They built a unique sort of man as they did so. One who, like the Virginians of earlier centuries, was remarkable for his "habit of command". --The Old World Show
Rhodesia remains a relevant tale because its history and destruction show the rot at the root of our world.
It was founded by private enterprise, and settled by a remarkable group of men--Cecil Rhodes's Pioneer Column was no collection of rogues, but a cross-class selection of particularly educated and talented men led by some of the greatest men of their era, such as Courtney Selous.
They marched north and built civilization where before nothing but the Stone Age had existed. They and their descendants built modern towns, prosperous farms, and a resplendent civilization that was both "more British than the British"--particularly as Labour regimes destroyed Britain--and well suited to its African environment.
They built a unique sort of man as they did so. One who, like the Virginians of earlier centuries, was remarkable for his "habit of command". He could assume the mantle of leadership and authority without breaking a sweat, and lead men well because he had been trained essentially from birth in their leadership on his farm. The Rhodesians fought with valor in both world conflagrations, and were noted in those wars for being remarkably adept officers, as nearly all of them were; they could command men with excellence, as they themselves were excellent. Restrictive immigration policy kept this attitude and the immense spirit and competence that undergirded it intact as the years wore on.
They built a civilization that flourished. That small nation between the Limpopo and the Zambezi was free, prosperous, and a shining light of Old World-style life in a world gone mad with equality.
For that reason, it was destroyed. The enemies of civilization who did so much to destroy Britain with Levelling and America with the Civil Rights Act turned their fire on it, demanding it give in to what everyone knew would be "one man, one vote, one time" mass democracy.
The Rhodesians refused. They chose to resist. They chose to fight for their nation. For their "Responsible Government". For the last flickering flame of what Western Civilization had always been--the cultivation of excellence directed towards human flourishing, and against the Levelling egalitarianism of the race communist menace they faced.
For 15 years they fought, winning battles with casualty ratios so lopsided their enemies could invent propaganda claiming (falsely) that they had slain non-combatants.
But it wasn't enough. They were overwhelmed, engulfed by forces backed by the entire world and stabbed in the back by their South African allies when the critical moment came in 1975. Betrayed, surrounded, and cut off, they fought on from 1975 to 1980 anyway, but in the end the odds told and the last little flame of excellence was snuffed by Mugabe and his equity.
And so now there is Zimbabwe instead of Rhodesia, a land characterized by tyranny rather than ordered liberty, famine rather than prosperity, expropriation rather than well-tended property, and anarchy rather than order.
Such is the threat we face to what remains of our civilization as well.
We are all Rhodesians now, for our enemies wish to do to us what they did to create Zimbabwe: erase every form of natural distinction, excellence, or greatness to replace it with the stultifying muck of equality.