AMERICA is many things that make a country great. But pioneering is not one of them. It is not the first pioneer nation. The Visigoths were along with other barbarian tribes that took over dying empires, although to Hitler’s admiration, it pioneered in the systematic extermination of the original inhabitants.
To abolish slavery, the Americans divided and famously fought, said Oswald Spengler, Hitler’s favorite historian, the first modern war in history—in scale, brutality, modern technology, and continental strategy. In that sense America pioneered the 1st and 2nd World Wars. But it was the Catholic Church, with less ambivalence than Lincoln, that doctrinally condemned slavery on the ground that we are all descended from Adam and Eve; and all are promised salvation by Christ. But it was the British who first waged war to abolish slavery.
The British navy captured slave ships and bombarded slave markets. At the Congress of Vienna for the division of the spoils of victory over Napoleon, Britain offered territory conquered with British blood in exchange for a European commitment to abolish slavery worldwide.
And finally it was earlier in history and in the rest of the world that women were raised to the highest and most powerful positions in the land, from Egyptian queens to Chinese empresses, English queens to Russian czarinas. And Filipino presidents—two already in just 30 years.
But last week the Americans nominated but have yet to elect the first woman presidential candidate in its entire history. It was British women not American who were the first suffragettes. And French women attained political equality way before anybody else:
By killing their king and queen,
While knitting at the foot of the guillotine.
My rhyme. The Philippines was the first and the only country to officially offer refuge to the Jews before World War 2. And we broke the tie to create the Jewish state of Israel. The Philippines was the first—after Boudicca, the warrior queen who beat a Roman tyranny—to pick a woman to beat a native one. Like Hillary Clinton might do, Cory beat a misogynist who dismissed her as “an inexperienced housewife.” She pleaded guilty to the charge of having no experience whatsoever in killing, stealing, and cheating. But, as they say, better late than never. Congratulations, America.