Speaking of the suicide of the West, here's Roger Kimball in the New Criterion:
“It looks as if Islam had a bigger hand in the thing than we thought… . Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other.” —Richard Hannay in John Buchan’s GreenmantleSuicide is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization.
—James Burnham, Suicide of the West[...]
Today, I believe, there is a widely shared understanding that our culture—not just the political system of democracy but our entire western way of life—is at a crossroads. That perception is not always on the surface. Absent the unignorable importunity of attack, absorption in the tasks of everyday life tends to blunt the perception of the threats facing us. But we all know that the future of the West, seemingly so assured even a decade ago, is suddenly negotiable in the most fundamental way. The essays that follow highlight some of the principle features of those negotiations. In this introduction, I want simply to review some of the moral terrain over which we are traveling.
[...]
One of the most penetrating meditations on the nature of that alteration is James Burnham’s book Suicide of the West. Written in 1964, that book, like its author, is largely and unfairly forgotten today. Burnham’s was a first-rate political intelligence, and Suicide of the West is one of his most accomplished pieces of polemic. “The primary issue before Western civilization today, and before its member nations, is survival.” Suicide of the West is very much a product of the Cold War. Many of the examples are dated. But as with Irving Kristol’s Cold War, so with Burnham’s. The field of battle may have changed; the armies have adopted new tactics; but the war isn’t over: it is merely transmogrified. In the subtitle to his book, Burnham promises “the definitive analysis of the pathology of liberalism.” At the center of that pathology is an awful failure of understanding which is also a failure of nerve, a failure of “the will to survive.” Liberalism, Burnham concludes, is “an ideology of suicide.” He admits that such a description may sound hyperbolic. “‘Suicide,’ it is objected, is too emotive a term, too negative and ‘bad.’” But it is part of the pathology that Burnham describes that such objections are “most often made most hotly by Westerners who hate their own civilization, readily excuse or even praise blows struck against it, and themselves lend a willing hand, frequently enough, to pulling it down.”
[...]
What are the stakes? The terrorist attacks of 9/11 gave us a vivid reminder—but one, alas, that seems to have faded from the attention of many Western commentators who seem more concerned about recreational facilities at Guantanamo Bay than the future of their towns and cities. For myself, ever since 9/11, when I think about threats to democracy, I recall a statement by one Hussein Massawi, a former Hezbollah leader, which I believe I first read in one of Mark Steyn’s columns. “We are not fighting,” Mr. Massawi said, “so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.”
It is worth pausing to reflect on that statement. The thing I admire most about it is its pristine clarity. You know where you are with Mr. Massawi. It requires no special hermeneutic ingenuity to construe his meaning. And you also know that he wasn’t speaking idly. He was a man of his word, as the events of 9/11 and the names Bali, Madrid, and—just last summer—London remind us.
Or so one would have thought. Mr. Massawi speaks clearly, but who is listening? Our colleges and universities have been preaching the creed of multiculturalism for the last few decades. Politicians, pundits, and the so-called cultural elite have assiduously absorbed the catechism, which they accept less as an argument about the way the world should be as an affirmation of the essential virtue of their own feelings. We are now beginning to reap the fruit of that liberal experiment with multiculturalism. The chief existential symptom is moral paralysis, expressed, for example, in the inability to discriminate effectively between good and evil. The New York Times runs full-page advertisements, signed by all manner of eminent personages, that compare President Bush to Adolf Hitler. Meanwhile, the pop singer Michael Jackson spends an unspecified number of millions to finance the construction of a mosque in Bahrain “designated for learning the principles and teachings of Islam.” Thanks, Michael.
Read it all. I'm not kidding, now. Get to work.
Here is similar article in the New Criterion from Mark Steyn. For those that didn't read it at LGF yesterday, this is one hell of an article.
http://www.newcriterion.com/archives/24/01/its-the-demography/
From the article:
Yes, that was extremely irritating. Had the French won, I doubt whether they would have been quite so "sensitive". But then, according to this contemporary account, the French did win.
