Surf n Turf
07-03-2014, 16:48
Good article on alleged American naiveté and advent of liberal democracies
SnT
Living in a World That Is, Not as It Ought to be
The long and complex centuries long evolution into the society which we have today is denied as liberal revisionism. On the American Left there is a strong discomfort with making observations about the differences between societies, in particular when those observations might reflect poorly on non-Western cultures when judged in light of liberal Western values, which are nevertheless implicitly assumed to be universal. In addition, while the Right deifies the founders and attempts to reinterpret the past so as to align it with modern values, much of the Left is suspicious of the long history of injustice of this nation, to the point of throwing all of American history into one vast bucket of iniquity with marginal redeeming qualities.**** The moral complexity of the past is uncomfortable, and so it is easier not to engage with it. Rather, paint a caricature which provides easy answers.
As of this writing a radical Sunni fundamentalist army is reshaping the Middle East, and explicitly putting before us the specter of sectarian conflict on a grand scale. Arrayed against this is a state which Americans have played an essential role in creating and propping up, moderately democratic, but sectarian and illiberal in its impulses. And, this state has had a long standing relationship in positive terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Americans, unable to grapple with our histories, are simply not equipped to enter into this game of sects played out against the most ancient of civilizational backgrounds.
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/living-in-a-world-that-is-but-isnt-ought/
SnT
Living in a World That Is, Not as It Ought to be
The long and complex centuries long evolution into the society which we have today is denied as liberal revisionism. On the American Left there is a strong discomfort with making observations about the differences between societies, in particular when those observations might reflect poorly on non-Western cultures when judged in light of liberal Western values, which are nevertheless implicitly assumed to be universal. In addition, while the Right deifies the founders and attempts to reinterpret the past so as to align it with modern values, much of the Left is suspicious of the long history of injustice of this nation, to the point of throwing all of American history into one vast bucket of iniquity with marginal redeeming qualities.**** The moral complexity of the past is uncomfortable, and so it is easier not to engage with it. Rather, paint a caricature which provides easy answers.
As of this writing a radical Sunni fundamentalist army is reshaping the Middle East, and explicitly putting before us the specter of sectarian conflict on a grand scale. Arrayed against this is a state which Americans have played an essential role in creating and propping up, moderately democratic, but sectarian and illiberal in its impulses. And, this state has had a long standing relationship in positive terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Americans, unable to grapple with our histories, are simply not equipped to enter into this game of sects played out against the most ancient of civilizational backgrounds.
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/living-in-a-world-that-is-but-isnt-ought/