact on their lives and the scope of his book awe anyone who dares disagree. Victor Davis Hanson refuted somewhat effectively using tradition historical methodology. Hanson deserves credit for throwing cold war on junk science. But Hanson makes the same errors Diamond makes and his evidence many times misses the mark. His argument needs the force of a Toynbee, Gibbon, Durant or Chesterton to reinforce his correct conclusion of Western cultural superiority. But the public discourse is without a champion, a champion who understands the impact of philosophy, religion, culture, love and peace. No one will pick up this cross and follow the King of Kings. Guns, germs, steel, not even in the hands of efficient killers cannot prevail against the Kingdom of Truth. Europe, the Americas, Australia and Russia too may fall under the blight of a nuclear holocaust. Who knows? The Church will live on even if that church is just the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity! What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays. The sun rises and the sun goes down; then it presses on to the place where it rises. Blowing now toward the south, then toward the north, the wind turns again and again, resuming its rounds. All rivers go to the sea, yet never does the sea become full. To the place where they go, the rivers keep on going. All speech is labored; there is nothing man can say. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear filled with hearing. What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:2-9²³

The Prodigal Son
by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
1669

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Munro, T. (2002, December 7). Tom Munro's review of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power (Paperback). Retrieved June 16, 2016, from https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RWYHFUGQQZ64B/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8

Nonfiction Book Review: CARNAGE AND CULTURE: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power by Victor Davis Hanson, Author . Doubleday $29.95 (512p) ISBN 978-0-385-50052-4. (n.d.). Retrieved June 16, 2016, from http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-385-50052-4

Jared Diamond on Religion. (2014, October 25). Retrieved June 16, 2016, from https://boldquestions.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/jared-diamond-on-religion/

Perry, Barbara. "‘White Genocide’: White Supremacists and the Politics of Reproduction." Home-grown hate: Gender and organized racism (2001): 75-85.

The New American Bible - IntraText. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2016, from http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PVG.HTM

Rose, B. (2013, October 20). Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, & Steel | London Real. Retrieved June 16, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rP8vkG3dmQ

Schanzer, Jonathan. "Ansar Al-Islam: Back in Iraq." Middle East Forum. Daniel Pipes, Winter 2004. Web. 10 June 2016.

Shakespeare, W. (n.d.). The Merchant of Venice. Act II. Scene I. William Shakespeare. 1914. The Oxford Shakespeare. Retrieved June 10, 2016, from http://www.bartleby.com/70/1921.html

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ozymandias." The Literature Network. Jalic Inc., n.d. Web. 10 June 2016.

Stripes, J. (2008, April 6). Carnage and Culture: Overview. Retrieved June 16, 2016, from http://historynotebook.blogspot.com/2008/04/carnage-and-culture-overview.html

Thivierge, Robert. "Atheist Revolution: Atheism and White Power." Atheism and White Power. Atheist Revolution!, 2 Nov. 2007. Web. 10 June 2016.

Waalk, J. (2014, September 07). Anthropology's Jared Diamond Problem. Retrieved June 16, 2016, from https://formerpeople.wordpress.com/2014/09/07/anthropologys-jared-diamond-problem/

Weigel, George. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. New York: Cliff Street, 1999. Print.

"'White Genocide' Billboard Removed". NBC News. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

Sexton, Jared (2008). Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism. Univ Of Minnesota Press. pp. 207–208. ISBN 0816651043. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

"World GDP Ranking 2015 | Data and Charts." Https://knoema.com/. Knoema, n.d. Web. 10 June 2016.

Yeʼor, Bat. Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2005. Print.

1Archbishop John Morton Morton's Fork popularized the false dichotomy in the late 15^th century England. The Archbishop of Canterbury, John Morton (1420 -1500) allied himself to King Henry VII. King Henry VII levied large taxes to restore Royal Solvency.

Morton agreed: "If the subject is seen to live frugally, tell him because he is clearly a money saver of great ability, he can afford to give generously to the King. If, however, the subject lives a life of great extravagance, tell him he, too, can afford to give largely, the proof of his opulence being evident in his expenditure."

People familiar with Morton's infamous dilemma attached his assent with forks as forks at that time had two only prongs. History instructs with further irony that Henry VII sought harmony and fiscal responsibility his successor destroyed by the Church and the Exchequer.

2Matthew 7:16: By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

The New American Bible - IntraText. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2016, from http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PVG.HTM

3Diamond met Yali in Papua New Guinea in 1972 where Yali asked, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” Cargo meaning stuff. Yali was an interesting and complicated man who served the British during the Second World War at great expense to himself. After the war, he served time in prison.

Diamond, J., Guns, Germs and Steel, (1997), Virago, 2005, p 13-15

4Diamond and Hanson do not belong to the Frankfurt School. But if Academia concedes a Marxist view of history, why not a Christian world view.

