Shall the Twain Meet?

 

We have been looking at the essay questions assigned to get admission to Canadian university programs; specifically, at McMaster’s essay questions for admission to the department of medicine. They seem politically charged. Here’s one for today:

OPTION B: Thomas King gave the 2003 CBC Massey Lecture Series entitled The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. In it, he comments on the centrality of dichotomies (that is, a sharp binary distinction between two things understood to be opposites) in many Western narratives: We do love our dichotomies. Rich/poor, strong/weak, right/wrong... We trust easy opposites. We are suspicious of complexities, distrustful of contradictions, fearful of enigma.' What dichotomy do you find to be especially problematic, and why do you think it Is important to take a more complex view of that issue?

The question assumes that “Western narratives” are “problematic.” The question seems crafted to oblige the student to show consent to this proposition.

A clever response would be to point out that King himself is creating a dichotomy, between “Western” and “native,” and indeed between “dichotomies” and a “complex” perception. So his thesis is self-invalidating.

Dichotomy is the essence of all rational thought: Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction. Or ask any computer engineer: all logic is binary at its base.

Including all “Eastern” logic. 

Why this drive to deny logic, or thought itself? The present question is almost explicit in revealing motive: what is really problematic is the dichotomy between “right” and “wrong.” I suspect this is the answer it is fishing for. This is a consistent postmodern theme: one must not be “judgmental.” 

Of course, it is those in power, otherwise unrestrained, who will most chafe at any hint of ethical responsibility. They want to be sure they are not admitting any potential whistleblowers to the profession.

This is something of a shift in medical ethics. We used to have the Hippocratic Oath, which imposed specific moral responsibilities. Rights and wrongs.

Simple dichotomies can indeed be a problem. Not because they are dichotomies, but if they are wrong or ill-conceived. Ironically, a leading candidate for the most “problematic” dichotomy in our current culture is that between “Western” and “native.” It is unnecessary, divisive, existing only to discriminate; and both categories are incoherent. There is no such thing as “Western” logic, “Western” mathematics, “Western” science, or “Western” civilization. There is simply logic, mathematics, science, and civilization. A bridge built in India does not need or use different laws of physics or different mathematics in its construction than one built in London. 

Nor is it possible to coherently define “native” or “aboriginal” or “indigenous.” We are all literally native or aboriginal or indigenous to some place. All of us are equally native to the place where we were born. None of us are aboriginal or indigenous to that place. The current term “aboriginal” or “indigenous” is simply a euphemism that replaced, in recent times, the earlier anthropological term “primitive.” That is, it simply refers to less technologically advanced cultures.

Which tend, in brutal honesty, to have fewer lessons and insights to share with the rest of mankind.

A similarly divisive and useless dichotomy is that between “white” and “non-white” (or “racialized”). Both are purely social and political constructs that do not describe reality. People tend to intermarry, for one thing. For another, “non-white” as a category includes ethnic groups more closely related to “whites” than to other “non-white” groups. “White” itself masks a wide variety of ethnicities, whose sense of themselves has nothing to do with any “white/non-white” distinction. The social classification really works only in the US, since the 19th century. For most of modern European or Canadian history, the crucial ethnic dichotomy was instead Protestant/Catholic, and in Medieval times, it was Christian/Muslim. “White/non-white” is still hardly the major dividing line in Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda, Nigeria, Burma, or Northern Ireland.

Time we stopped obsessing over skin colour, or where our ancestors came from. But dichotomies in general are not the issue.

Western Civilization

 

What exactly is “Western Civilization”? What makes it distinct from “Eastern Civilization” or “Middle Eastern Civilization,” or come other civilization? 

Not that it is Western, certainly. Australia and New Zealand are part of “Wesrern civilization,” and New Zealand is further east than any of the lands of “Eastern Civilization.”

Which tells us that “Western Civilization” is a euphemism. What we are referring to is Christian Civilization, Christendom. “Eastern Civilization” is founded instead on the principles of Confucius, while Christendom is founded on the Old and New Testaments. Morocco is not a part of Western Civilization, as far west as it is, because it is founded on the Quran and Shariah law, not the Old and New Testaments. Indian Civilization is not “Western” because it is founded on the Vedas as its bottom line.

This being so, if Christian civilization rejects Christianity, it collapses; it ceases to be. Not instantly, but inevitably. And that is the way things are going.

It is from Christian doctrine, from the New Testament, that we get the “self-evident” truth that all men are created equal. “Self-evident” is a con; Jefferson originally wrote, correctly, “sacred and inviolable.” Locke explained: it is not that it is self-evident; it follows from one divine creator and one act of creation. As the Levellers chanted in the English Revolution, “when Adam Delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?” In any polytheistic culture, there is no idea of human equality. Often the king claims exclusively divine ancestry; there are castes.

