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Quote of the Day: It Must Be the West’s Fault
“In other words, the assault on the West’s history succeeds because it speaks into a vacuum of vast historical and contemporary ignorance. It speaks to a populace inside the West as much as outside it, which is willing to see the whole of history through a single lens. If anything bad happens in the world, it must be the West’s fault, because there is no other legitimate explanation of how things can go wrong, other than explanations involving the West.” – Douglas Murray
Recently it occurred to me that in one sense, it is our own “fault” that we are being attacked and blamed by the Left for all the problems in the world. Our being a Republic, the most successful one ever created, makes us vulnerable to a takedown by all those people and countries who don’t know our history, are envious of our successes, and have failed miserably to demonstrate their ability to form prosperous societies. In fact, they have never intended to do anything of the kind.
Instead, they have been determined to establish maximum power, wherever they have existed. Whether we study Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, or other totalitarians, providing an egalitarian society was only a pipe dream. These leaders used their delusions to lure the people into a societal abyss, where everyone would serve them, as we acquiesced to fear and intimidation in order to survive. Literally millions of people died in service to their deranged agendas.
So, the West is a threat to those who elevate power above all else. Any promises made about equality, serving the masses, or fairness are intended to blind us to the lost gifts of freedom and agency.
They believe we must be destroyed, at any cost.
But this time in history, we will fight back.
Published in Culture
This is why a dubious friend is a worse threat than an implacable enemy. We can not fight against “them” if there is no “us”.
BDB, would you describe “us” as those who don’t know enough to fight back, or don’t even know there is anyone or anything to fight? I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that is a concerning proposition. . .
And part of the failure of the west was being way to trusting in believing that the “them” could be “us”.
Susan, why do you think that Communists like Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot did not believe their ideology?
I think that they were mistaken, at a minimum. You seem to have concluded that they believed that their ideas were wrong, and were consciously lying for the sake of their own power. How would we go about determining what they actually believed?
They didn’t think they were lies; we should have known they were impossible. I’ll try to clarify.
Those are two questions that are too hard for me. So I’m glad no one is asking me!
I get this far: it’s like trying to figure out the answer to, “Does Satan believe his own ideology?” and I’m stuck.
That’s because satan isn’t motivated by ideology. He is against mankind and against God.
Do you know how long it took for me to realize the fall in Genesis is also the fall of Lucifer?
One cannot read any history of the Communist revolution without quickly learning that Lenin, Stalin, etc., knew exactly what they were creating… and it certainly wasn’t democracy for the people. It was a totalitarian regime, with themselves at the top. Read their writings.
I had never heard that idea, nor thought about it.
Please teach me about it. (You, or others who understand it.)
According to your hypothesis, I should have quickly learned that
(Since I am in the experimental cohort, having read a fair amount of history of the Communist revolution).
I am a data point that confirms the hypothesis. (Meaning, I did quickly learn that, as predicted.)
But knowing those three things has not been of any help in answering the debate that I thought you and Susan you are engaged in.
When you refer to “ideology”, I thought that you mean not just the means to the ends, or the intermediate stages of the history of man (like Feudalism; Capitalist Democracy;
peaceful overthrow of Capitalism and Democracy by newly class-conscious proletariats [Marxism 1.0]; violent Revolution led by dedicated intellectual cadres [Marxism 2.0/Leninism] , arbitrarily ruthless, mendacious Totalitarianism; the classless Worker’s Paradise] , but most importantly, his ultimate purpose and ends.The ends being, not totalitarian dictatorship, but the classless Worker’s Paradise.
Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 are key chapters to the narration of the fall of the Angel Lucifer. They describe his desire to elevate himself above God and his subsequent casting out of heaven.
I thought it was a separate event from the fall of mankind in Genesis, but the declaration of the serpent being confined to his belly makes me think that’s also Lucifer’s being cast out of heaven.
