Great post. I agree: Western Judeo-Christian civilization is innately superior to all others.
(But be careful; there are certain people here on FR who will accuse you of being a white supremacist for saying so.)
Posted on 10/10/2001 11:43:52 PM PDT by MadIvan
'THE dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance [and] Islamic intolerance." With that prediction, and with the phrase "Islam has bloody borders", Samuel P. Huntington's book The Clash of Civilisations (1996) has soared to cult status.
Huntington forecasts a bleak future. He divides humanity into seven civilisations (the West, Islam, Russian/Orthodox, Hindu/Indian, Chinese, Japanese and African) and he forecasts that they will fight each other indefinitely. To Huntington, these civilisations are super-tribes that, like primitive tribes, will attack each other until the end of time.
Only poverty restrains super-tribal aggression, believes Huntington, but he assumes that all seven civilisations will grow rich without losing the cultural differences that provoke super-tribal war. Huntington argues that there are many different types of capitalism and that each super-tribe will find the type that suits it.
The West is unique in its individualism and its rule of law, and the West invented capitalism. But because the West was individualistic and was ruled by law before it was rich, Huntington denies that those properties are important to the creation of wealth.
To prove his argument, Huntington pointed in 1996 to the "Tigers" of the Pacific Rim. Their cultures are collective and authoritarian, and they ignore the individual's rights under the law, yet they were growing so rich that, by 1996, they were beginning to ape the Muslims in their defiance of the West.
Yet where are the Tigers now? Japan is locked in economic stagnation, while Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia struggle with economic disaster. Only the West continues to grow.
Even in the West, people have championed more than one type of capitalism. Once, we were urged to admire Germany's Rhenish capitalism. Under Rhenish capitalism, competition and individual property rights are minimised. Instead, companies collude in cartels, their shares are owned by the banks that fund them and the nation is organised by the government as a corporate conspiracy.
Yet, contrary to myth, the German economy was, until recently, a relative failure. In 1830, Britain was 25 per cent richer than Germany per capita, and was still so in 1914 and in 1939. Germany was a threat because it was big in toto, but the Germans overtook us only when, after 1945, we forced them to adopt the liberal Anglo-American market model - at precisely the time that we, under Labour, abandoned it.
The great capitalist success has been the United States, which in 1830 was as poor as Germany but which, by 1890, had overtaken Britain per capita. American capitalism was fiercely laissez faire, being rooted in property rights, the rule of law and a ferocious individualism.
What so many writers ignore is that "catching up" is easy. A country, when poor, can enrich itself simply by copying its rich neighbours. Such catching up can be achieved by any regime - during the 1920s and 1930s even the Soviet Union grew swiftly.
But once a country has caught up, it can further enrich itself only by innovation, entrepreneurism and risk-taking. Those activities flourish only within an individualistic culture where property is secure under the law.
In his analysis, Huntington overlooked a simple historical principle: causes precede consequences. Western individualism and the rule of law preceded, and therefore did cause, its wealth. Successful capitalism, therefore, is rooted in Western values, and the powerful peoples of the future will be only those with whom we can do business.
The power of Islam is deceptive. It is not rich because it is dynamically capitalist, but because of the oil that the West discovered. The rage of the fundamentalist is born of having to choose between his culture and his prosperity.
We have contests between those who Make and those who prefer to Take. This might actually have given rise to governments in the first place; see Franz Oppenheimer's book The State for an extended analysis.
We have contests between groups that are simply, amorally, fighting over an asset that they cannot share. If you look at the continuous border skirmishes between the Soviet Union and Red China from about 1965 to 1990, you'll see a good example of this.
We have punitive contests, in which our enemy is not a nation but its government, and not in an unlimited sense. A government must sometimes be punished for its excesses, yet be left in place because the consequences of toppling it entirely would be worse. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 was of this type. Despite a crushing victory, the German Empire preferred that France be left politically intact. Though I disagree with the assessment of Saddam Hussein as preferable to a power vacuum in Iraq, the Persian Gulf War may also be placed in this category.