Self-criticism can be destructive, as the New Criterion article argues. But so can self-delusion.
Thanks Robert, for an excellent article. Those of us on the Right such as Pepper and myself have to feel a degree of validation after reading this.
Cornelius, I responded to you on another thread that is rapidly disappearing beneath the wave of another day's articles, but it has relevance here as well, so I will post it again.
"The recognition of the worth and dignity of the individual is the basis for all human morality." -Cornelius
The recognition of worth and dignity itself has no basis in reality if there is no realm of moral truth that exists independent of man.
Morality should be seen an expression of one's fidelity to eternal truth. If eternal truth does not exist, then morality is reduced to time specific social mores, and those who follow that morality are simply dupes of the system, which seems to be the general sentiment.
The idea that man, sufficient unto himself, can create his own moral universe without reference to fixed verities is a source of great confusion. The New Age movement has been especially guilty of spreading the idea that every man is his own god and that self-realization is best accomplished by the creation his own morality; his own private (fill in the blank) religion, if you will. Spiritual substance is thus reduced to mere intellectual figments that then reduce to nothingness upon serious reflection.
Furthermore, the concept of better and worse cannot be supported without the admission of an absolute template by which these things may be measured. The imperfect may only be gauged in relation to the perfect. Without the idea that transcendental absolutes exist as “objective” reality, we have no moral compass by which to guide either our own lives or the life of our civilization. There is no direction pointing to better rather than worse. Everyone and everything is simply “different,” devoid of moral meaning and the morbid fixation on tolerance as a substitute morality becomes possible.
Tolerance, divorced from the rest of the realm of moral virtue, thus becomes an enforcer of anti-morality. There is no longer any better or worse, only "different".
We have lost our direction. We have lost our way.
Rebecca, There's nothing you've written above that I disagree with in any way. Yet, the passage is incomplete.
Is your "eternal truth" based upon belief in deity?
Or is - as Ali Sina suggests - the 'Golden rule' a sufficient moral bases from which to guide one's journey through life?
In essence my sweet lady, please help me understand your "eternal truth" in explicit terms.
I've never been able to define my own "faith." The concept of deity is as plausible an explanation for the existence of the universe as any other, so yes I believe on an intellectual and philosophical level. Certainly I find myself praying for intercession in times of crises ("there are no athiests in foxholes").
Yet, internally I seem to be hard-wired to reject all man-made religion as dogmatic invention. I'll certainly conceed there is wisdom to be gained in the study of religion, but to suscribe to beliefs that defy the laws of physics (e.g., the virgin birth, the raising of Lazaraus from the dead, the conversion of water into wine, etc) is to - in the absence of an ability to better articulate - descend into the realm of fantasy.
And so I'm left in a limbo of undefined or ill-defined belief..."lost" as you might say. All I can do is to try to love the people in my life as best I can and to savor those aspects of life that bring me joy.
Your "eternal truth" is what my bleeding-hearted, liberal brother refers to as the "infinite equation."
Whatever it is, it has eluded me.
Cornelius,
Imagine our philosophical world ordered thus: the material world of the senses exists. The material world is given meaning by mind, as mind discerns the relationships between material facts. Above, or perhaps within, the realm of mind is the realm of “spirit” by which the varying values of facts and their meanings are measured in relation to some absolute value, i.e. Truth, Beauty, Goodness or Love as the embodiment of all three. These values are always comprehended before reasoning begins over why something is true, beautiful, good, or why it should elicit our love. Therefore, we may say that it is probable that the mind exists between these two realms of matter and spirit, and that it is able to draw experience from both. In other words, we are conscious of love as an experience of spirit.
