It was in June of 2013. I had boarded a Concord
bus for the two hour ride from Logan International Airport
in Boston to the bus station in Portland , Maine Middle
East . Unlike the women, the men were dressed in contemporary western
style. At this point there were only a couple of seats available, and as they
were standing in the middle of the aisle the mother told her husband to sit in
a nearby seat while directing her son to sit in the last available spot at the
back of the bus. She, her daughter, and two other passengers were left
standing.
The bus moved out and left the terminal. I was sitting
behind these people waiting for all the passengers to settle in and trying to
decide what to do. The girl next to me looked like she was on the verge of
saying something and getting up at any moment to offer up her seat - at least that
was my impression – and I braced myself to stop her and offer my seat instead.
What did it matter that I could easily be this girl’s father? Chivalry is not
dead: at least not in my heart and not, I believe, to any man who is a man of
character. To hell with equality of the sexes – at least in this regard – a man
must be a gentleman. So here I am, sitting and feeling a bit guilty while
watching the slightly bowed, middle-aged, foreign woman holding onto the back
of the seats with her well-worn working hands while the bus picks up speed.
Then I started to get mad. Why should I give up my seat to accommodate this
woman when the own males in her family would not do so? At about that time the
bus driver asked why people were still standing and, after being told, pulled
over and stopped the bus, moved his items from the seat directly behind him,
and had the women sit there. The other two people, both men, found perches on
the stairs by the driver: probably illegal, but who cares? Certainly none of
us.
The driver might have managed to get us all sitting, but my
mind still dwelled upon the preceding several minutes and what I perceived as a
clash of cultures. What American family would have their women stand for
potentially two hours on a bus while they sat? Even if the men were planning on
swapping out with the women at some point in time – which I highly doubted –
what American man would not be the initial ones to stand? It’s one thing if
children are involved, but another if the children are in their 20’s or 30’s. I
believe any typical American family that did this would be looked at with
contempt by most Americans citizens... and most of the people on the bus.
People might not say anything, but they would think the male family members
were scum. Interestingly, the matriarch of this family seemed to be the one in
charge of this situation. The males didn’t just take the seats: they were told
to and obeyed without a word.
We are told that multiculturalism is good. The President of
the United States
has said that our diversity makes us strong. Bull crap. Unity makes societies
strong. There have always been relatively minor differences among similar
people, but fundamental differences lead to deep fractures which in turn
lead to failed states. It is only through shared cultural and religious bonds
that unite a people – for good or bad. Nationalism can manifest itself in ugly
and destructive ways when a people are united by their history, culture, or language
and think they are superior to others, but it can also provide for a united
front against aggression. Significant cultural and religious diversity, on the
other hand, will always make societies more vulnerable. Is Canada stronger
because of its English/French dualist identity? Perhaps we should ask the
people of Quebec who occasionally threaten to
secede from Canada .
How about Belgium
with its diversity of Flemish, French, and German speakers? A year without a
government due to their differences answers that question. Do the Coptic
Christians in Egypt ,
who still speak the language of Christ (Aramaic) and predate the Muslim
majority, feel secure knowing their country is stronger because of religious
diversity? Ask them this question when another one of their churches or schools
has been burned to the ground. The list goes on and on. As Pat Buchanan in Suicide of a Superpower points out,
globalization isn’t causing the people of the world to come together and become
more united: on the contrary, the opposite may be true and people may be more
divided than ever. Alexis de Tocqueville in his book Democracy in America, is very clear about liberty and unity when he
visited the United States
in 1831. Whereas a nation can only use its laws to try to hold together a
multiethnic, multireligious, and multicultural society, Tocqueville says that “American
laws are thus good, and one must grant them a great share in the success that
democratic government achieve in America, but I do not think that they are its
principal cause….I see reason to believe that they exercise less influence on
it than the mores.” And “I am convinced that the happiest situation and the
best laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter
draw advantage even from the most unfavorable situations and the worst laws.
The importance of mores is a universal truth to which study and experience constantly
lead back. It seems to me that it is set in my mind as a central point; I
perceive that is where all my ideas end up.” By mores, Tocqueville means “the whole body of intellectual and moral
dispositions that men bring into the state of society.” Do all men, under all
cultures and creeds, bring the same dispositions into the state of society? Of
course not. Our mores are shaped by our faith and the societies we are raised
in. So why would the mores of Anglo-Americans – and he was only speaking of
Americans of European decent - be shared so widely among themselves? Because, as
Tocqueville explains, “Almost all of the men who inhabit the territory of the United States
spring from the same stock. They speak the same language, pray to God in the
same way, are subject to the same material causes, and obey the same laws.”
