Western Superiority

Our current conflict in the Middle East has been characterized by some as a "war of ideas." While I am in substantial agreement with this distinction, great deals of people in the west seem to be uncomfortable with the premise. Who are we, they say, to claim an ideological and moral superiority over the east? The thought seems to be that ethics are culturally contingent, indeed, that ethics are a subjective worldview where right and wrong is really a gray area.

Many who take issue with conclusions of this sort will argue that there really are moral truths in this world, much in the same way that there are scientific truths. They will ask why, if we would not be tempted to consult the third world on issues of technology or economics, why should we be reluctant to make similar criticisms of their ethics? Civilizations of this sort have simply not advanced to the point where they are in a position to make legitimate claims about the way the world is. It is no accident, after all, that the term "third world" exists.

Before I go on, I would like to dispel the notion that claims of this sort of are racist, which they are surely not. Consider that at the height of its power in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was one of the foremost civilizations in the world. The Ottomans were an Islamic tradition, but contributed mightily to mathematics, astronomy, and the modern calendar. They were an exceptionally tolerant civilization, as Jews and Christians lived relatively undisturbed under Ottoman rule. This is in stark contrast to a Europe during this time that was burning "heretics" at the stake and converting Muslims and Jews to Christianity in violent fashion. It is reasonable to say, at that point in history, that white culture was inferior to Mesopotamian (Middle Eastern) culture. Clearly, therefore, notions of racism are false.

Typical arguments against the equality of cultures are unavoidably abstract, however, as it is difficult in cultural discourse to make evidentiary claims supporting one side or the other. As an aspiring historian, I would like to map this debate onto a historical perspective. One of the principle conflicts of the 20th century was western liberalism vs. far eastern communism. A common historical view is that the west, especially United States, overstated communism as a threat and was largely paranoid in its dealings with the spreading communist doctrine. While this may be true to a degree, we will see that communism, as a worldview, was incredibly destructive and the direct cause of a level of human misery that may be unmatched in human history. Communist movements in the Soviet Union, The People's Republic of China, and Cambodia saw affronts to basic human rights that western liberalism could not possibly create. Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, which caused the murder of more than 1 million Soviet citizens, directly correlated with the suppression of political dissent inherent in communist doctrine. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, who claimed the lives of more than 2 million Cambodians, were a communist regime bent on purging ethnic Vietnamese, Muslim and Christian Cambodians, and Buddhist monks from the Cambodian population. The Khmer Rouge targeted these groups as opponents to communist Cambodia. Finally, Mao Zedong, following his victory over the Chinese Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, declared the beginning of the communist People's Republic of China in 1949. One of the first acts under this regime was massive land reform, which called for the redistribution of wealthy land owner holdings to the Chinese peasantry. As most land owners in China were reluctant to give up their land, Mao oversaw the slaughter of resisting land owners in order to enforce the new reforms. The maintenance of the new communist China required the deaths of an estimated 2 million people.

We may be tempted to make a distinction here between what, on the surface, seem to be political grievances. I would submit, however, that when such movements lead to the abject extermination of millions of people, the motivation ceases to be merely political. When the maintenance of "political" ideas includes mass graves, we have left politics behind for the sort of ideology that is manifestly evil. Would anyone hesitate to say that the ideals of the west were just plain better than eastern collectivism here? One simply cannot attribute liberal democracy to the sort of human destruction that one can easily attribute to the eastern ideological patterns of the 20th century. There are those who will stand up in 2007 and claim that it is arrogant to claim western moral superiority, and receive relatively little pressure for taking such a stance. I wonder just how ridiculous these people would look making the same claims in 1950, as Chinese land owners were being taken behind their homes and executed for refusing to submit to the new communist regime. It is important that our discourse begin to point out just how wayward this thinking is, or we will be unable to criticize with sufficient vigor the sort of evil ideas about the world that have already begun knocking at our door.