Fundamental to our civilization also, is the affirmation that life is precious, God is Good and ultimately, that His universe is benevolent. Out of these primal assumptions grow our concepts as to the nature of God’s character and of His will, or what constitutes righteousness as opposed to sin. In the "Lord's Prayer" we pray for God's will to be carried out, because we recognize it as the highest good, regardless of what we may short-sightedly wish for ourselves or what the social mores of the time may tell us. In other words, God's will is absolute good which can only be realized in the flesh by increasing approximation.
From the viewpoint of the physical world, God is the "infinite equation" in the intellectual world, God is Truth, in the spiritual world, God is Good.
We cannot define Truth then, Cornelius, for Truth defines us.
I'll need to digest this one for awhile.
Thanks for the effort.
Thank you Rebecca.
-David, Northern Virginia
Rebecca,
Most of the time when I see Christians such as yourself ("Lord's Prayer") make these kinds of claims I pass by without comment, preferring to devote my time, where it is better spent, on attacking and exposing Koran-based Islamic ideology. I see Christians try to pass off this argument frequently at various sites, that Judeo-Christianity is somehow a timeless moral standard toward which we must all aspire. It is an absolute standard, a divine standard, you say, as opposed to those inferior little temporal human values.
My positions:
A. Is Judeo-Christianity, as it is currently practiced and interpreted throughout the world, generally morally better than Islam? Yes, clearly.
B. Is the Judeo-Christian doctrine (text of Old and New Testaments) morally better than the Koran, Hadith, Sira, overall? Yes, with certain conditions (1), and No, under other conditions (2).
B1. Yes, if we take the New Testament in isolation and give a purely metaphorical interpretation of the book of Revelation (i.e., we don't take it seriously), and if we ignore Christ's warning of maximum punishment of those who reject his message. Also yes, obviously, if we are comparing the example of Jesus against that of Mohammad.
B2. No, if we take the Old Testament into account and follow Jesus' own claims in assuming its law is still binding; in that case, the Judeo-Christian doctrine is about as bad overall as the core Islamic texts. The considerable level of evil advocated by God in the Old Testament has been diligently annotated by a skeptic at the site below. How, exactly, does one compare the respective levels of divinely-approved evil in the Old Testament versus the Koran-Hadith-Sira? I'm not sure this matters much, considering the extent by which the threshold of significant evil is surpassed in both the OT and the Islamic texts. In the OT, we are dealing with an alleged self-described jealous and angry deity who orders massive ferocious slaughter of men, women, children, infants, and even livestock; he allows or orders mass rapes, looting, and terror. He permits slavery. He forces parents to eat their children. In some cases He steps in and participates in the slaughter, and in another case threatens to rape the women Himself. The death penalty is used for blasphemy. Disbelievers are put to the sword for being disbelievers. Adulterers are executed. God kills people for showing the slightest sign of disbelief. Disbelief is the worst crime deserving of the greatest--indeed, infinite--punishment (by the NT, there are allusions to hell, eternal torture, and annihilation). In short, the Old Testament God and Islam's Allah, if they exist, are evil despots. They are so petty and narcissistic that they care more that people worship them than anything else. A disbeliever could do charity work all his/her life and contribute to the community, but being a disbeliever cancels it all out in God's eyes: They will not enter heaven, period. (The NT, Gospels, are ambiguous or contradictory on this issue of faith vs. good works. Nevertheless, those who reject Christ's message will face His wrath). Islam is worse with respect to its explicit and open-ended divine commands for believers to carry out real world domination through violence and/or threat of violence (or whatever other means serve this end), but if the Old Testament were upheld to the letter (as Christ himself says it should be), all the disbelievers would wind up being slaughtered anyway. Likely, no human being, believer or disbeliever, could possibly follow all the commands in the Old Testament--everyone would be slaughtered in this life before being punished eternally in the afterlife hellfires.
Rebecca said: “…his own private (fill in the blank) religion, if you will. Spiritual substance is thus reduced to mere intellectual figments that then reduce to nothingness upon serious reflection.”
