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worth of the individual and his liberty, freedom of speech and religion, democracy--
treasures which have arisen and been sustainable only in those societies nurtured by
this Tradition. Their seeds were planted at least as early as Plato's "Apology of
Socrates," and found in Christendom the Providentially prepared soil in which alone
they could truly flourish. They emerged only gradually even there, and never perfectly.
But the impetus for them was inevitably part of the Tradition, which reached its
greatest political fulfillment in the British common law and the American Declaration of
Independence and Constitution. Because of the evil that lies hidden in even the best of
human hearts, these values are precious and fragile, hard-won by the blood of our
ancestors, and in need of constant defense if they are to be preserved. The
Traditionalist readily admits that the Mosaic Exodus, Socratic Inquiry, Roman Law, and
Christian Love were not at all points compatible. Still, he thinks that the ways they
have interacted in our history have produced a set of ideals, consistent at their core, that
gives us hope in this world as well as the one to come.
But a certain type of post-modernist thinker looks at this confluence and sees
nothing but a pestilent congregation of vapors. Choosing to focus on the tensions
rather than the felicities in the complex ways the Four Strands have interacted, she
naturally sees nothing but contradictions. Choosing to focus on the West's failures to
live up to its own ideals, she blinds herself to the ways in which they have nevertheless
given a liberation to the human spirit which it has found nowhere else. Reading history
through the lens of her own jaded cynicism, she can see nothing but power being
exercised for its own self preservation. To her, the ideals for which the American
Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor are nothing
but excuses for the wealthy to hang on to position and power and deny it to everyone
else. Christianity is just the white man's religion, Reason the white man's way of
thinking, lofty ideals just the white man's smokescreen for his real agenda: keeping
women and minorities in perpetual subjection.
To the Traditionalist, the paradigm of Western civilization as the great Oppressor
of women and minorities, which exists only by systematically excluding them, is a
curious construct indeed. Never mind the fact that this civilization has never