No Wars of Civilization.

THE terrorist attacks on London did not provoke Tony Blair and the British public into a "holy
war" against the "forces of Satan." If at all, the British government is scrupulous about the
consequences to its Muslim or Middle Eastern population, an attitude that serves well to dispel
warnings of ready scholars about "fatal conflicts of faith" and "wars of civilization."
As the French poet, Paul Valery, once said, "Civilizations are amorous of each other." There"s a
common ground of peacefulness among religions, marking a demarcation between modern
times and the Middle Ages.
Consider the survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project before the London bombings of July 17,
which found the British public as among the least hostile to Muslims. Its tolerance has been
tested, as at least four mosques in Britain have been set ablaze since then. While there is no
similar retaliation on mosques in the US (Muslim extremists have not bombed Christian
churches), the attacks in Britain could have been made by "hooligans."
But the Pew survey found the following: Concern over Islamic extremism is high in Muslim and
non-Muslim countries alike, support for suicide bombings has declined in the Islamic world,
confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined in some Muslim countries, Europeans see Muslims
in their countries as seeking to remain distinct, and Europeans see a growing sense of Islamic
identity as a bad thing.
The last two items are worrying, but a stronger sense of "cultural identity" has been emerging
among so-called ethnic groups, except that in Western democratic countries, identity is
asserted through institutions. What Europeans see as a bad thing in the growing sense of
Islamic identity, however, may be less the consequence of faith but as a sense of "colonial" and
"feudal" repression.
All the same, the majority of Muslims in Morocco, Indonesia, and Turkey, see suicide bombing
as unacceptable in defending Islam. They believe that violence against civilians is never
justified. In war, Christian leaders accept "collateral damage."
Fanaticism, fundamentalism, the "culture of violence," are aberrations; they are not the norm
among peoples of all faiths and all civilizations.

-1-
Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Article Title: No Wars of Civilization. Newspaper Title: Manila Bulletin. Publication Date:
July 16, 2005. Page Number: NA. COPYRIGHT 2005 Manila Bulletin Publishing Corp.; COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group

The World at Civil War; Civilization Is at

Risk When Many among Us Are Mad.

Byline: Suzanne Fields, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The contentious and ever more partisan argument over whether Iraq is finally convulsed in a civil
war misses the point, it seems to me. Maybe it's the entire world that is finally convulsed in a civil
war.

Tony Blair, who is even more embattled at home than George W. Bush is here, put that proposition
in play this week, though not exactly in those terms. "This is not a clash between civilizations," the
British prime minister told a press luncheon in London. "It is a clash about civilization."

The prime minister was not saying something particularly new to anyone who has been paying
close attention over these many months, but he said it in a more compelling way, and the
implications should have been enough to curdle the cream in everyone's coffee. Here at home,
President Bush was saying familiar things about a war that is everybody's business, but in a new
way, and with a bit of humility and modesty of spirit that he doesn't often show us.

Taken together, and nobody suggested that the juxtaposition of the prime minister's luncheon
remarks and the president's press conference remarks in Washington was necessarily more than
coincidence, the events conspired to put a lot of the bickering and jockeying for partisan advantage
- on both sides of the Atlantic - in sobering context for anyone trying to make sense of a world in
which a lot of people have gone certifiably mad.

The clash of, by or about civilizations will trouble everyone who reads a newspaper, watches a
television newscast or imbibes the Internet. Who among us has not been tempted to think that we
in what we loosely call "the West" are under attack by barbarians, that what we've considered one
of the world's great religions has become instead a conspiracy of violence, hijacked by madmen
determined to build a bridge to the 12th century. Those widely published photographs of the
"faithful in Iraq," cutting gashes in the top of their heads with long sabers as a penance of blood,
merely inspires many of us to throw up our hands and wish that more of those faithful would only
cut deeper, and let the rest of us get a little peace.

Tony Blair offers a more hopeful view, however difficult it may seem in the context of the morning's
news. We must persuade the world to join the defense of the idea of civilization, and that the "we"
must include everybody. "'We' are as much Muslim as Christian or Jew or Hindu," he says. "'We'
are those who believe in religious tolerance, openness to others, to democracy, liberty and human
rights administered by secular courts." That's a big mouthful of things that the evidence suggests a
lot of barbarians do not share.

Selling the proposition of "religious tolerance, openness to others, to democracy, liberty and
human rights administered by secular courts" will require an "activist approach" to settling
accounts with the terrorists, and this is what underlies his government's method of dealing with
everything from climate change to poverty in Africa to terrorism in Iraq. "The terrorists know that if
they are to succeed in Iraq or Afghanistan or indeed Lebanon or anywhere else, the idea of wanting
to go the democratic route to a modern future for the Arab or Muslim world is dealt a potentially
mortal blow."

Back in Washington, George W. Bush might have been offering contrapuntal notes, trying to
organize the music of these old allies. "The terrorists haven't given up," he said. "They're tough-
minded. They like to kill. There will be more tough fighting ahead." This was the familiar Bush.