It is from Christian doctrine that we get the idea of human dignity and human rights. Human dignity follows from the claim that man is made in God’s image: so each man contains that divine spark. Human rights follow from the dogma that man was created, in the Garden of Eden story, to exercise free will and choose the moral good. He must therefore at all times be allowed the widest possible freedom of choice. The individual, in short, mut be free.

It is from Christianity that we get the idea of a separation of church and state, of freedom of religion, and of checks and balances on civil power. In pagan cultures, or in Islam, the civil power is also the religious power. There is no question of challenging the actions of the state, or of holding some non-state-sanctioned religious belief. This separation of sacred and secular spheres is succinctly expressed by Jesus in the New Testament: “render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar’s; render unto God what is God’s.”

And on it goes. Kick the Christian foundation out from all these assumptions, and there is nothing to support them. Sooner or later they are questioned, then no longer honoured. We are seeing this in real time. Nor will there be anything that magically appears to  replace them—any other foundation or set of general principles to which we can appeal in case of conflicting interests. We will no longer be able to do anything together: civilizational collapse.

Perhaps some new civilization might rise from the rubble. That might take thousands of years.

Eastern Civilization and Western Barbarism

When I teach young Chinese students, they always seem familiar with the classics of the West. In a recent class, I asked each, “what’s your favourite book?” The first student said “Tom Sawyer.” The next said “Little Red Riding Hood.” They can all recount the story of the Three Little Pigs, or the Tortoise and the Hare. Another was working on an essay on "The Little Mermaid." The Andersen story, not the Disney movie.

I recently signed on to help American students with their high school English Lit homework, and find I cannot. Despite two degrees and most of a doctorate in, essentially, literature. They are all reading recent novels which I would have to read myself in order to advise them.

No doubt North American kids are getting a good taste of the classics outside of school, if in a distorted form: from Disney and other forms of popular entertainment. But we really should be teaching the original versions in school. Obviously, the kids would be interested—this is just about what they are most interested in, according to the box office. Aside from the fact that they teach vital life lessons, these are, after all, the best stories available.

And sometimes versions of the classic stories do appear in North American texts. When they do, however, it is always a modern retelling intended to subvert the original. One classic example I encountered recently was The Boy Who Cried Wolf told from the perspective of the wolf. Who was, of course, a vegetarian.

It almost looks as though the future of Western civilization is in China; or in the Far East. Perhaps also in Eastern Europe.

It is encouraging to know, at least, that it will survive somewhere.

And perhaps this is a good thing. “Western civilization” was always a bit nonsensical as a term. Civilization is civilization. Its centre is perhaps shifting.

The Postmodern Iceberg

Given how dangerous postmodernism is, what is to become of us all? How bad is it going to get?

For postmodernism seems essentially the same virus that once infected Nazi Germany.

Luckily, if I’m right, postmodernism is most likely to destroy postmodernism before it becomes strong enough to destroy society as a whole.

For under its current multiculti principles, its proponents are the ones first coming into close contact with incompatible world views.

The left now has Muslims marching alongside Marxist atheists, feminists, transgender activists, black activists, Hispanic immigration activists, and gays. Some of these world views are anathema to one another.

And they certainly are not united in embracing cultural relativism. There is no way Islam works into that equation. The groups being pulled together here are really united only in a shared hatred of one particular world view: “Western civilization,” or more honestly, Judeo-Christian ethics. That is not likely to be sustainable. These groups actually have less in common with one another, in their principles and beliefs, than each does with this “mainstream” culture. Tolerance is a very Christian value.

They are bound to become aware of the incompatibility. There is bound to be culture shock.

This multiculti approach is very different from Fascism. It pitched its appeal to one large group, based on its vaunted supposed homogeneity, and scapegoated a small minority, perhaps 6%. Postmodernism’s current strategy is a good cover for the fact that underlying it is the same philosophy, but given that philosophy, it is less logical, and looks less sustainable. It is pitching its appeal to a variety of smaller groups, each of them stressing homogeneity and purity within themselves, and each incompatible with the others. And it is scapegoating what is still a large minority, “cisgendered heterosexual white males,” perhaps 33% of the population. It is only too likely that their victim will be able to resist. French Canadians, at only 24% of the Canadian population, have been able to do a pretty good job of protecting their interests.

If things have been able to go as far as they have, it is because this large chunk of the electorate have been complacent, busy with their own affairs and not very aware of what is going on. Aided, of course, by a steady diet of postmodernist propaganda in the media and the academy.

But surely we can already see this is changing. Trump is in power in the US. Brexit passed. Macron faces rioting in the streets. Doug Ford just won in Ontario. This kraken is waking up. Not that long ago, you did not hear dissenting voices in the media. Then came Rush Limbaugh. Then came Fox News. Then came social media. Then the Jordan Peterson phenomenon, subverting the academic monolith. Now there are two sides being heard all over the place. There is a growing YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter genre of people declaring themselves “woke,” “red pilled” or “just walking away.” Postmodernism may already have peaked; and the peak of evident craziness it seems to have reached may itself be a sign of desperation. It is in the angry tantrum stage, over not getting its will.

