The end of the West – or the beginning of a return to Christian values?
by Ann Bradshaw, TCW:
THE Afghanistan debacle seems to be some kind of turning point in the self-confidence of the West. Suddenly, commentators are asking if this is the fall of the West – a result of the failure of Western liberal, secular values. Paul Kingsnorth suggests the West has lost its virtue.Janet Daley thinks there is a global power crisis. Allister Heath thinks the West has become ‘racked by self-doubt . . . self-loathing . . . it no longer has values to sell’.
Nick Timothy argues that liberal democracies are ‘struggling to contain social fissures caused by ageing populations and changing demographics, radical individualism, woke ideologies and political fragmentation’. He argues that Western values are based on Christian assumptions, ‘however much modern liberals might deny it’.
Often commentators point to woke as the consequence of this loss of confidence. The inexplicable rise of woke is explained well by the historian Robert Tombs. He writes in the Spectator: ‘What makes “wokeness” formidable is certainly not intellectual cogency or even numerical strength. Rather, it is the willingness of institutions – international corporations, globalised universities, civil services, museums, the media, schools, civil services, local government, and even churches – to give in to, or worse, to exploit it. Paying lip-service to wokeness is an insurance policy that seems to cost little and offer much: a fig-leaf for the privileged, a PR strategy for institutions, a path to personal advancement, a source of profit, a shield against criticism, a token of virtue, and an instrument of power.’
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