Who Will Defend The West?

The National Review just tried and failed

It is up to “the West” to justify itself now. And that includes the United States of America, the unofficial capital of the West. The ideas and institutions the West has built and constructed are under a true microscope. They are also crumbling before the world’s eyes, specifically so, in the United States.

Liberal democracy, as Western political life is called, is under scrutiny and siege. White male supremacy has been called out as evil by more than a few. Authoritarian ideas, in America, and in other parts of the West also threaten to render much of the West a vastly different place because they have become real in the United States.

A poll, in January 2022, found that 26 percent of the U.S. population is fine with authoritarian rule and ideas. Even before the election of 2020, a significant number of Americans supported or likely supported authoritarian rule in the U.S. These numbers are contrary to the so-called traditions of the West and liberal democracy.

I have had an exchange with many Black poets and intellectuals lately about these developments and we all agree, the West owes the world a reflective period and an evolutionary approach right now. Or maybe it doesn’t. So be it. Good luck.

If so, those ideas the West likes to boast about are as useless as sunglasses in a dark room. America might think it can go forward “as is” but that is not likely.

What about the West should be preserved and must be preserved for the good of the human family, some keep asking? Why should we place any faith in the West if the West refuses to face itself as it is today? All of these questions apply to America the most because when the British empire tanked, the U.S. was handed the reins.

The evidence is pretty overwhelming that reflection is in order, not a doubling down by the West which seems to be the response so far.

Climate change. Ecological destruction at the cost of human lives. Authoritarian populism. Bigotry and hate. Oligarchies. Wide and deep economic inequality. The West, as an idea, looks lost. Not just to the former colonial subjects but for those in the West.

Boats have been lifted but not very high. A few boats have been lifted into the stratosphere. A few humans are ignorantly wealthy. That is a legacy of the West right now.

Thomas Pikkety has written extensively about this economic inequality in the West and in the U.S. Piketty, a French economist has written that the question of “inequality” and “redistribution” is central to “political conflict.”

He means that the reason politics is so volatile is many parts of the West and in America, in particular is because of the refusal to truly address economic inequality that was brought about by decisions made by state governments. Pikkety notes that the United States is the very worst when it comes to wage inequality amongst traditional Western nations.

Pikkety also stresses that this economic inequality is not only “unjust” but “inefficient.” The poor can’t invest and can’t compete on any level to try to better their lives. The greed of the super rich becomes all consuming and a drain upon the society.

This also ties into climate change and biological issues. Unless the super-wealthy in America and in some Western nations engage on the issue of climate change, the West will continue to be outflanked on that issue as well on the world stage. China and other nations will be able to step into the leadership void and lead. China’s authoritarian free market system is celebrated in some circles now. Social capitalism in other nations is also being embraced by more people.

The National Review (NR), the conservative magazine, recently devoted an entire issue to defending the West. I was disappointed by the weak response by the publication. This is not because I am a conservative either or that I am or was sold on the West. I am African American so I am of the West. It is a decision I did not make. I understand my benefits from living in the West and the ability to process and speak on it.

Rich Lowry, the editor, says “the West is under attack” at the beginning of the issue. I was not surprised by Lowry’s assertion.

Yet, I dismissed it as nonsense. The West has failed on the world stage at the present time over and over. It imploded the world economy and is starting to elect autocrats and individuals with questionable values. America elected a troubling, disturbed individual who thinks this is a reality show. He failed to lead during a public health crisis and irreversible damage occurred.

Yet, it did not begin just there. In 2009, the neoliberal rock star Barack Obama ascended to office. Despite his compassionate demeanor, he stood tall with the money changers, the same people who destroyed the world economy. He gave them a bailout and prosecuted few people, if any. Most Americans still feel the jolt and fear of that recklessness.

Obama was preceded by George W Bush, who recklessly invaded the Middle East in 2003 and started an almost pointless commitment of military adventure. At the same time, he cut taxes and borrowed money to pay for the wars.

But still, few of the country’s leaders disrespected and trampled upon the basic tenets of liberal democracy as did the country’s 45th President.

Thus, he lost to Joe Biden by 7 million votes. If only he had taken the work of the President of the United States seriously. If only he had put as much energy into his efforts to divide as he did at actually changing the direction of West, maybe he would be a notable leader in history.

NR is also not taking the crisis in the West seriously. Instead of examining Western values and ideas deeply and critically, NR again tries to put the reader into a time machine as has been the case over the years. They try to again go back and justify the West with the “canon” and “Christianity” not to mention “Capitalism.” It is all pretty odd. Allen Bloom and William Bennett already tried to do this back in the 80s and 90s and yet, the death spiral of the West accelerated.

