The West: Too Tired to Defend Freedom?
by Giulio Meotti
June 29, 2017 at 5:30 am
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10593/defend-freedom
"We are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal
society" — UK Liberal Democrats party leader Tim Farron, who resigned after
giving "politically incorrect" answers on homosexual sex and abortion.
Wherever he went, Jeremy Corbyn seemed as if he were a voluntary
collaborator with an Iranian regime that executes gays. But Corbyn was never
questioned about this affiliation the way the media obsessively questioned
Farron.
Muslim supremacists murder gays in Orlando? Instead of being proud of an
open society, defending it from Islamic jihadists, and accepting the freedom
to be homosexual as a positive difference between the West and Islam, our
liberals make it a case for more "inclusion".
After the recent terror attacks in Britain, The Spectator wrote: "After five
centuries, religious war has returned to England". The reference is to 1535,
when Thomas More was executed for his Catholic beliefs. Tim Farron, a
British MP and party leader of the Liberal Democrats who, after refusing for
several days to state whether he considers homosexual sex a sin, and gave
ambiguous answers on abortion, was not brought to the Tower of London for a
public execution. However, almost 500 years after More, Farron saw his
political career sacrificed on an almost identical ideological altar as
More.
Farron resigned his position as party leader with a dramatic speech. The
Daily Mail condemned the "liberal fascism" of the "moral pygmies". The
progressive New Statesman headlined its story on Farron's resignation as the
"decline of liberalism". Farron said: "We are kidding ourselves if we think
we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society".
It does not matter that Farron had, on gay rights, a 90.4% "positive score",
according to the Public Whip. Or that he repeatedly defended the right to
abortion. What was intolerable was that Farron could have nourished, in his
Christian conscience, even a minimal doubt.
Liberal Democrats party leader Tim Farron saw his political career
sacrificed because the British media found it unacceptable that, in his
Christian conscience, he could have considered homosexual sex a sin. (Image
source: Liberal Democrats/Flickr)
Western liberalism seems to have eliminated the so-called "corridor" that
had guaranteed a right to existence to those ideas that did not conform to
relativism. It is bizarre that this demonization has been consumed in the
Liberal Democrats, the party that has borne the torch of classic liberalism.
Perhaps Farron thought that his progressive ideas on climate change, the
protection of minorities and the European Union would protect him from such
vicious attacks. He was wrong. His inquisitors in the media wanted to talk
about his personal social ideas, not Brexit.
The Wall Street Journal told the whole story. After taking over the
leadership of the party in 2015, Farron was asked whether, as a Christian,
thought that homosexuality is a sin. "We are all sinners", he said. That was
not enough. During a television interview on April 18, 2017, Farron was
pressed four times to respond again and four times he refused. Silence was
not enough. The next day, at the House of Commons, Farron said that
homosexuality is not a sin. That, too, was not enough. The media had to be
sure that Farron believed it in his heart as well. So a BBC interviewer
asked him again a few days later. It was a campaign to smear Farron, an easy
scapegoat for a phony concept of liberalism.
Journalist Nick Cohen, writing in The Guardian noted a further paradox.
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn worked for state-owned Iranian television
and spoke at the Khomeinist rally in London. Wherever he went, Corbyn seemed
as if he were a voluntary collaborator with a regime that executes gays. But
Corbyn was never questioned about this affiliation the way the media
obsessively questioned Farron.
At a time when Islamic supremacists attack the symbols of Western
liberalism, liberalism shows a dangerous emptiness. Liberalism has been
turned into a caricature made of mandatory gender ideology, blind
multiculturalism, defeatist pacifism, anti-Zionism, feminism and critical
studies. "An orgy of liberal sex and liberal guilt".
The result is what Douglas Murray called a "tiredness" of the civilization,
a cultural chaos which turned into an apathy. In one month, Western Europe
has been hit by four major terror attacks: Manchester, London, Paris and
Brussels. Sholton Byrnes wrote in an article published by The National:
"...the definition of the West consists of far more than the security
alliance that underpins it. Does it not also mean Shakespeare and
Schopenhauer, liberal democracy, a progressive interpretation of human
rights, all springing from the soil of centuries of Roman-Judaeo-Christian
tradition? The West was once the inheritor of Christendom. Today, it is not
entirely sure what it is, with many voices violently clashing over their
views of what it should be. It lacks the certainty in its own civilisation
that Russia and China, for instance, possess. If it is too tired or
unwilling to defend itself, the US will survive for sure; but the concept of
'the West' will have dissolved through the apathy of societies who will have
shown they have no courage – and not many convictions either".
That is why, if we, the West, do not take our culture more seriously,
Islamic terrorists will easily be able to destroy it. Every time Western
symbols come under attack, the Western relativists rapidly accommodate the
attackers.
Salman Rushdie is threatened with death and a $6 million Islamic bounty on
his head, or Muslims supremacists attack because of cartoons of the Islamic
Prophet Mohammed? Instead of defending freedom of expression, our liberals
submit to Islamic blasphemy laws. Two years and a half after the massacre at
Charlie Hebdo, not a single European newspaper has again drawn Mohammed.
Muslim supremacists slaughter French Jews? Instead of defending them as a
post-Holocaust treasure, our liberals scapegoat Israel's security policies,
as did the European Union's former foreign minister, Catherine Ashton.
Muslims supremacists submit their own women to burqas and niqabs and
home-confinement? Instead of protecting equality, our liberals defend the
veils as symbols of "cultural diversity".
Muslim supremacists murder gays in Orlando? Instead of being proud of an
open society, defending it from Islamic jihadists, and accepting the freedom
to be homosexual as a positive difference between the West and Islam, our
liberals make it a case for "Love wins" and "Hate will not divide us".
A year after the massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub, the mainstream media
constructed a new narrative, as if murdering 49 gay people were not the
product of ISIS, but of "hate". That is why the question is repeatedly
asked: "Why did this happen?"
Contemporary liberalism is exhausted and irritated by the very idea of a
common civilization to be defended. In a weak conception of "liberalism",
the supreme goal for liberals seems to be "peace", whatever it costs -- in
other words, surrender. This is how Western liberalism has become fragile,
like a tree corroded by a lethal fungus.
Fifty years ago, James Burnham understood that liberalism had become "an
ideology of suicide" of Westerners "who hate their own civilization, readily
excuse or even praise blows struck against it, and themselves lend a willing
hand, frequently enough, to pulling it down".
Civilization is not a gift; it is a breakable achievement that needs to be
defended from inside and out from the many who would destroy it. Let us take
the freedoms we value more seriously; they are being taken from us as we
speak.
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and
author.