And this is even aside from the extreme potential disunity within their own ranks. Islam is, among all the major world religions, the most absolutist, the most perfectly antithetical to relativism and postmodernism. The prime reason the 9/11 bombers flew airliners into the Twin Towers was to protest Western feminism and gay rights. The postmoderns, in trying to embrace and digest it, were perhaps already showing desperation. A few years ago, the left themselves were foremost in demanding military intervention in Afghanistan and the Middle East to end the hijab, end the supposed subjugation of women, end female genital mutilation. They seem to have swallowed a poison pill; and maybe there is divine justice in that.

And the closer the jihadists get to those holding such relativist ideologies in the flesh, to feminists and gays and atheists and transgenders, the angrier and more violent they are likely to get. Any minute now …

Even apart from Islam, other incompatibilities are becoming obvious. The doctrine of transgenderism is incompatible with feminism. If being male or female is a matter of choice, any question of either oppression or new privileges for women is off the table. Set up an affirmative action program, and men can just declare themselves women and get the same advantage. Bar this, and you are discriminating against them as transgenders. Even demanding they identify themselves as either male or female is now discriminatory, so any affirmative action scheme based on sex is discriminatory in its very premise. If biological men are allowed to compete as women in sports, to cite only one trivial but visible example, Title IX requirements that women’s sports be equally funded become moot, and only an extravagant waste of money. “Genetic” women are not going to win any medals. And women purportedly no longer have a right to the safety of separate bathrooms. Any man can just declare himself a woman, and walk in. It was just this concern that killed the old Equal Rights Amendment, back in the day.

And, of course, if transgenders have this right, what is the justification for denying it to cisgenders? Isn’t that discriminatory in just the same way? In other words, if any man can enter any washroom he likes by declaring himself a transgendered female, it must hold that any man declaring himself a cisgendered male must also have that right. Or else you are discriminating against cisgenders.

Transgenderism is also incompatible with all demands based on racial identity; with either Hispanic, or black, or Native American activism. For if sex is a matter of choice, why not race? Race is a far more dubious and ambiguous classification in biological terms. And what about gay rights: if sex is a matter of choice, why not sexual orientation? The whole basis of gay rights is that nobody can choose to be gay. Lesbians are starting to notice, and openly oppose transgender rights.

Transgenderism seems another poison pill.

And what about immigration activists calling for more and more open immigration? Every new immigrant is potentially a job taken away from a struggling black already here. Or theoretically lowers their wages. Sooner or later, blacks are going to notice.

Nor are recent Hispanic immigrants likely to be big fans of postmodernism and relativism, feminism, gay rights, or Marxism. A lot of them are going to be Catholics. Within their own group, in their own families, they are traditionalist and conservative. Only a shallow cadre of Marxist intellectuals within this group are on board with the postmodernist program: probably a smaller, shallower, less connected cadre than with Anglo whites, now rebelling against the self-appointed experts. As this group becomes better able to connect individually, thanks to social media, the authority of such leaders cannot last.

And the same is true for American Indians/First Nations. The average Indian is pretty conservative in his views. He likes hockey, the military, Christianity, and country and western music. He has almost nothing in common with the handful of people claiming to speak for him. And he may not forever remain idle.

It looks as though the reality began to seep through in the most recent Women’s March. Many state organizations and former leaders, including the founder of the first Women’s March, pulled out, declaring of the current organizers, “they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform.” This seems largely the clash of the Muslim groups with some of the others. It’s only the tip of the iceberg; but little more sank the Titanic.

It does not seem probable that the postmodern delusion can hold together much longer.

A lot of what is holding it together is peer pressure. It is just as Andersen describes it in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Most people are moral cowards and will just go along with whatever they hear those around them say. The postmodernists have grabbed and long held control of all the megaphones.

That’s the sort of situation that can collapse very suddenly.

The single worst mistake those who oppose postmodernism could make, however, is to fail to make their own coalitions. It would be fatal to begin to demonize Hispanics, or Muslims, or gays, or Indians.

Not to mention, it would be directly against the principles of Judeo-Christian civilization itself, which is what they presumably seek to defend. It makes no sense to fight postmodernism and relativism by becoming a postmodern relativist.

White Supremacist Spotted in the Wild

Rep. Steve King

After much desperate searching and sounding of alarms, an actual white supremacist seems to have been located in the US.

