Criticizing any culture, specifically the West, for its evil deeds and demanding that it atone for them materially is not a war on the West. It is a must.
Challenging the West is patriotic.
I listened to this segment on Joe Scarborough. I have become a fan of Scarborough even though we are ideological opposites. I became agitated because there was a certain amount of hubris that I think most would miss. The narrative is everything. And those who have the platform to make it can make flawed opinions and statements seem genuine.
Joe’s guest, Douglas Murray, the author of the recent book titled “The War on the West,” along with Scarborough, made several statements that only one believing they are entitled to privileges beyond most could make. The first quote from the book that Scarborough chose is problematic.
The culture that gave the world lifesaving advances in science, medicine, and a free market that has raised billions of people around the world out of poverty and offered the greatest flowering of thought anywhere in the world is interrogated through the lens of the deepest hostility and simplicity.
I am neither a scholar nor a historian. Yet it is not hard for me to tear it apart. First, let me say the following to ensure no one believes that I intend to be anything but objective.
Every race, — I do not believe in ‘race’ but place it here because our society racializes — culture, ethnicity, and religion have the propensity to be good. Still, the psychopaths in those groups often do evil and lead many to follow them. My contempt for the statement is that while those words are not original to the author, they could only have originated from a psychopath if they believed it.
The more accurate instantiation of the statement should be as follows.
The culture that aggregated the world’s lifesaving advances in science and medicine and developed a controlled capitalist economy with a free market facade that has raised billions of people around the world out of poverty on the excess labor and backs of billions and stifled the greatest flowering of thought anywhere in the world to create equitable societies is interrogated finally through an objective lens.
The West is yesterday’s conquerors, and as such, they wrote the history and set the parameters of the debate. Now that the leaders of the West are losing power to a more and more vocal majority, they fear objective analysis will erode their power and the myth of their successes.
It is commendable that the author, Douglas Murray, is amenable to examining American history and Western History more objectively. But he wants to decide how far or how deep.
If someone robs a family store, leaving the family destitute, and then precedes to ‘help’ that family to some level of financial stability, is the robber to be commended? If one made their fortune on the free labor of others, do they have the right to keep it as they stand for policies that objectively deny the generations aggrieved any form of reparation? If one conquers land and continues to profit from the spoils of said land while the descendants of the previous dwellers remain destitute, should we hold the conqueror in a good light?
I am sure you get the point. In a humane equitable society, it is not the evildoer that sets the penalty, especially when the debt and behavior remain.
America and the West, for that matter, are the aggregation of intellect and service from all over the world. It isn’t one ‘race’ or one ‘ethnicity’ or one ‘gender’ that made us who we are and are trying to be. The hubris of the author is the Ayn Randian false belief in individualism. It never was. Thievery, violence, and oppression have always given the semblance of uniqueness and superiority.
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