Something Worth Dying For

(I had a brilliant commentary following this piece, but my Byzantine computer system decided to take the morning off! Oh, well...)

Here is a thought-provoking piece from the Art of War blog, courtesy of Wil Wirtanen:


Philosophies Worth Dying For
Posted by Gary Gagliardi

Sun Tzu makes the key factor of philosophy the core of his model for analyzing a strategic position. In my work with scores of large organizations over the years, a clear, meaningful philosophy of purpose is usually the clearest dividing line between the great organizations and the rest.

In organizations, Sun Tzu defines weakness as arising from a philosophical division. America today is much weaker country than the America of fifty years ago because of such a division is growing among the population. I generally describe this as a division between the elites and the common people because that particular division goes back almost to the beginning of recorded history, but it is more than this. It is a division between people about what constitutes ``morality.`` The larger part of America supports the traditional moral values of the common man, but a very vocal percentage of the population espouses a ``more modern`` morality. (This article from Pajama Media’s Oleg Atbashian analyzes that philosophy as articulated by John Lennon and Yoko Ono from an outsider’s viewpoint of someone who grew up in the Soviet Union. Another take on the ``anti-war`` aspects of this new morality from New America here. My recent work on the worldview behind this philosophy is here. )

The purveyors of the new morality prefer not to get specific about what they really believe. Instead, they refer to their morality as a ``kinder, gentler, more caring`` view of human society. One of the ``virtues`` of this new morality is complete tolerance for behavior that is immoral by tradition values. Another ``virtue`` is a complete intolerance for those who support traditional values (see this article about General Pace expressing his opinions about homosexual behavior) because such opinions are intolerant. Another of the new morality’s ``virtues`` is to express disdain for our materialistic free enterprise system which focuses on making money (that is, producing things that other people find valuable) and creates more wealth for everyone. Simultaneous, another virtue is to express an equal or greater disdain for belief a higher non-material power that guides and gives purpose to human life. The fact that these moral values are self-contradictory is at least part of the reason that those that subscribe to this ``new morality`` prefer not to discuss their beliefs in detail.

I hate to get all Darwinian here, but history has a test for all philosophies. That test isn’t how ``popular`` a morality is among society’s elites. The test is how many common people are willing to die for that philosophy.

Wars exist because people are willing to die for their philosophy. Millions have died to sustain traditional American values. If push comes to shove, I expect that millions more are willing to die to preserve its traditional morality.

The problem with the new morality is that it holds that no one should be willing to die for their beliefs. It goes further. It teaches that war would not exist if everyone shared the new morality’s lack of devotion. It espouses this particular cynicism as a virtue. While that sounds reasonable, since wars exist because people are willing to die for their beliefs, there is a logical flaw. Just because one group believes that morality consists of not dying or, to put it more positively, not killing for your values, the vast majority of people on the planet do not and will never share that view. More to the point, a certain percentage of people will always believe that their self-interest trumps the self-interest of others and will, if not restrained, kill for their belief. So, what happens, in the end, to people who believe that nothing is worth dying for? They can look forward only to either death or enslavement by those who are willing to kill for their beliefs.

When I was young, Gandhi was a hero because of his devotion to non-violence. Now, I realize that there is something that I call the ``Gandhi fallacy.`` Non-violence works only against thoroughly Christian nations. It says more about the affect of Christianity upon state than it does the value of Gandhi’s ideas. All strategies arise from their environment. While Gandhi’s approach (and the morality of the new elites) ``works`` within a Christian environment, it does not work within a non-Christian environment. Gandhi would have found an early death if he had attempted his campaign in almost any less Christian country in history. Despite his own immense popularity, it didn’t work in India after its liberation from England where Gandhi wages a long campaign to stop Hindu’s and Moslems from separating and killing each other. Nor would it have worked against countries such as Nazi Germany, where Gandhi basically suggested that England should surrender and that the Jews should die gladly.