Starkey is right – cultural degeneracy has weakened the West
By Andrew Devine, TCW:
AS Kathy Gyngell reported yesterday and expands upon today, Mark Steyn and the historian David Starkey have articulately described the naive, idealistic mindset of many Western citizens who can’t get their heads around why Russia has invaded Ukraine and is acting so belligerently towards the West. If you ask me, the effect of the post-war hippie culture and its concomitant sentimentality (see John Lennon’s fatuous lyrics) on the western mindset has made us collectively weaker, and weakness isn’t conducive to security which is a prerequisite for peace. Minds that are muddled with marijuana and/or the mawkish platitudes of contemporary culture like ‘give peace a chance’ haven’t grasped this.
Now, while I’m very much opposed to Russia’s attack on the Ukraine and am no fan of Putin, an understanding of the realist theory of international relations explains how states, and regional alliances formed from states, are primarily motivated by self-interest. This explains why during the Cold War the United States fought wars and proxy wars against communism within various countries. Put aside the ethical considerations of the outcomes of these interventions – I didn’t agree with all of them – from a cold rational perspective they made complete sense because if communism became the dominant global power it would have been the end of the US and western capitalism. Whatever the rights and wrongs of some of those interventions, to have surrendered to the spread of communism would have brought immense suffering and oppression to many more people. As Thomas Sowell puts it: ‘There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.’
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