Or, actually, no, not quite. It’s Rep. Steve King of Iowa, and what he actually said was that he did not see why the terms “white nationalist,” “white supremacist,” and “Western civilization” have become a problem. It does not follow that he would use them to describe himself. And he has since specifically denounced these attitudes on the floor of the House, and said they do not describe his own views.

But it seems to be the best we have.

So he has been publicly denounced now by Jeb Bush, Ben Shapiro, the National Review, Paul Ryan, the House Republican Whip, the Republican National Committee Chairman, Tim Scott, and on and on—all Republican or right-wing voices.

This reaction does seem over the top; on the other hand, I can understand it. Republicans and the right do not want to be associated with such views, even tangentially. Even if nobody actually holds them.

Neither do I.

Let’s look at them.

“White nationalist.”

Nationalism is always immoral. One has a right to feel attachment to the polity in which you were nurtured and raised, and you have some obligation to it for this. If it works well, you have a duty to protect it, for the sake of mankind. But beyond this, nationalism violates the basic moral principle of human equality.

Unfortunately, we have a tendency to glorify nationalism in certain contexts: we like and celebrate Cree nationalism, or Inuit nationalism, or perhaps Quebec nationalism, or Scottish nationalism, or Chinese nationalism, or black nationalism; or the many nationalisms implicitly celebrated by multiculturalism. It too often seems that our problem is with “whites,” rather than with nationalism. This is a vital concern; but it obviously is not helped by promoting white nationalism along with the others.

Secondly, there is no “white nation.” There is no “white” ethnicity. To be a nation in the ethnic sense implies a shared language, history, perhaps religion. In North America, where King lives, there is no distinction among Americans on any of these grounds that also corresponds to their skin colour. In Europe, those who share the skin colour, conversely, can have quite different languages and histories. Mostly Irish by ancestry, why would I want to identify as “white,” and consider myself ethnically the same as an Englishman? My ancestors fought against that for centuries.

“White supremacy”

This is a term that has no accepted definition. On these grounds alone, it should not be used.

If it means special rights for some based on their skin colour, it is of course immoral. It violates the principle of human equality. Unfortunately, we violate human equality all the time now by giving a variety of groups special rights based on their skin colour: affirmative action in all its forms. So again, it looks as though our objection is not to discrimination, but to “whites.” But advocating special rights for “whites” does not fix the problem. It makes it worse.

Some of those opposing Steve King have not helped the case at all, by making the argument that he is wrong on the grounds that non-whites have actually contributed a great deal to civilization. The problem is that, no, objectively, the contribution by people with “white” skin really has been disproportionate. Those arguing against the claim on these grounds have to resort to verbal tricks like defining Italians, Greeks, Slavs, or Middle Easterners as “non-white,” in order to then show that non-whites have been holding up their side. Define “white” as cognate to the scientific racial category “Caucasian,” and their arguments collapse. Some impressive stuff from China and Japan, but on the whole, Caucasians have indeed produced more than their numbers warrant.

But that is to get lost in the weeds. The doctrine of human equality does not imply that all humans are equal in all their abilities. To suggest so is transparently wrong. And just as humans can vary in individual abilities, they can certainly vary by group. For example, Caucasian Europeans really do have higher average IQs than sub-Saharan Africans.

This is not relevant. Human equality is founded on the fundamental premise that we are all children of God, created by him, and he must therefore love us equally. We are all equal in our intrinsic moral worth, but (of course) not in our abilities. We must all therefore treat one another respectfully and strictly as our individual merits warrant.

“Western civilization”

Seems innocuous, but again, I think it is a harmful concept. The proper distinction is between civilization and barbarism. And the path to civilization is simple: civilization is, broadly, technology for living. To become civilized, you select the best option available for whatever you need to accomplish, from whatever the source. Not to do so is to willfully remain less civilized. To speak of “Western civilization” is implicitly to violate this principle, and so to advocate barbarism.

Because of natural geographical barriers, civilization has over past centuries developed largely independently, and so differently, in different parts of the world. It has been somewhat different in Europe, China, India, or the Middle East. But now that we are all in communication, it makes no sense to preserve the distinction. Why would you refuse a better product because it is made in China?

I also believe that, as far as technologies for living go, the Judeo-Christian-Hellenic foundation on which European civilization has been built is more solid and seems to have been more productive over the long term than Confucianism and Buddhism, in the Far East, Hinduism in India, or Islam in the Middle East. I think that recommends it as a technology to be embraced everywhere.

Many in China and Africa are currently coming to that same conclusion. Just as many in Northern Europe or the Americas have in the past.

There is No Dog

Proportion of atheists by country. Eurobarometer poll, 2005.

"New atheists” always want to make the point that religion is not necessary to lead a moral life—that atheists can be just as moral as Christians.

This is a straw man argument: religion does not claim that morality comes from religion. Morality is equally binding on everyone, religious or non-religious. Whether or not you are Catholic, it is still wrong to murder someone.

