As I sit here in Hong Kong, the ultimate “East meets West” city, I find the East, led by China, Korea, Japan, India, Vietnam…to be in robust good health. Not so for the West. The greatest engine in history for enrichment of economies, politics, cultures, enquiring minds and vibrant arts. Under threat.
The West is under severe and sustained attack from myriad directions and myriad factions. We must resist the attacks. We must support the West.
Mathias Döpfner argues there is still time to save the West.Then again, Mathias is a German commentator and Germans have not been much good at predicting, at least in recent years.… Look what they’ve done to their energy systems. To their car industry. To their society, converting it from a high-trust society to a low-trust. Still, well said:
When The Spectator asked me whether I would write an essay on ‘Why we need to strengthen the West’, I was delighted – and bemused. Why is this even up for debate? That we must explain and justify ‘the West’ at all indicates just how weak it has become. It would be better if it did not need strengthening at all but the truth is that the West has become an invalid.
What exactly, though, needs to be strengthened? The West is an idea, not a location. It is not a matter of geography, it is a way of life. The idea of the West rests on four pillars: Athens – where democracy was born. Rome – the cradle of the rule of law. Jerusalem – where Judeo-Christian values placed the inviolable dignity of the individual at the centre. And finally, the Enlightenment – whose great thinkers in London, Paris and Königsberg anchored humanism, individual civil liberties, the separation of powers and the division of church and state. Read on …
