Actual title/subtitle on NRO:
Our “Grievance” Problem
Some “root-cause” talk will get you nowhere.
A point worth reiterating.
The same ideological movement that spawned the eminently triumphant American Revolution also gave rise to the Terror and the guignol in the Place du la Concorde.
The difference is that the American Revolution was constrained by conservatism -- a conscious determination to retain those parts of English tradition that had proven themselves over time. Only those concepts that had proven tyrannical were to be rejected. The French, on the other hand, untrammeled by any conservative bent, set out to discard the entire system in all its aspects, without regard to their historical value. Unchecked, the pendulum swung to its extreme, then back again nearly as far. The resultant cataclysm destroyed much of Europe and central Asia before it was finally over.
The lesson? Conservatism is the only force powerful enough to bind the present to the past, and to contain the foolishness of men.
Until you remove the root cause of all man's problems, the sinful, fallen nature, combined with Satan's authority given to him by Adam and Eve, he will continue down the wide path of destruction.
Bookmark bump. Great article.
Excellent article.
Having spent several years of my life as an Enlightenment scholar, I never cease to be be amazed at the many ways the Englightenment is misunderstood and misinterpreted. Which Enlightenment is he talking about: German, French, Anglo-Scots?
In one sense, the Enlightenment is the problem, and IMHO, in that one sense only: the Enlightenment worldview, and the Enlightenment philosphers (including, but not limited to, the philosophes), require sustained thinking, not simply faith. The beauty of religion is that faith offers a way of accepting the complexity and contradictions of life. To a large degree, the Enlightenment undermined faith (especially if one reads the Enlightment only casually or reads only their epigoni trying to interpret them) for those who are not constitutionally disposed to think seriously about hard things. While this sort of thing works for those who are serious about philosophical inquiry, that might be .001% of the population. Many writers about the Enlightenment have even tried to define the Enlightenment's substitute faiths, to no satisfaction. Hence, the baleful effects. But, of course, socialism and Marxism provided the replacement for faith in their embrace of dialectcial historical materialism (the great god Diahistomat). Hence the fundamental hostility of Marxism to the Enlightenment even as it sought to build on it.
Just over a century ago, the British defeated the Muslim fanatics of the Mahdi army at Omdurman and later in the interior of the Sudan. Muslim governments that had been hostile for centuries were run out of North Africa, which was colonized by the British, French and Italians. Earlier, the British defeated Muslim (and Hindu) fanatics in putting down the India Mutiny.
Europeans dealt with fanatics in putting down pro-democracy rebels in the early 19th Century, the Boxers in China, and in defeating fascism in the 20th.
What has happened to the civilization born in the Reformation and forged in the Enlightenment? Decline. Western Civilization is in an advanced state of decay and in many quarters the West is no longer inclined to defend itself.
Um, why would any sane person embrace western values?
What, in the end, are western values?
At least half of the west spends its every waking moment castigating the west for the greatest crimes in world history. This article also arraigns the west for the greatest crimes in world history, but strangely enough those aren't the crimes for which half the west spends its every waking moment castigating the rest of us. No, the horrors for which we are put in the dock are consuming more than our fair share, practicing capitalism and technology, possessing power, etc. In fine, for being the modern west.
To be sure, those hurling the charges think that the act of hurling them makes them the most moral creatures ever to have existed, and wipes away all past evils, and establishes them as the saintly annoited worthy and destined to rule us all. And in particular, to run those cowboy warmongers out of town on a rail. But why would anyone else on earth see things in that twisted way? The crimes are proclaimed and they believe us guilty, full stop. They see no reason that the new power that is to replace the criminal rulers of the criminally capitalist and powerful west, should be milketoast socialists from Berkeley or pinstriped pinheads from Paris. Of course, it should be them - the revolutionary vanguard of the third world proletariat. Who intend to smash bourgois civilization, as it has been howling to be smashed, for over a century.
"Western inability to look at evil in the face, call it for what it is"
Um, half of the west is in lust with evil. They not only look it in the face, they celebrate it with bloodthirsty abandon. Do you think all those Che t-shirts mean "peace now"? Do you think the Anarchists have a black flag because they want to save solar power?
The author has been taken in my surface smarm and hypocrasy. The modern left is not too moral to see a hand raised in anger. It has utter contempt for morality in every form. Morality is oppression. Liberation consists in telling anyone with moral scruples to shove it up his backside, then rubbing their faces in liberal excrement and demanding the both fund it, and applaud. It wants to abolish morality as a hypocritical pose of uptight fuddie duddies, as superstitious nonsense, as insufficiently materialist about meaningless blobs of protoplasm standing between liberals and their self actualization.
You want to know what the left thinks of evil, go to the movies and pay attention to evil. They hate that they have to paint white hat goodie two shoes everymen as heroic role models. Deviant moral ambiguity and bottomless sass, now that is cool. Self seeking, right on. Selling out to the man is the only self seeking that is condemned, and not as selfish but as surrender to the evil white dudes everybody is supposed to be humiliating to death, preferably right before cynically murdering them for sport.
What are the values of the west again, exactly?
"it defies our expectation that all human beings somehow must want the same things: a job, a house, a decent and peaceful life."
Name any liberal who does not deride those aspirations as the very pinnacle of a slimy evil mediocrity that is destroying the world. A job? Do you think people in liberal fairy tales long for gainful employment helping other people with the mundane economic business of life? A house? Do you think liberals present owning a house as a great thing, rather than as a ball and chain, the citadel of patriachal conformity, or as a bankrupting disaster and bankers scam?
"we believe that some values are universal, both rights and duties"
Who is this utterly imaginary "we"? Has the author confused himself with the west? As a fact, half of the modern western world believes it is a heroic moral stand to call for divestment from Israel and for giving nuclear reactors to Amhadnejad and Kim Il Sung, and that driving a car that emits CO2 is a greater crime than firing rockets at Israel or setting off car bombs in a Baghdad market at noon.
Somebody involved is indeed mad, and there is indeed a failure to face madness, but the Islamic terrorists are not the madmen of the piece, and they are not the ones nobody is facing. They know precisely what they are doing and go about it in an utterly rational businesslike manner.
What a fanciful, romantic PC idea that trerrorism is not done for profit.
Terrorism is the oldest profession LOL!
No, the ideology is the tool of the terrorists.
Perhaps the Enlightenment can be blamed for the present PC inablility to recognize even such an obvious basic quality of man as greed.
"We are always inclined to seek an alternative explanation: There is a cause — our policies — there is an effect — their anger — and there is a solution — our change of policy. " should be recognized by even the PC infected as another of man's great basic qualities: his cowardice. Um, it's why terrorism is such a profitable business.
What a waste of mental effort PC causes.