Don’t be afraid to say it

I am not afraid to say the West’s values are better

Douglas Murray

6 October 2007

The West should be proud of its ethical achievements

Just one of the lessons to be rescued from the multicultural wreck is how important it is to speak out even when all around you are shouting for quiet. Next week I am speaking at the Intelligence2 debate in London for the motion that ‘We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of Western values’. It’s already been gathering the kind of interest which has a touch of the ‘How could you?’ about it.

Speaking alongside me is the great Islamic scholar, Ibn Warraq, one of the great heroes of our time. Personally endangered, yet unremittingly vocal, Ibn Warraq leads a trend. Like a growing number of people, he refuses to accept the pretence that all cultures are equal. Were Ibn Warraq to live in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, he would not be able to write. Or if he did, he would not be allowed to live. Among his work is criticism of the sources of the Koran. In Islamic states this constitutes apostasy. It is people like him, who know how things could be, who understand why Western values are not just another way to live, but the only way to live — the only system in human history in which the individual is genuinely free (in the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson) to ‘pursue happiness’.

Recognition of the superiority of our values is made with people’s feet every day in the one-way human migration to the West. It is an admission which many make in private. But we seem to have become so comfortable with our rights that we no longer acknowledge their superiority, or the superiority of the values which gave them life.

Even a couple of generations ago, assertion of the superiority of Western values — the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, equalities, freedoms of expression and conscience — was uncontentious. But we have become morally lazy. If other people live under tyranny, then who are we to ‘impose’ democracy on them? If others live in benighted societies in which half their population can be treated as chattel, then why should we disturb them? Like the multicultural edifice before it, this genuine prejudice — the refusal to discern or assert moral difference — is finally collapsing. It must do, when reality comes a-knocking.

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Conor Pickering

October 8th, 2007 5:50pm Report this comment

Thank you for this voice of reason in an age and a nation that is scared of its history, politically and socially weak in its present and ill equipped to face the challenges of the future. With decency, tolerance, honesty, pluralism and ambition we can face the future with some hope of success. But to do so, we must understand who we are and be confident about the things we have got right, whilst recognising the things we have got wrong. Mr Murray is helping us do that.

Charles E Moore

October 8th, 2007 10:17pm Report this comment

We offend ourselves, and the world, by cringing beneath the weight of a self-imposed "guilt," affected merely in order to "apolgize" for the fact that western civilisation, out of respect for individual rights, has created so much for so many. For all the regard we may genuinely feel for the brilliant accomplisments of other world cultures, none have deigned to grant the single human being, and how much less the single human female, the dignity of meaning that we so take for granted...and shamelessly seem almost ashamed to note.

Ian Campbell

October 9th, 2007 6:05pm Report this comment

It should be remebered that historicaly, the freedoms we ascribe as western with roots in Judeo-Christian teachings have only recently become what they are in western liberal societies. Was it only in 1984 that women got the vote in Luxembourg (or was it Lichtenstein?). Our cultural values as embodied today are quite new, so we should not be surprised that other cultures are just getting exposure to them. That is not to say that their historical novelty means they should not be asserted as much better or else future developments of worldwide cultural values will not benefit from the lessons learnt along the path to the values we have today.

Brett_McS

October 10th, 2007 12:28am Report this comment

Excellent article. "The emperor has no clothes" - or perhaps he is a social nudist? Multiculturalism and post-modernism: How future generations will laugh at us!

Rob Spear

October 10th, 2007 3:19pm Report this comment

Votes'n'democracy as the sole determiner of government policy is at best a contentious issue, Mr Campbell. Since it has been introduced we have seen ever more rapacious and totalitarian states in the west. I do not know if this is inevitable, but it is possible that democracy is the enemy of freedom.

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