Monday, October 31, 2011

American culture-blindness in Iraq

The Telegraph obituary of career British diplomat Sir Hilary Synnott discusses his observation in Iraq of the revolutionary American mentality:

The CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] itself, he found, was mainly staffed by American policy wonks — “young, naive, pushy people” fired with a messianic zeal rapidly to replace centuries of tribal and religious rivalries and state control with democracy and free markets, and displaying a dogmatism that, as Synnott drily noted, “cut no ice” with the Iraqis.

Perhaps the two greatest forces in American life today are egalitarianism and capitalism. Both opinionmakers and politicians shun other cultural questions, either because they believe they are unimportant or because they believe they are losing issues.

This muteness has crippled our response to cultural decay at home, so it is no surprise it has crippled our international actions as well.

Without cultural ballast, a democratic society cannot make the distinctions necessary for rational thought, let alone wise governance.

How does a country recover from this desolation?

(Link via Rod Dreher)

1 comment:

W.LindsayWheeler said...

Convert the Protestants back to Catholicism.

Put discipline and Tradition back into the Roman Catholic Church.

Get rid of the Marxist professors at Catholic Universities would be a good start.

The Frankfurt School's mission was to convert Marxism from an economics standpoint to Cultural. It was about transforming culture to Marxist values. Boston College actually has hired one of these people and he is teaching Western Civilization. The Frankfurt School is about destroying Western Culture.

Did not St. Paul quote Meneander? "Bad Company corrupts good morals". Yet, no church leader or university admin follow this point of wisdom.

The whole of the supposedly "Enlightenment" needs to trashed, done away with.