Please don't sue me, WSJ!!
Losing the Enlightenment
A civilization that has lost confidence in itself cannot confront the Islamists.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of
confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western
Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian
benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common
decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium.
...
It is easy to defend artists when they produce works of genius
that do not challenge popular sensibilities--Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" or
Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws"--but not so when an artist offends
with neither the taste of a Michelangelo nor the talent of a Dante.
Yes, Pope Benedict is old and scholastic; he lacks both the charisma
and tact of the late Pope John Paul II, who surely would not have
turned for elucidation to the rigidity of Byzantine scholarship. But
isn't that why we must come to the present Pope's defense--if for no
reason other than because he has the courage to speak his convictions
when others might not?
...
But furor as well as
fear, not logic, drives us in West to seek blame among the humane among
us rather than the savagery of our enemies....What are the proximate causes here
in America that send liberal criticism over the edge into pathological
hysteria? ... Just as the Europeans are stunned
that their heaven on earth has left them weak and afraid, so too
millions of Americans on the Left are angry that their own promised
moral utopia is not so welcomed by the supposedly less educated and
bright among them. But still, what drives Westerners, here and in
Europe, to demand that we must be perfect rather than merely good, and
to lament that if we are not perfect we are then abjectly bad--and
always to be so unable to define and then defend their civilization
against its most elemental enemies?
There has of course always been a
utopian strain in both Western thought from the time of Plato's
"Republic" and the practice of state socialism. But the technological
explosion of the last 20 years has made life so long and so good, that
many now believe our mastery of nature must extend to human nature as
well. A society that can call anywhere in the world on a cell phone,
must just as easily end war, poverty, or unhappiness, as if these
pathologies are strictly materially caused, not impoverishments of the
soul, and thus can be materially treated.
Second, education must now be,
like our machines, ever more ambitious, teaching us not merely facts of
the past, science of the future, and the tools to question, and
discover truth, but rather a particular, a right way of thinking, as
money and learning are pledged to change human nature itself. In such a
world, mere ignorance has replaced evil as our challenge, and thus the
bad can at last be taught away rather than confronted and destroyed.
Third, there has always been a
cynical strain as well, as one can read in Petronius's "Satyricon" or
Voltaire's "Candide." But our loss of faith in ourselves is now more
nihilistic than sarcastic or skeptical, once the restraints of family,
religion, popular culture, and public shame disappear. Ever more
insulated by our material things from danger, we lack all appreciation
of the eternal thin veneer of civilization.
We especially ignore among us
those who work each day to keep nature and the darker angels of our own
nature at bay. This new obtuseness revolves around a certain mocking by
elites of why we have what we have. Instead of appreciating that
millions get up at 5 a.m., work at rote jobs, and live proverbial lives
of quiet desperation, we tend to laugh at the schlock of Wal-Mart, not
admire its amazing ability to bring the veneer of real material
prosperity to the poor.
...
But can I end on an optimistic
note in tonight's tribute to Winston Churchill, who endured more and
was more alone than we of the present age? ... By past definitions of relative
power, al-Qaeda and its epigones were weak and could not defeat the
West militarily. But their genius was knowing of our own self-loathing,
of our inability to determine their evil from our good, of our mistaken
belief that Islamists were confused about, rather than intent to
destroy, the West, and most of all, of our own terror that we might
lose, if even for a brief moment, the enjoyment of our good life to
defeat the terrorists. In learning what the Islamists are, many of us,
and for the first time, are also learning what we are not. And in
fighting these fascists, we are to learn whether our freedom can prove
stronger than their suicide belts and improvised explosive devices.
So we have been given a reprieve
of sorts with this war, to regroup; and, in our enemies, to see our own
past failings and present challenges; and to rediscover our strengths
and remember our origins. We can relearn that we are not fighting for
George Bush or Wal-Mart alone, but also for the very notion of the
Enlightenment--and, yes, in the Christian sense for the good souls of
those among us who have forgotten all that as they censor cartoons and
compare American soldiers to Nazis.
Mr. Hanson is a senior fellow
of the Hoover Institution, a distinguished fellow of Hillsdale College,
and author most recently of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and
Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." This article is adapted form a
speech he delivered at the Claremont Institute's annual dinner in honor Sir Winston Churchill.
Recent Comments