Oct. 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Neoconservatives and those in favor of military engagement overseas often argue that the West should promote our “Western values” in those places where democracy and freedom are lacking.
But, as I’ve written before, the moral and cultural relativism that has swept the West since the Sexual Revolution has rendered us incapable of promoting what were once considered to be Western values. Instead, what we are best known for now is the promotion of ‘values’ like gay marriage and abortion. No longer are we famous for our freedom and democracy, but rather Internet porn, pop music, and Hollywood films. One can scarcely blame people for assuming that the West is populated by sex-crazy hedonists, since our pop culture icons usually are precisely that.
The idea that Western decadence might repulse more traditional societies is, of course, a wildly unpopular one. American Christianity in particular is often thoroughly wrapped in the Star and Stripes, and many still believe that America is a “Shining City on a Hill,” a once-Christian society that just took a bad left turn. That’s why Dinesh D’Souza’s 2007 book “The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility For 9/11″ prompted loud shouting from every side. And admittedly, his thesis is tough to swallow.
In his words:
“The cultural left has fostered a decadent American culture that angers and repulses traditional societies, especially those in the Islamic world that are being overwhelmed by this culture. In addition, the left is waging an aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family and to promote secular values in non-Western cultures. This campaign has provoked a violent reaction from Muslims who believe that their most cherished beliefs and institutions are under assault…Thus when leading figures on the left say, ‘We made them do this to us,’ in a sense they are correct. They are not correct that America is to blame. But their statement is true in that their actions and their America are responsible for fostering Islamic anti-Americanism in general.”
Conservatives, of course, despise this point of view, because it has been the left that has traditionally been self-loathing. The left is repulsed by the idea that their Brave New World might not make America loved in other circles—even though Obama’s serial rebuking of other leaders for not being on board with the rainbow agenda obviously doesn’t endear America to anyone but the self-righteous Sexual Revolutionaries back home. It’s a bit ironic—the left has struggled to find a moral framework that permits them to condemn cultural practices such as gendercide and female circumcision without success, but rediscovers their theological rigidity when someone dares suggest that parents could be referred to as “mother” and “father.”
To have an intellectually honest discussion about the growing chasm between Western “values” and those of her neighbors is virtually impossible. Obviously, cultural barbarism is practiced on both sides. Some cultures circumcise little girls, some abort them in the millions. Some drape their women in body bags, others produce entertainment celebrating the pornographic destruction of the feminine. Some deny women their inherent rights, others consider the destruction of life in the womb to be one of them.
I think the memoirs of Iraqi general Georges Sada, Saddam’s Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein, captured the cultural conflict quite well. Sada, while generally quite complimentary of the United States and the comportment of its troops in Iraq, noted: “We’re more conservative about matters concerning women and girls, especially their clothing. Not very many women in Iraq wear the veil anymore—we’re already Western in that way…But why should a young woman walk around with half her body exposed, as teenagers in America do? Any teenage boy would be glad to see a girl dressed in that way, but our culture is not prepared for it. Modesty is a good thing and I hope we never lose it.”
But that being said, it’s still essential for us to understand that there’s a difference between having the wrong values and no values at all. We used to understand that Western values—those rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition—were values worth promoting, and values that could adequately replace other cultural values. A controversial thing to say, sure, but the Christian religion is one that makes universalist claims and has a universalist message. When we appear to believe nothing, we offer nothing appealing to those cultures we interact with.
Consider this recent example, just published by CNN:
Sergeant 1st Class Charles Martland, the Green Beret being separated involuntarily from the U.S. Army for kicking and body slamming an Afghan police commander he describes as a “brutal child rapist,” began telling his side of the story Monday.
Martland is under a gag order imposed by the Pentagon, but at the request of Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif, he wrote a statement detailing his actions on Sept. 6, 2011, which was obtained by CNN…
“Our ALP (Afghan Local Police) were committing atrocities and we were quickly losing the support of the local populace,” Martland writes in his statement. “The severity of the rapes and the lack of action by the Afghan Government caused many of the locals to view our ALP as worse than the Taliban.”
Quinn and Martland were told by a young Afghan boy and his mother, through an Afghan interpreter, that the boy had been tied to a post at the home of Afghan Local Police commander Abdul Rahman and raped repeatedly for up to two weeks. When his mother tried to stop the attacks, they told the soldiers, Rahman's brother beat her. Quinn says he verified the story with other ALP commanders from neighboring villages…
“While I understand that a military lawyer can say that I was legally wrong, we felt a moral obligation to act,” Martland writes.
In short? Sergeant Martland was kicked out of the Army for interfering with something that was considered to be none of his business, even though what was happening was brutal child rape.
Now contrast that with a different example. Sati, the now-obsolete practice of an Indian window immolating herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, was once widely practiced. In fact, when the British colonial forces first arrived in India, they ignored these practices, considering it outside their mandate to limit the cultural practices of others, no matter how repulsive. However, Christian influences inside Great Britain soon effected a change in policy, and the British began to view civilizing as synonymous with colonizing. British officer Charles Napier is famous for his response to a number of Hindu priests who complained about the prohibition of widow-burning. As related by his brother William, Napier responded:
“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
Regardless of your views of colonialism et al, I think it’s important to recognize the words of a man who is confident defending his national customs, and confident in their moral rightness. Today’s West doesn’t recognize objective morality, and doesn’t recognize any concepts of right and wrong. And thus, the “values” we end up promoting both politically and culturally end up being a relativism that is understandably repulsive to many.
We used to know how to combat cultural practices and values that we recognized as repulsive: Put forward and promote an objectively better set of values, those rooted in the Christian tradition. Now, we have no adequate response. As I wrote after the shootings in the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, we are too often presented with a false choice: The barbarism of some cultures versus the lazy, blasphemous nihilism of our own.
Christians in the West need to be intellectually honest, even when it hurts. We need to reject both in favor of a third way, one that is mocked and ridiculed by cultural elites as it has been for 2,000 years. It is, after all, the only way that has survived both decadence and barbarism many, many times before. Christians passed laws against infanticide, banned gladiatorial combat, destroyed the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and led the movement against segregation.
Christianity has been declared dead by the elites time and time again. Each time, this demise has been greatly exaggerated. This time will be no different.
