你没有意识到的美国

托马斯·索威尔（Thomas Sowell）是美国著名经济学家。他出生在北卡罗来纳州的一个贫困家庭，父母早逝，跟随姨妈在纽约哈林区（Harlem）长大。

1958年，索威尔以优异成绩毕业于哈佛大学，其后又分别在哥伦比亚大学和芝加哥大学获得经济学硕士和博士学位。索维尔曾在康奈尔大学和加州大学洛杉矶分校等大学教授经济学，自1980年起，在斯坦福大学胡佛研究所担任高级研究员。

索维尔出版了四十多本著作，主题涉及种族、教育、经济学等领域。他的作品《知识与决策》（Knowledge and Decisions）获得1980年法律与经济中心奖 (Law andEconomics Center Prize)，被誉为“里程碑式的作品”。诺

贝尔经济学奖获得者弗里德里希·哈耶克（F.A. HAYEK）称赞此书为多年来最好的综合经济学书籍，他写道：“索维尔以一种完全独创的方式，拓展了思想的应用范畴，并有效地将这种方法带入我从未考虑过的新领域。他还成功地将抽象和理论的论证，转化为对当代经济政策核心问题的高度具体和现实的讨论。”

When my research assistant and her husband took my wife and me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, I was impressed when I heard her for the first time speak Chinese as she ordered food.

My assistant was born and raised in China, so I should have been impressed that she spoke English. But I took that for granted because she always spoke English to me.

We all have a tendency to take for granted what we are used to, and to regard it as somehow natural or automatic -- and to be unduly impressed by what is unusual.

Too many Americans take the United States for granted and are too easily impressed by what people in other countries say and do. That is especially true of the intelligentsia, and dangerously true of those Supreme Court justices who cite foreign laws when making decisions about American law.

There is nothing automatic about the way of life achieved in this country. It is very unusual among the nations of the world today and rarer than four-leaf clovers in the long view of history.

It didn't just happen. People made it happen -- and they and those who came after them paid a price in blood and treasure to create and preserve this nation that we now take for granted.

More important, this country's survival is not automatic. What we do will determine that.

Too many Americans today are not only unconcerned about what it will take to preserve this country but are busy dismantling the things that make it America.

Our national motto, "E Pluribus Unum" -- from many, one -- has been turned upside down as educators, activists and politicians strive to fragment the American population into separate racial, social, linguistic and ideological blocs.

Some are gung ho for generic "change" -- without the slightest concern that the change might be for the worse, even in a world where most nations that are different are also worse off.

Most are worse economically and many are much worse off in terms of despotism, corruption, and bloodshed.

History is full of nations and even whole civilizations that have fallen from the heights to destitution and disintegration. The Roman Empire is a classic example, but the great Chinese dynasties, the Ottoman Empire and many others have met the same fate.

These were not just political "changes." They were historic catastrophes from which whole peoples did not recover for centuries. It has been estimated that it was a thousand years before Europeans again achieved as high a standard of living as they had in Roman times. The Dark Ages were called dark for a reason.

Today, whole classes of people get their jollies and puff themselves up by denigrating and denouncing American society. Such people are a major influence in our media, in our educational system and among all sorts of vocal activists.

Nothing illustrates their power to distort reality like the way they seize upon slavery to denounce American society.

Slavery was cancerous but does anybody regard cancer in the United States as an evil peculiar to American society? It is a worldwide affliction and so was slavery. Both the enslavers and the enslaved have included people on every inhabited continent -- people of every race, color, and creed.

More Europeans were enslaved and taken to North Africa by Barbary Coast pirates alone than there were African slaves taken to the United States and to the colonies from which it was formed. Yet throughout our educational system, our media, and in politics, slavery is incessantly presented as if it were something peculiar to black and white Americans.

What was peculiar about the United States was that it was the first country in which slavery was under attack from the moment the country was created.

What was peculiar about Western civilization was that it was the first civilization to destroy slavery, not only within its own countries but in other countries around the world as well.

Reality has been stood on its head so that a relative handful of people can feel puffed up or gain notoriety and power. Whatever they gain, the rest of us have everything to lose.

我的研究助理和她丈夫带我和我妻子去一家中餐馆吃饭的时候，用中文点了菜。那是我第一次听她讲中文，很有些惊讶。

我的助理在中国出生和长大，本该让我惊讶的是她会说英语。但是因为她一直和我说英语，我便认为她说英语才是理所当然。

我们都倾向于把自己习惯的东西视作理所当然，视作固有的和必然的，对不太寻常的东西才有显著的反应。

太多的美国人认为美利坚合众国是理所当然的，他们又太容易被其他国家的人的言行所打动。知识分子们尤其如此。而那些就美国法律做出裁决时引用外国条例的最高法院大法官也是如此就危险了。

美国的一切成就都不是自动到来的。在当今世界，这个国家不同寻常，在历史长河中也十分稀有。

它不是从天而降，而是人们的努力造就——我们今天认为理所当然的一切都是这些人前赴后继，用鲜血和财富争取并保存下来的。

更重要的是，这个国家的留存也不是必然的，它取决于我们的行动。

今天有太多的美国人不仅不关心如何保护这个国家，还忙于拆解使美国成为美国的东西。

我们的国家座右铭 —— “E Pluribus Unum 合众为一”–已经被颠覆，因为学校和政客们一直在努力以种族、社群、语言和意识形态撕裂着美国。

有些人热衷于“改变”——丝毫不担心在一个大多数国家都更糟的世界里，这种改变可能会走向更糟。

这个世界上，大多数国家经济上更糟，更多的国家专制、腐败和社会冲突的情况更糟。

纵观历史，从高处跌落到贫困以至于分崩离析的国家和文明并不少。罗马帝国就是一个典型的例子，古代中国的辉煌王朝，奥斯曼帝国和许多其他国家都遭遇了同样的命运。

这些不仅是政治的“改变”而是历史性的灾难，整个民族在几个世纪都难以复苏。据估计，欧洲人是经过了一千多年才再次达到罗马时期的生活水平。黑暗时代之所以被称为黑暗是有原因的。

今天，成群的人都在通过诋毁和谴责美国社会来获得快感和自我满足。这些人主导了我们的媒体、我们的教育系统和社会活动。

没有什么比用奴隶制谴责美国社会的方式更能说明他们扭曲真相的能力了。

奴隶制是癌症，但是真的有人认为这个恶疾是美国社会独有的吗？这是一种世界性的苦难。每一块有人，各种种族、肤色和信仰的人，居住的陆地都曾经生活着奴役者和被奴役者。

被巴巴里海盗劫持并被带到北非的欧洲奴隶曾经比被带到美国和其他殖民地的非洲奴隶还要多。然而，在我们的教育系统、媒体和政治中，奴隶制被不断提起，好像它专属美国黑人和白人。

美国真正的独特之处在于，它是第一个从建国之日起就开始与奴隶制作战的国家。

而西方文明的独特之处在于，它是第一个摧毁奴隶制的文明，不仅在本国摧毁，在世界上的其他国家也一并摧毁。

真相被颠倒，这样少数几个人获得满足或者名声与权力。无论他们得到什么，我们剩下的人都会失去一切。

Reference：

*参见：International Journal of ConstitutionalLaw: The relevance of foreign legal materials in U.S. constitutional cases: Aconversation between Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer

https://academic.oup.com/icon/article/3/4/519/791958