In the home stretch--Stark and How the West Won

More  from Rodney Stark and his powerful book, showing the value of Christianity to the rise of the West and the value of the West itself to the flourishing of the world.

Stark moves in chapter 17 to a discussion of liberty and prosperity. He credits the rise of a newly respectable upper-middle-class with the Industrial Revolution. This group of people believed that status and power should be achieved through merit rather than through inheritance. Innovation was valued and rewarded. So, the two primary supports of this group were education and liberty.

Why did it gain such a foothold first in England? He says secure property rights, high wages, and cheap energy helped immensely. British culture was favorable to commerce, unlike most other societies throughout history, which generally regarded commercial activities as degrading. Even the nobility in England displayed very little contempt for commercial activities like those on the European continent did.

Education helped fuel the rise of British commercialism. Stark says by 1630, before the takeoff of the Industrial Revolution, Britain had by far the best-educated population in the world. I worry a lot about education today in America. Government schools are so busy teaching politically correct ideas or indoctrinating their students, they often don't have time to actually educate anymore.

Then the United States became a manufacturing giant. This happened for the same reasons that the Industrial Revolution had originated in Britain – political freedom, secure property rights, high wages, cheap energy, and a highly educated population. Plus, the United States had great resources and a huge, rapidly growing domestic market.