Another liberal victory: defining Western civilization as secular libertinism

In the recent thread at View from the Right in which the Candian leftist Ken Hechtman expounds upon his vision for the world, Hechtman stated his belief that a soap opera was going to "Westernize" the Middle East. This sentiment was popular shortly after September 11th, 2001, when prominent leftists and neoconservatives began to advocate what might be called the "Britney Spears" strategy for combating terrorism: bombard 'em with the MTV culture. At the same time, "public health" enforcers often speak of the problems with a "Western" diet, or claim that various non-Western peoples, previously healthy, have developed health problems after being introduced to a "Western" diet. At a recent visit with my father, who was a Reagan voter in the 80s but has more recently become a liberal, I remarked that the North Koreans could alleviate their famine and other problems by abandoning Communism and adopting a freer economy as South Korea has done, and he said that that's what brought down the Soviet Union: increasing "Western" influence with our movies, TV shows, pop music, fashions, etc.

What is interesting about this is that when such people use the word "Western," they don't mean traditional Western civilization. They don't think that soap operas are going to spark a wave of Middle Eastern interest in Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Shakespeare. They don't mean that African tribes started developing atherosclerosis and heart disease after they began to eat roast chicken and peas. Instead, they're referring to the corrupt, degraded, mass-produced popular culture that has taken hold of Western countries. They're referring to the television shows and movies that glorify sexual promiscuity, the acceptance of cohabitation and homosexuality and bastardy, the interest in getting the latest upgrade to one's home theater system rather than in living rightly, the ubiquitous fast food and junk food with their high-calorie but otherwise low-nutrient French fries and sodas.

Of course, it's insulting to traditional Western civilization to have these things co-opt the "Western" label. Not only are they unrelated to the traditional West, they are positively antagonistic to traditional Western values. And of course, it's a victory for the left to have the term used this way, because it makes it that much harder to advocate for the traditional West when the name "Western" now means something else. But there's a second, often overlooked point in this discussion: why should these phenomena be considered Western? There's nothing distinctly Western about them; debauchery, materialism, and junk food exist the world over. Western civilization did not invent them, and there is no historical continuity between them and the traditional West; Shakespeare did not give birth to The Sopranos, nor Mozart to Britney Spears. One might say that these phenomena first emerged as society-wide phenomena in Western countries, but that is more a function of Western countries being uniquely suited to produce the wealth necessary to support them. Today, they certainly exist anywhere such wealth exists, and take on their own decidedly non-Western cultural flavors: witness the burgeoning Hong Kong pop music scene, for instance. So why should they be called Western, any more than strong family ties or a sense of social obligation should be called "Eastern?"

They shouldn't. Let's stop giving the cultural left ammunition, and make sure we don't participate in their defining everything that's corrupt about our society at present as characteristic of our civilization.

Fast food is the new tobacco: the next advance of the nanny state

Have you ever heard anyone joke, "what a great country America is! Even our poor people are fat!" Well, the left has plans to change that. It was only a few short months ago that I heard a medical school classmate, as I've mentioned before, advocate taxing fatty foods to encourage those who tend to eat such foods to eat more healthfully. Now the discussion has gone national. In an article at Slate, William Saletan describes an ordinance passed by the Los Angeles City Council prohibiting construction of new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area inhabited by 500,000 low-income people. Saletan seems to be against it, but on close reading his reaction is basically the "shock" that liberals are always evincing to phenomena they should have been able to predict:

We're not talking anymore about preaching diet and exercise, disclosing calorie counts, or restricting sodas in schools. We're talking about banning the sale of food to adults. Treating French fries like cigarettes or liquor. I didn't think this would happen in the United States anytime soon. I was wrong.

Well, why didn't you think it would happen in the United States? Look at what's happened with smoking. The left has already virtually won that war; why shouldn't they turn to unhealthy food next? And notice that by Saletan's own description, we're not talking about treating French fries like cigarettes or liquor, we're talking about treating them more severely than cigarettes and liquor, which are freely available for purchase by adults.

Saletan does make a good point in the article. Among those who think that the obese poor need more governmental help with their culinary choices, it is often said that poor people in urban environments have no choice but to eat fast food, since there are no supermarkets in their neighborhoods because of high crime and economic deprivation. Saletan thinks that's bogus:

And the helplessness attributed to poor people is exaggerated. "You try to get a salad within 20 minutes of our location; it's virtually impossible," says the Community Coalition's executive director. Really? The coalition's headquarters is at 8101 S. Vermont Ave. A quick Google search shows, among other outlets, a Jack-in-the-Box six blocks away. They have salads. Not the world's greatest salads, but not as bad as a government that tells you whose salad you can eat.

I tend to agree with this. During the first year of medical school, we were all forced to do a public service project, and one group decided to examine nutrition in poor areas of the city. They claimed that in one area, for blocks and blocks in every direction, there was no store selling fresh produce. Despite such claims, I find it hard to believe that the denizens of the "inner cities" can't find healthy food. Even if they don't have cars, they have public transportation. Most of them do work, meaning they are probably leaving their neighborhoods daily for somewhat more thriving ones. Yet the left accepts the "poor people don't have stores selling healthy food accessible to them" idea as gospel, and will not consider that it might not be true, using it to shut down debate when one suggests that we shouldn't regulate fast food.

In any case, while there's nothing morally wrong with tobacco, it's not a necessity of life and there's no question that chronic smoking is foolish. Yet eating is a basic necessity, and as I pointed out above, the left wants to treat it more strictly than tobacco. Perhaps it will soon be time to formulate a new law. Something along the lines of: in liberal society, the more natural and normal an activity, the more it will be constrained and regulated according to what the elite deems best. I don't think we have sufficient examples of this yet, but be on the lookout for more.