Our Failing Cultural Revolution

It is always reassuring to discover that you are not alone. This is especially the case when someone is working on an idea that echoes the theme of your new book-- book that he most assuredly has not read, because it has not yet been published! 

Such is the case with a Gerard Baker column in the Wall Street Journal. It bears a close similarity to my new and eventually hopefully forthcoming book, Can’t We All Get Along?

It is fair to say that Baker, in a newspaper column, could not do all that I could do in a long book, but still. His thesis bears a stark similarity to mine.

Baker describes a cultural revolution. He argues that Judeo-Christian civilization has recently been replaced by a secular ethic, one that you will recognize immediately. 

Baker adds that the new culture has lately been failing. He is calling for a return to more traditional ethos. 

In his words:

Over the past 30 years, the values of Judeo-Christian belief that had inspired and sustained Western civilization and culture for centuries have been steadily replaced in a moral, cultural and political revolution of the postmodern ascendancy. But the contradictions and implausibilities inherent in this successor creed have been increasingly exposed, and its failure to supply the needs of the people is discrediting it in the popular mind.

As for the three pillars of the postmodern secular faith, Baker begins with globalism, which presumably supersedes national interest. Of course, nationalism does not preclude free trade.

It is important to emphasize that nations can and should engage in free trade with each other. Yet, ignoring borders, disparaging and defaming the nation, makes for a world in which people do not belong to a nation. They belong to an amorphous mass called humanity. That means, they do not belong.

This means that we ought to forget the fatuous nonsense about being citizens of the world. We, in America, are citizens of the republic. We ought to take pride in it. No more and no less.

The second pillar of the new culture is climate catastrophism. Our culture warriors believe that the world is going to end and that the Industrial Revolution is to blame. Thus, they want to repeal industry and manufacturing, the better to return to a state of nature. By their lights, we are guilty of destroying the pristine innocence of Mother Nature and must mend our ways, lest the world go up in smoke.

Evidently, this has a Biblical antecedent, but the perpetual whining about the damage we are doing to Mother Nature makes it seem that the One God of Judeo-Christianity now has a consort. Thus, we are returning to paganism.

The third pillar denounces traditional Judeo-Christianity as an organized criminal conspiracy, whose successes were purchased at the cost of oppression and exploitation. We should give back everything we earned, because we really stole it.

Baker explains:

Third, a wholesale cultural self-cancellation in which the virtues, values and historic achievements of traditional civilization are rejected and replaced by a cultural hierarchy that inverts old prejudices and obliges the class of white, male heterosexuals to acknowledge their history of exploitation and submit to comprehensive social and economic reparation.

Yes, indeed, attack national pride; attack cultural pride; attack all achievements and accomplishments. Denounce it as criminal and call for universal penance, not to mention reparations.

If you had set out to undermine the culture, you could not have done much better than this attack on the greatness of American civilization.

Anyway, Baker is an optimist, so he believes that the pillars of the new culture are crumbling, before our eyes.

First, the dreams of a borderless world are crumbling in Lampedusa, Italy and Eagle Pass, Texas.

… the idea of permissive migration in an economically unequal world is being tested to destruction. Lampedusa was inundated last week with another surge of migrants from Africa, larger than the population of the island itself. In Texas, the influx across the border with Mexico became a torrent.

Worse yet, according to New York’s mayor, the torrent is in the process of destroying the nation’s largest city.

Besides, the notion that we have limitless resources to support people who have no business being here will eventually, one hopes, cause the politicians who promote such policies to be replaced.

Second, in the matter of climate change, countries that are assessing the cost of going carbon neutral are walking back these absurd policies.

Baker assesses the situation in Great Britain:

Last week, Britain’s notionally Conservative government took a small but symbolically important step in climate apostasy, announcing some sensible tweaks to a program of regulatory decarbonization mandates, such as pushing back by a few years the phasing out of new gasoline-powered cars. The move was precipitated by the high and rising costs to ordinary citizens of these measures and didn’t actually involve—yet—a formal retreat from the ambitious goal of making the country “carbon neutral” by 2050. But the howls from almost the entire establishment were an encouraging sign that the priesthood knows its days are numbered.

In America we all expect another spike in energy costs, the direct consequence of Biden administration Green New Deal policies.

As for the politics of reparations, of redressing grievances, Baker explains what is happening in Australia, where politicians decided that they should offer reparations to indigenous people who were exploited and repressed by the bands of white criminals who founded the country. 

Unfortunately, the people of Australia, who will have a say in the matter through a referendum, are rejecting it, soundly.

The left-wing government there, eager to impress the world with its moral bona fides, has called for a reform to the constitution designed to redress the grievances of the Aboriginal population. Called the Voice to Parliament, the measures would create a constitutional body that Parliament would be required to consult on all legislative and other matters relating to indigenous peoples.

The referendum that was expected to approve this change takes place next month, but the campaign has run into fierce opposition. The most recent polls suggest Australians will reject the move by a large majority. It seems they—like many of us in the rest of the West—have had enough of leaders’ insistence on dividing us by race and other attributes rather than uniting us around our common national identity.

Will we all fulfill Baker’s wish and return to a more sound and sensible culture? We can certainly agree that it would be a step forward.

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