PROMETHEAN ANTAGONIST

...An overly dramatic and rather grim and cynical question, no doubt. I usually prefer a more optimistic appraisal of world affairs but I also can't help but note a recurring theme I've heard often from many that causes me to fear the worst.

Just the other day I heard it again, this time from a very respectable and well-educated person (slightly left of center); the stale mantra that there really is no "good" or "bad" side in the pages of history. Even "Hitler was acting for what he felt was best for 'his people'." This insight, he explained, was gleaned from his studies at an American liberal arts college (he stressed the fact that it hadn't occurred to him before this "higher education" epiphany).

This "perspective," so commonly inculcated upon college students, is something I can honestly say I've grown sick of. It manifests in academia and pop culture in a thousand guises and forums.

I know that from an abstract and transcendent position no one can really say that God or the universe favors free, open, and diverse societies over imposed totalitarian systems but, do we really want mental masturbation defending our friends and families from Fascists, Nazis, Communists, and various Totalitarian-Lite enterprises?

It has become the default position of many that the current U.S. president (who will be gone in less than a year) is the incarnation of evil but Kim Jong Il, the governments of Iran and China, and Al Qaeda represent just another view, no worse than ours and perhaps more justified than our own.

Pathetic... The world isn't a University-town coffee shop. It isn't a Hollywood movie (i.e. Directed by George Clooney). It isn't a Noam Chomsky internet chat room. In real life the self-loathing of open societies is going to get us killed or at least eliminate the social, cultural, political, and technical progress of centuries.

We in the west (I include those countries, like Japan, that have adopted western democratic values) have adopted systems that permit a high degree of tolerance for diverse viewpoints and lifestyles – we don't stone women to death for "offending" some theocratic power freak's obsessions and we don't imprison someone for being an "enemy of the people" because they've simply called for free elections.

The west and the societies we've developed are full of flaws and often don't live up to the very standards we hold as ideals. Maybe we aren't even good. But, if Hitler, communist dictators, and Islamo-fascists are thought to be no worse than us, what exactly is our plan of action when they seek our destruction?

The generation that lived through the Great Depression and WWII has sometimes been called "the Greatest Generation." So what should we call those generations who have followed it? Those who respond to genuine evil with sound-bites from liberal arts professors or Hollywood actors. Those who don't even think that free and open society is worth "fighting for," or at least supporting in spirit?

Entire generations have now been reared on the philosophy of surrender to, and sometimes outright support for, evil because they've micro-critiqued the concept out of existence. Many who at least recognize evil's existence can only find it in our own "materialism" and "selfishness" while giving the benefit of a doubt to the most ruthless distopian schemes.

During the recent motion picture academy awards, many participants wore orange ribbons to show their solidarity and support for terrorist captives at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. They're certainly above demonstrating any "solidarity" with people beheaded, stoned to death, or enslaved by the world's trendy fascist revival. I wonder if Al Qaeda and associates, at their video-taped beheading ceremonies, will start wearing ribbons to show their solidarity with oppressed Hollywood millionaires and pampered spoiled brats who would serve up their own children's freedom to make a point in a philosophy debate.

Is civilization – free, open, diverse, and prosperous – worth defending, or is it doomed by the lazy and pathetic who think real life is a mere competition in sophisticated thought...where no one gets hurt?

The relativist, in a time when distinctions between good and evil are growing clearer, isn't exactly doing the civilized world any favors.

# posted by Promethean Antagonist @ 12:14 PM