PR: 'defending Western values' - inaccurate and misguided?
How challenging a question is that? It's certainly not the question that people expected to be posed and I believe that it differs considerably from the main thrust of the 9/10 group. The resolution of this question will clearly affect any future progress and the 'campaign's' ability to win friends and gather support. I'm going to make myself even more unpopular. It seems to me that to talk of defending Western values, culture or civilisation is both factually inaccurate and tactically misguided. I have the impression that most people who think of Western civilisation believe it to have been built on two pillars - the Bible, and Classical Greek civilisation. Both of those were Eastern in mentality and outlook. When Alexander the Great set out to conquer the known world, he headed east and carried on in that direction, taking in much of what is now the Arab world, including parts of North Africa, through Persia until he passed through Afghanistan to reach India. That was the world as he knew it, and for the Greeks, the strange northern barbarians were just curiosities in tales like Jason and the Argonauts. Classical Greek culture was formed through centuries of contact, and conflict, with that, Eastern, world where writing, arithmetic and mathematics were developing long before literacy came to the north. The Bible, especially the Old Testament (before the Romans made them look West as well), was equally the product of a non-European world: Egypt, Iraq, Persia were the neighbours of the Jews and the influences of those cultures can be seen as early as the Book of Genesis. It is absolutely true that the traditions of democracy and Christianity took better root, eventually, in Europe but to seek to divorce these things from their Eastern antecedents seems wrong in fact. It's also tactically inadvisable, because nothing could be more certain to eliminate the possibility of a worldwide enlightened movement than the dividing of the world into a civilised West, and a barbaric "other". The great advantage we have, of course, was the miracle of the Enlightenment and the Reformation - roughly contemporary movements that liberated human inventiveness from the shackles of theocratic suppression. And others in the world want to benefit from this. It's worth browsing Memri's website from time to time to see, in addition to the horrors we associate with the Muslim media, the voices of sane, cultured, rational people striving under circumstances much less congenial than our own to liberate themselves from oppression. If we describe ourselves - define ourselves - in opposition to them - West versus East, North versus South - then we reduce the possibilities of joining with them to build free and open democratic societies everywhere. Muriel Grey has today defined something she calls "enlightenism". It's worth reading and considering. At the very least, I think you'll enjoy some of her language: http://www.sundayherald.com/58809

My father was a para during WWII. He took part in special ops. and fought in many of the theatres of war, except the far-east. He also had a spell in intelligence in the Army of Occupation in Germany. He has taught me some useful things during my life. When I was very young and reading comics like "Victor" that tended to glorify WWII, a war in which all Germans screamed "Achtung!" all the time, he took me aside one day and told me to always remember that we fighting against the Nazis - not the German people. That was a good lesson which can be applied in all sorts of situations. When I grew up a bit, I started to ask him about particular events, like Arnhem, for example. He explained that as the allies approached Germany itself, for the German people, it became less a war of ideology, which they did not all agree with anyway, and more a war of survival which united people right across Germany. By the time the Allies entered Germany itself, they sometimes found themselves up against divisions comprised of 13-15 year old boys, such was the desperation. That's another lesson. If you can avoid it, there's no need to break people completely in victory. Leave them with some shred of self-respect if you can (not always possible but something to strive for). That's why I welcome Peter's approach rather than the "all out Clash of Civilisations" approach which simply pits entire peoples against eachother because they are forced into taking sides. By not alienating entire peoples because of the actions of a minority of extremists, Peter has more chance of achieving something. I think that it's worth a go. If that approach fails there are all kinds of extremists, ready to declare war, who would be more than happy to make this country a very unpleasant place live.

But as far as I am aware none who I have come across here or on the other forum except perhaps the far right nut jobs there- advocates a clash of civilisations. The Huntington thesis has its many critics & indeed it does falter in the real world to a degree, Huntington asks us 'If not Civilisations, What? Although I do not wholly subscribe to his thesis to be fair the reality is there is a fundamental clash of ism's. To my mind there is nothing wrong in defending the values of the Western world, no matter where they have been inherited from is to my mind irrelevent as they now constitute that which is considered Western. As far as I am aware none here are advocating a separation of values indeed trying to sort out origins would be a task in itself if not ridiculous next to impossible if conceived. Thus we can not surrender our values we too must now be uncomprimising in their defence, for if not on these issues then where? Where is the line drawn? Neither should we fear the normative in our stance, we must be that & more whilst remaining tolerant & free. :D

I'm going to make myself even more unpopular. It seems to me that to talk of defending Western values, culture or civilisation is both factually inaccurate and tactically misguided. If we describe ourselves - define ourselves - in opposition to them - West versus East, North versus South - then we reduce the possibilities of joining with them to build free and open democratic societies everywhere. Muriel Grey has today defined something she calls "enlightenism". It's worth reading and considering. At the very least, I think you'll enjoy some of her language. The point of this campaign is not to build “free and democratic societies everywhere”. Not everybody believes in “free and democratic values”. Surely the one lesson to be learned from Iraq (though our politicians seem stubborn in not learning this lesson) is that not everybody believes in our values. Many in the Middle East, for example, want to live under Sharia Law. They consider the West to be decadent and morally corrupt. The point of this campaign, is in fact, to try and persuade most people in this country of the values we believe in. And why should we shy away from the term “Western”? Because non Westerners may be offended? So What? I do not care if somebody living in Gambia may be offended by our terminology. It will nevertheless have a ring with those who we need to reach out to first, who are the citizens of this country who having their freedoms taken away from them as I write these words. Attempting to globalise our movement before it has even got of the ground is folly. And what terminology is recommended instead of “Western” (and the notion that this term has only geographical meaning is nonsense, look at Australia who consider themselves Western and yet are further East of us than the Orient)? We are told that a better name is “enlightenism”. Does that mean then, that people who disagree with us are not enlightened? What is somebody more likely to take offence over; that they are considered not “Western” or they are considered not “enlightened”? The values we are actually defending are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (UDHR 1948). So we could call ourselves “Universalists”, but what would this mean to the average person on the street. People know what we mean when we say “Western values”, and this can be used as a rallying point to those who we need to persuade first: that is to say the citizens in this country who are currently sleepwalking towards totalitarianism.