Elon Musk was recently asked what kept him up at night. His greatest fear was the possible collapse of the United States. In Musk own worlds, "I worry generally about the strength of America. America is the central column that holds up all of Western civilization... If that column fails, it's all over. You can't run off to New Zealand or some other place. It's over. So either we strengthen that column and make sure America is strong, and we'll be strong for a long time, or that roof’s coming down."
Musk is a hard-headed, data-driven businessman, so his pessimism cannot be ignored. Is his apprehension justified?
Musk’s worry is about western civilization, and the political arrangement undergirding it. This civilization requires a liberal (classically understood) democracy where disputes are settled by the rule of law, not violence, with an open, election-based political system that guarantees such rights as freedom of speech and limited government, all the while promoting free enterprise.
Conceivably, Musk’s own experience of living in South Africa that virtually overnight was transformed from a peaceful, prosperous nation to a violent, Third World nation shapes his pessimism. It was not that the apartheid-era South Africa was an America-like paradise. Hardly -- it brutally suppressed blacks. Rather, South Africa’s collapse demonstrated that no political and economic status quo is forever.
Musk probably knows that Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Italy existed only briefly as civilized, liberal democracies during the World War 1 and World II interim. Meanwhile, our efforts to create “America-like” nations abroad illustrate the difficulty of building and then sustaining western civilization. We have sent hundreds of billions in foreign aid to countless Third World nations to help them “become more like America” with scant results. Ironically, this aid often propped up tyrants imposing socialism.
These failures reveal that while America may epitomize western civilization, our understanding of how to achieve it is limited. If we better understood its underlying mechanics, we could improve it at home and even export our “secret sauce,” and, clearly, we cannot. Musk wants to preserve something that nobody fully understands, hardly an easy task.
Public opinion data paints a bleak picture. One poll recently announced, “Americans with extreme national pride hovers near record low.” Specifically, between 2001 and 2022, the percent saying that they were “very” or “extremely” proud of being an American dropped from 54% to 41%. This decline even occurred among Republicans, who generally exhibit the most national pride.
The problem, however, may be deeper. In the context of history, American and the civilization that it embodies may run counter to human nature, and given changing circumstances, human nature may reassert itself. After all, countless sophisticated societies have vanished without a trace.
Humans have existed and evolved for eons, so it is bizarre to suggest that contemporary America is evolution’s final destination. Judged by societies worldwide, America is an outlier, not what automatically happens when humans gather to create nations. Our democratic government and civilization may only be a thin veneer. The bestselling 1954 novel Lord of the Flies fictionally recounts a group of civilized British pre-adolescent schoolboys suddenly stranded on an uninhabited island, lacking any adult guidance. Initial efforts to create a civil society failed and the group quickly deteriorates into brutal savagery.
“De-evolution” likewise occurs among domesticated animals who escape into the wild. This transformation is particularly noticeable for pigs where the absence of human-provided food and shelter activates “stealth genes” helping them to function autonomously. Now, armed with longer and sharper tusks and coarser hair, these wild boars aggressively forage for food, defend themselves against predators, kill other animals, and otherwise live a totally different life than those raised on farms.
Americans are hardly immune to “de-evolution.” Recall the hundreds of urban riots of the 1960sand, more recently, the widespread 2020 “George Floyd” riots. This re-emergence of primitive instincts is hardly unexpected. Such barbaric behavior was normal for over 95% + of our existence and remains in our genome despite today’s more civil society.
Musk’s South African background may make him especially sensitive to the early warning signs of an impending collapse. Unfortunately, such tremors -- to use the language from earthquakes -- now abound. While few are explicit -- no organization exists named “Down with western civilization.” there are myriad groups and individuals who want, perhaps unconsciously, this destruction. Consider the following subversive trends:
The fracturing of American public education and its transformation into a radical ideological crusade. Beginning in the late 19th century American public education was a unifying forcein response to massive immigration. It included daily flag salutes, holidays honoring national heroes and otherwise stressed “Americanism.” Today, by contrast, education is increasingly fractured along ethnic lines with entire school curriculums (e.g. 1619 Project) built on celebrating ethnic separatism, not national unity. Meanwhile millions of families are abandoning the common school experience via private schools, publicly funded charters, and home schooling. Our shared political culture is dissolving.
At the same time higher education often forsakes transmitting knowledge in favor of propagating a multitude of grievances and contempt for the status quo. This is especially common in fields such as Gender Studies, the social sciences, and the humanities but has now spread to the hard sciences. The upshot is an anti-American elite that often abhors its own society despite its privileged position. Today’s undergraduates are thus easy prey for anti-Americanism. Who would have predicted violent demonstrations at Ivy League schools supporting Muslim terrorism?
Much of higher education also demonizes merit in favor of group politics. The very idea of “truth” is under attack while “merit” is condemned as unearned privilege. White males are especially demonized. Many Americans now tacitly celebrate incompetence.
Then there’s the weaponization of law to destroy one’s political opponents -- think the prosecution of Donald Trump. Less obvious is selective law enforcement law to punish entire classes of people. Examples include tolerating black-on-white crime (but not the reverse) under the guise of promoting anti-white “racial justice.” Politics thus become a never-ending low-level civil war.
The law is also used for “de-civilizing” society by permitting anti-social behavior, for example, public intoxication, drug dealing, and vandalism. This “tolerance” creates cities like today’s slum-ridden Detroit, a city once admired as the “Paris of the Midwest.” Rome was ransacked by barbarians; in today’s San Francisco, the culprits are shoplifters and drug dealers.
The “memory holing” of our national history. Here leftists rename schools and streets while delegitimizing once honored symbols like the Constitution. Traditional patriotic history instruction is replaced by commemorating obscure figures only notable for their race and gender, not their contribution of American life. National identity declines.
Add importing millions from Third World nations who are unlikely to assimilate while critics are intimidated into silence regarding Europe’s experience with these immigrants. With this influx has come a decline of English as the great unifier.
Finally, there is the decline of “civil” language and appearances. Vulgar, once socially forbidden, language is now mainstreamed in popular entertainment and ordinary conversations. Virtually every sexual preference, no matter how dangerous, has become “normal, if not celebrated. College students now adorn themselves with tattoos, piercings, and bizarre hairstyles once limited to primitive tribes. Flouting cultural norms has become “cool.”
No wonder Musk has a hard time sleeping.
American Thinker
