Seeing through Lies
If you have ever sensed that something is out of kilter with the news we are force-fed by outlets such as the BBC, this is a book to read.
Douglas Murray, the author of the equally outstanding The Madness of Crowds, helps us to see through some of the lies made out to be truth and progress.
Murray looks at Race, China, History, Reparations, Religion, Gratitude and Culture in turn; this review will draw out some highlights of a most fascinating read.
Overall, I found this book helped me understand some aspects of the twisted world of western culture we all swim in.
The New Hatred of Western Culture
No-one can defend any culture or civilization blindly or wholeheartedly. Western culture today is riven through with major fault lines, not least, for example, the widespread acceptance and defence of murder. [Abortion is murder, except in the case when a doctor tries to save both mother and child and discovers to his deep sorrow that he can only save one.]
As colonial powers the West did some evil (along with a great deal of good). (My father who lived in Pakistan for 12 years would have Pakistanis secretly confide to him, "We wish the English were still here." Reason? After the 1947 partition, Empire was replaced by Corruption - and for some Pakistanis, benevolent empire was viewed as the better of two evils).
No-one should defend every aspect of western culture, but we should try to view it objectively, sieving out the bad and rejoicing (with gratitude) at the good.
Murray shows that starting in the 1980s and - you guessed it, starting in the Academy - the study of Western Anything became taboo.
New fad, come on everyone, jump aboard!
Mary had lots of little lambs...
Since Everything Western was the product of dead white males, Everything Western became toxic overnight. "Just a couple of decades ago, a course in the history of Western civilization was commonplace. Today it is so disreputable that you can't pay universities to do it." (page 8)
How then do you go about discrediting everything about the West? Well, first you elevate every other culture, ignoring their numerous patent faults and evils. Then you assault every aspect of western civilization, line by line.
That is what has been taking place.
"The culture that gave the world lifesaving advances in science, medicine, and a free market that has raised billions of people around the world out of poverty and offered the greatest flowering of thought anywhere in the world is interrogated through the lens of the deepest hostility and simplicity." (page 10)
In the place of careful discernment - let's accept this part, let's reject that element - the approach is to attack everything western, wholesale, relentlessly, irrationally.
Murray helped me see that there is a savage war on the West today. Not being a believer, he cannot discern underneath this assault is most likely a spiritual attack on the truth, since so many of the benefits of the West are a direct consequence of an underlying Judeo-Christian consensus.
Race
Take race for example. Critical Race Theory (CRT - your poor kids or grandkids will have to read about it along with Marx, Freud, Darwin and every other has-been theory) wants us to read the history of the world through the lens of race. Every problem in the world, past, present and future, is the result of racism. Did you not know that? In that case you must be a racist.
Racism is an evil, prevalent around the whole world today, alive in every country, bar none. CRT however, ignores the rampant racism in all other countries and highlights it only - guess where?
At a time when racism, factually, is at its lowest in the USA, for example, CRTs give the impression that it's at an all-time high. (Well, of course, if every problem in the USA is ultimately caused by race, then racism is a rather big problem.)
CRT advocates want to assign every person into one of two camps. Either you are an anti-racist - by which is meant someone who is actively campaigning for CRT - or you are a racist.
Murray helped me to see the divisive and distorting effects of CRT on western media.
Every time a race card is called, we need to check up the facts (something the BBC, for example, would never do on this particular issue.)
Take the George Floyd case. Terrible and as inexcusable as it was, a worse police killing took place four years earlier in which a white man was held down gasping for air for 13 minutes (page 29; four minutes more than the 9 minutes Floyd was held down). But the world heard nothing about that earlier case and everything about George Floyd. How come? Because American culture had been primed by the mythology of CRT and was waiting for a George Floyd event; America "was ready and primed for a certain interpretation to burst out. That interpretation had been prepared in the academy." (page 30).
Parents beware what your kids are being taught at school and university - especially in the humanities.
History
This new attack on western culture necessitates an attack on western history and upon all the great (but, of course, equally flawed) characters of western civilization.
