What our greatest civilizations shared wasn’t just power or prosperity—it was a fierce belief in themselves, something the modern West is forgetting.
Did you hear about the time George Washington, Winston Churchill, and Marcus Tullius Cicero walked into a bar?
Cicero headed straight for the jukebox, slipped in a sesterce, and out poured Merle Haggard’s 1970 hit The Fighting Side of Me: “When you’re runnin’ down my country, hoss, you’re walking on the fightin’ side of me…”
“Hell yeah!” all three roared. Cicero ordered mulsum for his buddies. High-fives flew.
Then Churchill sauntered to the jukebox and fed it a couple of half-crowns. “Mmm. No Rule, Britannia… oh, here’s a jolly one.” Aaron Tippin erupted from the speakers: “You’ve Got to Stand for Something, or You’ll Fall for Anything.” Winnie bought a pint for the other two blokes, who fist-pumped in approval.
Next came Washington. He dropped four quarters into the machine. Unable to choose between Toby Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue and Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA, he played both. And when Toby belted out “We’ll put a boot in your ass…,” the three compadres whooped, hollered, and chest-bumped. Washington ordered a flaming rum punch for the whole house.
What would make these three fellows carry on that way?
Every few months I have a Zoom call with my British friend, George Maher. George is a classicist with a Ph.D. from King’s College London and Managing Partner of Maher & Company, a management consultancy in London. We both share a deep interest in history and economics, believing that human nature ultimately drives all earthly activity—and that the best societies are those that harness our better angels while constraining the fallen ones.
Our calls have no agenda. Last week we discussed Britain’s current ministerial incompetence, particularly the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves. That led us into mass hysteria and Charles Mackay’s 1850 classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. From there we drifted to Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities and how England escaped the revolutionary bloodshed that engulfed France. We even touched on schadenfreude and how easily demagogues exploit our innate and ignoble tendency to resent those who have what we do not.
In moments of mass delusion, logic’s voice is almost always drowned out by the hysterical passions of those seduced by the demagogue’s oratory. Perhaps if we were all like Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, great nations would never fall. Logic would prevail, prosperity would flourish, contentment would be the norm. But history shows that ignorance—and its most fervent enthusiasts—can breach a nation’s ramparts with alarming ease. If a single candle can defeat the darkness; enlightenment can overpower ignorance.
Which leads to the question: What makes great civilizations great?
George’s book Pugnare is a masterful study of the Roman commercial system—its sophisticated commercial “code” and its astonishing network of voluntary trade stretching to the corners of the known world. The essential ingredients of any prosperous nation are well understood: property rights, the rule of law, sound money, voluntary exchange at home and abroad, and a strong military to keep the peace and protect commerce.
But George added one more element. When he said it, I blurted: “DAMN, YOU’RE RIGHT.”
A nation must believe in itself. It must possess cultural confidence.
Was there any Roman who embodied Roman virtue more than Cicero? The legionaries of the Punic Wars believed Rome was destined to civilize the world—and by objective standards, it largely did. Rome produced engineering feats, architectural marvels, legal concepts, and a well of intellectual literacy from which we still draw today.
And what the Romans didn’t civilize, the British did. The idea of King and Country emboldened everyone from common sailors to dukes. British common law, property rights, administration, commercial systems, innovation, literature, and scholarship lifted the world. Behind me as I write is a decorative screen bearing 42 portraits of imperial leaders; the antique dealer told me such patriotic displays were commonplace in Victorian homes. Great nations believe in themselves—and act accordingly.
When George raised “cultural confidence,” it sparked an old memory from my days at the University of Virginia: the Turner Thesis. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that the frontier shaped American democracy, individualism, and character. The conquest of a continent bred self-reliance and independence. And though the frontier is long settled, that spirit—that distinctly American ethos—still lives. Yes, manifest destiny. Not long ago, in the age of slide rules, we put a man on the moon. What can’t we do?
Yet today the Western world has been snookered by cultural Marxism, which insists it is unfashionable—even immoral—to revere our institutions or acknowledge the civilizational inheritance that made us who we are. Statues must be torn down, history rewritten to flatter the fragile and soothe the unaccomplished.
But those fellas at the honky-tonk sliding coins into the jukebox knew better. They knew they came from a superior culture—not perfect, but worth defending.
The West is under attack. And if it is to survive, a renewed, unapologetic confidence in our civilizational heritage may be the only thing that can save it.
PS: Buy George’s book, I promise it is a fascinating read.
