The Left’s Inconsistency on Western Values
Protection of rights is incompatible with current vilification of Western values.
As Americans watched images of the Taliban retake the entire country of Afghanistan over the course of a weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in two separate tweets, implored those following the events: “The U.S., the international community and the Afghan government must do everything we can to protect women and girls from inhumane treatment by the Taliban. As we strive to assist them, we must recognize that their voices are important and respect their culture.” This statement, followed by a similar one from U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, arrives in the context of a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, a withdrawal championed for some time by many from both parties. America, it has been claimed, needs to remove itself from “endless wars” and after 20 years, the mission in Afghanistan would certainly seem to qualify.
Lost in the horror of the events unfolding is a troubling tension that strikes at the heart of the increasingly radical Democratic party and the intellectual left more broadly: a desire for the fruits of Western civilization while in the same breath rejecting root and branch the tradition that produced these fruits. That rejection proclaims the evils of colonialism and seeks to “decolonize,” removing all Western influence and leaving other countries presumably to their own self-determination. Hence Mrs. Pelosi’s attempt to split the difference: respect human rights but also “respect their culture.”
It’s not difficult to see the problem here. The rights proclaimed by Western countries, especially rights for women and other minorities, are precisely the fundamental difference between Western civilization and others, both historically and now. Equality, liberty, and the numerous freedoms protected in the U.S. Constitution and other Western charters are those not found in the majority of other nations today. So which is it? Do we protect human rights against encroachment by other cultures or do we respect their culture, understanding that such respect means tolerating persecutions and unequal treatment, including some of the harshest varieties?
“Decolonialization” as an intellectual obsession on the left has its origins, not surprisingly, in the universities. But it has made its way into the mainstream. NPR recently ran a piece on decolonizing one’s bookshelf. The spirit here originally began as one of increasing diversity in the academy. Why, it was argued, should we read Plato and Shakespeare and not authors from non-Western countries and cultures. This view took hold and professors branched out, especially after the protests of the 1960s. But this call for increased viewpoint diversity was never about diversity: it was, and continues to be, about elimination of the Western tradition. Decolonization in practice means rejecting Western values in works of political thought, philosophy, art, and literature.
But this leaves Speaker Pelosi, and many others, from the so-called Squad to various race ideologies forwarded by Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, in an irreconcilable position: reject the West while profiting from it, both materially and especially culturally. In rejecting American values as systemically racist or imperialist, they reject the fact that these values form the basis for Western liberal democracy and also had to be fought for, promoted, and spread to other countries.
John Locke, the 17th century English political philosopher, grounded and popularized the notion of natural human liberty – no authority exists before one consents to government. Even parents are only a temporary authority until children reach the age of reason. Human beings can and must rationally govern themselves, both as individuals, and collectively via the rule of agreed-upon laws. The only legitimate task of government, in Locke’s formulation, was protecting “life, liberty, and property.” This transformation in how we view government’s aim was one of the “superstructures,” as Jefferson called it, of modern life that found its way into the Declaration of Independence.
From Abigail Adams’s admonishment to “remember the ladies,” addressed to her husband John as he was off co-authoring the Declaration, to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments, women have appealed to the Founding documents of this country to successfully make the case for women’s liberty and equality. Castigating and rejecting this Founding is not only false to the Founding era’s intentions and aims; it is false to the successes our nation’s fundamental beliefs have afforded for women, both in America and around the world.
There are costs to losing wars. There are costs to isolationism, a U.S. foreign policy position gaining in popularity. There are costs in ceasing engagements abroad, rather than furthering not only economic and security interests, but cultural ones as well. The sadness and anger Americans now feel seeing images of women and children fleeing is a reminder that rights are rare, must be articulated and posited as the goal of government, and then defended against those who refuse to recognize them.
Civilization and rights are incompatible not only with an easygoing cultural relativism, but with the current vilification of Western values. This vilification becomes all the more incoherent when some selectively help themselves to rights grounded in Western views of human dignity, yet reject the basis of those views. Simply telling the Taliban to respect women and girls and liberty and education will not be enough. We have to fight for our beliefs. But we have to understand and cherish those beliefs first.