Then came the unfamiliar note of humility - he intends to win back his once overwhelming public
support by "talking realistically to the people" about the importance of the war in Iraq.

He might have said, if he had had the prime minister's gift of rhetoric in the language of kings, that
the foe of American interests and values is the same foe who wants to eliminate the liberties of
free men everywhere - including the Muslims who aspire to the freedoms we in the West take as
our due.

"The only way to win is to recognize that this phenomenon is a global ideology," Mr. Blair said, "to
see all areas in which it operates as linked, and to defeat it by values and ideas set in opposition to
those of the terrorists."

Just so. But the weakness of the West is that a lot of us want to believe that we can wish the clash
of, or about, civilization(s) away if we just wish hard enough. That way lies the catastrophe of
global civil war. This is the message Tony Blair and George W. Bush have to sell. It's not a seller's
market.

* Suzanne Fields, a columnist for The Washington Times, is nationally syndicated. Her column
appears on Mondays and Thursdays. E-mail: sfields1000@aol.com.
Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com

Article Title: The World at Civil War; Civilization Is at Risk When

Publication Information:
Many among Us Are Mad. Newspaper Title: The Washington Times. Publication Date: March
23, 2006. Page Number: A19. COPYRIGHT 2006 News World Communications, Inc.;
COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Group
Preserving Civilization.

Byline: THE WASHINGTON TIMES

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. wrote a brilliant column about an outstanding ally, British Prime Minister Tony
Blair ("Steadfast duo ... with vision," Commentary, Friday). In this column, Mr. Blair rightly was
compared to Winston Churchill and his opposition to the Neville Chamberlain appeasers of World
War II Europe.

The parallel is apt, as the appeasers assume the Islamofascists are willing to stop short of total
domination and if we just allow them their dominance in certain areas, they will leave us alone. I
am surprised, in a way, that not one of the celebrity antiwar zealots has cried out loud that peace
in our time is possible and that after we withdraw from fighting, we all will be able to sleep
peacefully. This is a head-in-the-sand belief that ignores the reality of the evil that confronts us.

The comments made by Mr. Blair and President Bush have shown that although politically they hold
differing philosophies, they understand that survival requires us to continue the fight to the end.
That Mr. Blair is being pressured by both sides of the aisle to resign and has said he will do so
means that the security of Europe and America rests on a replacement who also understands the
stakes on the table.

The very survival of Western civilization, freedom and self-determination is at stake in this game,
and by the remarks they made Tuesday, both our president and the British prime minister showed
they fully understand this.

The relationship between these two great men is an eerie parallel to that between Franklin D.
Roosevelt and Churchill, whose leadership was as unappreciated as is that of Mr. Bush and Mr.
Blair. Other modern world leaders, such as Australian Prime Minister John Howard, support the war
effort, but the two leaders who are most prominent and critical are Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair. To lose
one half of this team because of shortsighted ideologues in Britain would be worse than a shame.

To borrow from Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, now is not the time to go wobbly. Mr. Blair, remain in
place.

NORMAN HENDRICKSON

Bowie
Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Article Title: Preserving Civilization. Newspaper Title: The Washington Times. Publication
Date: March 26, 2006. Page Number: B02. COPYRIGHT 2006 News World Communications, Inc.; COPYRIGHT 2006
Gale Group

