I would like to share a simple historical secret with the reader. It serves as a reasonable explanation for why the Allies won World War II, why the West won the Cold War, and why America is currently winning the War against Islamic Extremism.
During the Second World War, all of humanity stood at a crossroads. Was Fascism the way of the future, or did our destiny lie in other socioeconomic systems? The Fascists were the first to emerge from the Great Depression, and were by far the most powerful nations on Earth at the outbreak of war. They quickly conquered their neighbors, and set their sights on global domination, expanding into Africa and Asia, and preparing to invade the Americas.
But they had a fatal flaw: they were completely patriarchal cultures. Their women were mostly house wives, and had no real role in their society. By contrast, the Americans, Soviets and British put their women to work in factories. This not only created huge amounts of war materials; it also made many more men available to serve in the Armed forces of their respective nations. While fascist women were playing on European beaches, Soviet and American women were hard at work in munitions factories, tending to crops, and in supportive military roles. The Allies thereby built the logistical capacity to field ten-million-man armies, and the Axis advance was first repelled before being defeated within a few short years.
The Cold War then pitted two competing powers against one another, which were roughly equivalent in strength and influence: The victorious Soviet Union, and the Western World. For decades these two hegemonic empires vied for economic supremacy. And they remained largely on par with one another. But then an astounding development occurred. In the United States, the Civil Rights Movement erupted, with the stated intention of abolishing discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and gender. Over the ensuing decades, this had the effect of creating a far more meritocratic society in America. The Soviet Union, by contrast, had no such movement, and remained intransigent in its adherence to cultural stereotypes about the comparative efficacy of men and women. By the end of the 20th Century, the Western World had economically far outpaced the Soviet block, and in a last-ditch effort to modernize its society through "glasnost" and "perestroika", the Soviet Union inadvertently destroyed itself.
Fast-forward to the modern world of the 21st Century. The United States, Europe and Russia have invaded the Middle East in response to provocative terrorist attacks, and become entrenched in a massive campaign that will soon pit entire civilizations against one another. The question on everyone's minds will be: which society is superior? The West, the East, or the Islamic World.
On the face of it the challenge facing the rest of the world seems daunting. There are 1.5 billion adherents to Islam. How can 500 million Americans and 500 million Europeans possibly pacify them?
And yet, the numbers are deceiving, because the Islamic World is close to being as patriarchal as were the Fascist powers of the mid-20th century. So instead of facing an economy driven by a billion and a half productive citizens, the West is facing only half that number at most, as women have very little power in the Islamic World. They do not work most jobs, nor do they fight in the military, nor do many of them even so much as drive cars. They are allowed to contribute next to nothing to their societies.
Meanwhile, the Western World has continued to advance the cause of both minority and women's rights, exploring controversial subjects that other regions of the world have largely swept under the rug. Women take on ever more challenging roles in both American and European society, which has allowed them to become far more productive than their Islamic counterparts.
That to me explains the enormous amount of success the West has had at conquering Middle Eastern nations over the past two decades. And yet, with it comes a warning, for the only thing that could possibly prevent a Western victory against the Islamic World would be a degeneration of the rights of women in the West, owing perhaps to the resurgence of Fascism. If women's rights are dismantled, and they are relegated back to the kitchens and backyards of the Western World, then the West will fall to Islam. Otherwise, it will triumph.
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