Loathing the West: It's All the Rage

(Originally posted June 30, 2007)

British authorities are still sorting out what look like three more-or-less botched terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow yesterday and today.

Unless we're looking at a string of wildly-improbable outbreaks of incredibly bad luck, there's a good chance that whoever played with fire in the United Kingdom were what's euphemistically referred to as radical Islamists.

Quite a few folks see hatred of western civilization, and the United States in particular, as something that's typical of parts of Islam.

That may be true, but seeing the west as a decadent pit of foul licentiousness and greed is hardly an Islamic monopoly. Take a look at op-ed pieces by some conservatives and liberals in the States, and you're likely to see a loathing of what's going on in the west.

Although the two groups aren't likely to see themselves as having common ground, they each have members who are quick to say, and write, about how much they hate the west's loose morals, uncontrolled greed, unwillingness to be self-supporting, and indifference to the suffering of spotted owls. Sometimes, they even have a point.

On the other hand, I'm at least as concerned with the self-loathing that's been fashionable for the last few decades in this country as I am with this culture's shortcomings.

Posting this, I feel that I've thrown oil on a troubled fire.