Defining 'culture,' but not as

anthropologists would
Byline: Steven Menashi, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
In his 1963 novel "Planet of the Apes," Pierre Boulle imagined a monkey civilization that, by
mimicking human behavior, eventually displaces human culture. But human culture is not so
easily impersonated. In "The Survival of Culture," a collection of essays culled from the New
Criterion and edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball, contributors remind us that there is
an older, more proper definition of "culture" than the one employed by anthropologists today -
precisely those civilized activities that cannot be aped by simians.
Keith Windschuttle, the Australian scholar, notes that until recently the term "culture" was used
in the sense established by Matthew Arnold's 19th-century book, "Culture and Anarchy," as "the
best that has been thought and said." Culture in the Arnoldian sense - which today goes by the
designation "high culture" - entails the recognition of a hierarchy of achievement in all forms of
artistic, intellectual, and moral endeavor.
Anthropologists, on the other hand, use "culture" in a purely descriptive fashion to describe the
habits and customs of a particular population, cultural achievements that can't be judged across
different societies. Shakespearean drama can't be said to be superior to Kabuki theater, for
example, only different. Throughout the book contributors address the issue of cultural
relativism, the most conspicuous example being the brouhaha surrounding Silvio Berlusconi's
proclamation of the superiority of Western civilization over Islam.
Appearing in Germany shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Italian prime
minister said: "We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has
guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights, and - in contrast with Islamic countries -
respect for religious and political rights." Mr. Berlusconi did nothing other than state the
obvious. Yet politicos throughout Europe quickly denounced his comments and Mr. Berlusconi
eventually recanted.
The European tendency, writes columnist Mark Steyn in his contribution to this collection, is to
see deviation from basic guarantees of political decency "as just another 'alternative lifestyle' -
lesbianism, vegetarianism, totalitarianism, whatever." This may save some public figures the
burden of judging others, but it constitutes a flight from reality.
When, as Mr. Steyn notes, European diplomats "are willing to pretend the foreign minister of
Syria is no different from the foreign minister of Luxembourg or New Zealand," they deny all we
know about the differences between democracy and dictatorship.
The loss of high culture means nothing less than the failure to recognize the existence of an
objective universe. "The idea that Western rationality must produce universally valid knowledge
increasingly appears doubtful," the Australian sociologist R.W. Connell has written. "It is, on the
face of it, ethnocentric." Mr. Connell points to efforts made by some Muslim philosophers to
ground science in different, non-Western assumptions about the world, producing "Islamic
science" as an alternative to Newton and Einstein.
One can only wish that Islamist terrorists would follow such advice, quips Mr. Windschuttle, and
shun Western technology in favor of armaments produced by Muslim science - the most recent
innovation of which was the Mameluke curved sabre in the 14th century.
These pages are full of warnings about the tendency to ignore reality. Mr. Kimball mentions the
incipient normalization of "gender reassignment surgery." Robert Bork examines jurists who
rule with marked indifference to the actual content of the law. Kenneth Minogue, at a more
general level, focuses on the modern desire to enter a profession without recognizing its
conventions and boundaries as real limitations.
In politics, David Pryce-Jones takes on the European Union for abandoning the democratic
ideals that are Europe's heritage. (When Denmark rejected the euro in a September 2000
referendum, the Belgian foreign minister, speaking on behalf of the EU, averred, "I personally
think it's very dangerous to organize referendums when you're not sure you're going to win
them. If you lose that's a big problem for Europe.")
Mr. Pryce-Jones also finds the EU concocting a fictitious "European identity," complete with
"European values," and imposing it on nations with their own distinct languages, laws, and
histories. The EU brass, argues Mr. Pryce-Jones, is "insulated from reality," trying to impose a
fantastic utopian vision on a reluctant public through an autocratic, remote bureaucracy.
Europe, he writes, has forgotten the lesson taught by its earlier totalitarianisms and their own
attacks on the nation-state.
This sort of politics, unmoored from reality, is really a kind of sorcery, conjuring up political
institutions out of nothing. Tocqueville called this approach to government the "literary spirit in
politics," which "consists in seeking for what is novel and ingenious rather than for what is true;
in preferring the showy to the useful; . . . and lastly, in judging by impressions rather than
reasons." In losing our sense of culture, we've lost our bearings.
"The Survival of Culture " includes important advice on regaining those bearings. There is
advice from Edmund Burke, who - as Martin Greenberg puts it in his essay -"despised a
speculative, abstract politics," preferring a standard rooted in nature. There is advice from
George Orwell, who worried about the "horror of abstract thought." There is Hannah Arendt,
who upheld the integrity of the "objective status of the cultural world" and a "nonsocial and
authentic criterion" for judging its achievements.
There is a human tendency, especially in times of crisis, to retreat from a world of civilized
standards to a more romantic, blood-and-soil nationalism. After World War II, and the apparent
failure of the European project, Charles de Gaulle located the vitality of the West not in its
achievements of high culture, but in "the value, the power, the shining example of these
ancient peoples," by which he meant the various nations of Western Europe.
Yet "Nostalgia," explains Mr. Kimball in the book's concluding essay, "is a version of
sentimentality - a predilection, that is to say, to distort rather than acknowledge reality." Eric
Ormsby's contribution to the book is about the fate of libraries in the age of digitization, but Mr.
Kimball applies it to culture at large: our fascination with means has led us "to ignore and
neglect the ends."
America, which never possessed a culture in the anthropological sense - Americans did not exist
as an ancient people before the founding of the United States - has been better able to
maintain a sense of purpose or universal mission. That mission, after all, is the only foundation
of an American identity. In her essay, political scientist Diana Schaub captures this
phenomenon by contrasting American patriotic songs - she singles out the verse "This is my
country! Land of my choice!" - with foreign odes about motherlands and fatherlands, "children
of the soil," and pure bloodlines.
So it's not surprising that American principles have remained relatively stable. As Mr. Steyn
notes, "The U.S. Constitution is not only older than the French, German, Italian, Belgian, Greek
and Spanish constitutions, it's older than all of them put together."
It's also natural that George W. Bush could describe the attack on American cities as "an attack
on civilization." What we're defending, it turns out, are not the various customs of our culture,
unmediated by reference to objective standards of civilization, undirected toward any purpose;
that's ape culture, and it's neither threatened nor under assault. What's at risk is civilization, a
universal system of standards that can act as a guide for all human societies. Our enemies
know it. We should, too.
Steven Menashi is associate editor of Policy Review and a public affairs fellow at the Hoover
Institution.
+++++
THE SURVIVAL OF CULTURE: PERMANENT VALUES IN A VIRTUAL AGE
By Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball
Ivan R. Dee, $28.95, 256 pages