We have contests between groups that view one another as morally intolerable. That is, each one sees the other as evil. This is the pattern into which our war with Afghanistan falls. The same is true for World War II.
No doubt there are other categories.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Mohammed is the source of the great differentiation between Muslim and Judeo-Christian religions. So, you would be better served by modifying your statement to read "Mohammed, prophet or demon?"
I disagree. The context of Huntington's thesis is that Western ideas = individual liberty (i.e. freedom from autocratic or theocratic tyranny). The only way to provide a truly civilized society is to enable and promote individual liberty. Any other societal approach is slavery, not civilization.
I contend that the essential component part of "Civilization" is a Body of Law that preempts both the will of tyrants -- and the tyranny of the mob. [AKA "democracy"]
Another apparently essential component part seems to involve the Judeo-Christian foundation of being created in God's image and striving valiantly to achieve as close to that image as is humanly posible.
Our Beloved FRaternal and Constitutional Republic, [Not, note well, a "democracy!!"] America -- by far and away the cutting edge of Human Civilization -- and essentially a Judeo-Christian Nation -- has been the cradle of so much creativity, innovation and productivity because, having, uniquely among nations, been Founded in -- and standing on -- the Principle of Individual Liberty -- and recognising as God-given -- and therefore inalienable by man or government -- the Constitutionally-Guaranteed Absolute Right of every man to the pursuit of all that is vital to his own life -- every man has been FRee -- as never before in the entire history of our species -- to pursue and to attempt to achieve his own vision of his own God's Image!
All other modern cultures, including those of the "tigers" and of Japan, have essentially failed to produce a sustainable wealth because they pursue only the material, by which the West's success appears to be measured -- either without understaning -- or being unwilling to embrace -- the underlying Moral Integrity -- and accompanying Rule of Law.
China, often [Falsely] held up as a 5000-year "civilization" was only a hundred and fifty years ago soundly defeated [And will never forget it!] in a war with a handful of Britons in a few sailing ships at the end of a ten-thousand-miles-long supply line! And for all of its much-trumpeted "5000-years of 'civilization,'" -- and quite long exposure to Western Civilization -- to this day has never even managed to put together a government worthy of the name -- and is ruled as if [And is!] a medieval serfdom, by a mass-murdering gang of self-appointed thuggees.
. . . but unlikely to run out of it any time soon, it would appear. Cold fusion is, I fear, tin-foil hat stuff . . .
Excellent analysis generally.
Thank you.
FReegards
Brian
Where he is his own guardian and guide.
Where he neither needs nor wants an "external authority" to rule him...
Where he fights all attempts to be controlled and manipulated by others...
Consciousness is his weapon... Not his weakness...
Great post. I agree: Western Judeo-Christian civilization is innately superior to all others.
(But be careful; there are certain people here on FR who will accuse you of being a white supremacist for saying so.)
[And, having spent much of my adult life among the Arab Peoples, having learned their language -- and having enjoyed them all so much -- I understand and share what appears to be your admiration for them all! But, that said, knowing them as well as I do, I harbor no delusions about the intentions of the islamics!]
Semantics?
Or:
A Civilization is defined by the WRITTEN Body of Law that ensures its multi-generational survival!
Western [IE Human] Civilization's knife edge is thus that epitomized in the only Constitutional Republic ever Founded and standing on the Principle of Individual Liberty -- The United States of America!
. . . but unlikely to run out of it any time soon, it would appear. Cold fusion is, I fear, tin-foil hat stuff . . . Excellent analysis generally
Spain was flooded with gold for 200 years, it didn't make them stronger, it did them no good at all. In the end Nepoleon brutally invaded, and the peasants began the first guerrilla war.
I agree cold fusion seems tin-foil hat, but technology does present surprises from time to time, and all of them are called tin-foil hat, by the establishment.
Main Entry: civ·i·lize
Pronunciation: 'si-v&-"lIz
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -lized; -liz·ing
Date: 1601
transitive senses
1 : to cause to develop out of a primitive state; especially : to bring to a technically advanced and rationally ordered stage of cultural development
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