It has become fashionable to attack “the West.” The term no longer expresses the certainties it once did. Thus, it has proven to be a ready scapegoat to blame for so many of the world’s ills.
Both the left and right share this criticism. Gone is the secure, unified world it once represented. Instead, the notion of the West is shattered into a thousand pieces. Conspiracy theories, fake news and alternative narratives cast doubt upon everything Western.
Loving to Hate the West
Thus, “the West” is a concept that many love to hate. The left hates it for all the right reasons. The West clashes frontally with its erroneous worldview. Leftists correctly see in the West the remnants of patriarchy, tradition, Christian morals, rule of law, order and Faith.
On the other hand, elements of the right hate the West for the wrong reasons. They lack the insights of the left, who perceive the West’s solid Christian roots. These astigmatic rightists can only see the West as the carrier of all the errors of liberalism, the Enlightenment, materialism, globalism and secularism that have indeed devastated the modern world.
Both currents reside in the framework of the modern notion of the West. They have long coexisted inside its conflicted narrative. For a considerable time, each side thought it might prevail over the other.
However, both left and right now see the futility of the struggle in today’s hopelessly polarized world. Each side sees the other’s West as the object of its hatred. The intensity of this hatred has reached a dangerous point where both seek the demise of the West as a concept.
The West as a Concept
The West is a relatively recent concept that developed over the course of the nineteenth century. It refers to the inheritance of the intellectual canon of Greek, Roman and Christian thought and its structural consequences that Europe spread throughout the world. Modern thinkers also entered into this canon and served to undermine the West’s Christian order.
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The modern use of the term West was built upon the ruins of the French Revolution, which itself overthrew Christian civilization. The latter’s secularized version became known as Western civilization, which still offers some helpful rules of order and virtue for organizing society, albeit without the guiding influence of the Church.
Thus, this West fought against many errors of modernity, especially Communism, while allowing its own internal errors like secularism and materialism to grow like cancerous tumors.
A Destruction of Certainties
There are many ways to destroy concepts like the West. One way is to corrode its socioeconomic structures, cultural foundations or vast networks. This process is now well advanced and has enjoyed great success.
However, a much more effective way of destroying the Western order is to undermine the certainties that undergird it. This way calls for casting doubt upon all Western narratives, making everything uncertain, undefined and insecure.
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This destruction of certainties now dominates as the world barrels forward into a postmodern, postliberal and post-Christian nightmare. Postmodernity is building another world in its own nihilistic image that clashes with the West’s vision of reality.
Suppressing Metanarratives
Postmodernism posits that the modern world consists of “metanarratives” that tell a grand story of the world and history. They are the prisms through which everything makes sense and people understand themselves. Many of these metanarratives provide stability, logic and order, while others, like Marxism, give the contrary.
Postmodern philosophers like Jean-François Lyotard claim these metanarratives are coercive structures universally binding on all people under their influence. Postmodern society must have “incredulity toward metanarratives.” It must “deconstruct” and suppress these structures if humanity is to advance.
The West is one of these metanarratives. It has reached a point of decadence that allows its metanarrative to be seriously challenged and mercilessly questioned.
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Thus, traumatic events like the COVID crisis, the present wars and polarization have shaken all certainties. People experience an exasperation toward a decadent establishment, which inclines them to abandon those stories through which they understand themselves. Once these defining metanarratives have been discarded, the most absurd things (or “genders”) can be affirmed.
Desperation and Incredulity
Today, people feel desperation, leading them to say that everything must be thrown out. Nothing is to be believed; each person determines what reality is. The system becomes so brittle that a single affirmation can bring down towering structures.
Thus, for example, Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Darryl Cooper miscast Winston Churchill in the role of a warmonger and villain, contrasting him with an equally adulterated Adolph Hitler, who supposedly wanted peace. The conversation made an impact on certain sectors of the deconstructed right. Commentators rightly pointed out that the interview calls into question not just the role of an individual but the whole Western post-war order.
In this way, things are accepted wholesale without nuance or qualification. These attacks target foundational concepts, not just individual policies or people.
The Danger of this Attack
This blurring of all focus is what makes the postmodern attack upon the West so dangerous. The left cuts itself off from its Western roots because the next step in its process forward is consistent with the postmodern journey of questioning all certainties, pronouns and narratives. The left hates those things that still linger on from Christian tradition and are found in the West. Thus, the left welcomes the West’s destruction and the myopic right’s participation in this process.
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However, if the right abandons the notion of the West, it has nowhere to go. It cannot start over. It needs this rich foundation of Christian thought and tradition to build something better. At the same time, the notion of the West still represents a formidable obstacle in the left’s path to nihilism. The right has everything to gain by defending those Western Christian values and principles that oppose the left.
What Defending the West Means
Defending the West does not mean denying the very real errors, policies and philosophies inside its narrative that have caused so much harm in the modern world. The fight against these evils must continue and intensify.
However, defending the West does mean framing the debate differently. It means affirming the West’s Christian roots and principles that so enrage the left. It means taking this fight to the public square to oppose the anti-Western persecution. It means reconnecting with the supernatural virtue and life of grace that make up the dynamism of a counter-revolution. As history proves, these perennial principles and values vivified by a strong Faith can regenerate the world.
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