Fill in the blanks with which religion? Judeo-Christianity? Islam? I don't see how this escapes relativism without being empty chauvinism. How does one say that a modern interpretation of Christianity, which downplays the OT, is better than Islam? Simple: We use a moral standard that is independent of both such religious doctrines. Divine command is irrelevant. The deity is irrelevant. The topic is morality. It is a categorical mistake to confuse the two. Socrates made a more detailed argument, (see Euthyphro argument) perhaps 2500 years ago, which essentially showed that morality is independent of divine command. But it does not take a philosopher of Socrates' ability to figure out that someone who chooses one religion over the others, on the grounds that one is more moral than the others, and who, moreover, recognizes imperfections in the morally-best one chosen, is using some extra-religious standard. What standard was Moses using when he argued with God, and God apparently came around to Moses' point of view? And by my morality scoring of what happened in the Book of Job: Job = 1, God = 0, Satan = 0.
Rebecca said:“Furthermore, the concept of better and worse cannot be supported without the admission of an absolute template by which these things may be measured. The imperfect may only be gauged in relation to the perfect.”
Judeo-Christianity is imperfect; it is not a perfect standard (see above). We don't kill blasphemers anymore, but the OT says we should.
Rebecca said:“Fundamental to our civilization also, is the affirmation that life is precious, God is Good and ultimately, that His universe is benevolent.”
-life is precious, but less so than the afterlife, according to all Abrahamic or pseudo-Abrahamic revealed religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Life is certainly not precious in the OT. God often prefers the smell of roasting flesh.
-God is a complex character, some good, but capable of as much evil as any of the major psychopaths in history: Mohammad (if he existed), Stalin, Mao, Hitler.
-the arguments from evil generally have defeated this idea that the universe is benevolent, in my opinion. Death by disease, unavoidable starvation; the existence of carnivorous predators; natural disasters that destroy millions of people; parasites of all kinds (e.g., animals that live exclusively by sucking the life out of the host organism); eventual death due to the sun burning out in billions of years from now; death of innocent people due the the behaviour despots and terrorists; disorders involving excruciating pain; significant disorders of the mind such as schizophrenia, severe autism, sociopathy/psychopathy (including biologically-based dysfunctional moral capacity)...
My point is simply that there are many things in the universe that are not benevolent.
Rebecca said:“In other words, God's will is absolute good which can only be realized in the flesh by increasing approximation.”
Increasing approximation toward the Judeo-Christian Biblical Law? Realized in the flesh?! No thanks! Human flesh should not to be sliced, diced, roasted, stoned, smashed, whipped, devoured, etc. due to transgression of some archaic superstitious law.
But I do take some comfort in my belief that you do not actually want the return of Old Testament Law. Nor do I believe that most Christians and Jews in the modern age want any such thing. Throughout history, Christianity and Judaism have developed interpretive traditions that have, despite some lapses, tended toward improved morality and justice, justified peace, justified tolerance, etc.; they have increasingly emphasized the good parts of the doctrines. But most Islamists have not done this yet.
Islam, with its divinely-mandated imperialism and totalitarianism, is the biggest threat to human life and human rights. Given the population sizes now involved, Islam (and the following of Islam) may prove to be the worst thing that has ever happened in human history. (Given the number of unjustified deaths and persecutions and oppressions due to Islam in its history, it may in fact already be the worst thing that has happened in human history. Neither of history's worst tyrants, Mao, Stalin, nor Hitler are responsible for as many deaths). This is why I generally focus my criticisms on Islam.
However, when Christians start talking about absolute divine-authority standards laid down in ideology that was almost certainly concocted by humans for human purposes, and returning to the Biblical standards of "morality" (i.e., appeal to alleged divine command, which as I've opined is a category mistake), the morality apparatus in my head tells me that I have an obligation to respond.
All of my claims about the Bible are backed up at these sites (below). Note that the skeptics site contains annotation of the entire King James Bible. Some of the arguments are discussed at the ebonmusings site.
http://www.evilbible.com/
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/index.htm
(The above one is a handy reference for criticizing the Koran (Pickthall translation), having the verses categorized according to various moral, logical, and scientific problems)).