5Robert Greene makes this point in the Preface of his book. He writes: “They might also lead them astray literally, taking them on a journey, as Cleopatra lured Julius Caesar on a trip down the Nile. Men would grow hooked on these refined, sensual pleasures — they would fall in love. But then, invariably, the women would turn cold and indifferent, confusing their victims. Just when the men wanted more, they found their pleasures withdrawn. They would be forced into pursuit, trying anything to win back the favors they once had tasted and growing weak and emotional in the process. Men who had physical force and all the social power — men like King David, the Trojan Paris, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, King Fu Chai — would find themselves becoming the slave of a woman.

Greene, Robert. The Art of Seduction. New York, NY: Penguin, 2003. Print.

6Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ozymandias." The Literature Network. Jalic Inc., n.d. Web. 10 June 2016.

7"World GDP Ranking 2015 | Data and Charts." Https://knoema.com/. Knoema, n.d. Web. 10 June 2016.

8Mark 8:36 What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?

The New American Bible - IntraText. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2016, from http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PVG.HTM

9What is really startling about the theses of Hanson and Diamond is that they make no concessions to culture. At least Diamond on his website acknowledges the limitations of Geographical Determinism.

Homer. "The Internet Classics Archive | The Odyssey by Homer." The Internet Classics Archive | The Odyssey by Homer. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d. Web. 10 June 2016.

10Yeʼor, Bat. Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2005. Print.

11Eager, Paige Whaley (2013). From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists: Women and Political Violence. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 90. ISBN 9781409498575.

Kaplan, Jeffrey (2000). Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. AltaMira Press. p. 539. ISBN 9780742503403. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

Kivisto, Peter; Rundblad, Georganne (2000). Multiculturalism in the United States: Current Issues, Contemporary Voices. SAGE Knowledge. pp. 57–60. ISBN 9780761986485. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

Capehart, Jonathan. "A petition to ‘stop white genocide’?". Washington Post. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

Perry, Barbara. "‘White Genocide’: White Supremacists and the Politics of Reproduction." Home-grown hate: Gender and organized racism (2001): 75-85.

"'White Genocide' Billboard Removed". NBC News. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

Sexton, Jared (2008). Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism. Univ Of Minnesota Press. pp. 207–208. ISBN 0816651043. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

12Thivierge, Robert. "Atheist Revolution: Atheism and White Power." Atheism and White Power. Atheist Revolution!, 2 Nov. 2007. Web. 10 June 2016.

13Rose, B. (2013, October 20). Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, & Steel | London Real. Retrieved June 16, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rP8vkG3dmQ

14I am telling a joke. I made a pun that plays on the words reign and rain. - the reign of Guns, Germs and Steel. Matthew 5:45 - for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

15 Diamond, J. (n.d.). Geographic determinism. Retrieved June 16, 2016, from http://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Geographic_determinism.html

This is the first time in my life where someone described an act of conscience as a failure. Von Stauffenberg did not succeed in the assassination of Adolf Hitler any more than the Polish Home Army in Warsaw Uprising. But we don't belittle the sacrifices of the brave just because they do not succeed. It was very much in poor taste.

Further Hitler escaped over 20 attempts on his life. Why? Neither theses from Hanson or Diamond explain this.

16Ibid.

17It must be said that the public see Hanson's argument on Midway is the strongest and Tet the weakest.

18Line 35

Shakespeare, W. (n.d.). The Merchant of Venice. Act II. Scene I. William Shakespeare. 1914. The Oxford Shakespeare. Retrieved June 10, 2016, from http://www.bartleby.com/70/1921.html

19Elliot, John. "Fall of Eagles Episode 01." YouTube. British Broadcasting Company, 16 Jan. 2016. Web. 10 June 2016.

20Schanzer, Jonathan. "Ansar Al-Islam: Back in Iraq." Middle East Forum. Daniel Pipes, Winter 2004. Web. 10 June 2016.

21ForaTv, and Victor Davis Hanson. "Victor Davis Hanson - Is the "War on Terror" Really a War?" YouTube. ForaTv, 29 May 2007. Web. 10 June 2016.

Hanson, Victor Davis. "Is the War on Terror Over?" RealClearPolitics. Tom Bevan and John McIntyre, 26 Apr. 2007. Web. 10 June 2016.

Hanson, Victor Davis. "Waging The War on 'Terror,' Vichy-style." National Review Online. William F. Buckley Jr., 14 Nov. 2015. Web. 10 June 2016.

22Weigel, George. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. New York: Cliff Street, 1999. Print.

23The New American Bible - IntraText. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2016, from http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PVG.HTM

James A. Bretney

 Norwich University, Entrance Essay

June 9, 2016