[lbo-talk] Twilight of the West

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com
Sat May 15 08:04:26 PDT 2004


Carl Remick quoted Martin Jacques in the Guardian:


> Western hubris hitherto has seen the economic growth of these
> countries as simply an affirmation of growing western influence.
> Countless BBC news items coo about how western the Chinese are
> becoming. Well, yes, in some respects, but in others not at all.
> Modernity is not just composed of technology and markets, it is
> embedded in and shaped by culture. We will slowly wake up to the fact
> that the west no longer has a monopoly of modernity - that there are
> other modernities, not just ours. The story of the next
> quarter-century will not simply be about American hyper-power, but the
> rise of Asian power and values.
>
> The invasion of Iraq may well come to be seen as the apogee of the
> idea of the "moral virtue of the west". One year of occupation has
> already profoundly eroded that claim. If 9/11 and its aftermath - not
> to mention Ignatieff and kindred spirits - suggest that we have
> entered a simple world of American power and moral virtue, a more
> balanced view of global development suggests that we stand on the eve
> of a very different world, in which western values will be contested
> far more vigorously than at any time since the rise of Europe five
> centuries ago. It is true, of course, that communism, especially in
> its heyday, represented a profound challenge to western values, but
> the nature of this threat was always political rather than cultural:
> and culture is far more powerful than politics.

There's lots of difference suppressed by the idea of "western values," isn't there?

The "culture" behind the invasion of Iraq is partly rooted in a "revolt against Enlightenment reason." Book of Revelation fundamentalism is a strand in Western culture. Archaic, mythological barbarism is another.

Revenge beheading without due process expresses an idea of "popular justice" whose Western advocate enjoys substantial support in Western, particularly North American, universities as do the advocates of archaic, mythological barbarism.

Like Hayek's, Michael Ignatieff's "liberalism" appears to involve a significant element of what Keynes called "sadistic puritanism."

Ted



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