All of those institutions could be relevant but not as they currently are configured. Kishore Mahbubani, the United Nations diplomat, and international relations expert from Singapore, suggested last year in his book, Has China Won? that the West was already in deeper trouble than it realized. But Mahbubani does not think China will step into supreme power. Influence in the world, according to Mahbubani, will shift to Asia:

“The 21st century will be the Asian century. This also means that Asians will be expected to provide greater leadership to solve global challenges, including environmental challenges. Hence, this multi-disciplinary programme from NUS could not be more timely. It meets a pressing need to educate, train and empower leading players in the public, private and civil society sectors in Singapore, Asia and the world.” — Mahbubani

Most of us can already see how South Korea, Taiwan, and China handled and are handling the pandemic as evidence that Asia has awoken from its slumber. It is on the move. NR makes little mention of this reality.

I was so perturbed by the weak case NR set forth by various writers, I wrote a letter to the editor. My letter has not yet appeared, in print or online. I sought to target a few of the many essays and why they sound old and dated and unimaginative. It is a conservative magazine but even conservatism has to know, the time is now for hard reflection and action:

Here are my words:

Reading the various articles that NR calls “A Defense Of the West,” was, to put it mildly, disappointing. I did not read it expecting a total repudiation or reflection by the various writers on why the West is being critiqued more aggressively. Yet, I did wonder if there would be some admission of the mistakes and ideological transgressions of the West. I also would disagree that anyone wants to necessarily delete western ideas from society overall. Many do want a closer and more soul-searching examination by western thinkers as to why there is so much reasonable disappointment in free-market capitalism, liberal democracy, and the so-called western canon. But, the writers, most of them, refused to consider the state of the world and world history. As Kishore Mahbubani recently noted in many of his books, the West and its ideals have been around only a few hundred years. Other societies and civilizations, highly developed, sophisticated culturally, socially, and economically have been working at the task of civilization far longer and have much to teach the West.

But NR kind of did what the now-former President did for four years — it doubled down. Yes, the West can defend itself but to barely criticize the sins of the Christian Church against the masses was laughable. Allen Guelzo’s article on the Enlightenment was puzzling with its omission of African states in the development of agriculture and civilization itself. Where’s ancient Egypt for example, the society that actually provided the world with civilization according to research conducted by multiple scholars and writers, including Cheikh Anta Diop, Martin Bernal, and most recently Howard French for example?

Joseph Loconte’s offering on individual rights fails because it fails to admit that the history of the West is to extend rights to Europeans mostly and not persons of color most specifically Africans and the Indigenous populations they encountered. The struggle over basic rights in the West for persons of color remains a failure today as, in America, once again African Americans find themselves fighting for their voting rights.

Deidre McCloskey’s essay on capitalism’s expansion contains the same sad justifications for the African slave trade we hear from the West: others did slavery, what’s the big deal? I would think McCloskey would understand that African slavery was race-based in America and in the West, and eventually exclusively of Africans, whose children were also slaves for life like their parents. No African nation constructed any such system and had no such system in place when Europeans invaded Africa.

It was the beginning of four centuries and counting of economic plunder that cannot hide behind macroeconomic jargon. And perhaps McCloskey’s incomplete critique of Western settler colonialism and all that it entails reveals where this issue goes off the rails. It fails to discuss eugenics at all, a guiding ideology now in the West (how about some bad ideas, not just ones thought of as good?). It might not have been called eugenics when the West began its imperial project, but it was so named by Galton in the 20th century and it explains the West more accurately now.

To defend the West and effectively ask the world to continue to pursue the ideas of the West in the face of centuries of destruction motivated by the exploitation of “the other” is dishonest. If NR wants to defend the West and justify free markets, the Christian faith, the western canon, and liberal democracy, it must and can admit the flaws and evil deeds of the West, and then bond with the rest of the world, as equals and build egalitarian societies that embrace all ideas not just Western visions of more domination and exploitation of people and the planet. NR is correct about one thing — the West has to justify itself (defend its ideas), but the way NR tried to do here, is self-serving and reveals little sign of growth.

The essays in the NR issue do not explain how to save the West, but why the West is in decline in its influence on the world. There are great problems in the West and they are related to its ideals.

Specifically, liberal democracy is dying in the hearts and minds of the people. It is not getting their children educated or trained for the work of the 21st century without going into deep debt. It is not providing medical care for them without risking bankruptcy. It is not delivering much of anything except for a tiny minority.

Yes, corporate capitalism has swallowed up liberal democracy. The Citizens United case by the U.S. Supreme Court is an albatross. The state is not owned by the people anymore. It is for sale.

The by-product of this development is authoritarian populism and xenophobic politics that has the West receding into itself. Democracy is worth fighting for; the real question is what kind of or which democracy? Is it the liberal democracy of African slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, the oppression of women, and the Doctrine of Discovery, or a new democracy?

Yes, it is time for West to defend the West. But really, it is time for the West to evolve, admit its mistakes and transgressions and step into the future like many civilizations are doing. China, Brazil, parts of Africa, and other parts of Asia, are making moves of importance.

They are not trying to destroy the West either. They respect the West. But, they know, the West has lost its way and it would be unwise to wait for the West to find itself again. Time is wasting.

Thomas Piketty, The Economics of Inequality, Harvard University Press, 2015

Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won?, Public Affairs, 2020