In WW II, it was popular to say that people get the kind of government they deserve. This may have eased our conscience while killing a million German civilian men, women, and children by strategic bombing, and incinerating circa 500,000 Japanese with nukes and napalm, samurai and nuns alike, as part of destroying Nazism and Japanese imperialism.

Anyway, it sold well. Our government had expected more outcry over these murderous strategies than there was — then. Americans felt that with leaders such as Hitler and Tojo the enemy deserved everything it got.

Of course not all Germans or Japanese were evil or responsible for their evil leaders. Bombs, like rain (as the Bible says), fall on the just and unjust alike. Most people not around in July, 1945, do not know that we suffered 5,000-plus casualties in the China-Burma-India and Pacific Theaters that month. When we dropped the Bomb, nobody in my battalion then preparing for the invasion of Japan turned a hair.

As for peoples getting the governments they deserve, which leads to their getting their just deserts, I still find that idea attractive. It may not be merciful, but it's just. Throughout history some peoples have been competently led, others led over the precipice. In the real universe, people make choices and either prosper or suffer from them. This is the basic difference between the savage and the civilized, high culture and low, rational government and idiotic ideology. This may seem harsh — but if you look around the world today, you will see that most poor peoples or failed states have bad governance. I believe that most of humanity's woes — wars, poverty, destructive ideologies, oppression, corruption, and cheap money — come from humanity's inability to rule itself. Fairness or history has little to do with it; outcomes are decided by the choices peoples make, individually or collectively. Societies can delude themselves about stupidity and guilt, but they can't fool Mother Nature about responsibility.

The problem may be innate. As a Christian, I do not believe in the perfection of man, and an imperfect species cannot create a perfect world. Our Founders tried to make our government “more perfect,” not perfect — wise choice.

Billions abroad live on less than $2 per day and suffer accordingly. In almost every case they are ruled by feckless, over-regulating, incompetent, ignorant, arrogant, oppressive, or just plain nasty governments. Two-thirds of the regimes in the United Nations Organization are also illegitimate by our standards, which proves my point.

I believe that as long as poor peoples and nations accept this sort of governance and organization, no amount of aid or assistance will ever lift them from their sloughs of despond. However, nature or nature's God has not given the more successful peoples a free pass. The rich have to prove themselves eternally.

Wrong-headed policy, political, economic, or military folly, missed opportunity, laziness, incompetent leadership, can bring a nation from riches to rags. “Where there is no vision the people perish” is as true today as when it was written into the Old Testament.

And people still get the kind of government they deserve.