Regarding the clash of civilizations

February 23, 2007 at 4:06 am (The Rest, The United States, The West)

A recent incident, wherein a man killed his daughters and then himself over frustration over his daughters’ evident desire to pursue the Western way of things rather than the traditional way of life, underscores how the clash of civilizations is not simply a matter between states or areas of the world but is, indeed, a matter that transcends borders.

This man lived in the West. The clash between his civilization and that of where he was living should have been anticipated. And that he felt impotent to control his daughters further underscores the difference between key values of the clashing civilizations: whereas one remains committed to controlling lives and imposing upon people an antiquated way of life, one wherein one has few, if any, choices, and the other that grants to each person the freedom to make choices for oneself, whether for better or for worse. So if a silly-headed girl wants to marry that cameraman for a wedding video production company rather than some better off businessman, she may. She has the freedom to make or break her life.

What may be further nauseating is that still we, the West, are accused of devaluing people, of cheapening people’s worth and lives. They cannot see that the very fact a person may prostitute oneself in wanton sex if he or she so desires precisely underscores the value we place on a person and his or her life: so valuable is that person and his or her life that we dare not interfere in how he or she seeks enjoyment and meaning, even if it means doing completely idiotic things.

A child can do anything he or she wants: become an engineer, become an artist, become a dahipb designer, become an astronaut, even become President of The United States. His or her decisions are not determined by his or her parents or society. Unto each person is given a blank book to fill in, not a sheet within which to fill in the blanks.

This is the continuation of the age-old debate between individualism and communalism. We have seen that communalism does not help a society progress and rise: it keeps the society, and its people individually, stifled with antiquated systems and rules that cannot be questioned or changed. Stagnant and inferior, such societies simply cannot compete with Western civilization. We have seen that with the elevation of the individual, we prosper society itself.

This incident is quite alarming. We need to be more sensitive to the offspring of immigrants, ensuring they are safe. We must do more to pressure our immigrants to adopt our civilization, to embrace it, to honor it. We must impress on them that they cannot presume to shield their charges from the irresistsble draw of our civilization, that if they think their charges would be better off dead than autonomous, they should leave. Now.

We are becoming too soft about our civilization, too tolerant of attempts to lavish praise on every civilization except ours. Do we really need immigrants and the children of immigrants to remind you how great Western civilization is? Does America really need our pontificating before its people will stiffen their spines and make it clear that our civilization, your civilization, is something to be promoted, cherished, and defended?

If immigrants leave a civilization to enter ours so as to progress, it speaks volumes about the civilization they left behind. For the sake of our people, let is impress upon them that they must leave their civilization behind. Enough with the relativism. Enough with the patronization. Let is get started defending and cherishing our civilization.

For Thursday, February 22, AD 2007, the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, the second day in Lent, the second penitential day of Lent.