Two views on the current state of the West. Both share a fairly grim tone. We need to as nations of the West turn things around. The classical liberal* principles that our societies were founded on need to be restored and refreshed in their primacy of how we exist as people in society.
There are competing narratives of how we are supposed to advance society, I think if we stray from the path we’re on we going to be in trouble.
*Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism which advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
4 comments
October 24, 2023 at 8:52 am
Infidel753
It’s too bad that Saad says so little, and Weinstein nothing at all, about what form they believe this self-destruction of the West is taking and why they believe those malignant forces are so strong that collapse is all but inevitable. Yes, woketardia and its academic and cultural power are alarming, but the universities have always been full of naïve idiots, and there are already signs that public opinion is shifting rapidly against the worst excesses of it (such as trans ideology), both here and in Europe. Yes, it’s alarming that so many people reacted to the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust by swarming into the streets to support the murderers, but we also had a fairly large Nazi movement in the US in the 1930s, and in the long run it came to nothing. Yes, the MAGA insanity is frightening, but we’ve always had a sub-population of paranoid conspiracy nuts, anti-vaxers, and the like — what’s different now is that the internet has allowed them to coalesce under a common banner, while Trump provided a single leader. I suspect the movement will fragment after Trump dies.
These modern problems strike me as trivial compared with some earlier threats to the West, such as the highly destructive war of 1914-1918, the rise of open fascism to power in several European countries in the 1930s and the Nazi aggression which almost conquered most of Europe, and the nearly-half-century Soviet occupation of lands as far west as central Germany. If the West survived all those challenges, I don’t think it’s going to be brought down by Dylan Mulvaney and a bunch of clowns in Congress who can’t get the simplest things done without begging the opposition party for help. Yes, the problems today are real and need to be addressed, but nobody ever solved a problem by declaring right from the start that the situation was hopeless.
LikeLiked by 1 person
October 24, 2023 at 6:36 pm
tildeb
I liked what Jen Gerson wrote about today’s progressives:
“These people are showing who they are. Believe them.
Violent resistance is being advocated by the same ideological tribe that once claimed to be too fragile to handle a debate on abortion or trans issues. Words are violence, from people who implicitly and explicitly support literal atrocities committed by those on the Right Side of History. Conservatives are Nazis, they say, while celebrating or at least justifying a pogrom. Five whole minutes ago, we are told to Believe All Women; women don’t lie about sexual assault — from the very same activists who are now very online proclaiming gross denial about Hamas’ use of mass rape as a weapon of war against Israeli women.
I don’t expect that these hypocrisies will pose a cognitive threat to anybody who is already deeply ideologically committed to these files. But for normies, the dissonance is too much. It’s going to be difficult for the rest of us to take any of you fuckers seriously ever again.”
Maybe, just maybe there are enough ‘normies’ to begin to steer the ships of western states institutionally captured by progressives back to their liberal course. We’ll see.
LikeLike
October 25, 2023 at 9:19 am
The Arbourist
@Infidel753
I hope you are right. Given Weinstein’s encounter with the Activist Left at his University I can see why he is more pessimistic than many commentators. We do have a tough road ahead of us – rooting out the systemic ideological rot that has infected so many of our institutions will not be an easy task.
Isn’t it ironic that the centre-right has an actual systemic problem to deal with as opposed to the boogymen the Left has made hay with over the years? :/
LikeLiked by 1 person
October 25, 2023 at 9:21 am
The Arbourist
@tildeb
I hope so. JFC the good ship activist Left has been sailing much too long in our society. I hope the blatant hypocrisy of their support for Hamas will wake people to their ideological malfeasance.
LikeLiked by 1 person