This analysis of the unholy alliance of the left and Muslim exremists by Charles Lipson of U of Chicago is very good. But the defense of Western civilization toward the end is outstanding. Especially three paragraphs toward the end that highlight the huge difference western/Christian values made in...
1) Lifting mankind out of poverty was due to Western (Christian) values and actions.
The idea that the West is responsible for the world’s poverty has a [small] core of truthful criticism next to a mountain of lies. One doesn’t have to apologize for colonialism to note that almost everyone on planet Earth lived in grinding poverty until the cumulative effects of industrialization began to take hold after 1800. That process began in northwestern Europe and gradually spread across the world, lifting income, health, diet, and life expectancy. Where it failed was in countries racked by civil unrest or governed by rapacious regimes that didn’t provide public order or secure property rights and stole the revenues needed to provide essential public goods.
2) The end of slavery - ditto.
As for human liberation, no societies voluntarily ended human bondage [slavery] until the West did it, mostly in the 18th and 19th centuries. Britain spent enormous sums stationing its navy off the African coast to prevent the transshipment of slaves, which had been captured and sold by local tribes. Britain gained nothing financially from that effort; it did it for moral reasons. In America, “free states” in the North and Midwest abolished slavery well before the Civil War. The war itself ended slavery, though blacks were still oppressed for another century by Jim Crow laws (in the South) and segregation (everywhere). Those practices were always inconsistent with the Western ideal of human equality and were finally outlawed in the mid-1960s by the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
3) It’s what they call "bourgeois (corrected) values," not inherited wealth that makes good people, good families, stable society and a great country — the values we value and model in our lives and families.
It’s high time Americans went beyond revulsion and defended their basic, liberal ideals and the constitutional democracy founded upon them. We don’t have to accept the mantle of “oppressors” because of events that happened long before we were born, for which we are not responsible, and from which we never profited. We don’t have to accept the damning slur that our success is due to “privilege” rather than hard work, time-tested values, and a good education. The greatest “privilege” is not inherited wealth or status. It is being raised in a stable home by loving parents, living in an orderly community, and growing up in a country where each of us is free to pursue our own goals and define ourselves as we choose.
Corrected "Bourgeois" 11/7/2023