Methinks they do protest too much.

To atheists, by their own admission, God is a reason for worry.

This, not incidentally, is why it is false to claim that those who oppose abortion, for example, are “trying to impose their own religion on others.”

Religion, rather than being the source of morality, offers a reliable moral guide. In the end, it is always up to your own conscience; but committing yourself to some established moral code, be it Confucian or Catholic, is an important check against rationalizing. Otherwise, you may, by casuistry, manage to justify almost anything, and sashay down the primrose path until return becomes quite painful.

The existence of God, moreover, is our guarantee that moral values are real and absolute. Without God, how do we know that our morality is correct, or whether it is all just a matter of some arbitrary “social construct”? If the latter, there is no real morality in the end: we merely do what we are accustomed to do, or programmed to do, no more. There is no moral value in that.

Cover to a Soviet atheist journal of the 1930s.

And then there is a further consideration. Sorry to say it, but if someone declares himself an atheist, especially if he does so publicly and aggressively, this is reason to believe he is not a moral person.

I do not believe it is possible to sincerely disbelieve in the existence of God. There are too many solid rational proofs out there, for anyone who takes the care to look. Even for anyone who does not, the evidence from design is too obvious and in all of our faces. The experienced universe is regular and patterned; it follows a design. Even atheists always assume it, and tend to personify “Nature” or “Evolution” or “Earth” or “Science.” They still have a god—it is just that they do not want to accept his moral nature. It is expressly this that they are rejecting. The rest of the concept, in one way or another, they keep.

Accordingly, when someone says they do not believe in God, I think they usually mean either one of two things: 1) they are angry at God; or 2) they are afraid of God. And of these two, the second is far more likely. Being angry is not a common reason to claim something does not exist. Being afraid is. It is the familiar human reaction of “whistling past the graveyard.” If you are afraid of something, it is natural to not want to talk or to think about it—to tell yourself it is not really happening.

This pretty plainly indicates someone who has a guilty conscience.

The worse one/s conscience, the more aggressive one is likely to become in one’s atheism.

Bad enough, and you are going to lash out at religion and the religious. Their very existence becomes a problem for you. It makes you feel guilty.

This is what we are seeing now in Western Europe and North America. A growing proportion of the population has done evil, knows they have done evil, suffer from a guilty conscience, and so are turning away from religion. 

How is one militant about not knowing something?

The same factor explains as well why we in the “West” have stopped having children; this is a clear sign of self-hate. It explains why so many of us have started hating our own “Western” heritage in general—like hose Dalhousie students who now refuse to celebrate Canada Day. It is all a projection of our own guilt. Rather than admit the sin, we blame the messenger who says it is a sin: the church, the culture, tradition, civilization. And so we come to want to tear it all down, “by whatever means necessary.”

The bottom line is, I think, the “sexual revolution.” This die was cast in the 1950s. The abortion issue is the most critical, and what made it only too obviously wrong, but the whole concept was wrong and brutal.

I have hopes. There may be something finally happening, at this Harvey Weinstein moment. There are rumours that the dam is about to burst, and worse is about to come out about Hollywood pedophilia. The culture may wake up and turn. It has happened before. Pendulums swing.

It almost has to happen; because people have a conscience, and conscience cannot be denied indefinitely. The real question is whether what we see will be a restoration of “Western civ” more or less as it was, as happened after the English Restoration, or so often in the Chinese or Korean changes of dynasty; or something new, as when the Roman Empire went from paganism to Christianity.

And how bloody things are still going to get before the page is turned. The forces of evil are getting more violent all the time, as they are backed by their consciences further into a corner.

Ignorance is Strength

On the face of it, the official objections to the actions of the Halifax “Proud Boys” on Canada Day-- appearing to peacefully watch an anti-Canadian protest in a Canadian public park and ask questions—are insane. But then, so are the objections one hears to Donald Trump’s recent speech in Warsaw. How can it even be controversial to express support for either Canada or Western civilization?

Yet this is now called “racism.” You are now a “white supremacist” if you believe in and promote either Canada or Western civilization. The fact that you also believe in racial equality, as both Canada and Western civilization do at their core, simply does not matter. Believing in racial equality is now racist.

A recent Atlantic article lays it out. According to the left, your culture is determined by your skin colour and your genetics.

They then attribute this belief to the right, but this is completely illegitimate. It is a core assertion of the left. And it is racism, classically defined.

Consider what this means. One is “racist,” then, for asserting that Michelangelo is the greatest fresco painter ever. You are racist, because Michelangelo was “white”―and worse, male. (But there is no problem with praising Toni Morrison, or Susan Aglukark.)

Surely you have to admit he was fairly good.

In other words, we have just reversed the polarities. Now not being racist is racist, and being racist is not being racist. Freedom is slavery, war is peace, ignorance is strength.

