Barbarism in our Time

When we think of barbarism, our first inclination may be to think of ancient times, when primitive collections of people were violent and uncultivated. The Germanic tribes were described as barbaric. The distinctions between our own culture and the people of ancient times were substantial. Most of us couldn’t even relate to their culture or behavior:

Since to be human is to be civilised, those who behave inhumanly are the uncivilised or barbarians. Who is the barbarian? He is the stranger or foreigner, the one who speaks in a strange tongue. More precisely, he is someone whose speech is unintelligible or who makes incomprehensible sounds like an animal. The barbarian is someone who is thought to be more of an animal than a human being, yet without being either the one or the other. He is something in between a human and an animal. He is bestial or beastlike. The word ‘barbarian’ was used to refer to the native or savage, the wild (untamed) man, the cruel man who lacks grace.

As we moved into more recent times, when slavery was practiced in this country, people spoke out against the barbarity of slavery. Senator Charles Sumner addressed in 1860 the efforts of those who tried to clothe slavery in a noble garment:

It is now more than three years since I deemed it my duty to expose, in the Senate, the Barbarism of Slavery. This phrase, though common now, was new then. The speech was a strict and logical reply to the assumptions of Senators, asserting the ‘divine origin’ of Slavery, its ‘ennobling’ character, and that it was the ‘black marble keystone’ of our national arch. Listening to these assumptions, which were of daily recurrence, I felt that they ought to be answered. And, considering their effrontery, it seemed to me that they should be answered frankly and openly by exhibiting Slavery as it really is, without reserve; careful that I should ‘nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.’ This I did.

Eventually, through the efforts of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, slavery was abolished, followed by another 100 years of working to eliminate the residual racism.

Yet no matter how advanced we perceive our civilization to be, barbarism seems to lie, often hidden, in the human soul. We tend to notice barbarism in the “other”: cartels, gangs, and riots. But we never seem to advance beyond it, and instead bury it deep in our psyches. I’m proposing that barbarism is emerging in many areas of our society in ways that are not as obvious.

For example, the emergence of moral relativism planted the seeds of barbarism; if there is no objective truth, then “anything goes.” Attacks on people on social media are often so vicious that they could be described as barbaric; people who support open borders, which encourages illegal immigration from all over the world, including terrorists and criminals, are barbaric and support barbarism; pro-Hamas protests; summer riots; no bail cities; those people in politics who believe in winning “by any means necessary,” including fraud, deception, and manipulation, are barbarians.

Do you think “barbarian” is too strong a word? Aren’t these the people who essentially live in a world that ignores the rule of law, where they make up their own rules, create their own language, and detest people who insist on following the Bill of Rights and the Constitution?

Here are two recent incidents that represent many other similar occurrences of barbarism:

On Monday at the University of Berkeley, to choose one of so many examples, a violent mob gathered outside an event featuring an IDF reservist. The students who gathered to hear him—and never got a chance to—were forced to evacuate. One student reported being physically assaulted. Another says he was spat on. Various students say the mob yelled slurs including ‘Jew, Jew, Jew.’

Another alarming story from November—

At Hillcrest High School in Queens this week, a New York teacher had to lock herself in her office as hundreds of high school students rioted after learning that she posted a pro-Israeli statement on Facebook. Dozens of police had to be called to quell the riot, which caused property damage throughout the school.

These stories are not just examples of anti-Semitism. They are examples of a society that is becoming more primitive and wild. We have gone through periods of losing our humanity, such as with slavery and Jim Crow. We have memories of genocide and the Holocaust, and each time we hope that we will never witness such atrocities again. We want to believe they are a passing derangement, a temporary sickness, and that we will heal ourselves and learn how to be better human beings.

But the woke attacks persist. Terrorism is ongoing and will likely escalate over time. Progressive Attorneys General will continue, for the foreseeable future, to let murderers out of jail without their serving time; many will continue to be elected by naïve and idealistic constituents. (I’m not just saying the murderers are barbaric, but also those AG’s who allow their own idealism to repeatedly put citizens at risk; they are barbarians for ignoring the rule of law).

I see no signs that these actions and behaviors will decline over time; in fact, I worry that we are trapped in a barbaric reality.

How do free ourselves from this barbaric morass?