The statements of every great historical figure are now scrutinized for the presence of 'modern sins', taking no account of historical locatedness - and thereby putting this generation under the risk of damming judgement tomorrow for its present and numerous foibles.
Old statues are torn down, busts removed from universities. Before long no-one from history (except for today's myth spinners) will be standing. In order to destroy the reputation of Cecil Rhodes, for example, a whole paragraph was concocted out of a patchwork of selective quotations to give an impression totally alien to the actual views of that man.
Of course colonialism becomes a major focus of this revisionist history. No-one justifies colonialism, no-one denies atrocities were committed under its reign, but was it all evil? Did not the colonialists do at least some good?
Slavery is another terrible blot on western culture with no redeeming features, but slavery has been practiced across the globe throughout history, and is ubiquitous today, with present day estimates of some 40 million (see here).
These facts do not justify western slavery, but it does set it in context.
All the historical sins of the West are raised, while all the historical virtues ignored. "History becomes the history of Western sins. And ignorance reigns not only over anything good the West ever did but over anything bad that anyone else ever did." (page 132)
Another 'gospel' for the churches
Murray laments on the way churches, such as the Church of England and the Episcopal church in the US, have lamely followed all these agendas uncritically.
According to one of its own reports, the Church of England must "decolonize theology, ecclesiology and possibly examine official teachings of the church that follows prejudicial theological value systems." (page 186) All the while, a former evangelical bishop, Michael Nazir-Ali, who knows a thing or two about racism, warns against following this bizarre new gospel, since the church has a far better Gospel of our own to tell.
(BTW: Whenever churches preach another gospel, it's a sure-fire sign they have lost the original true one.)
Attack on Reason Itself
We may not be surprised that all this nonsense has run wildfire though the humanities, what needs to concern us is that it is now running through the sciences and engineering.
Maths, you see, is elitist. Privileged. And so, you've guessed it, maths must be racist. And therefore attempts must be made to "dismantle the culture of white supremacy (meaning, logic, objectivity, written word, etc.) that exists within the math classroom." (page 197)
Why call it Pythagoras theorem? Wasn't Pythagoras a white male? Let's call it instead "side-length relationships for right-angled triangles." (page 197).
The idea that 2 + 2 = 4 is a cultural simplification of reality! You guessed it, a Western simplification.
Gratitude
Murray has an unusual chapter on Gratitude. He believes that resting beneath much of the current animus is deep resentment, leading to anger and a desire for revenge. Destruction is their only (and wholly negative) modus operandi.
But "To live in the West in this time is to enjoy a piece of historical good fortune unlike almost any good fortune in history." (page 211). And Murray urges us to be grateful. "A life lived without gratitude is not a life properly lived." (page 212).
Murray ends his book, pages 260 onwards, with a long list of the blessings of living in the West (recognised, not least, by the fact that the whole world wants to live in the West: "the migrant ships across the Mediterranean go only in one direction - north." (page 263).)
Just listing these wonderful blessings he has to call a "nuclear" action because people polluted by CRT will explode with anger when they read it. Here are some of the many blessings of living in the West:
- almost every medical advance
- almost every scientific advancement
- the oldest and longest-established educational institutions
- developed the world's most successful means of commerce
- developed the principle of representative government
Conclusions
I read this book on Holiday a couple of months ago. While I couldn't put the contents down, the book has to be read in small doses to allow reflection. We shan't and shouldn't agree with everything here.
My overriding impression was that the blessings westerners enjoy which are the direct fruit of the Gospel, are now under attack.
As our culture paganises, it will abandon its source streams, the Judeo-Christian consensus. This book documents some of that fierce rejection of truth.
Without God, trouble looms.
In so far as the West has been shaped by the Gospel, an attack on the West is also an attack, to some degree, upon the God of Scripture, and throughout my reading, the God who laughs came to mind:
"Why do the
nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and
the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, “Let
us break their chains and throw off their shackles.” The One enthroned in
heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies
them in his wrath, saying, “I have
installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.” Psalm 2
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