The real meaning of saying “We’re guilty,” is that we have no right to defend ourselves
In a thread about Ralph Peters back in 2006, there is a long comment by me (I’ve copied it below) on how liberal guilt for our past sins, an attitude everyone takes for granted today, is in reality nothing less than a recipe for national defenselessness and national suicide, and must be identified and attacked as such.
As an example of what I mean, when conservatives warn about the Islam threat, the single most frequent response by liberals is: “But the Bible is very violent too.” The moment that comment is made, the discussion dies, the deal is done: we’re as guilty as the Muslims, therefore we don’t have the right to judge them or defend ourselves from them. The motivations for the suicide of the West may be deep and complex, but the way it is carried out is as simple as a slogan.
Which is why such comments should never be allowed to stand. Their implications must be immediately identified and refuted. Pin the person down: will he support the West defending itself or not?
Here is my comment from the 2006 thread:
I would say that the way to respond to the liberal argument is, first, to identity what it is really saying. Every time a liberal says, “We have committed such and such sins in our past, therefore we don’t have the right to judge Islam or take any actions against it,” what he is really saying, though he doesn’t put it in those words, is that we don’t have the right to defend and preserve ourselves. Though liberals make this kind of argument constantly, conservatives never identity what the liberals are really saying and put the liberals on the spot for saying it.
This Western guilt or white guilt is the root of anti-Westernism, which did not develop from the radical left (as David Horowitz believes), but from mainstream liberalism. Postwar mainstream liberalism told people that any kind of discrimination or assertion of power over weaker parties was Nazi-like evil. Since our history was replete with discrimination and assertions of power, we became guilty for our entire history and began to react in the way you’ve described. But the real meaning of this reaction is never brought to the surface and made explicit, namely that we are saying that we do not have the right to defend ourselves and preserve our existence, that in any encounter with the Other, we will put ourselves down and blame ourselves rather than take our own side.
So the way to confront this is to identify it, as I’ve just done; and second, to say that it is wrong and senseless to believe that because our society has done things in the past that we no longer approve of, therefore our society has no moral right to exist; especially given the fact that we have amply repented of those things. Therefore this paralyzing guilt is not based on any moral position, but is a form of collective suicide and is a horrible crime. For example, let’s say that my grandfather once did a wrong to a certain person, and now the grandson of that person is coming to my house to destroy it and kill me and my family. Is it moral to say, “I’m guilty because of my grandfather, therefore I’m going to let myself, my wife and my children be killed?” Yet that is what liberalism basically tells us. This, the real meaning of liberal guilt, needs to be brought to the surface.
If, as you suggest, you bring up the fact that Moslem aggression came before the Crusades, and the liberals say that “everyone is equal in having a violent and bloody past and that violence is wrong no matter who uses it,” you should point out that what they are saying is that there is no right of self-defense, no matter what is being done to us. That is simply nihilism. It is totally immoral and unacceptable. Put the liberal on the defensive for saying such an outrageous thing.
Say: “No one in all of history would have believed that the sins of my great grandfather destroy my right to use force to defend myself. Only insane liberalism says such a sick thing, which empowers evil men, and disempowers us. Only liberals say things like this.” Again, put the liberal on the defensive. Don’t accept his premises and then struggle against them. You need to set the premises of the discussion.
However, this argument may not work if people are still deeply convinced of not only our historic guilt but our present guilt, e.g., racial inequality, the backwardness of Muslims and so on. Then you need to be very specific and say there is nothing that whites can do to make blacks perform better (except of course for getting rid of the liberal relativism that has so harmed blacks). See my FP article “Guilty Whites.” Say there is nothing that the West can do to raise up Muslims. Show how Islamic societies are they way they are is for reasons that have nothing to do with us.
If the liberals resist this idea, point out the insanity of this view that everything happening to people on the other side of the world is somehow created by us, rather than by their own beliefs, culture, behavior. Show how the liberals are attributing to our society a godlike power, even as they are saying that our society is totally guilty. Show them that their liberal morality is really a form of bigoted hatred against our own society. Put them on the spot. Don’t accept their liberal premise for even a moment.
Also, liberals believe that non-Western societies have the right to exist. So challenge them on this point and say, “How come they have the right to exist, and we don’t? Does it really seem possible that third-world cultures are completely innocent, while the West is totally guilty? Does this sound to you like a rational picture of the world?”
Further, you could go deeper and point out that this liberal guilt would basically make all existence guilty. According to liberalism, a maple doesn’t have the moral right to exist, because by being a maple it is preferring mapleness over oakness. According to liberalism, no society could exist, because by being a society, it is saying it is different from other societies, favors itself over other societies, looks out for its own interests more than those of others societies, and uses power to protect and advance those interests, all which is discriminatory and therefore evil. Under liberalism, no individual separate society could exist. Only a global unaccountable government, like the EU or the UN, could exist, under which there would be no freedom at all. (See my article, ’Transparency’ Revealed: The U.N. Sees Us, We Can’t See Them.) Show them where their liberal premises really are heading. Ask them if that is what they want. Put them on the defensive.
- end of initial entry -
Jonathan W. writes:
I’ve had that exactly debate many times. What the liberals (and neocons) really mean is that since the Bible is also violent (in their words), then the Koran’s violence is not dispositive in explaining violence waged in the name of Islam. In other words, since we (Westerners) can build a civilized society without advancing the Bible’s alleged violence, then so can Muslims if we just “change their culture” or “assimilate them properly.”
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 10, 2008 05:46 PM | Send