It is no secret that we live in a contentious time right now. Not that this is unusual, we’ve been here before.
Nor is this necessarily a bad thing. I firmly believe that disagree is what free men do, and that the truth or at least a close approximation of it is best found in the riotous tumult of debate contending in the free marketplace of ideas.
But we do appear to be having a problem. For one, people are not arguing with each other, but often past each other.
How many times have you experienced lately the teeth-grinding frustration of having somebody argue with something you did not say?
Worse, though arguments are often misunderstood by people who assume they know what you believe, often on the strength of a single remark, these days there is a lot of deliberate misrepresentation of people’s positions by media figures.
And to be fair, if your world view is complex it’s hard to explain to people whose views rest on different foundations. Especially if their view rests on assumptions they haven’t thought deeply about.
I do not mean to be insulting or dismissive by that remark. Most people don’t make a habit of thinking deeply about the basic assumptions their lives rest on, as long as they are reasonably sure they’re working for them.
Those of us who aspire to be pundits however, are obliged to make clear where we are coming from and to explain ourselves when we are asking people to consider an issue from our point of view.
So, I consider myself to be an American patriot, a Western Civilization loyalist, and espouse a position that has variously been described as Libertarian-Conservative, Classical Liberal, or Philosophical Anarchist.
That probably doesn’t leave you any better informed than before, so here below I list a number of things I believe to be true that inform my opinions on pretty much everything else.
Enjoy!
• Civilization is a Good Thing. The difference between civilized and savage is real and is not racism.
• Civilization can go bad, and when it does causes far more harm than any savage band ever could.
• Obviously, civilization could stand some improvement.
• The civilization most likely to improve and evolve into something better is the one we call Western Civilization.
• The reason for this is Western Civilization has evolved cultural and political institutions that support a greater degree of individual liberty than any other civilization. The result has been an explosion of wealth and prosperity unequaled in human history.
• This has created its own problems.
• The Western countries which have achieved this to the greatest extent are the English-speaking countries.
• The Western country that has been most successful at this to date (on a large scale at least) is the United States.
• The survival and success of liberty depends for the foreseeable future on the survival of Western Civilization.
• The survival of Western Civilization for the foreseeable future depends on the survival of the United States as a free country.
• Western Civilization in general and the United States in particular have external enemies who desire their destruction.
• Western Civilization in general and the United States in particular have internal enemies who desire their destruction and are willing to cooperate with their external enemies to bring this about.
• The internal enemies of the U.S. and the West come not from the ranks of the poor and dispossessed, but from the most affluent, educated and privileged parts of their societies. The people you’d expect would have the most at stake in preserving their civilization.
• The defenders of Western Civilization and the tradition of individual liberty are divided among themselves. This is a good thing in terms of intellectual diversity, and a bad thing in terms of coordinated action.
• There is a very real possibility of the United States breaking down into tyranny, disunity, disorder, or civil war, i.e. reverting to the norm of history. If this happens, the survival of the West is in serious doubt.
• The problem of free societies is how to be strong, free, rich and united all at once.
• There has not yet been found a permanent solution to the problem. There may not be one.