George Gilder's "Israel Test"
A distinguishing characteristic of Liberals and Leftists is an aversion to recognizing or acknowledging evil and its permutations, i.e., communism. On another level, it explains the Lefts dislike for capitalism, a system which produces winners and losers, a painful fact that the Left would rather not see.
And on an international level, it largely explains the Left's antipathy toward Israel.....
1." How do you respond to people who excel you in invention, creativity, and wealth? Do you envy them? Do you feel their success somehow diminishes you? Or do you admire what they've achieved and try to emulate it? [That is] what I call "The Israel Test."
2. ... Jews settled in mandate Palestine and wrought an agricultural miracle..... Jewish settlers drained malarial swamps, leached salt from the soils, terraced the barren hills, and planted millions of trees. They massively expanded the capacity of the land and enabled it to support a substantial Arab population.
3. Crucial to Israel's accomplishments were world leading technological advances in the recovery of water through desalinization, drip irrigation, and sewage recycling.
4. .... between 1921 and 1943, Jews quadrupled the number of enterprises, multiplied the number of jobs by a factor of 10, and increased the level of capital investment a hundredfold. Far from displacing Arabs, they provided the capital for a major expansion of Arab farms and enabled a sevenfold rise in Arab population by 1948, to a level of 1.35 million, the largest in the long history of Palestine. In other words, the Arabs came to what would be soon be the State of Israel because of the Jews
5. By comparison, Trans-Jordan, now known as Jordan, with the same geological endowment and four times the land but no Jews was able to sustain a population density only one tenth of the population density of Palestine.
6. Over the past fifty years, Israel has increased its population tenfold, its agricultural production sixteen fold and its industrial production fifty-fold while actually reducing net water consumption by ten percent since 1948 [enabling] the land to support not only more Jews, but also millions more Arabs.
7. ... Israel with its astonishing achievements in computer science and other high tech fields distills both the genius of the Jews and the misdirected anger of the failed states that surround her.
8. The great divide in the Middle East is .... between admiration of achievement, along with a desire to replicate it, and envy accompanied by violent resentment.
9. People who admire success, who pass the Israel Test, tend to be wealthy and peaceful. People who resent achievement, who fail the Israel Test, tend to become poor and violent.
10. The Israel Test is the central divide in the world today.
How you answer it as an individual and ultimately how we answer it as a nation is a test of our own will to triumph over enemies who hate us, as they hate Israel, for what is best within us."
Do You Pass the Israel Test? - Prager University
A distinguishing characteristic of Liberals and Leftists is an aversion to recognizing or acknowledging evil and its permutations, i.e., communism. On another level, it explains the Lefts dislike for capitalism, a system which produces winners and losers, a painful fact that the Left would rather not see.
And on an international level, it largely explains the Left's antipathy toward Israel.....
1." How do you respond to people who excel you in invention, creativity, and wealth? Do you envy them? Do you feel their success somehow diminishes you? Or do you admire what they've achieved and try to emulate it? [That is] what I call "The Israel Test."
2. ... Jews settled in mandate Palestine and wrought an agricultural miracle..... Jewish settlers drained malarial swamps, leached salt from the soils, terraced the barren hills, and planted millions of trees. They massively expanded the capacity of the land and enabled it to support a substantial Arab population.
3. Crucial to Israel's accomplishments were world leading technological advances in the recovery of water through desalinization, drip irrigation, and sewage recycling.
4. .... between 1921 and 1943, Jews quadrupled the number of enterprises, multiplied the number of jobs by a factor of 10, and increased the level of capital investment a hundredfold. Far from displacing Arabs, they provided the capital for a major expansion of Arab farms and enabled a sevenfold rise in Arab population by 1948, to a level of 1.35 million, the largest in the long history of Palestine. In other words, the Arabs came to what would be soon be the State of Israel because of the Jews
5. By comparison, Trans-Jordan, now known as Jordan, with the same geological endowment and four times the land but no Jews was able to sustain a population density only one tenth of the population density of Palestine.
6. Over the past fifty years, Israel has increased its population tenfold, its agricultural production sixteen fold and its industrial production fifty-fold while actually reducing net water consumption by ten percent since 1948 [enabling] the land to support not only more Jews, but also millions more Arabs.
7. ... Israel with its astonishing achievements in computer science and other high tech fields distills both the genius of the Jews and the misdirected anger of the failed states that surround her.
8. The great divide in the Middle East is .... between admiration of achievement, along with a desire to replicate it, and envy accompanied by violent resentment.
9. People who admire success, who pass the Israel Test, tend to be wealthy and peaceful. People who resent achievement, who fail the Israel Test, tend to become poor and violent.
10. The Israel Test is the central divide in the world today.
How you answer it as an individual and ultimately how we answer it as a nation is a test of our own will to triumph over enemies who hate us, as they hate Israel, for what is best within us."
Do You Pass the Israel Test? - Prager University
I didn't grow up affluent and so never became addicted to money as a source of my happiness. As I like to say it's more important to be able to be happy alone and in an empty room. If you can be happy with nothing and no one, then anything up the ladder from that will see you still happy. But when people start off higher on the ladder I think more than anything else they fear descending rungs. Whereas the poor are happy with what little they have while looking up. Rich people look down instead.