The Atlantic also objects because “Western civilization” is a religion-based concept. So it discriminates against Muslims, I suppose.

Here, they have more of a case. Race is no part of culture; America demonstrates that; but religion is at any culture’s core. You bet that Western civilization is based on Christianity and Judaism. Not just Christianity, mind you—I think any objective evaluation would have to say that Jews and Judaism have had an influence far greater than their actual numbers. And the pagan Greek philosophers are also an essential foundation. But yes, it is absolutely true that Judaism and Christianity have shaped our civilization, and given us its core values: separation of church and state, human equality, the brotherhood of man, democracy, science, the common law, freedom of speech, the equality of the sexes, and so on.

This is exactly why mass non-Christian and non-Jewish immigration are a concern. Do we value such matters? Are they not our core values? Do we not realize that they are based on Judeo-Christian presuppositions? Do we not realize that people coming from other cultures do not spontaneously agree? That, indeed, while these core values are the core values of Christianity and Judaism, some other religious traditions may actually directly oppose them? And what do we do then? In the name of human equality, we reject human equality? In the name of freedom of speech, we oppose freedom of speech?

Apparently many of us do not understand this. The Atlantic does not understand this. This is why legislation like the recent M-103 in the Canadian Parliament is so dangerous: in calling for a prohibition on “Islamophobia,” it, like the Atlantic, understands no distinction between objecting to elements of Islam and objecting to Muslims.

Rep. Steve King and White Supremacy

Golly. I am beginning to suspect I might be a white supremacist.

It comes as a bit of a shock to me. After all, I have spent my life in non-Western cultures, and studying them has been my great interest. I have been married twice, first to a Pakistani woman, now to a Filipina, and my two children are half-Filipino. Politically, I have always been a liberal, condisering it self-evident that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain rights. In religion, as a Catholic, I believe that all men are brothers, of equal worth in the eyes of God.

But no—somehow the word “white supremacist” has changed definition. It apparently no longer requires believing, as I do not, that there is any such thing as a “white race.” And it no longer requires believing that people with pale skin should be given some special rights—i.e., supremacy.

I suppose this should not surprise me. I had, in earlier days, supposed that being a liberal put me on the left of the political spectrum. But that ground got shifted decades ago.

I am jolted into this realization by the current controversy over US representative Steve King.

The Washington Post writes:

King told CNN that he is merely “a champion for Western civilization,” which he called “a superior civilization.” Which means, of course, that he considers other civilizations inferior. But we knew that.

… We should pay attention to his lexicon, however, because today’s white supremacism tends to shy away from overtly racial terminology. Listen instead for words such as “culture” and “civilization.”

The idea is that the United States is the land of the free and the home of the brave because its “civilization” is “European” or “Western” — euphemisms, basically, for “white.”

I face an obvious problem here. It is conceivable, I suppose, that some people use “European civilization” as a euphemism for “white race.” Maybe King is doing this, although I think we owe it to people generally to take their words at face value, and not put new words in their mouth.

But what about people like me who are simply using “European civilization” to mean “European civilization,” and are making the point that it is the most advanced civilization in the world?

For we would naturally say exactly the same thing. How does the Washington Post, or anyone, tell the difference?

It seems the answer is that racism no longer requires believing in race. It is this very opinion, that Western civilization is superior, that is intolerable. The WaPo apparently has a problem with the mere statement that “other civilizations are inferior.” “But we knew that.”

To be fair, King also said something more controversial. He tweeted, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

If American culture is not race-based, and it obviously is not, then yes, of course, they can. But King has explained that this is not what he meant: he was referring not to the children’s genetic makeup, but to the values instilled by their parents. Which seems a perfectly fair point. If race does not matter, in a country like the US or Canada, values matter that much more.

It ought also to be pointed out that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a country being race-based. Some countries are: Japan, Korea, other Asian countries. If we really suddenly have a problem with this, we are going to have to re-think a lot of things. Is Japan Japanese-supremacist because they do not take in immigrants? Are they morally obliged to do so? Are the Falklands morally obliged to take in Argentine immigrants?

Rep. John Lewis tweeted,

“Rep. King’s statement is bigoted and racist. It suggests there is one cultural tradition and one appearance that all of humanity should conform to. These ideas have given rise to some of the worst atrocities in human history, and they must be condemned.”

Actually, King did not say this. He was speaking of America, not the world. He was saying there is one cultural tradition all Americans should adhere to. Nigerians are presumably free to conform to theirs, and Koreans to theirs. But now simply claiming that there is a distinct American culture, and it is worth preserving, is “bigoted and racist.” Why would this be so? What about claiming there is a distinct Korean culture, or a distinct Jamaican one?