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/index.html
Cornelius says:
“Certainly I find myself praying for intercession in times of crises ("there are no athiests in foxholes").”
First of all, there are plenty of atheists in foxholes, and we should be as grateful to them as any of our other veterans who served their country with honour.
http://www.maaf.info/expaif.html
Also scroll down to the “Atheists in Foxholes” section at the ebonmusings site, which I’ve cited above, at which there are multiple links for articles on this topic.
Cornelius says:“Yet, internally I seem to be hard-wired to reject all man-made religion as dogmatic invention.”
I'm not sure what your position is, Cornelius. You say you pray, but you also say religion is dogmatic invention. Could be deism?
Q: "I'm not sure what your position is, Cornelius. You say you pray, but you also say religion is dogmatic invention. Could be deism?"
A: Isn't this poster's exhibitionism also a splendid illustration of "the chief existential symptom [of] moral paralysis" in the West, as well as "affirmation of the essential virtue of [the poster's] own feelings" as discussed in the article above?
I am hard put to understand the link between Cornelius' state of "limbo" (Great grief seized on my own heart when this I heard) regarding morality or the existence of God as it pertains to the discussion of anti-Jihad, or the "suicide of the West". I would ask how the use of this public forum to discuss this or any poster's private struggle with his/her own spirituality has any relevance to the discussion of anti-Jihad or the "suicide of the West"?
jsla,
I'm not entirely sure if by "this poster" you mean to refer to me (quoted) or the other poster (Cornelius) that I cited.
In any case, I don't see what's particularly "exhibitionist" in either my post nor Cornelius' posts. I also don't see your "exhibitionist" label as a legitimate criticism.
In any case, the reasons for my post in reply to Rebecca are clear in that post: There may well be an independent moral standard on which our civilation should be based (on that, I agree with her), but Judeo-Christianity--untamed--isn't it. We will not defeat jihadist ideology with yet more reliance on alleged divine commands, but rather with more independent moral thinking. For example, to assert that killing someone for blasphemy is wrong is an assertion based on a moral standard that is independent of the Judeo-Christian Biblical morality and the Islamic core text morality.
As for my question to Cornelius, you're right, it is off-topic. Nevertheless, I am interested in Cornelius' opinion, and whether or not Cornelius responds is his business.
That is fine. I wasn't referring to you as the exhibitionist. I thought your question was interesting, and I thought the content of the target's post, as well as your subsequent question to him, were largely anticipated in the article on which this thread is derived.
In addition to the two excerpts I paraphrased above, I might add this one:
"For anyone concerned with the fate of our culture, our civilization... I wonder... what Nelson would have thought" about the self absorbed ontological "discussion" roiling above... It is especially odious since the poster claims that he usually bypasses such topics, and then proceeds to make ample comments on the topic he claims is counterproductive. He not only appears to be confused about his own deism, but about his stated opinion that such discussions are counterproductive...
I was criticizing the craziness of reading here such an example of confused non-sensical Western indulgence which Roger Kimball might assert would confuse Lord Nelson... As for the anti-Jihad, or the "suicide of the West", as such matters pertain to the poster's various existential quandries, I would ask 'who cares?' Did he even read or comprehend Kimball's post?
Anyway, I agree with you that the precept of defeating this ongoing Islamic Jihad is not enhanced much by conversational comparisons of the merits of Christianity vs. Islam. Given the nature of our Muslim enemy, it is especially unlikely to be resolved through some accommodation between the "sides" within the non-reasoned sphere of faith, or "holy" or "divine" mandates...
For my part, I am unconvinced that this site is the proper forum for ontological gymnastics -- and in particular, in a thread following Kimball's missive about Western resolve (or lack), the poster's topic is GUARANTEED to produce more heat than light...