“The Emperor’s New Clothes – Decline of Western Civilization?” Sydney Williams
The story of the emperor’s new clothes is applicable to our times. Two swindlers, posing as weavers, appealed to the emperor’s vanity, a man fond of new clothes. They convinced him and his courtiers that only those fit for high office or brilliant of mind would be able to see the bright colors and patterns that would comprise his new outfit. For everybody else, they would be invisible. The weavers then wove air on the looms they had set up. Once finished, they had the emperor and his councilors approve what they had done. Not wanting to be seen as stupid or unfit, they all admired what they could not see. The emperor then paraded through town, while the weavers scurried away. It took a young child without pretension to alert the town folk that the emperor was naked. The people at first hushed the child, but as the truth was whispered throughout the crowd, people saw – the emperor was naked.
For the past several months, the tale has been spun that America is systemically racist and built on a foundation of slavery, that social justice must be pursued regardless of societal costs, that capitalism created privilege for white males and inequality for minorities and women, and that brutal police oppress people of color. It is a tale that says white males need be indoctrinated with critical race theory, a view that race is not biologically grounded but socially constructed by white people at the expense of people of color.
This mythical tale originated in elite universities – ironically, where endowments are the fruit of capitalism – whose wealth allowed professors and administrators to criticize the hand that feeds them. It has been abetted by a media, a vomitorium more interested in promoting ideology than in discovering truth. It is an orthodoxy that combines ignorance and shame and is intolerant of all who do not adhere to its “wokeness.” A recent survey conducted by Heterodox Academy and quoted by John McWhorter in the September issue of The Atlantic, found that “more than half of respondents considered expressing views beyond a certain consensus in an academic setting quite dangerous to their career trajectory.”
This orthodoxy instructs youth to condemn Western Civilization, the culture that has done more than any other to free people from the yoke of tyranny, lift them from poverty and extend lives. Many of these professors and journalists promote Marxism, which promises a transcendent life of sunny days and blue skies, a place where equality reigns, but which in reality is state-sponsored dictatorship and which was instrumental in the formation of Fascism, Nazism and Communism. Supporters of Socialism point to Nordic countries, failing to note their capitalistic ways and ignoring the dreary lives of Cubans, Venezuelans and the 90% of Chinese who are not members of the Communist Party.
Western civilization is not perfect. While its positive consequences have benefitted millions, its negative effects cannot be ignored. Territorial and religious wars have been fought. It produced empires that enriched a few at the expense of the many. Thousands of American Indians were killed or displaced as the frontier moved west. Western civilization produced Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini. But it also produced Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, Witold Pilecki, Dwight Eisenhower, Ruby Bradley and the thousands of men and women who joined the Resistance in France, Poland and other countries. Western civilization gave us Thomas Jefferson, William Blackstone, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie and the Wright Brothers. “The essential characteristic of Western civilization…is its concern for freedom from the state,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in his 1962 essay, “In Praise of Government.” In his 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Samuel Huntington wrote: “The qualities that make a society western…are special: the classical legacy, Christianity, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, civil society…”
Yet, in the multicultural world, in which we live, we are told no culture is superior to another. So, questions must be asked: Why did Christianity flourish in Rome and then migrate north, east and west? Why did the enlightenment, which took people out of the dark ages, originate in Europe? Why did the concept of individual freedom give birth to the Declaration of Independence? Why did the Industrial Revolution, which did more to eradicate poverty and extend lives than any state-run program, emerge in Christian-dominated Europe? Why do people from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America choose to migrate to Western countries? Why is the U.S. the number one choice of immigrants? With the exception of Macau, Singapore and Qatar, why have European and Anglo-sphere countries produced a GDP per capita that is multiples of those in Asia, Africa, Central and South America and Russia? It is not because the latter do not have resources or populations. It is not racism; it is culture – individual opportunity and personal responsibility, a representative form of government with separation of powers, rule of law, respect for the individual, minority rights and the ability to own property. Eleven and a half percent of the world’s population produces thirty percent of the world’s GDP. Without the West, what would standards of living be? What about life expectancy? What about the art, music, architecture and literature that Western Civilization has produced?
Many Americans look at the choices we have this November and despair. On one side they see a dyed blond-orange, boorish braggart, a non-conforming egotist who speaks with a New York accent. On the other, they see a professional politician, an insider who has spent half a century making a good living in Washington’s corridors of power, a nice man but one who has become incoherent and has bedded with those who would bring down the West, like the statues and monuments they have already toppled. In an op-ed a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal, Ruth Wisse, born to a Jewish family in what is now Ukraine and professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, noted differences and similarities between Czarist Russia and the Communist Soviet Union. She wrote of the political distinction between bad and worse: “America today is far removed from czarist Russia, but that lesson has governed my political thinking ever since. Because we in the United States start from a much better place, our ‘progressives’ may destroy even more of the good that exists. When there is no better choice, it is all the more important to vote for the merely bad over the worse.” That, to many, seems November’s choice. But to me the election is clear – to continue the slide toward the end of Western Civilization, or to persist with the Trump disruption that alienates Washington bureaucrats and insiders but returns political power to the people.
In every age, there are Cassandras. Malcolm Muggeridge’s prophecy was early. Nevertheless, attacks on the West have become more frequent and virulent. We have been spun this tale by those who blame the West, especially America, as oppressive and systemically racist. It is a tale instigated by “progressives” and brought to us by their accomplices in the media. Its purpose is power. Fearful of not being “woke,” schools, universities, businesses, non-profits and thousands of gullible people, like the emperor and his courtiers, have chosen blindness over truth. Let the child’s voice ring clear – this tale they promote is as naked as the emperor’s new clothes.
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