Defender of Democracies mutilating Democracy

Clifford D. May has a piece in The Washington Times that came under the title: “Celebrating the values of the West is right because they're the best,” and the subtitle: “Trump's campaign for the survival of Western civilization drives the so-called 'progressives' crazy.” It was published on July 11, 2017.

Surprisingly, May no longer speaks of Western values as being “Judeo-Christian” values. Instead, he speaks of “Western concepts, rooted in classical Greece and Rome and developed in the Enlightenment.” As to what these values are, he cites: human, civil and individual rights, freedom, representative government, separation of church and state, the rule of law, pluralism and tolerance.

But to look and sound even-handed, he also asks: “What about the legacy of slavery, imperialism and colonialism?” And he answers, “These practices were the norm in every corner of the world from time immemorial.” He also makes the point that: “Slavery was abolished in Saudi Arabia only in 1962; and formally abolished in Mauritania in 1981”.

Mentioning those two Muslim nations in such negative terms is meant to be contrasted against the claim he makes to the effect that a revolution in moral thinking was required to see that slavery, bigotry and discrimination were evil, and that “the revolution began in the West and was led by William Wilberforce who was a white, evangelical Christian” a century and a half earlier.

And while these values are holding in the West, says May, he wants the readers to believe they are non-existent or precarious in the places where undemocratic governance is practiced. To strengthen his argument, he boasts that “millions from non-Western lands prefer to live in the Western community of nations.” He also points out that “the jihadis of Boko Haram and the Islamic State revive the slave trade where and when they can”.

Now, my friend, imagine a human child coming to an age when he can read. Being the smart little fellow that he is, he becomes curious about the history of civilization. He reads Clifford May's article and works out the chronological development of human civilization. Using the material he has, he puts it all together as follows:

“Before the Greeks and the Romans, there was nothing but slavery, imperialism, colonialism, bigotry and discrimination. The Greeks and the Romans came along; and they developed human, civil and individual rights, freedom and representative government. There was nothing after that till the early nineteenth century when a white Christian started an enlightened revolutionary movement that helped to develop separation of church and state, the rule of law, pluralism and tolerance. And then came a bunch of Islamic jihadis; and they wanted to revive the slave trade”.

The smart little fellow feels a little uneasy about the simplicity of this chronology, and so he goes into the basement where he is keeping his extraterrestrial friend E2T2 hidden from his parents. The human boy tells his friend about the problem he is having, and asks if he knows something about the history of Planet Earth. E2T2 says he doesn't, but reveals that he just called home, and they are coming to take him away. Luckily, they are using a spaceship that is also a time machine. And so, he'll ask them to take his friend on a quick ride through time to see first hand how human civilization developed over the millenniums.

The spaceship/time-machine arrives and takes the two youngsters on the trip they asked for. They see that ten thousand years ago, there were humans living around the equator where food was so plentiful, they lived by hunting and gathering what they ate. The youngsters also saw that there were human-like Neanderthals in the northern hemisphere that also lived by hunting and gathering the food they ate. And the youngsters noticed that things were different in the tropics. The food was not plentiful, but there were rivers around which people settled and started to farm the land. And the time travelers understood this is where and how civilization began.

They moved forward in time and saw how a dozen or so civilizations arose in or near the tropics, taking mankind from the Stone Age to great heights. They did it using systems of governance that would range on today's spectrum from the ultra progressive to the alt-right. Finally, Europe caught up with the ascent of man. It happened in Greece because that's where Europe touches Asia Minor. The Greeks learned about the Arabic/Assyrian alphabet: Aleph, Beh, Theh, which the Greeks pronounced Alpha, Beta, Theta, and so on ... And so they read the Assyrian texts and became just as smart.

But the Greek culture did not last long. Still, there was enough time to influence nearby Rome which copied what Greece had to offer, and added something new. It added slavery. For the first time in the history of Planet Earth, human beings could own other human beings in the way that they owned animals. The practice then spread throughout Europe and nowhere else except where the Europeans went and took the habit with them.

Rome fell eventually, and Europe slipped back into the Dark Ages from where it had come. Meanwhile, Asia Minor was witnessing the blossoming of a new Arab civilization that basked in aesthetic splendor rivaling those of the ancient civilizations. But the Arabs were also armed with modern science, mathematics and humane legal concepts. They transferred their knowledge to Europe, thus triggered a Renaissance that began a half millennium before the so-called European Enlightenment.

One more thing happened that changed the course of history. The Arabs invented the artillery but would not use it because they reasoned that it was unethical to kill someone at a distance. They preferred to do face to face combat so as to give the other guy the chance to defend himself. The Europeans had no compunction about violating that sort of ethical conduct, and so they used the Arab invention to attack the Arabs, causing them incredible damage. They even colonized them.

Upon learning this, E2T2 turns to his human friend and asks why is it that the Arabs are not reminding the White, Christian, and European West of this historical truth and ask for justice? And the human boy tells his extraterrestrial friend about a dirty little secret that's plaguing the planet at this time. He says this:

“There was a time when Europe's culture was so imbued with Arab ethics, it would tell the truth. Things have changed, however, and things are so distorted nowadays, you have a hard time finding the truth about them. You search the internet for the history of artillery and find nothing that is relevant to our story. That's because a band calling itself Jews, is going around mutilating history like a school of piranha attacking a bird that fell into its pool of water”.

Dismayed, E2T2 asks if there is any sort of record where the truth can still be verified. And the human boy says yes, the truth about the Muslim Arabs shying away from using the artillery they invented because of ethical reasons still exists in the early editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And so the youngsters made it a point to check it out before calling on the barons of the internet to warn the Jews about mutilating history.