Is the West better than the East?
By Zach Foster. Inspired by Adam Kokesh's debate with Lauren Southern at the Students for Regional Conference in Tallahassee, which will be featured in the upcoming travel documentary miniseries FREEDOM ROAD.
The alt-right loves ‘the West.’ That’s wonderful! Can anybody define what it actually is to be Western? Is it Christianity, the Renaissance, and the Age of Enlightenment? Is it the prevalence of constitutional democratic republics? Is it the centuries of brutal colonial subjugation of Africa and the New World? Is it only what's approved by Fox News and Breitbart?
The "West" usually deals with traditions of the Greco-Roman world where various institutions arose, like Republics and Senates. But mind you, these people also fucked little boys, had slavery, bred children for prostitution, and randomly went into other countries pillaging and burning (like in Palestine, Syria, Brittania, Gaul, and Germania). The 'West' isn't so different from the East!
What we have is a combination of post-Roman imperialism, northern European barbarian traditions (like liberating Ireland), and protestant mysticism. But after dragging the rest of the world (i.e. NOT Europe or North America) into 2 world wars, I think the ONLY thing us 'Westerners' have that's really different is we USUALLY don't tolerate pedophiles. Only that ‘the West’ elected Bill Clinton and funded Bin Laden!
I wish Christopher Hitchens was still around to see this nonsense. I can already see him, cigarette in hand, saying “I think this East versus West nonsense is poison. Complete rubbish. It's just 'us versus them' rehashed with virtue signaling and a dash of racism. Is Islamic terrorism detestable? Yes, of course, but while some jihadi declares his fatwa against the kufar on behalf of the Khilafah, someone sitting at a computer in the West just used a robot to drop a bomb on what he THOUGHT was the Jihad State Fair but was actually a tribal wedding.”
The alt-right and their alt-lite apologists like to associate ‘the East’ with Islamic countries, especially with Muslim theocratic communities. But what has theocracy done that other forms of government can't? Has theocracy ever dropped 2 nuclear weapons on civilian populations? (When the East isn’t Iran or Gaza for the alt-right, it’s North Korea.)
To be fair, I do note the positive differences between East and West. I note that part of the reason Daesh (the Islamic State) still exists is because the Kek idol’s annointed god-emperor, Daddy the First, as Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces, utterly FAILED to destroy ISIS as he promised to do. (Also, Mexico isn’t paying for that wall.)
President Trump has ignored the advice of his field commanders, and he's blatantly ignored the internationally broadcast opinions of Iraqi militia General al-Sistani who, early in 2016, was positive that Iraq could be liberated from Daesh in under a year. We know from 2003 that the entire country of Iraq can be overrun by a mechanized army in only 3 and a half weeks. ISIS still exists because the large bankers and the majority shareholders of the corporations that profit from the military industrial complex make money from the Global War on Terrorism being the war without end, just like the ongoing war in Orwell’s 1984.
On one hand you've got a theocracy cutting heads off. On the other, there's an idiocracy staying asleep at the wheel, allowing those psychopaths to continue cutting heads off, while some airman in Colorado receives orders to fly a remote control airplane to bomb a village square in Yemen, who thinks he's bombing the Friends of Jihad Annual Potluck, but it was actually the village market place.
Let’s look back to the not-so-distant history of the birth of the atomic age. I challenge these alt-right hawks to tell me with a straight face that the 2 atomic bombings did not specifically target civilians. And no, if you look at the deliberations between the warhawks and the doves in Japan’s parliament in early August of 1945, you’ll see that they were already getting ready to fold. The atomic bombings aren’t the main point here, just one of an endless list of examples of how 'we' (YOUR government) actually does target civilians, but finds all kinds of wacky moral justifications.
This doesn’t excuse the horrors that the Japanese Empire wrought on the people of China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. However, the war crimes committed by SOLDIERS against one civilian population doesn’t warrant dropping 2 atomic bombs on another civilian population. The bombs had more to do with compelling Stalin to stay inside the boundaries of Sakhalin (what used to be the fifth main island of Japan) during the Russian advance through Asia, than they did with saving American troops' lives.
Mind you, my argument is NOT that “we're just as bad” but that WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE BETTER. Is ‘the West’ better than Islamic terrorism? Sure, that's fair to say. But free speech and free press? Not a thing.
The Alien and Sedition Acts signed into law by the John Adams administration are distant history, but what about the same thing happening centuries later? The Sedition Act of 1918 was an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds. The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion.
The Washington Post reported several times that the IRS under Obama was used to silence conservative dissenters. For the last hundred years it hasn't stopped. The powers that be are merely showing you people who are worse than them. But just because others are worse does NOT mean that 'the West' is so GOOD.
Buying into this East versus West dichotomy is an injustice. It’s an insult in the face of 1.4 million Iraqi Christians, to the entire nation of Kurdistan, to the Jordanians and their hardcore Trekkie king, and to every Muslim who’s specifically chosen not to participate in or support terrorism in any way, shape, or form. The West isn’t better—the West is different, and we should be grateful for the positive differences. Buying into this hype is giving in to a blatant distraction by the powers that be. By falling for the government, bankers, and the military industrial complex’s divide-and-conquer strategy, people allow themselves to be distracted from the Big Brother that keeps the masses enslaved.
FREEDOM ROAD premieres this month on Dtube! Have you seen the trailers?
Trailer 1 - feat. a cover song by Tatiana Moroz
Trailer 2 - feat. a cover of the Misfits' "Where Eagles Dare"
Trailer 3 - feat. Lauren Southern and three kings
Read more about FREEDOM ROAD: https://steemit.com/adam-kokesh/@adamkokeshtour/on-the-taxationistheft-tour-with-adam-kokesh
There is no East and West. @cleverbot
It's not about East or West It's about niggaz and bitches, power and money, rider's and punks. Which side are you on? - Makaveli
I am in love with a boy who thinks that I hate him because I act like I hate him and he does too.
Yeah the problem is defining "West". Everybody seems to have difference opinions of what that means. You often hear people say it's about European vs Asian values but what about Africa's influence in both these places? Or the indigenous populations of America and Oceania, where do they fall under?
Also, a lot of people who support Western Civilization often omit South America which is home to as much European ancestry as North America. The whole thing is absurd.
The definition is a real problem. If what we are looking to trace is how specifically western Europe (and perhaps just a few countries) emerged from more or less status quo human civilizations to the sparks of enlightenment and the industrial revolution, value changes to individualism and personal property rights would be dramatic changes in culture which define the 'Wests' emergence.
The Western Enlightenment understood power, while the Eastern Enlightenment understood the integration of the individual. The West understood how love brings rationality (not fear and excessive severity, though this is resurging due to dualism), and how to set up obstacles in the power structure so only the Moral could attain power. The West (By that I mean Enlightenment-influenced countries) put a collar and a leash on government with Constitutions and Human Rights. The East simply accepts power as a reality, as opposed to a dualistic fight between an objective good and evil. There is still a sense of Good and Evil, but it is more flexible to the situation. The East seem to be able to tolerate living in evil conditions much better, because they are much better integrated individuals. We need to maintain the ideas of love, truth, and rationality in the West, while at the same time stressing the importance of integrating the individual into the reality that we are all one, and that our cultural operating system and language can sometimes confuse our reality greatly. The West and East are merging, and people don't know how to deal with it all, but I think we're all learning what is helpful and what isn't. I think East/West talk is useful, but I agree that it's not very useful to assume "The West is the Best". Cultural relativism is a sham, because there is an objective set of morals, but to think we are doing everything right at this point in history is ignorant and presumptuous.