The West must rediscover its courage

During the Second World War, it became a criminal offence to spread alarm and despondency. Yet there is probably more of that going on today than there was in 1940.

Back then, and despite all the evidence to the contrary, most of the British people appeared to believe that we would eventually prevail. Churchill deserves much of the credit. When other armaments were in short supply, he weaponised the English language. Our present Prime Minister could not be accused of doing that. This government cannot provide an antidote to gloom. As for President Biden – he is the unparalleled inspirer of gloom.

It is sad to look back 20 years. In response to al-Qaeda’s Pearl Harbor moment on 9/11, Messrs Bush and Blair got the tone right: solemn and purposeful. In response, even the French expressed solidarity. President Bush told the world that: “America has stood down enemies before and we will do so this time… We go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in the world.”

Twenty years on, who now believes in America’s commitment to those values? We could have an endless debate about the special relationship. But for most of the past 70 years, it might have ended with a paradox for a conclusion: that the special relationship had never really existed, and was as strong as ever. Equally, from Truman onwards, even presidents who were sceptical about the special relationship were firm Atlanticists. Joe Biden, firm? The word only applies to him in one respect. He is firmly in contention to be ranked as one of the worst presidents ever.

In response to all this, it is clear that the West’s problems are not limited to our defeat in Afghanistan. Indeed, there is almost a new special relationship: a loss of confidence in Western values and Western power, on both sides of the Atlantic. We appear to be facing five interlocking crises: military, political, fiscal, social and cultural. Although his arguments were more complex than the title would suggest, Spengler has come back into fashion, with a widespread belief that the West is doomed to decline while the rise of China is inexorable.

It would be absurd to deny that we face problems. But it could be argued that they are both insoluble and superficial; that they arise, not from the defects of the current political order, but from human nature itself. The briefest summary of the human condition remains the best one; “Original sin”.

Advanced societies are inherently unstable. On the face of it, that seems odd. In the West, after centuries of trial and error, we have learned how to make societies work, through a harmonious coalition between classical liberalism and small-c conservatism. The crucial ingredient is the rule of law, that Hobbesian necessity. From that, with progress, there comes freedom under the rule of law. This in turn expresses itself in some form of democracy and in free markets, leading to economic growth, leading to prosperity, which results in rising living standards and rising life expectancy. This should all be buttressed by institutions and above all, in the most favoured nations, by a monarchy. There is a further crowning glory: civilisation. Even some of the most anguished epochs contributed to mankind’s heritage, yet another boon which modern Westerners can enjoy.

So what could possibly go wrong? To that question, there is a simple one-word answer: mankind. Hegel believed that world history would be shaped by the progress of reason. More recently, Francis Fukuyama was a latter-day Hegelian. Modern man has tried hard to refute them both. “The troubles of our proud and angry dust/ Are from eternity and shall not fail.”

It may be that many human beings find a liberal social and political order too unsettling. Perhaps mankind was designed to seek psychological contentment in an agrarian, tribal, hierarchical and religious society, and in families. In recent decades, all those elements have been in decline, especially the family, that vital social antibiotic. Moreover, the liberal social order finds it hard to constrain four of the five great impulses which underlie so much human activity: nationalism, sex, money and religion (the fifth is hunger, which modern societies can satisfy.) Canalised by order and legality, all those four can be immensely creative: running wild, immensely destructive.

In the case of religion, although the devout might disagree, everything works better with an Erastian framework like the one which used to operate successfully in England. Now, religion has escaped from established churches, leading to cults and chaos, as all sorts of rough beasts slouch towards Jerusalem to be born. Or to Kabul.

It is very easy to draft oneself into Weltschmerz. But doing so is perilously close to self-indulgence. In the West, although much has gone wrong, much has also gone right. Think how our ancestors would have been astonished by the standards of living and the aesthetic opportunities which are now widely available. Unless one is possessed of a heroic faith, coping with life and death will eventually require stoicism. Socialists believe that humanity can be perfected, and have murdered tens of millions of their fellow humans to bring this about. Wise Conservatives, their economic enthusiasms tempered by Tory realism, know that perfectibility is unattainable, at least in this world. Their task is to cope with imperfection.

That should not be as hard as it now seems. The West still possesses immense military might. It also possesses an immense amount of debt. Have we discovered the philosopher’s stone? Or are we on the edge of a fiscal abyss? That may be an even more important question than the future of Afghanistan.

Yet if we have difficulties, so do the Chinese. Undemocratic capitalism was a fascinating social and economic experiment. But it was also an unstable one. Free enterprise flourished in the West because governments’ powers were limited. There was legal space in which entrepreneurs could grow. Although capitalism is inherently destabilising, at times anarchic, that has been a price worth paying. 

Not, it seems, in Xi Jinping’s opinion. He has an excuse. If you have to govern almost 1.4 billion people, the thought of instability must be terrifying. He seems to have decided that Chinese capitalism will have to cope with lack of freedom. Will this work? As Iain Martin recently argued in these pages, that seems unlikely. In Imperial times – and under Maoism – China’s development was held back by what Montesquieu described as the “settled plan of tyranny.” It may be that those days will return.

If that were to happen, the West would need strong leadership to cope with the resulting new world disorder. Leadership: everything comes down to that. Trump was a disgrace. He has now been replaced by a dunderhead. This is not the most glorious period in American democracy. There is an urgent need for a great president. As a few hundred million Americans agree with that, who knows? We might get one.

In this country, we have a premier who is… not a dunderhead. Again, we could do much better, and that view too is increasingly widely shared.

In both our great nations, there is another urgent need: self-confidence. The success of the Gramscian culture warriors has been astonishing. They have launched an attack on history, patriotism, decency and even biology. Thus far, the resistance has been feeble. It is time for a fight back, under the banner proclaiming that uncommon quality, common sense.

When he came to power, Roosevelt told his fellow Americans that they had nothing to fear except fear itself. That is true today. “The resources of civilisation are not yet exhausted” was a favourite saying of Gladstone’s. That also remains true. The next line in the Housman poem quoted above is “Bear them we can, and if we can we must.” Dead right. As Niall Ferguson put it at the end of his excellent book, Civilization: “The biggest threat to Western civilisation is not posed by other civilisations, but by our own pusillanimity.”

He is also dead right. Let us pusillanimate no more.