The importance of drawing lessons from our own era. The Left never looked at the failures of the Left in the 20th century.
There is a failure in the past 25 years that should not be ignored.
The San Francisco Bay had an earthquake in 1989 of magnitude 7.1 Richter near Santa Cruz, roughly 100 miles from the center of the Bay. The earthquake shook for a few seconds. A bridge fell down, a freeway fell down, hundreds of houses collapsed and hundreds more were destroyed beyond repair.
Tokyo, an area with roughly 10 times the number of houses and buildings, experienced an earthquake in 2011 of 9.0 Richter, 140 miles away. The earthquake shook for five full minutes. The only damage was to a 100-year-old auditorium where most of a ceiling fell. Two of my friends lost their best red wine bottles.
A 9.0 earthquake is 100 times greater than a 7.0 earthquake. 100 times.
The lesson here is very clear. Japanese engineering is inordinately better than American engineering.
There are hundreds of other examples of the superiority of Japanese engineering. Simply ride on one of their subways or their trains, even compare a Toyota to a Chevy and you will know that Japanese engineering is orders of magnitude better than American. Today there are almost no American cars in Japan, only a few German models are imported.
I make a simple prediction. In 50 years, when American chauvinism has declined, the best American engineers will be trained in Japan. First they will have to become good mathematicians which is already a characteristic of nearly all Japanese high school students.