The Survival of Western Civilization

While it is true that Western countries are not perfect — i.e., they are often hypocritical, routinely violate both property and civil rights, and commit aggression against other nations — they are head and shoulders above non-Western countries when it comes to nonviolence, respect for individual rights, and demonstrating compassion. Without question, notwithstanding its flaws, Western civilization is still the most moral and civilized culture the world has ever known.

In order for a civilization to survive and prosper, it must possess a generally accepted code of conduct. In the case of Western civilization, I am referring to such virtues as self-responsibility, respect for the property of others, hard work, honesty, loyalty, proper hygiene and dress, temperance, civility, tolerance, persistence, thriftiness, planning for the future, self-discipline, a stable economic system, respect for elders, and reverence for the family unit.

But perhaps the most glaring trademark of Western culture is nonviolence. Compared to most societies throughout the world, where violence is ingrained in the culture, Western civilization is, notwithstanding its ill-advised foreign adventures, generally nonviolent.

Unfortunately, for decades Western civilization has been under attack by enemies not only from abroad, but from within, as well. It is not the barbarians at the gates who should give us the greatest concern. Far more threatening to the survival of Western civilization is the enemy from within — or, more accurately, the enemies from within. These enemies include a wide array of forces that clearly are intent on undermining all that is moral, decent, and civilized in Western culture.

What I am referring to here are the sworn enemies of our civilized code of conduct, the very heart and soul of Western civilization. For the most part, these enemies are so-called progressives that include a wide variety of special-interest groups, parasites, and relativists who revel in sloth, vulgar behavior, and, above all, living off the efforts of others. They are the destructive forces that have virtually hijacked America and other Western nations.

In reality, the term progressivism is a misnomer, because, based on their words and actions, progressives actually hate progress. Why would anyone want to stop human progress? In most cases, it’s not a matter of bad intentions. Rather, it’s more a combination of naiveté, ignorance, and arrogance.

Unfortunately, this naiveté, ignorance, and arrogance has been moving the United States and the rest of the Western world away from liberty and toward servitude for more than a hundred years. Ayn Rand summed up the progressive perfectly when she said, “The man who has no purpose, but has to act, acts to destroy others.”

I should point out that I do not see this situation so much as good versus evil, because the debate over good and evil — and, indeed, whether good and evil even exist — is an intellectual and religious hornet’s nest. Rather, I see today’s world-wide conflict as one between civilized and uncivilized people. Framing the problem in this fashion removes such emotive factors as religion, race, and nationality from the equation.

Millions of Americans have bought into the big lie that diversity is America’s greatest strength. But, in truth, diversity is not a strength; it’s a weakness. This is so self-evident that I am tempted to posit it as an axiom. History makes it clear that diversity is not a helpful ingredient for keeping a civilization intact. On the contrary, cultural diversity has always proven to be a divider of people.

Having said this, I should emphasize that skin color is not an issue. It has been a long, hard struggle, fraught with racism and injustice, but millions of non-white Americans have succeeded in adapting to Western culture. For them, diversity is not a problem.

Diversity, however, is a major issue when it comes to those on the radical left who despise Western culture. These are the individuals who revel at every opportunity to vilify civilized people of goodwill who make a sincere effort to abide by Western civilization’s generally accepted code of conduct.

These haters of Western culture are among the worst of the barbarians dwelling inside our gates, and it is clear that nothing short of a total destruction of our way of life will satisfy them. And because they are rebels without a moral cause, any attempt to pacify or reason with them is folly.

Certitudes

Unfortunately, relativism, which goes back to at least the time of the Greek Empire, is in full bloom throughout the Western world. Who’s to say what’s right and wrong? After all, isn’t everything just a matter of opinion? In 21st century America, anything goes.

Civility is one of the things that most distinguishes the human race from the animal kingdom. Our desire for civility must be second only to our love of freedom. Since the hippie protests of the sixties, however, Western culture has deteriorated into a cesspool of anything-goes, take-this-job-and-shove-it antisocial dropouts. There is a stunning disrespect for anything that smacks of mainstream, and a seeming hatred for any kind of civilized structure to society.

In truth, however, I believe that young people are hungry for certitudes. They want to know that there are limits to acceptable behavior, both in the eyes of their parents and society as a whole. They don’t want to hear the relativist’s cop-out that “it’s all in the eyes of the beholder.” They want to know that aggression will always be punished. They want to know that they will be rewarded not on the basis of ethnicity, but on merit. They want, and need, certitudes.

Purist libertarians argue that a totally free society can exist only in an atmosphere of anarchy, but this notion conflicts with the reality that civilization cannot exist without a generally accepted code of conduct. When certitudes cease to exist, confusion reins, and confusion and frustration are natural bedfellows. Together they lead to fear, fear of the unknowns that might fill the vacancies left by certitudes.

The worst long-term effect of a society without certitudes is that in the wake of chaos, someone ultimately will come along and force order upon it. When certitudes vanish, the disappearance of liberty cannot be far behind. It’s an environment that is ripe for dictatorship.

Thus, the Achilles Heel of purist libertarianism is that it relies on the voluntary goodwill of all people in a society. As a result, it opens the door to progressives, communists, and radicals of many other stripes who believe in the use of force to socially engineer the human race to their liking.

Radicals throughout the world are fond of referring to the United States as the Great Satan, but they are pointing in the wrong direction. The Great Satan is progressivism, which is the enemy of Western civilization. It is an ideology whose goal it is to destroy individual liberty and socially engineer the human race.

Millions of well-meaning but naïve people love to use terms like “civil discourse,” “compromise,” and “bipartisan consensus” when it comes to dealing with progressives. There is no question that these terms sound admirable, but only if you are dealing with civil people.

Progressives, however, are not civil. They lie, they cheat, they deceive, they vilify, they ridicule, and they fear monger … to name just a handful of the vile and despicable tactics they employ. Nothing — absolutely noting — is off limits to them. To be a progressive is to believe in the Marxian maxim “the end justifies the means.” Translation: Anything goes.

I believe it’s time to fight back and restore the ideals that comprise the embodiment of Western culture. When our safety and the fabric of our civilization are in obvious jeopardy, we should be proactive and do whatever it takes to assure the survival of our Western way of life. No matter how much we may believe that aggression is the only action that is against the law, it would be folly to ignore the enemies from within and sit idly by as Western culture continues to disintegrate.

If we do not resist progressivism and confront it at every turn, it might very well succeed at plunging the Western world into another Dark Ages from which it may never recover. Thus, while liberty should always be our number-one objective, reality dictates that we should be ever vigilant about preserving our cherished Eurocentric way of life, even if it means sacrificing to some degree our purist libertarian beliefs.