Civilization at a Crossroads?

Roger Kimball is a deep thinker. He also is Co-Editor and Publisher of The New Criterion and the author of a provocative new commentary on that website entitled "After Suicide in the West."

Wretchard at the Belmont Club notes that when Kimball talks about the West (and we're not talking California here) he does so almost in the past tense:

[A] civilization suicided from despair; death from want of a reason to live. The contradiction within liberalism -- within multiculturalism -- Kimball argues, is that it unwilling to believe in anything definite, even in itself.

Wretchard nails my biggest problem with Kimball and some of his fellow travelers. They cannot think outside the box that declares anything to do with liberalism and multiculturalism to be suspect, if not downright bogus. While Wretched probably would not agree, methinks that bias flaws his commentary, but it is nevertheless well worth reading.

The New Criterion seems to be undergoing website redesign pains, and I had trouble putting up a link to the essay, but their website address is:

www.newcriterion.com

Following is an excerpt from the intro to "After Suicide in the West":

It seemed fitting that a symposium devoted to the subject of “Threats to Democracy” should convene on the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. Not only was it one of the greatest sea battles in history, but it was also a battle greatly pertinent to the questions that guided our deliberations: What is the nature of the threats to democracy, to the culture and civilization of the West, and how can we best respond to those threats?

Let me say at the outset that I believe that Lord Nelson had the right idea—sail boldly in among your enemy’s ships, start firing, and don’t stop until you’ve reduced them to a shambles. It was good for England and for the rest of Europe that the Duke of Wellington proved himself to be of like mind a few years later. “Hard pounding, gentlemen,” he said at Waterloo. “We’ll see who pounds longest.”

Today, I believe, there is a widely shared understanding that our culture—not just the political system of democracy but our entire western way of life—is at a crossroads. That perception is not always on the surface. Absent the unignorable importunity of attack, absorption in the tasks of everyday life tends to blunt the perception of the threats facing us. But we all know that the future of the West, seemingly so assured even a decade ago, is suddenly negotiable in the most fundamental way. The essays that follow highlight some of the principle features of those negotiations. In this introduction, I want simply to review some of the moral terrain over which we are traveling.