But I would go father than King here. I actually think there is indeed one cultural tradition all of humanity should conform to. You could call it the emerging world culture. I have been in Korea, the Philippines, China, and the Middle East for most of the past twenty-five years. And I tell you, it is artificial any longer to speak of different cultures. Everybody now listens to the same music, eats the same fast food, plays the same games on the Internet.

And I believe this is a good thing. As I have said before in this space, there is no such thing as “Western civilization.” There is only civilization and lack of it. The great task of human existence is to take the best wherever we find it, and build human civilization.

As it happens, that is more or less what America already is.

Anyone who is against that, and who insists instead on preserving their little cultural ghetto, is doing the devil’s work.

King is not doing that. King wants more melting pot. Lewis and the Washington Post and cultural relativism are doing that.

Dead Poets' Society

Students at Yale have just presented a petition complaining that too many of the poets in the English literature curriculum are dead white males. Students at Seattle University have just succeeded in forcing the Dean of Western Civ to go on administrative leave, on the grounds that Western Civ involves too much Western Civ.

I almost want to agree with them. I sometimes think of myself as the original protestor at how culturally narrow the traditional humanities curriculum is—I was arguing this way back in the early Seventies. That's why I ended up, having started as an English major, majoring in Comparative Religion. Comparative Religion was the only strategy allowing me to study perhaps ninety percent of the best thoughts of mankind. Anywhere else, you were effectively limited to post-Renaissance Europe. A rather tiny corner of the world.

I believe we are failing to educate ourselves, or our future generations, if the typical humanities curriculum does not include full majors, let alone courses, in the Chinese classics, the Vedas, and the Talmud. In any one of them, there is a hell of a lot more worth knowing, studying, and thinking about, there than in any given subject in the social sciences. Plus, of course, the valuable intellectual exercise of trying t ocome to terms with a foreign culture. Why, other than laziness or chauvinism, this obsession with only the Greeks?

But still I cannot agree with these present protests. They are moving in exactly the opposite direction. Instead of adding the study of other cultures, they are actually subtacting the study of any cultures at all.

Witness what has come to be called “culture studies.” They include no study whatever of the named culture. Instead, they deal only with modern politics. It is as if there was no China until Westerners appeared at the ports, no India before Clive, no Arabia before T.E. Lawrence.

So why does that appeal to “minority” students? I guess it's because it's an easy degree. It limits everything effectively to the twentieth century and its views; it limits everything to familiar issues. It limits things by and large to things they might well already know. The more so since they can then generally hand in essays based only on their personal experience as a “minority.” No thinking, no reading involved. And they cannot be challenged—everyone is the final authority on their own life.

And easy for the profs—they don't have to learn anything either. They just have to be.

Yet it is a special kind of madness to complain that English literature should cut out all the dead white males. That's like demanding that English studies drop the English.

In one of the bitter ironies of nature, the English turn out to be white of skin. And the major you sign up for is, after all, English, not Hindi or Swahili. English has become an international language over the past hundred years or so, and you begin to see contributions from folks of other ethnic backgrounds. But if you are going to study English literature, inevitably, something like ninety-nine percent of available authors will be white.

Insist on something like the demographics of the American present, and you are going to force-feed random junk, if anything. But then, what the protestors really want is that the course be limited to current authors. Much easier to read, if perhaps of much less educational value.

As for women, since women have not traditionally had to earn a living, there were, until recently, far fewer women spending the blood, sweat, and tears to get published. To insist on proportions reflecting their proportion of the population, instead of their proportion of actual published authors, would again force us either to read only random junk, or current authors.

If current authors are easier to read, they are not English literature. First of all, we cannot communaly judge their quality until they have stood a test of time. The top-grossing novels, or movies, of any given year are rarely the best-remembered. I despair of Dan Brown's chances.

And, too, in literature, the dead get a vote. Writing is immortal by its nature; everyone who ever wrote in English is still in the conversation. To read only the living would be the greatest discrimination.

Things Fall Apart

Ways in which Western Civilization is committing suicide:

1. We are not passing on the culture. Any civilization is, in essence, a shared culture. That means shared literature, shared history. We are no longer teaching our history or our literature in the schools or colleges. In principle, this kills any civilization within one generation.

2. We are no longer making any new culture. The arts in general are moribund, and have been for a century. Nobody reads poetry any more. Nobody is interested in contemporary painting, or contemporary classical music. Even the artists no longer believe in art, and mock it.

Burke. Decapitated. As the French Revolutionists no doubt would have had it if they could.

3. We are losing the “little platoons.” Voluntary organizations of all kinds are dying. We are all aware that fewer people are going to church. But it is also true that fewer people are joining Elks’ Clubs, or Toastmaster’s, or bowling leagues, or golf clubs. In fact, the decline in membership is greater here; churches are holding up better than other voluntary associations. These are the “little platoons” of Edmund Burke, of which he says, “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.” Like a platoon in the army, these are the essential units for creating an esprit de corps, a sense of belonging to society. If an organism is breaking down on the cellular level, it is dying.

