Thursday, September 13, 2012

Resistance is NOT Futile

In his controversial 1996 book on the likely source of conflict in the post-Cold War world -- "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" -- the late Samuel P. Huntington postulated that cultural and religious tensions between dissimilar civilizations were far more likely than national ideological differences to result in war.  

Viewed through the lens of the largely ideologically motivated war experience of the 20th Century, Huntington's thinking was roundly criticized as radically backward-looking and simplistic. His critics were particularly at odds with his assertions that the spread of democracy was not the peace-providing panacea that the current crop of Western geo-political interventionists believed. 

In the Colonel's not-so-humble opinion, and in light of the rise of radical religious movements filling power vacuums in the wake of the supposed democratically motivated "Arab Spring," ole Sam had it about right. 

Huntington believed that the source of Western supremacy in the latter half of the 20th Century was misinterpreted  -- "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violenceWesterners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." -- and that America's survival depended more on strengthening our own culture and less on attempting to impose our culture on others.

The Colonel would have you understand that culture matters; that our Republic's strength, and thereby its survival, springs from an unshakable belief in American Exceptionalism (not shared by the current presidential administration).  Once we begin to believe and act (and apologize) as if we are no better than any other culture -- weakening ourselves both physically and spiritually in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world -- we are at grave risk of being subsumed by cultures who believe themselves to be exceptional and whose principles are antithetical to our own.  

The Colonel will resist.