Behindthis lunacy lies the notion that we have it coming, that we are guilty,that our motives are impure, that we are the arch-demons behind allglobal misery.
Thisidea that criticizing your own culture and values is a sign ofintellectual sophistication has many roots. The Enlightenmentabandonment of faith and the rise of rationalism as the only road totruth unleashed a corrosive criticism that destroys everything butbuilds nothing. Communist dogma, of course, exploited this cultural ticin order to gain traction in the West and undermine the liberaldemocracy and free-market capitalism that stood in the way of thecommunist utopia. Though the Sixties popularized more widely these badintellectual habits, they have been going on for over a century, andinfluenced the policies of appeasement in the Thirties that emboldenedHitler. Churchill noted the connection in a speech from 1933: “Ourdifficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement intowhich we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals.They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a largeproportion of our politicians. But what have they to offer by a vagueinternationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossibleutopias?”Howmuch worse is our condition today, when this “self-abasement” has nowhardened into banal clichés repeated in popular culture, schoolcurricula, and the received wisdom of badly educated pundits. And wesee its effects in the promises of the new Democratic regime that iseager, under the cover of “vigorous diplomacy,” to subject Americaninterests to the strictures of a “vague internationalism,” which inreality is merely the camouflage other nations use to pursue theirinterests at the expense of our own. Yet this approach, whose failureis institutionalized in the U.N., will not deliver the promised boons.On the contrary, to the jihadists fired with faith in the righteousnessof their own cause and beliefs, this eagerness to shoulder the blamefor their dysfunctions, this desire to exchange flabby words forvigorous deeds will simply convince them that for all our wealth andpower, we don’t really believe in our professed values and so are ripefor destruction.