In an article on social justice in the Oct. 5, 2019 edition of the Hamilton Spectator, the Rev Victoria Ingram states that “Western ideology values objectivity and individualism. In seeking objectivity, we privilege a focus on the reasonable and the rational.” Think of the ramifications of what she is saying. Those benefits which result from Man’s application of Reason to the exigencies of the real world are not the result of its inherent value but simply a matter of “privilege.” The laws of Cause and Effect have been suspended. It is double-speak run amok, Ingram’s disdain for common sense rivaling that of Marcuse and his friends. The goal of such nonsense, of course, is the enshrinement of that exemption from moral responsibility so vigorously championed by Blake and his fellow 19th Century Romantics, that delusional vision of Life which has come to dominate the political Left. “Do your own thing,” as I recall, was one of the battle cries of the Cultural Revolutionaries of the 60s; not the intelligent thing or the right thing or the responsible thing but your own thing. Consequences really aren’t your responsibility. The State will take care of you!
Attacks on the value of Reason by those “others” who clearly resent the success of the West are manifold. But they are no less common and indeed virulent among White, Western “intellectuals.” John Ralston Saul’s 1992 work “Voltaire’s Bastards” is one among many we might cite. While the book’s title implies that the abuses of those Capitalists and Technocrats whom Saul so clearly despises are a “bastardization” of the Ideals of the Enlightenment, the work actually suggests Reason itself to be the source of most human evil. How would you interpret the following from page 581: “It isn’t surprising that like most aging religions, reason is able to get away with presenting itself as the solution to the problems which it creates.” So Reason, rather than being a natural and eminently useful product of human consciousness, is in fact passe, not the antidote to the abominations committed by religious fanatics of various sorts, but itself the specious remnant of an “aging religion.” In his eagerness to denounce it Saul suggests the Holocaust to have been its inevitable result, the heartless application of technology to the eradication of millions of human beings. But was it Reason that was responsible for the abominations of the death camps or the simple, undeniable fact of human evil? Enlightenment Principles are explicitly incompatible with the sort of fanaticism that drove Hitler. Unfortunately it is a given of the human condition that the freedom and prosperity engendered by Capitalism must inevitably enhance Man’s capacity for both good and evil. Saul consistently implies”conservatives” to be prone to simple either/or value judgments yet his book teems with the very same. As we are a species given to both thought and feeling, it is perfectly “rational” to define our values accordingly but Saul defines Reason in the most reductive way imaginable and then proceeds to indict it, Capitalism and Western Civilization in general as pervasively heartless and oppressive.
He goes on at length inveighing against “efficiency” and “structure,” two of the most obvious products of a world submitted to the dictates of Reason. Clearly “efficiency” is of enormous value in enhancing life on this planet, the “efficiency” of our political and economic systems with their fundamental commitment to the Rights, Freedoms and Energies of the Individual operating within the Rule of Law being the main reason for the attempt by millions around the world to flee their homelands for the shores of our Western Democracies. At the same time the “structure” of the Nation State not only enhances its efficient operation but allows it to defend itself against the intrusion of those who do not share its fundamental beliefs and values. Yet Saul tends to see only negatives in assessing Western pragmatism, stereotyping our “ruling elites” as a collection of monsters relentlessly invoking “efficiency” to exploit their workers, while impugning the Nation State as but a tool of the xenophobic urge to keep all “others” out. No doubt he approves of the U.N.’s 2018 “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,” an edict which taxes the Nations of the West not only with the obligation of accepting without question all new migrants to their shores but with the responsibility of mitigating the dangers and hardships of their journeys.
Poll after poll suggests there are well over three hundred million Muslims on the planet who subscribe to the barbarities of Sharia Law, who believe that homosexuals should be eradicated, that women who refuse to wear their head scarves should be imprisoned, that young girls should be genitally mutilated. Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan in a recent Al Quds day speech invited the Muslim world to flock to Western Europe and reproduce with abandon so as to Islamize the entire continent before the end of this century. Clearly the “structure” of the Nation State can be of service in defending a peoples fundamental beliefs and values. Clearly it is more than just a vehicle of hate. But Saul, as are most on the brain-dead Left, is interested only in “inclusiveness,” the ideas, values and behavior of those granted inclusion simply being irrelevant.
Silly as it may seem, “progressivism” equates Success with Evil. No one is white-washing the behavior of Western Colonialists or our contemporary “ruling elites” [i.e., rich White people] but “Voltaire’s Bastards,” in its vilification of efficiency and structure, is actually vilifying human achievement itself. That Westerners, in their intrusions into Asia, Africa and the Americas, were generally successful, is not a product of their incomparable perfidy but of the pragmatic superiority of their culture. In the world according to Marx, however, those who succeed in their conflicts with others are always the villains. It’s the specious “moral” principle informing the anti-Western animus of Marcuse, Saul and “progressives” in general, all of them apparently unfamiliar not only with the brutal facts of history, including those of Twentieth Century Socialism, but with the incomparable savagery of much of the contemporary “third world.”