There’s a wisecrack attributed (without evidence) to Gandhi. When asked “What do you think of western civilization?” he is said to have responded “I think it would be a good idea.” In his Washington Post column George Will laments President Trump’s lack of understanding of “western civilization” in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine. He writes:
Donald Trump’s frustration with Putin’s refusal to split differences like a rational real estate broker flows from Trump’s failure of imagination. Trump’s incomprehension of Putin, his inability to understand Putin as Putin understands himself, is a failure to recognize the reality of deep-rooted, durable civilizational conflicts.
Varouxakis, citing U.S. scholars James Kurth and Michael Kimmage, says, “No recent American president has shown himself more prepared to withdraw from ‘Western civilization’ and ‘the West.’” And “there is truth in the statement that during his 2017-2021 presidency, Trump was ‘the first non-Western president of the United States.’”
I probably should read the book on the history of the term “the West” cited by Mr. Will in his column. I think that “Western civilization” was a term revived in the 18th century to distinguish between Britain, Netherlands, and secular France on the one hand and Germany, Austro-Hungary, parts east, along with southern Spain, Portugal, and Italy on the other. In the 20th century it was redefined to include the United States whenever Britain needed our help to win a war. After World War II it was redefined again to include West Germany as part of “the West” for the first time. That’s what created the “Plato to NATO” historical construct.
Contrary to Mr. Will I don’t believe there has ever been a meaningful “West” that included the United States. The U. S. is an outlier in an enormous number of ways. Not just in size, demographics (until recently), and wealth but the rights asserted in the Bill of Rights, property rights, commerce, government, and almost every other way.
I am no Trump supporter. I have supported Ukraine against Russia’s invasion not to defend “the West” against “the East” but to save Ukrainian lives and because Russia was wrong to invade just as the U. S. was wrong to bomb Serbia, invade Iraq, and encourage if not foment the Ukrainian putsch against the legitimately elected but pro-Russian Yanukovych government.
The American Anglophile Henry James wrote:
… unprecedented and unique in the history of mankind; the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of evolution without having passed through the mediate one; the passage of the fruit, in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) ripeness. With the Americans, indeed, the crudity and the rottenness are identical and simultaneous;…
That was over a century ago. Europhiles continue to preach that gospel today.
In my opinion the greatest mistake we could make would be to abandon what makes us distinctively American in favor of some imagined, chimeric, and ephemeral “West”
In the past I have explained how the Founding Fathers greatly exaggerated in deriving our political culture from ancient Greece and Rome. Yes, the Greeks coined the term “the West” to distinguish between themselves and the Persians. Greek philosophers also enunciated some forms of rights; that’s just about where it ends. Our political culture derives more from Italian humanism than it does Greece or Roman but the Italians were dirty Papists and the Founding Fathers couldn’t bring themselves to admit that.
I think “western civilization” in the way Will uses it is a shorthand for “liberal, secular democracies.” Broadly, the values of the Enlightenment operationalized. I don’t think he’s going any deeper than that.
The United States is significantly more absolutist in freedom of speech, the press, and religion than the United Kingdom or any country in Europe. The “right to cross the land” is enshrined in Magna Carta; here that’s called “trespassing”. To emigrate to France you will probably need to demonstrate proficiency in the French language; there is no such requirement here. Either we’re not upholding the values of the Enlightenment or they aren’t or both.
Furthermore, many “Western” countries in Europe continue to have established churches. The Church of England is still established; Lutheranism is established in Denmark and Norway; in other countries Roman Catholicism continues to be established. Germany sort of straddles the issue. In the United States that would be considered a violation of the First Amendment. Who’s upholding Enlightenment values? Who’s secular?
For goodness sake, Charles is the governor of the Church of England. You can’t get more established than that.
I should add that when I first started this blog my city council member was the daughter of the previous city council member, the mayor was the son of a previous mayor, multiple local Congressional representatives were the children of the previous representative, and the governor was the son-in-law of a powerful Chicago alderman. It reminded me of my complaints about the Kurds. When the heads of your political parties are the traditional tribal chieftains, is that really a democracy? Or is it an aristocracy with a democratic facade?
I think you are exaggerating the differences. We are much more alike than different if you compare with the rest of the world. In the countries with established religions they are largely either non-religious or the religions dont have much, maybe a bit in some places, influence on laws and daily life. The US without established religion has groups actively trying to turn their religion into law, with some success.
We are supposedly more absolutist about free speech but the people with money control mass media and politicians now threaten media and their ability to make money to try to control them. Look, for example at the UK open questions sessions with the PM while in the US POTUS is treated (and now acts) as near royalty. In essence we are probably better in some areas and they are better in other areas where we think or claim to be superior. Still our cultures, values, legal systems and probably mostly as Andy noted, our liberal democracies are much different than what you see in Asia, Africa, South America and the ME.
Steve
I read Will as advocating the idea of a West that united to defeat and roll back the Soviet Union, freeing European countries from illiberal despotism. That dictatorships like those of Greece and Portugal complicate the story doesn’t matter relative to Stalinism.
I think he misreads Huntington, who described Ukraine as a cleft country, which “could split along its fault line into two separate entities, the eastern of which would merge with Russia.” Huntington’s starting point for Western civilization was the dividing line between Catholicism and that of Orthodoxy or Islam around 1500. That is just before the Reformation and it is a line that places the western parts of Belarus, Ukraine and Romania in the West (as well as the northern parts of the former Yugoslavia). That might have been a high water mark for Church influence in many of those places.
Dave Schuler: Contrary to Mr. Will I don’t believe there has ever been a meaningful “West” that included the United States.
Huh? The United States is strongly influenced by the Enlightenment and Classical and Medieval European influences through the Renaissance. The Founders wrote about it constantly.
Dave Schuler: Not just in size, demographics (until recently), and wealth but the rights asserted in the Bill of Rights, property rights, commerce, government, and almost every other way.
All of that was inherited from western Europe, including the notion of natural rights, from the Classical Greeks through Thomas Aquinas and Locke, among many. Property rights were well-established in English common law, common law forming the basis for American jurisprudence. Even later developments, such as industrialization, originated in western Europe; while America looked towards Europe for models of culture until well into the 20th century.
That is not to say other cultures haven’t been amalgamated into American culture, but its roots are very much in Western Civilization. While the category of what constitutes “the West” has chaotic fringes, the United States has always been considered a part of Western Civilization, the Declaration of Independence being the very pinnacle of Enlightenment thought. Arguing for keeping the “distinctively American” flavor of Western Civilization doesn’t require overstatement.
If inheriting something from western Europe means you are “the West”, then everything is the West including China, India, Japan, etc. Then the term has no meaning.
Dave Schuler: If inheriting something from western Europe means you are “the West”, then everything is the West including China, India, Japan, etc.
There’s a reason why modern cities look much alike. However, the root of American civilization is found in western Europe, while the roots of the cultures of China, India, and Japan are in Asia.