4. We hate children. We are not reproducing. The fact that it is easier than it used to be to prevent children may of course be a factor. But why, on the other hand, do we want contraception and abortion, and think they are good ideas? After all, either abortion or exposure of newborns was always an option, and accomplishes the same thing. Having children is a statement of confidence in the future; not having children is a vote of non-confidence. Darwin noticed that cultures that fail manifest this most dramatically by failing to reproduce.

5. The family, the smallest and most important of the little platoons, is dying. Our women are working outside the home. This is robbing the future for the sake of the present: the mother plays a critical role in nurturing children and passing on the culture. We apparently do not care. Our fathers are often altogether missing. One in three American kids now grow up without a male parent. No-fault divorce, punitive divorce settlements (punitive to men), and feminism have encouraged families to split up or never form, and women to have children outside marriage. The father, as much as the mother, plays a critical role in nurturing children. We know that children’s prospects are seriously diminished by not being raised by both biological parents. Again, we apparently do not care. We live as if there is no tomorrow for our civilization.

6. Our civil service is becoming parasitic. According to recent stats, taking everything into account, US federal workers now make about twice as much as workers in the private sector. The great Arab social scientist Ibn Khaldun traced the broad expanse of human history, and isolated this as the inevitable way civilizations die: the ruling class gets greedy, and starts skimming more and more off the economy to finance their lavish lifestyles. Eventually the structure collapses under the cost of administration.

Leonardo di Caprio is over to the right.

7. Cultural self-hate is everywhere, at least among the ruling class. When we do give any attention to our cultural patrimony, it is to condemn it: “dead white males,” “colonialism,” “eurocentrism,” “crusaders,” “man is a cancer on the planet,” “orientalism,” “patriarchy,” and so forth. We are flooding the agora with hostile propaganda against Western civilization. In an individual, this would look like clinical depression: “low self-esteem.”

8. We have lost our religion. If a culture shares its core values, it is strong. If it does not, it is weak. The ancient Romans understood this. If we cannot all assume we are working for the same goals, we can no longer work well together. One of us is building a tower; the next guy in the chain is pulling it down. Without shared core values, we can no longer even properly communicate. Society functions, when it does, on a series of "gentlemen's agreements" which rely on shared values. Take them away, and it is dog devour dog.

I say nothing here of causes, or remedies, except perhaps in passing. In some cases, these are clear enough. I’m just looking at the symptoms. We are in a heap of trouble here, gang.

The good news, or the worse news, is that the rest of the world is at least as dysfunctional.

An Old Hope

Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!

I am no expert on economics. It fascinates me, but it is, in the end, a social science. Which means to me that its data are unreliable. So I am not qualified to comment on this recent piece. But I include it because of its possible relevance to my own point that Western Civ died in the First World War.

Despite the title, its thesis seems to me to be hopeful. It argues that free trade and globalization make war increasingly unlikely. The century of relative peace between Waterloo in 1815 and Sarajevo in 1914, sometimes called “Pax Britannica,” was, it holds, no lucky accident. The First World War was a desperate rear-guard action by the traditional old landed elites, seeing their powers slip away. And, if we can ever shake off the last vestiges of socialism and Keynesianism, we may yet get back on track.

The argument seems to me to make some sense. After all, more land or even more resources means nothing in an industrial economy and given free trade. Let alone that, in modern democracies, you have to give any conquered people the vote. The one group to whom it would matter is the old landed warrior class, committed both to land and to war, who would see an expanding empire as an opportunity for their younger sons. Moreover, going to war would magnify their political power back home.

Germany was clearly more worried about Russia than France...

I note that the nations most responsible for the war’s outbreak were those in which the old landed warrior class were a) most dominant, and b) most threatened; yet also the nations that c) as nations, had the most to lose. The initial culprit was Austria: a terribly rickety aristocratic government already clearly in decline. Next to break the peace was Czarist Russia, by mobilizing in response: still run by aristocrats, but developing quickly. After that, industrialized but autocratic Germany. It was the ancien regime’s last throw of the dice, driven to desperation by their declining importance in the modern world.

We Live in Bizarro World

One day, perhaps when I retire, I’d like to take a crack at distilling Western Civilization into one volume, a volume of short passages. This would be primarily for ESL students from non-Western cultures trying to get a fix on the West; but it also ought to be useful for the education of children.

The Bible is, of course, especially good for this. It is, after all, the original such repository in the West. One passage that comes close to summing up the world is John 3: 20-21.

“Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”

Hard to say much about that explanation, because once one starts, one might go on forever. Note that “light” here equals truth and moral good.

This explains, for example, why, so often, it is the exact opposite of the truth that is proclaimed as truth. It seems in my experience that this is usually the case.