What we call Western democracy is not the best possible society nor even a suitable model for mankind, argues Desmond Fennell
Gone are the days when humane Europeans explored other civilisations - Ottoman Turkey, Arabia, Persia, Japan, China - and described their strange, non-Western ways with respect and occasionally wonder. Even when there was an assumption that European civilisation was the best, Europe took for granted and respected the cultural pluralism of mankind.
Now Europe has succumbed to the new intolerance issuing from the USA that proposes the package called "Western democracy" as the only right way for people to live. In the public voice of the West, respect for diversity has been replaced by a constant patronising and carping criticism of societies that diverge from that Western "norm" in their political system, laws or customs. In particular, this denigration of diversity points its finger at Muslim nations.
In Ireland, "live and let live" - if the "different other" is not hostile or oppressive - has long been part of our culture. But here, too, our mass media and political class have fallen into line with the new cultural fundamentalism of the America-led West; and many educated people take their lead from them.
While this is likely to remain the case, it is important, I believe, to point out two things. The notion that "Western democracy" is the best possible society and therefore an appropriate model for mankind is a delusion. Insofar, moreover, as it is believed in Ireland, it will have negative consequences for the quality of our life in the years ahead.
Superficially, "Western democracy" is advertised as a system having parliamentary elections, freedom of expression, recognition of "human rights", equality before the law, etc. But that is not a full account of what a "Western democracy" is in practice, and therefore not what the non-Western world perceives it to be.
Leave aside that, for much of that world, "Western democracy" means arrogance towards it, contempt for its civilisations, economic and military imperialism, and bombers enforcing Western interests from three miles up in the sky. Consider the day-to-day actuality of a "Western democracy".
The Republic of Ireland is a not untypical example. It is a society so constituted that a number of positive and negative consequences follow. People vote every few years in parliamentary elections. The rights called "human" are enshrined in law and upheld by the police and the courts. Murders of every kind have been increasing, but in particular those of children by their parents.
Referendums are held on major issues. Real pluralism among political parties and media organs is a memory. In matters of public policy, the parties function as a single party with a number of factions. On most issues, large and small, the media teach and preach in unison. The State, the mass media and the civil law largely ignore God and His law.
Men and women have equal legal rights. Because of threatening violence, the spaces in which women and children can safely move have been decreasing. Shopping malls are crowded at weekends with people who have money to buy the goods on offer. More and more girls who have engaged in reckless sex are getting abortions.
Access of the poor to good healthcare is improving. Many teenagers blow their minds with drugs and practise binge-drinking. Young men killing themselves has become a countrywide epidemic. Public tribunals investigate and expose political corruption.
That, more or less, is what a Western democracy amounts to in practice. It is the "package" of features that follows from how our society is at present constituted. More precisely, since many of the features are of recent origin, it is the package that follows from how our society has come to be taught and organised during the past 20 or 30 years.
Obviously, while it has much to be said for it, it is not the "best possible" kind of society or one that could seriously be offered as a model, say, to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, China or Japan. Leave aside that it is obviously a society in which many young people suffer from desperation and find life senseless; it has too much violence and deliberate killing - of self, of others, and even of the unborn - to be considered exemplary.
Singly, of course, these ills are lamented, and heads scratched for what to do about them, singly. But that the ills, along with the good things, flow from how the society as a whole is constituted - that insight is barred by the ruling delusion. It would mean that the problem lies in the general set-up, that the society could be taught and organised better than it is, so that at least the desperation, violence and killing might be progressively reduced.
But that thought cannot be admitted by the ruling belief that, because the Republic of Ireland is a "Western democracy", it is a society that cannot be better constituted! That smug delusion blocks any attempt to discover what is faulty in its make-up.
Desmond Fennell's latest book is an autobiographical memoir, The Turning Point: My Sweden Year and After.