On Western Civilization

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 January 2020.]

Across the globe western civilization is under an historic and relentless assault.  Today most countries – developed and developing – have adopted and practice many fortuitous aspects of western civilization with attributes and social norms developed in the west.  Nevertheless, the world’s leftwing institutions, in their work toward universal collectivization, see the stubborn survival of western culture, along with its mores and values, as the main impediment to achieving one-world governance of a homogenized global population.

Today the unifying objectives for this globalization effort are summarized in the United Nation’s Agenda 2030 (formerly known as Agenda 21).  This coherent effort is strongly denied, and identified as a fake news conspiracy by the progressive press.  You can make up your own mind on this by reading the UN’s globalization objectives, and comparing them to the public policies adopted and proposed by the Left’s political parties in the West.

When we examine the contributions of western civilization to humanity, we are overwhelmed by how the adoption of its tenets and practices dramatically increased standards of living, survival rates, and the quality of life across the globe.  It was western culture that was key to the ending of slavery worldwide, increasing literacy rates and access to education, emancipating women, and eradicating starvation along with many of our dreaded diseases. (more here)

Harvard historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Niall Ferguson, identifies key contributions of western civilization that include the notion of competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern science-based medicine, consumer societies, and the win-win rewards of the work ethic.  These are sometimes referred to as western civilization’s “killer apps”. (more here and here)

Ferguson points out that these apps “are all interrelated to developments that occurred concurrently in the West. Property rights and the work ethic of the West rise directly from Christianity. They stem from a respect for the person and their property, a rejection of corruption (theft via bribes to those in power), and respect for the laborer. Christianity isn't as pro-business as Judaism, but the Christian West thrived after it gained respect for business and allowed reasonable interest on debt. That led to consumer society, reinforced by the work ethic.

The scientific revolution wasn't possible before Christianity reformed to become less fundamentalist, though the belief that God was rational and study was morally acceptable, was only possible in the Christian world. In the Islamic world, to question Allah is to risk being murdered for blasphemy, (which explains) why science stalled in the Muslim world once the religion became a majority faith in any area. In Chinese society, the belief that everything is part of a complex, inseparable whole prevented development of math-based scientific laws. Only Christian society, that both permitted science beyond mere observation and belief you COULD develop such rules without risking your safety, explains why the West alone had a scientific revolution. And that led directly to modern medicine.”

The value and success of these so-called killer apps became apparent wherever their European and American practitioners showed how they worked.  As a result, over the last century they were quickly adopted by people of all cultures who understood them.  And as Ferguson points out, “The rapid rise of Singapore, Japan and South Korea after adopting these "killer apps" of prosperity show you don't have to be Christian or of a Christian derived culture to benefit from them.”  But today, Ferguson points out, Western predominance is waning since the world ‘downloaded’ and now uses these killer apps, “while the West has literally lost faith in itself.”

As a struggling Christian, I remain undeniably a child, student, and defender of Western Civilization.  Long time listeners to these commentaries know I am also a conservetarian, and view the world through the lenses of one who has survived both the catastrophic events of Stalin’s communism and Hitler’s Nazism. (more here) To me, these collectivist ideologies and their practice are not merely intellectual theories about how to organize society.  To millions of us they were existential, we experienced them in their unmediated raw form.  These experiences shaped me, and today in these commentaries, they shape my words in defense of the West.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Comments

[scenes]

"Harvard historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Niall Ferguson, identifies key contributions of western civilization that include the notion of competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern science-based medicine, consumer societies, and the win-win rewards of the work ethic."

I would add the ability to build trust relationships by non-related individuals.

The early appearance of banking is a good example.

[George Rebane]

scenes 659pm - good point. I would call it the introduction of contract law that gave rise to all kinds of trust relationships between strangers. Ferguson tries to cover that in his assessment of Christianity's support of business and banking through liberalizing the strictures on usury.

[Don Bessee]

Now boys you need to stop promoting those dead white guys and things like contractual rights or property rights, merit and education much less Christian values. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

;-)

[scenes]

...and not to say that things can't reverse. After the Romans left Britain, it didn't take long for things to degrade. Even their pottery quality went downhill rapidly.

There are any number of books and papers on the declining social capital in the US (Putnam, etc.), but it's hard to tell how that will play out. Either a startling increase in the guiding hand of government to hold the center together or more social strife I imagine. Gotta love vibrant diversity although social institutions can certainly die off for other reasons. The internet can push both ways on this.

