The West’s kneejerk reflex against its own past

Below is a letter I’ve sent to Investors Business Daily:

To the editor:

In your editorial, “Bhutto’s Tragic End,” you write:

“Her death is a tragedy not just for Pakistan’s fledgling democracy, but for all of us. We only hope that Musharraf has the strength and resolution to fight those who would drag Pakistan back into the Middle Ages.”

What possible parallel could you be suggesting between a nation of honor-murderers and bin Laden followers on one side and the Middle Ages on the other? Please realize that when you smear the Middle Ages you are smearing our own civilization, including the origin of all the nations of Europe and of Christian society, along with Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Arthurian romances, Chaucer, Romanesque and Gothic architecture, Chartres, Westminister Abbey, the English common law, trial by jury, and limited government. Even the worst of the Middle Ages does not compare with the nation of deranged jihadists that is Pakistan.

Please stop denigrating the past of our own civilization with this cheap, thoughtless smear against the Middle Ages which is worthy of a college sophomore, not of the editors of a serious publication.

- end of initial entry -

Paul Cella writes:

Thanks for standing up for our ancestors! The trope of referring to Islam and the jihad as relics of the Middle Ages, with no distinction made between the Christian Middle Ages and the Islamic Middle Ages, has always annoyed me. You don’t have to be a medievalist in the mold of Chesterton or Tolkien to admire the men of that age.

Anthony Damato writes:

You cut to the chase and expose illogic and outright ignorance like a surgeon. You are damn good at it.

Your observations about such issues as the fast and loose use of platitudes of the Other, which do much harm to our heritage are so clear cut that it is a wonder most people overlook them.

I wonder why the philosophy departments in America’s universities are silent on such rhetoric to the point that philosophy as a discipline is almost mute on any contemporary concerns and hence, insignificant as a 21st century force for reason.

LA replies:

Thanks to Mr. Damato. His last point is very interesting. I think he’s speaking of the fact that in our time the study of philosophy is not directed at helping people to understand truth, think more logically, and critique the false and sloppy logic that envelopes Western society like a plague. Instead, philosophy departments devote themselves to nihilist esoterica. What he’s saying is that in an intellectually healthy society, the constant linking of the jihadism with “the Middle Ages,” for example, would not go unopposed. The constant trope that a terrorist murder is a “reminder” would not go unchallenged.

Alan Levine writes:

You were absolutely right in your letter to Investors’ Business Daily. This sort of nonsense has become so prevalent that even I probably wouldn’t have reacted as sharply as I should had I run into it. Thanks!

Comment: It is an interesting point by the way, that some Indian historians like Majumdar use the term ” Middle Ages” for the corresponding period in the history of the Indian subcontinent, the common factor with the European Middle Ages being the onset of Muslim invasion.

In a sense, therefore, someone could reasonably say that Pakistan is the product of the (Indian) Middle Ages, and can’t very well get out of it!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 28, 2007 01:16 AM | Send