I missed a teaching opportunity today.
In my class [that I teach], we were talking about the writings of early European explorers around 1500 and their descriptions of the Native Americans they encountered. One student accurately observed that these Europeans considered themselves to be superior to the Natives, physically, mentally, intellectually, spiritually, and culturally. The student added, however, that these European cultures were of course “not better than” the Native American cultures. And this points to the basic principle of our 21st-century American university mentality: we must be all-accepting, all-embracing, and all-equating when it comes to different cultures (our own exempted). Underlying that basic principle, however, is a subtle yet extremely powerful assumption: that we cannot at the same time proclaim one culture to be in any way “better” than another culture. Such a belief, we are told, would make us bigoted. To declare that one culture or way of life is “superior” to another would make us racist, xenophobic, closed-minded, intolerant and backward. My question is: why must we necessarily operate at such extremes? Why is the respecting of other cultures and ways of life mutually exclusive with valuing one more highly than another or proclaiming that one is, indeed, “better” than another? Can I not hypothetically express, without insulting the legacy of these peoples and without indicating that Native Americans today are somehow inherently inferior or no longer deserve to exist, that the European way of life around 1500 was indeed better? Can I not openly exclaim today that the United States of America and the basic societal structure and culture that prevail here (political correctness excepted) are better than, for instance, the Shariah Law that dominates certain Muslim countries – without automatically expressing my hatred for everything associated with Islam? Of course I can. Those who would have you believe that you have to value all cultures and points of view equally (except…you know the drill) in order for you to not be closed-minded and xenophobic are bullying you into accepting their completely relativistic worldview. It is possible to be a devout Christian and to still treat people of other religions with dignity and respect. It is possible to be a patriotic American who loves his country and who thinks its history and its culture are better than those of another country while still retaining respect for other countries and their peoples. Shockingly, it is also possible to vehemently disapprove of facets of another culture, and yet to not be overcome with an irrepressible compulsion to mercilessly eradicate from the planet the entire people who practice this culture. An ideological or philosophical preference or pronouncement of superiority does not necessarily have to be rooted in hatred and hostility. Yes, of course we should encourage tolerance, respect, mutual understanding, and we should certainly value the expression of different perspectives. In fact, the guiding principle in all interactions is that we should do our best to love our neighbors as ourselves. But this does not mean that we can’t have sensible positions that prioritize one way of life or system of belief over another because we believe it to be superior based on a given standard of evaluation. We shouldn't be afraid to espouse a particular set of beliefs as superior, as long as we do so fairly, gently, benevolently, and sensibly. We don't have to subscribe to relativism. If you are having trouble picturing the idea of relativism, imagine thousands of particles (representing different cultures) buzzing indiscriminately and without purpose through space. They are all of equal value, regardless of their shape, size, or content, and they are all similarly bereft of transcendent meaning. The particles that are buzzing through space have no referent and anyone trying to make sense of them all will be utterly confounded. A philosophy such as this, one that declares all cultures equal and dictates that we cannot assign values to cultures based on moral reasoning, lacks a foundation of principles. It lacks a structure which would help sort the particles and allow us to align them in a particular order. This leads us back to the mentality described at the beginning of this post: that we must be all-accepting, all-embracing, and all-equating. In other words, it is the notion that we shall have no foundation by which we can differentiate between right [cultures] and wrong [cultures], between good [ways of life] and bad [ways of life]. Without such a foundation to guide us, everything – including what cultures are better – becomes relative. To which worldview you subscribe becomes merely a meaningless matter of personal preference. What you live out in your own life and which culture you prefer can then be ascribed to how you feel. You do what you feel is good. You do what you feel is right. Thus, to quote Ravi Zacharias: "In some cultures they love their neighbors; in others they eat them, both on the basis of feeling. Do you have any preference?" ______________________________________________________________________________ Note: Before anyone who has a penchant for misinterpreting the things they read jumps down my throat – I am writing here about the choices we make, the beliefs we hold, the ways of life we cultivate, and the values we assign to those. I am not talking about physical characteristics with which we are born, such as our complexion or the amount of hair we possess. God has made us all in His image, and only in His eyes we do possess true, transcendent, triumphant equality.
