The Decline of the West

By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

To comprehend the present decline of Israel, which is but a necessary stage
of its eventual  ascendancy, one must understand the decline of the West of
which the present politics of Israel is a mere excresence.

The twentieth century witnessed the decline of no less than five empires or
world powers.  In addition to the Ottoman Empire (which spanned the Middle
East), we need only mention Great Britain, France, Germany, and, to
mankind's astonishment, the Soviet Union.  One world power remains, the
United States, and it shows unmistakable signs of decay and disintegration.

Prominent educators warn that the Great Books of Western civilization--Plato
and Aristotle, Sophocles and Shakespeare, Descartes and Kant, etc.,--are
disappearing from the curriculums of American colleges and universities and
are being replaced by Third World and feminist studies of dubious value.
Multiculturalism and cultural relativism are undermining the classical quest
for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.  As a consequence, the minds of
countless American students are being impoverished.  At stake is nothing
less than the viability American democracy.

The changing multicultural character of the United States has altered the
distribution of power in academia.  The quest for knowledge has given way to
a power-struggle between ethnic groups seeking to control university
admission policies and scholarship committees.

The decline in intellectual standards was inevitable.  Indeed, one can
hardly speak of intellectual standards any more without incurring the
mindless charge of racism.  For given cultural relativism on the one hand,
and the great influx of college students of non-European origin on the
other, WHOSE STANDARDS ARE TO BE USED FOR DESIGNING CURRICULUMS AND JUDGING
SCHOLASTIC ACHIEVEMENT?  "There is no knowledge, no standard, no choice that
is objective," writes one modest educator.  A recent document of the
American Council of Learned Societies entitled "Speaking for the Humanities"
goes so far as to maintain that democracy cannot be justified as a system of
government inherently superior to totalitarianism; it is simply an
"ideological commitment" that the West has chosen to make.

At the level of higher education, however, the West was committed to
cosmopolitanism.  But as various critics of multiculturalism see,
cosmopolitanism is being replaced by ethnic egocentrism as the ethic of
academia.  What they do not see is that the ascendancy of this ethnic
egocentrism is symptomatic of the moral and intellectual poverty of
cosmopolitanism or internationalism.

Of Greek origin, cosmopolitanism renders man a citizen of the world rather
than of any nation.  Also transcending kith and kin (indeed the world) is
the City of God or some universal church of Christianity.  And if
Greco-Christian cosmopolitanism were not enough, man has also been alienated
from hearth and home (as well as from heaven) by the secular humanism
issuing from the Enlightenment.  In short, cosmopolitanism has undermined
familial, cultural, and national ties.  Ethnic egocentricity is thus filling
a cultural vacuum.

Until the ascendancy of cultural relativism, the West regarded itself (and
still does) as the pinnacle of human achievement, the standard by which to
rank the nations and progress of mankind.  When all is said and done,
however, Europe, the heart of Western civilization, of Christianity and
secular humanism, has again and again been drenched with rivers of blood.
Neither the religion of love nor secular humanism has made nations
compassionate, righteous, or humane.  Much as the works of Goethe, Schiller,
Herder, Schelling, Lessing, Schlegel, etc., may have illuminated the salons
of Europe, their influence was invisible during Hitler's long night.

Erupting in many parts of the world are militant ethnic groups advancing in
the wake of decayed Western ideologies.  Democracy, now triumphant, is
actually fostering this development.  The democratic principle of
self-determination encourages separatism among the diverse ethnic groups of
any nation.  The fact that multicultural nationalism has surfaced with the
birth pangs of democracy in the (former) Soviet Union indicates that
democracy's cardinal principles, freedom and equality cannot of themselves
provide the cement of civil society.

A new era is dawning, and its rising star is Israel.  True, the STATE of
Israel is disintegrating, as it must, for the political, judicial, economic,
and educational institutions of this secular and pseudo-democratic state are
based on non-Jewish foundations.  But a renaissance is occurring in Torah
philosophy, with scientists and mathematicians leading the way.  The Torah
conception of human nature and of how man should live will eventually
illuminate the world.  Israel will be reconstituted on new foundations and
will once again become the light of mankind.





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