From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents Paperback – May 19, 2004

Gress is the best-read person I have ever read.
His main points appear to be that despite multicultural sensitivity not all outlooks are of equal value.
Gress discusses Communism which has already failed: it diagnosed the problem correctly but not the solution: totalitarianism.
He moves on to contemporary China and Islam. China hides behind an untrue Confucian face as a “spiritual” guide to enforced order and uniformity. Islam uses religion as an excuse for lack of individuality.
Both are doomed to fail: Hong Kong demonstrators say in the end we will triumph; Ukrainian demonstrators say we want to be a European democracy.
One thing we are all continuing to learn: how difficult it is to be a democracy: you must be able to lose an election and go on.
In ways NATO began with the Nuremberg trails: which many Germans and Japanese still say was victors’ justice. Not the Koreans; not the Israelis
Brad Benziger
BradBenziger@gmail.com
BradBenzigerCounseling.com

An amazing and excellent book. Enclycopedic at 750 pages, it took me six months to read and digest. Currently I'm re-reading it and appreciating it even more. It explores the grand narrative that brings the whole span of world history, philosophy science and economics together in a rational analysis. The whole book is probably too big and comprehensive to be be compulsory reading in schools and colleges but it should be. Later chapters would make good readings in themselves as booklets that stand alone. It proposes that the triad of democracy, liberty and capitalism are all necessary for modern prosperity and nations that compromise these entities condemn their citizens to a less than optimal future. Only by learning and promulgating the correct narrative can the forces of corruption, fascism, or totalitarianism be kept at bay.

I have never read such a good, comprehensive history of the idea of the West. Too often, historians and commentators have focussed on the classical and modern avatars of it, ignoring the thousand years of history known as the Middle Ages. Gress does not make that mistake: his wide reading and understanding makes his book one of the most satisfying and deep works of cultural history I have ever read. And it is most readable, what's more!

~From Plato To Nato : The Idea Of The West And Its Opponents~ tackles a most complex and ambigious subject, the Idea of the West. Danish author David Gress offers a sweeping overview and defense of the both the "Western Idea and a "Western Identity." The West has been under attack for last century by universalism, multiculturalism, nihilism, relativism and cultural Marxism. In the 1960s, the cultural Marxism of Gramsci's "long march," which seeks to take over Western institutions and transform their Western character into something altogether different, began to make an aggressive march forward. The West is beseiged from within. Gress chronicles the Idea of the West and its opponents in this remarkable intellectual and philosophical history. Though, the West is not really one big idea, but a culmination of ideas in flux. As Richard Weaver said, "ideas have consequences." What have been the consequences of these grand ideas in light of history? That is the focus of Gress' thesis.

Gress' chapter on Germanic Freedom and the Old Western Synthesis breaks with the New Liberal interpretation, which sees "an imaginary direct line connecting the modern West to the ancient Greeks... in which everything in between formed an orderly sequence culminating in liberal modernity. This version descended from the romantic and nineteenth-century cult of Greece and misunderstood both the Greeks and the West. It creating an idealized vision of Greece seen through the lens of a West defined as the heir of that idealized Greece." Historians like Will Durant play a role in shaping this myth. The intervening history is sometimes treated as the dark ages, an aberration or a period of disenlightenment. Two World Wars with Germany as the aggressor helped reinforce this progressive myth of Hellenic enlightenment. Gress challenges this absurd school of historical interpretation and shows how the West is a unique culmination of Roman, Christian and Germanic culture. Thus, modern Western concepts to freedom are very much indebted to Germanic influence more so than classical Greek influence. Two Germanic tribes, namely the Angles and Saxons, brought the Germanic culture and its concepts of freedom to the front. One lingering question emerges about the idea of the West? Is it merely an abstract proposition of human liberty or community? Is there something more substantive that defines the West like the interplay of its vibrant cultures with Christianity?

Gress offers an astute analysis of the cultural crisis beseiging the West. First, in the twentieth-century, the West was overwhelmed with totalitarian threats, which Gress covers in the chapter entitled 'The Totalitarian Trap.' Secondly, the West is under attack for elitism and exclusivism by post-modernism, nihilism and relativism. Thirdly, in the aftermath of that crisis, a new secular universalism has emerged which seeks to supplant the West and create an altogether new civilization. The final chapters 'Battle in the Heartland' and 'The Failure of Universalism' draw the book to a fitting conclusion defending the Idea of the West. Gress offers a break from social scientists like Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington that confuse Westernization and Universalization. "Universalism," notes Gress, "never solved its fundamental dilemma of being both a Western idea - the idea that Westernization was global and irresistible - and an anti-Western idea - the idea that Western identity had fortunately come to an end and been superseded by a lowest common denominator of communications technology, capital markets, free trade and doses of American entertainment."

It is clear that the West is under attack, but it is very much an attack from within. An appropriate response dictates the universalists within the intellectual nomenclature must be displaced by champions of the Western idea. The West can export "cultural capital," to borrow a concept from Thomas Sowell, but one is gravely mistaken to think it tenable or desirable to 'Westernize' the whole world. Moreover, efforts to supposedly 'Westernize' the world may really be an exercise to 'Dewesternize' the West. The 'West' will itself die in the process of trying to universalize itself and an altogether different civilization will emerge. The West will only die if good men fall into a spirit of resignation and declare it inevitable.

Gress gives amazing clarity at discussing history, philosophy and the developments in the West. He defends the West with a trenchant pen. This is an erudite piece of scholarship. I also recommend Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order.