Therefore, long before America ’s terribly Civil War,
Tocqueville recognized what our leaders today can not grasp: a nation can not
be strong if they are significantly divided in matters of language, religion,
and culture. It doesn’t mean that those that have these traits in common are
strong nations, for many are not, but is does mean that in the long run
seriously divided countries will fail. American society needs to focus on
defining and accentuating the mores that made us a great nation, especially as
they pertain to traditionally recognized values and beliefs, as opposed to
celebrating or encouraging mores introduced into our society that may be
politically popular but conflict with our long-established ones that created
the backbone of this nation.
Tocqueville was very concerned about the tyranny of the
majority, and in writing about this topic it has made me wonder if a society’s
minorities are often meant to be the conscience of the majority. In a booklet
produced by Alliance Defending Freedom called Faith & Justice, attorney
Nina Shea, in discussing religious freedom, had this to say: “Often,
governments want to shore up their own legitimacy with the majority of their
people – or with their ideology. They see cultural pluralism and diversity as a
threat, because they want to impose orthodoxy – their orthodoxy – on their nation, and they want complete
conformity of thought. In the Muslim world, in particular, you see governments
trying to scapegoat Christians, and strengthen their own religious credentials
in the process. Political Islam has been a catastrophe for religious freedom.
It has legs: it’s on the move, on the rise, and incredibly repressive and
violent. That’s our biggest challenge.”
Personally I do not believe political Islam is our greatest
challenge: I believe radical secularism – atheistic secularism without
constraints - is the greatest challenge facing the United States and the
Western world today and the collective shrug, indifference, and silence of its
leaders to the decimation of the Middle East’s Christian populations – from 20%
several years ago to 4% today - is a tragedy in and of itself. In an article
titled On Creative Minorities
(adapted from a lecture) Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, formerly the Chief Rabbi of the
Commonwealth of Great Britain, sums it up this way in First Things magazine:
“What has come to be called the Judeo-Christian ethic is under sustained
assault from two quite different directions: from those who would eliminate
religion altogether, and from those who seek to create a universal theocratic
state that is neither Christian nor Jewish.” He explains: “Three phenomena cry
out for attention. First is the religious equivalent of ethnic cleansing
currently being carried out against Christians throughout much of the Middle
East and parts of Africa .” Rabbi Sacks gives a
number of examples before explaining that the second “is the return of
anti-Semitism to many parts of the world today…”, and the “Third concerns the
West itself, which has already gone far down the road of abandoning the Judeo-Christian
principles of the sanctity of life and the sacred covenant of marriage. Instead
it places its faith in a series of institutions, none of which can bear the
weight of moral guidance: science, technology, the state, the market, and
evolutionary biology.”
Atheistic secularism without the constraints of moral
guidance provided by the clear religious mores of a faith built upon justice
and equality for believers and
non-believers (which Christianity fulfills), will naturally devolve into chaos:
and I believe that is what we are witnessing in the United States today. It is a cancer
that is eating out the heart and mind of America . When the heart is sick it
has no strength to properly defend its friends or – in the long run – itself; and
when the mind is sick it can’t distinguish between right and wrong, justice and
injustice, and sometimes attacks the good in thinking it is the evil. Political
Islam can, once again, be kept within boundaries if the West beats back the
ravaging cancer of unbridled secularism, but, unfortunately, the prospect of
the West regaining some semblance of its moral strength in the near future
looks dim.
On the bus ride to Maine I wasn’t, of course, thinking of
Alexis de Tocqueville and his fascinating insights into Jacksonian America, or
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks concerns about the marginalization of the Jewish and
Christian people, or the march of political Islam, or the cancer of unrestrained
secularism, but I was thinking of that family whose cultural heritage hailed from
a distant land. And I thought that if the bent and weathered woman holding onto
the back of the seat had been my mother or wife and told me to take an empty
seat that I would have firmly refused and made sure that she instead sat down.
And you would have too: because that is what our traditional mores have handed
down to us from our Judeo-Christian heritage and how we have integrated these
beliefs and habits into our daily lives. And if you didn’t – and are an able-bodied
man - I might not say anything, but I would think you were scum.