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“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
John Adams, the second President of the United States, penned these words to a friend in 1814.[1] If we look at the United States today, should we be worried about impending doom, as John Adams foretold in 1814? Amidst the seemingly daily discovery of government corruption,[2] the unprecedented extent of government interference in the freedom of the press[3], accusations of fraud in the democratic process[4], and the ever-growing reach and power of the federal government – could we be witnessing the demise of our beloved democratic republic? In 1887, the Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote about the nature of democracies: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship." Confronted with this prospect, I feel compelled to return to our Founding Fathers and examine the vision they had for the United States of America.[5] Benjamin Franklin: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Samuel Adams: "Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." Richard Henry Lee: “It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.” John Adams: “I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading?" Thomas Jefferson: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.” Put more eloquently and in more detail, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "Whereas it appears that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience has shown, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibits, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes." When Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French thinker of the early nineteenth century, visited the United States, he wrote: “It cannot be doubted that, in the United States, the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of a democratic republic; and such must always be the case, I believe, where instruction which awakens the understanding is not separated from moral education which amends the heart.” What are the Founding Fathers and Tocqueville telling us? Their statements revolve around two principles: the importance of a virtuous people and the importance of an educated people. Without these, democracy as developed by our ancestors and as we know it today cannot exist. But how is this relevant today? Well, while this may be surprising to some, Studies and a shocking variety of anecdotal evidence indicate that the American people – particularly teenagers and young adults – are very poorly educated when it comes to the fundamentals of American history and the basic processes and characteristics of our governmental system and founding document, the Constitution. Take these for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRkFDcX_72c http://www.businessinsider.com/poll-many-americans-dont-know-basic-facts-about-government-2014-9 http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Study-Americans-Dont-Know-About-Much-About-History.html Given the statements of our Founders quoted above and the common sensical reality that a population that has the freedom to choose its own leaders should be well educated, the historical illiteracy of our people should be unsettling. Popular culture has hijacked our minds, convincing us that “keeping up with the Kardashians” and knowing to whom Brad Pitt is married, who is on the latest edition of Dancing with the Stars, and what is the latest drama on the Jersey Shore (okay, that one is a little outdated, but so is my familiarity with popular culture) are more important than knowing truly important things such as the basic tenets of the two parties that dominate our political system or the long-term significance of our $17 trillion dollar national debt. If we continue to prioritize popular culture and neglect American history, government, politics, and contemporary international issues, we will become a people wholly unfit for the system our Founders created. So what about the second part of the quotes I listed above? What about virtue? This indicates another problem I would like to highlight. Our public school system has abdicated its responsibility to provide its people with a civic education. Instead of teaching our kids to cultivate manners and respect, we grant them ever more individual freedoms and privileges at younger and younger ages for which they are not ready. Instead of instilling in them a sense of gratitude and humility, we present to them a growing list of “entitlements.” Instead of offering our kids a vision, ideals for which they can strive and role models they can try to emulate, we teach them that there is no “right” or “wrong” way and abandon them to their youthfully impetuous whims. Instead of emphasizing to them the importance of performing our civic duties and being productive citizens of a democratic society, we tell them that they are powerless victims of an oppressive system. Instead of revealing to our kids what a great fortune and a blessing it is to live in these United States of America, we increasingly tell them merely how incomparably horrifying and disgraceful our past is and how ashamed we should be of it. While the cultural currents that have led to this pedagogical and cultural decay are infinitely complicated and multifaceted, there is one unifying thread to it all: the exclusion of God from public life. We have taken Him out of our education curricula, banished Him from the public sphere, and locked Him away in the churches across our nation, as if to say: “in there you can stay, God, but don’t you dare show your ugly head outside of those church doors!” As a result, we have lost our moral compass; we have lost our vision; we have lost our sense of what is good and what is not. In God’s place, we have erected a culture of self-worship that exalts a relativism that can only lead to confusion, emptiness, and self-destruction. But more on that another time…the point is, to return to the beginning of this post: we are rapidly transforming into a people wholly unfit for the system our founding document set up for us. Uneducated, uninformed, uninterested, devoid of a solid moral conscience, and cultivating the wrong priorities – we are becoming unfit for the privilege of choosing our leaders and holding them accountable. We are becoming unsuitable for a democratic system, and as we continue traveling down this dark and ominous road that is littered with frightening historical precedents, we may yet, as Benjamin Franklin said, “have more need of masters” than individual liberty. ___________________________________________________________________________________ [1] http://www.foundingfatherquotes.com/father/id/1/s/30#section=quotes [2] I don’t deem it necessary to provide links for this accusation. Whatever your political leanings, hopefully it is sufficiently clear to you that whether it is the Center for Disease Control spreading misinformation, the IRS targeting specific people, the Department of Justice and its wealth of scandals, Republican or Democratic officials, or the White House itself – our government is rife with corruption. [3] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-united-states-just-finished-46th-in-a-press-freedom-contest/283798/; http://nypost.com/2014/10/27/ex-cbs-reporter-government-related-entity-bugged-my-computer/; http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/10/27/usa-todays-susan-page-obama-administration-most-dangerous-to-media-in-history/ [4] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391474/non-citizens-are-voting-john-fund; http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/10/29/massive-non-citizen-voting-uncovered-in-maryland/; http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3607682.shtml#.VFcXqvnF-_U; http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/10/28/voting-machine-in-maryland-changes-votes-for-republicans-to-votes-for-democrats-n1910991 [5] I cross-checked these statements to verify their historical veracity and to ensure that they did not end up on “Snopes” or a website dedicated to quotations falsely attributed to our Founders. |
AuthorChristopher is a student in the Ph.D. program in History at the University of North Carolina. He enjoys following sports, going to church on Sundays, and discussing contemporary issues in American society. Archives
Mai 2015
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