A short visit to Dubai showed me what historically made America great.
I could see that the wheels were coming off of the family. Two boys had finished their academic programs while a third just seemed tired. My wife also needed a break from the routine. A vacation was in order. Two of the most impactful treaties Israel ever signed were Open Skies with Europe and the Abraham Accords with the Gulf and other Muslim states. Open Skies has led to incredibly cheap flights to Europe. Our boys flew to Georgia to ski, came home for the weekend and then took off again with my wife and me to Dubai.
We had planned our Dubai trip a few weeks back. Flights were $250 round-trip, the apartment on the marina was around $1,100 for four nights, and we had a rental car. Then Israel whacked an Iranian general in Syria. Would Iran respond? When and where? We thought about canceling the trip, as there are plenty of Iranians in Dubai. In the end, we traveled as there was some doubt if Iran would respond, and I did not believe that they would risk their relations with the UAE by making an attack on its soil. So off we went, while the concerns about Iran still remain. Our flight last night back to Israel was delayed for no reason for two hours and never had its actual departure time made public.
The low-cost flight to Dubai included mostly young families, both Arab and Jewish. Our arrival and stay in Dubai involved many interactions with both local as well as foreign Muslims living and working there. Farook at Avis got us the last car on the lot, while Ahmad at the rental property was there to greet us when we arrived. Abbas was our driver who took us all over the dunes outside of the city, while the sellers at the very old “Gold Souk” were more than happy to take our money. I have found that business is a far better tool for bringing people together than the UN or any cosmetic exchange program. The magnificent malls in Dubai look identical to those in the West, food courts and all. I found it funny that the same stores that have racy models on their big glass windows in the West have well-covered Muslim models on their stores in Dubai.
I additionally found that Ramadan means different things to different people. For the past two decades, the approach of Ramadan has signaled potential violence in the West and in Israel. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran all called for more anti-Israel violence during Ramadan of this year. In Dubai, Ramadan was more like our Labor Day. Gap and many other stores had Ramadan sales: buy two, get one free. The spirit on the streets and in the stores was festive. On the holiday at the end of Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, I had free parking throughout the city and the “Global Village”—an ersatz World Fair with food and goods from countries all over the world—was packed with revelers. My kids took pictures with Yemenite sellers and spoke with Iranians and Saudis in their respective pavilions. While nobody gave us a hug or said how happy they were to see us, the interactions we had with local and foreign Muslims were cordial and productive. The pro-Hamas crowd at Harvard would have been disappointed.
While we were driving through Dubai, we kept remarking how it reminded us of Las Vegas. Both were big sand lots that with vision, money, and manpower, were turned into nature-defying oases of grandeur. Dubai boasts several world records, including:
*Tallest freestanding building, Burj Khalifa at 160 stories.
*Largest flower garden with 150 million flowers.
*Longest manmade marina at 7 kilometers.
*Largest mall in the world.
*Largest manmade island, the Palm-shaped exclusive Jumeirah neighborhood.
The streets were clean and free of homeless people, there was no graffiti on the trains, and the residents of Dubai did not seem confused about either their pronouns or which bathroom to use. Issues have been raised about the living and working conditions of foreign workers, who seem to outnumber the locals by a large margin. Still, Dubai is a dynamic city and shows the can-do attitude that was once so common in America. The Hoover Dam was built earlier and for less money than planned. The outside of the Empire State Building was constructed in 13 months. Today, American cities are overrun with crime, homelessness, outdoor drug use, and illegal aliens let in by the Biden administration. Zoning and lawsuits can make putting up a building a decade-long process. Why are Dubai and American cities going in opposite directions?
While democracy is far preferable to even a very benign monarchy, democracy does not provide any moral values. Ostensibly, some democratic body somewhere could vote by 50.1% to kill all residents whose last names start with “K”, and if the new law does not violate whatever constitution or other guiding documents are in place, then they could legally go out and fulfill their new law. When America was a far more religious country (say up to the 1980s or 1990s), democratic institutions and politicians understood that they could not undertake any initiative that was somehow anti-God or anti-religious. America has always been a Christian country, and moral values have been the guiding light for both politics and business. America thrived when its moral compass was still working.
With the precipitous drop in religious fealty in the US and Europe, democratic institutions no longer have the guardrails or direction provided by moral systems outside of the electoral process. We thus have laws allowing children to be mutilated at ages where they cannot drive a car or buy a beer. We have rules that allow unsatisfied males to enter women’s competitions and physically harm others through their greater strength. We have politicians who have let millions enter the country illegally, much to the detriment of millions of Americans who are harmed by drugs, violence, displacement, or lost services given over to the illegals. Criminals are released so that the law-abiding citizens are to suffer in place of the criminals who should remain locked up. The UAE is a Muslim country, and while I do not pretend to understand Islamic teachings, the life there is guided by religious principles and law. Dubai still enjoys a moral system that allows the city to grow, but only within the bounds of morally acceptable behavior.
US cities can be great and beautiful again, but only with the moral guidance to do that which is right by their citizens.
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