It does seem to me that history makes a worse-than-usual tool to predict the future at this point. If it was simply a matter of population/resource pressure and the occasional need for cultures to commit suicide, you could make decent guesses. Throw in the rate of technological change, especially in the various corners of machine intelligence, and we are playing 52 card pickup.

Hopefully the bankers give me a job oiling the robots on occasion.

[George Rebane]

scenes 919am - Yes, things are indeed different now, and we are definitely headed toward a fin de siecle when we consider 1) the approaching Singularity, and that 2) Earth is 'full' (there are no more unspoken places to ship people or get stuff from). What I find most remarkable is how few people on this planet have any concept of the age in which they live - according to my lights 'the last great century of Man'.

[Scott O]

re this post - I would recommend this article as well as the noted new publications coming out by Murray and Caldwell.
https://www.takimag.com/article/civil-rights-gone-wrong/
It tells us a lot about the new kind of totalitarianism we are descending into where people are not free to pursue their own honest thoughts and even scientific endeavors.
Group-thought combined with modern IT is not going in a good direction.
The lack of education of several generations as to our true history is producing a population of easily hood-winked fools.

[Bill Tozer]

Not the topic I was thinking about, but has some intersectionality with the topic.

Christian Democracy and the Future of Europe

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/christian-democracy-and-future-europe
—————————-

https://www.amazon.com/DARK-AGENDA-Destroy-Christian-America/dp/163006114X

David Horowitz, the former Commie and leftist radical, argues that it was Protestant Christianity that had the most influence and guiding inspiration on the Founding of America than any other influence.

In fact, I would argue that without the direct influence of Christianity and Western Civ on our country, 14 year old Carlotta Walls and eight other teenagers would have never entered Central High in Little Rock in late Sept, 1957, aka, The Little Rock Nine.

[Bill Tozer]

Anecdotal story

Yale University Dumps Famed Art History Course Because it is ‘Too White

https://thewashingtonsentinel.com/yale-university-dumps-famed-art-history-course-because-it-is-too-white/

[Bill Tozer]

Scott O.

Just to repeat your 23 Jan @ 7:56 pm

“Christopher Caldwell’s new book argues that, for the past half-century, the U.S. has been effectively living under two competing constitutional regimes.”

https://www.city-journal.org/age-of-entitlement

[scenes]

re: BillT@4:48PM from your link...

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2020/01/24/art-history-department-to-scrap-survey-course/

You know, I sense a profit opportunity here. It's probably just an expert, a podium, and a video projector. No reason not to simply give the course off-campus for a fee.

Maybe over time you put together a real liberal arts curriculum again.

The truth is that a student could gain as much by simply closely reading the right coffee table book or two, but I do hate seeing civilization getting chiseled away by the Blue Mob.

[Bill Tozer]

Interview with young communists

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/03/impeachment-protestors-call-for-nonviolent-revolution-to-end-u-s-fascism/

[George Rebane]

BillT 739am - Great catch Mr Tozer, a must read, especially by our libs.

[Bill Tozer]

‘Burying ‘Dead White Males’

“These are just two examples of an academic scramble to assert that Western civilization, if it exists at all, is just a chronicle of racism, sexism and imperialism. As a result, young women and men who have the privilege of studying at some of the world’s great centers of learning are being cheated out of their past. They are being denied the intellectual tools for understanding themselves and the society in which they live. Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant, wrote a very dead white male, Tacitus, about how the Roman Empire treated subject nations: "where they make a wasteland, they call it peace." Some universities are a bit like that.”

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/burying-dead-white-males

[Bill Tozer]

Human Nature Makes Socialist Ideals Impossible.

“Chesterton declared, “Mr. Blatchford’s philosophy will never be endured among sane men.” Why was this near-nobody so able to make such a confident statement? Two reasons. He knew something about the nature of man, and he knew that Blatchford’s philosophy was essentially one of materialism and determinism. Blatchford believed that two things would follow if people were provided with “better conditions of environment and heredity.” People, he believed, would be good, and society’s problems would then be solved.

Chesterton was not persuaded: “Mr. Blatchford offers nothing remotely resembling an argument to show that he knows what conditions would produce good men.” For that matter, Chesterton was also not persuaded that anyone knew the answer to that question. Surely, Blatchford could not mean that “mere conditions of physical comfort and mental culture [could] produce good men, because manifestly they do not.”

And why not? Chesterton, who had only just become a committed Christian, had detected a “strange thing running across human history.” That would be “Sin, or the Fall of Man.”“

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/human-nature-makes-socialist-ideals-impossible

[Bill Tozer]

Actor: Slighting Christianity Is the Sign of an Ill-Read Mind

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/actor-slighting-christianity-sign-ill-read-mind