Am I involved in a debate? Somehow I missed that. I didn’t intend for this post to be a religious discussion, although it can go that way. If the question is about whether those tyrants had evil intentions, I have no doubt about that. Whether they thought they were being evil, I don’t know, and I expect they probably didn’t care. But I do believe that people can commit evil acts, and just because they don’t call them evil doesn’t mean they aren’t evil. In Judaism, we refer to the evil inclination (although there are places where Satan is referenced in the Old Testament). I don’t see where he is referenced in the citations from Ezekiel or Isaiah, although wickedness is.
Back in the 70s, we heard the choruses of “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ has got to go” from the students at Stanford (being led by Jesse Jackson).
At the time, most of us brushed it off. Who in the world would wish to see the works of the Greeks and Romans swept aside? What could possibly take its place?
Now, we know.
If they’d told the true history of those monsters, it would work for me. The way their histories are taught, not so much. Oh, and of course we’ll get it right this time . . .
A cancer. Not detected earlier. Major surgery, radiation and chemo required. Each day we wait the more its going to feel like the cure is word than the disease — except it isn’t and must be done.
A powerful analogy, Rodin. Thank you.
This occurred in 1987, not the 1970s. (Here’s a NR article on it.)
I also don’t think that Western Civ is about the Greeks and Romans. It’s mostly about the Christians.
Not the Western Civilization I was taught in college.
What is the cure?
I think that there’s a great deal of disagreement about this.
Let’s just call it a multitude of potential solutions.
When was that?
I wasn’t really taught Western Civ in college, though I was taught some of it in high school. It was a Catholic high school, so there was a Christian element.
Much of what we call Western Civ is based on Christianity, even if it’s not overtly Christian. What works did you study? Most, maybe all, of the great writers of Western Civ were Christians and taught Christian themes. I think that this is true from Dante, to Cervantes, to Shakespeare, to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and even Dickens.
My high school did include a course on the Greek myths, too.
My impression is that the teaching of the Bible itself was driven out of the colleges and universities sometime between the late 1940s and early 1960s, though I wasn’t there myself, so I’m not sure about the timing.
Right, not a debate, sorry. You and Jerry were discussing a question.
It’s a bit off point for the post, but I happen to have taught a Bible study lesson on Ezekiel 28 a few weeks ago. There is a lament over the “king of Tyre” in the middle of the chapter, verses 11-19, which is about Satan. It doesn’t use the name Satan, but identifies the “king of Tyre” as a “guardian cherub” who was quite glorious, was “in Eden, the Garden of God,” but sinned and was cast out.
It’s a very interesting and unexpected passage in the middle of Ezekiel. The idea of God lamenting over the fall of Satan was new to me, as far as I can recall.
Well, yeah, some of which may turn out to be more of the poison that gave the patient cancer in the first place. Diagnosis is important.
For my part, as I’ve made clear before, I think that a great many Leftist ideas have infiltrated what passes for the conservative Right these days. Others disagree with me, and think that people like me are the problem, or at least this is my impression.
We were required to take, as I remember, at least one semester of Western Civ. The first semester required the reading of several Greek and Roman sources with discussions and essays following. That was 50 years ago, so there’s no way I remember those I read. Given it was the Cal State system, I don’t recall any readings of Christians or people associated with other religions.
When Lenin and his co-conspirators were discussing the revolution, they weren’t picturing themselves as among the classless workers, they saw themselves at the top, directing the never-ending struggle.
Jim,
I miscommunicated my meaning.
The question I thought was being discussed is this: Did Lenin or Stalin believe in the state of the world at the end of Progress, (also called “the end of History”) or not?
Nothing I have ever read about the history of the Communist struggle, nor anything in the writings of Lenin (or Stalin, who didn’t write a lot of ideology unlike Lenin) would indicate that they did not believe in the Workers’ Paradise being the end state.
I would be very interested to know if you think there is such evidence in the record.
I don’t remember reading theologians or church fathers, but there is a good bit of western history that is tied up in the Holy Roman Empire and the Protestant Reformation (and the rebellions that reformation justified).
So there is the study of Christendom in western civilization studies. Not theology, and I don’t think JG intended to imply that.
That’s my understanding. Why would they contemplate an end to their efforts to gain more power?
I don’t understand what you are saying.