Is the West Worth Defending?

For many, the massive embrace of “populist” politicians in the West, such as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, and Marine le Pen, centers around the issue of mass immigration. Many in Europe (and even in the United States) fear what perils the unprecedented intake of migrants from the Islamic world could bring, such as an increase in Islamic terrorist attacks, isolated cultural enclaves (such as the French banlieus), and historic demographic shifts that threaten to fundamentally transform European society. Indeed, what were once the half-conspiratorial ramblings of Geert Wilders, Hilaire Belloc, and Ba’at Ye’or, now prove to be an all too real possibility (perhaps best chronicled and analyzed in Christopher Caldwell’s 2009 book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe).

Ironically, the European situation reminds me of a theory of history proposed by the Muslim historian, Ibn Khaldun. Born in Tunisia in the 14th century, Khaldun witnessed the twilight of Arab civilization and its subsequent takeover by various Mongol and Turkic Tribes. He developed a cyclical theory of history in which civilizations rise and fall based on a similar pattern. First, a new people would invade and conquer a decadent and decaying civilization. They would establish their own civilization, growing in power and wealth. Over time, the people would become so wealthy and prosperous that they would grow soft and decadent. Once this happened, the people would not be able to defend themselves from a younger, more confident, and assertive new people taking over. Once the new society established itself, the cycle would only repeat itself.

The idea that the West is in a period of decadence and moral confusion is certainly not a new or even radical idea. Cultural critics on both the Left and the Right, from Camile Paglia to Jordan Peterson, have warned the wider society that something is dangerously wrong. What’s worse, this moral confusion makes it harder for us as a civilization to stand up for our values against the terror attacks, rape gangs, and violent riots that have been an unfortunate consequence of mass migration. Perhaps the noted historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, put it best when he noted to the Wall Street Journal that in the struggle against Nazism, “we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues. It is different today. We don’t know who we are. We don’t know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy.” The constant and dogmatic repetition of the mantra “Islam is peace,” to the hordes of Noam Chomsky drones who bemoan the sins of the West and how everything wrong in the world is our fault, shows that when it comes to fighting the renewed tide of militant Islam, the West is not only unable to fight, it is unwilling.

While this apathy towards Western Civilization is known to traditionally come from the far Left, important figures on the Right have also expressed a disgust of what the West has become. George Kennan, the architect of America’s “containment” policy during the Cold War, once stated that “I can see very little merit in organising ourselves to defend from the Russians the porno-shops in Central Washington.” Peter Hitchens, the conservative brother of famed New Atheist Christopher Hitchens, once wrote, “when George W. Bush used to say that Muslim militants ‘hate our way of life’, I could not bear to chime in ‘But I also hate our way of life!'”, referring to the moral relativism the post-Christian West had fallen into.

The pessimism of both Hitchens and Kennan are certainly not unfounded. The breakdown of the traditional family, the scorn of any public display of religion (without any sort of legitimate spiritual alternative), and the pervasive hedonism that infects almost all of our popular culture today is turning the West (by the standards of any real conservative) into a moral wasteland. Instead of defending what was once a vibrant and morally confident culture, we would now be defending a hive of moral degradation.

So then, should conservatives acquiesce to the fall of Western Civilization? In protecting the West from the implantation of a foreign culture, are we only preserving an equally horrifying hedonistic and decadent one? Is there anything about the West that is still worth saving, or are we only engaging in a futile endeavor?

I would argue, yes, the West is certainly worth defending, and in fact, it is imperative that we continue to defend it.

Perhaps the best philosopher to aid me in my answer is the American Lutheran pastor, Reinhold Niebuhr. In the mid-twentieth century, he became an important voice in America’s conscience, exhorting his fellow citizens to fight against the twin evils of fascism and communism on the one hand, and warning them against any kind of national self-righteousness on the other.

A former pacifist, Niebuhr eventually changed his attitude, and became one of the strongest supporters for American military action against the Axis Powers during the Second World War. Arguing against the non-interventionists and pacifists who claimed that America had no business interfering in Europe, Niebuhr held that America had a moral obligation to fight against the evils of National Socialism. However, Niebuhr’s condemnation of Nazism’s evils did not lead him to believe that America and liberal democracies in general were morally perfect and incapable of wrongdoing. On the contrary, Niebuhr was fully aware that American society had its own serious moral shortcomings: its rampant materialism, its naiveté about human nature, its moral decadence and penchant towards a soft utopian pacifism. In his 1940 essay, “An End to Illusions,” Niebuhr argued, much like many conservatives would argue today, that the West’s decadence “does not understand historical reality clearly enough to survive.” Lost in utopian fantasies, the West would not be able to stand up to real evil when it arose. Niebuhr concluded that the West “has a right to survival only because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.”

Niebuhr’s defense of Western civilization is hardly optimistic. But there is much truth is what he says. As much as the language of human rights and equality has been twisted in the West, such a language still exists. The same cannot be said for entire cultures in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Even if we do not like what the West has become, we must face the truth: anything that replaces the West will surely be worse.

Finally, the West is worth defending for those immigrants who do wish to come here, desire to make a better life for themselves and for their families, and wish to give back and be productive in the societies that have taken them in. For many who live in the chaos and political repression of countries all over the planet, the West and its principles of liberty, equality under the law, and democratic self-rule serve as a beacon of hope in what is often a dark and cruel world. Even those Africans or Middle Easterners who wish to stay in their countries and work from within to change their societies for the better use the great philosophical and political traditions of the West as their guide.

Abraham Lincoln once called America “the last best hope of earth.” That saying could be applied to Western Civilization in general. Despite how corrupted and degenerate this “last best hope has become,” isn’t there still some good in it that is worth saving?