<From an article by Edwin A. Locke:

...There are three fundamental respects in which American culture is objectively the best. The core values and achievements of American civilization — the values that made America great — are:



1. Reason. The Greeks were the first to identify philosophically that knowledge is gained through reason and logic as
opposed to mysticism (faith, tradition, revelation, dogma). It would take two millennia, including a Dark Ages and a Renaissance, before the full implications of Greek thought would be realized. The rule of reason reached its zenith in the West in the 18th century — the Age of Enlightenment. “For the first time in modern history,” writes one philosopher, “an authentic respect for reason became the mark of an entire culture.” America is the epitome of Enlightenment thought.

2. Individual Rights. An indispensable achievement leading to the Enlightenment was the recognition of the concept of individual rights. John Locke demonstrated that individuals do not exist to serve governments, but rather that governments exist to protect individuals. The individual, said Locke, has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of his own happiness. This was the founding philosophy of America. (America made a disastrous error by
tolerating slavery, which originated elsewhere, but it was too incongruent with America’s core principles of reason and rights to endure and was corrected in the name of those principles.)

3. Science and Technology. The triumph of reason and rights made possible the full development and application of science and technology and, ultimately, modern industrial society. Once man’s mind was freed from the tyranny of religious dogma, and man’s productive capacity was freed from the tyranny of state control, scientific and technological progress followed. Men began to understand the laws of nature. They invented machinery. They
engaged in large-scale production, that is, the creation of wealth. This wealth, in turn, financed and motivated further invention and production. As a result, horse-and-buggies were replaced by automobiles produced by Henry Ford, wagon tracks by steel rails produced by Andrew Carnegie, and candles by electricity harnessed by Thomas Edison. At last, after millennia of struggle, man became the master of his environment.

The result of these core achievements was an increase in freedom, wealth, health, comfort, and life expectancy unprecedented in the history of the world. These Western achievements were greatest in the country where the principles of reason and rights were implemented most consistently — the United States of America. In contrast, it was precisely in those (third-world) countries which did not embrace reason, rights, and technology where people
suffered (and still suffer) most from both natural and man-made disasters (famine, poverty, illness, dictatorship) and where life-expectancy was (and is) lowest. It is said that primitives live “in harmony with nature,” but in reality they are simply victims of the vicissitudes of nature — if some dictator does not kill them first.

The greatness of America is not an “ethnocentric” prejudice; it is an objective fact. This assessment is based on the only proper standard for judging a culture or a society: the degree to which its core values are pro- or anti-life. Pro-life cultures acknowledge and respect man’s nature as a rational being who must discover and create the conditions which his survival and happiness require — which means that they advocate reason, rights (freedom), and technological progress.



Those we speak of as "Anti-American" strongly oppose one or more of these basic themes, and often all three. To oppose them is to support their opposites: Dogma and superstition, collectivism, and anti-technology.

Another, more specific description of American values, or what should be American values, is a definition of Western Civilization, included here for further clarity:

From the perspective of intellectual and cultural content, Western civilization represents an understanding and acceptance of the following: the laws of logic; the concept of causality and, consequently, of a universe ruled by natural laws intelligible to man; on these foundations, the whole known corpus of the laws of mathematics and science; the individual's self-responsibility based on his free will to choose between good and evil; the value of man above all other species on the basis of his unique possession of the power of reason; the value and competence of the individual human being and his corollary possession of individual rights, among them the right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness; the need for limited government and for the individual's freedom from the state; on this entire preceding foundation, the validity of capitalism, with its unprecedented and continuing economic development in terms of division of labor, technological progress, capital accumulation and rising living standards; in addition, the importance of visual arts and literature depicting man as capable of facing the world with confidence in his power to succeed, and music featuring harmony and melody.



-Dr. George Reisman, Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University's School of Business and Management in Los Angeles.

Excerpted from an article, "Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism" in The Intellectual Activist, Volume V, No. 4, April 30, 1990.