The Stewardship of Wealth: Successful Private Wealth Management for Investors and Their Advisors, + Website

Conclusion: Underdogs and Bullies

We instinctively favor the underdog in every circumstance. We boo Bluto and cheer when Popeye, having downed his trusty can of spinach, knocks the brute into orbit. If Goliath had defeated David the story would have ended there, but Goliath's defeat by the puny David created a legend that has persisted for thousands of years. In its early history, Israel was widely perceived as a small, embattled nation surrounded on all sides by large and aggressive enemies. But Israel's very success in war after war—to say nothing of having the United States in its corner—has caused this perception to change. Israel is now widely perceived around the world as the neighborhood bully—a serious political problem for the Israelis. And then there is the United States itself. Worldwide we are feared and loathed not for what we stand for or the policies we advocate. We are hated simply because we are bigger and stronger than anyone else—indeed, stronger than everyone else combined.

And this is as it should be. We can imagine a world in which we instinctively cheered for the powerful as they smashed the powerless into dust, but it is not a world most of us would like to live in. Nazi Germany was such a world—Germans still embittered by the terms imposed on them at the end of World War I cheered Hitler when he overran Poland and Czechoslovakia, and all too many Germans applauded when the Nazis hunted down and murdered Jews, even then a small, persecuted minority in Germany. ...