So, Silvio Berlusconi has claimed "superiority" for Western "civilisation". A barbarously bullish exemplar of much that is most abject about the "civilisation" he lionises and represents, Berlusconi has rightly been condemned for his claim and has given a somewhat half-hearted apology, yet it is naive to believe that his opinions are not widely held throughout the Christian and secular worlds. Sure, since the Holocaust of the second World War, scepticism about Western "civilisation" has grown but, at heart, a majority of Westerners, though shrewd enough not to say so, almost certainly share Berlusconi's sentiments.
In terms of power and technology, the West is undeniably best. Likewise, in terms of material efficiency - feeding, sheltering, clothing - principally for its own members. These are not minor achievements and cannot be cursorily dismissed. But success has a shadow side (as even the arch-cheerleader for British imperialism, Rudyard Kipling, understood with his injunction to treat both triumph and disaster as "impostors"). Indeed, in such a context, the notion that it is our failures which civilise us, gains relevance and vigour.
Often it is our failures which civilise us, which is not to say that civilisation is simply built on failure but is built on how individuals, societies and cultures react to and cope with inevitable setbacks. In that sense then, the metaphorical acid test of any civilisation lies not in its technical capability but in the resilience and quality of the morality it develops in response to challenges. Comparing moralities is, of course, an ethical minefield - an arguably impossible task, the complexities of which have promoted hand-wringing relativism as an answer to moral disagreements between individuals, societies and cultures.
No surprise then that, for relativists, morality is always about context - to many people, "right" means "right" for a given person, society or culture.
Even that, of course, though it is an improvement on exclusively dictatorial "morality", doesn't answer the problem and, at its worst, is evasive. The idea that it is always wrong for people in one culture to condemn or interfere with another doesn't quite cut the mustard. How about, for instance, human sacrifice, female genital mutilation, fundamentalist Islam's treatment of women? Do you just shrug your shoulders, say it's no business of yours and let them get on with it? It's not right for us but it must, by definition, be right for them if that is their "culture". Are there no universal values to bind us even on a species level?
There are many, well-known conundrums which address the difficulties. Say you were a British governor in India during the time of the Raj. Should you try to prevent Suti burial - widows sacrificing themselves upon the deaths of their husbands - or do you refuse to interfere? A common contemporary answer is to argue that you ought not have been there in the first place. Fair enough. But just denouncing imperialism in principle still doesn't answer the problem.
If you are burgling somebody's house and you come across the owner about to commit a murder, is there no moral obligation to try to stop a crime you judge to be worse than your own before you make off with the loot in your sack? Sure, it's hypothetical and, as such, irritating to many people, but is it not a microcosm of the moral dilemma which currently grips worthwhile Western "civilisation", whatever about its ignorant Berlusconian rantings?
If you accept that the wealthy world burgles - indeed ravages - the poor world, and that inevitably within both there is good and bad (after all, parts of the wealthy world help the poor one and parts of the poor world ravage other parts of it, too), then responding to the slaughter in the US is morally complex. Few in the West will attempt to defend the "integrity" of the Taliban, though "integrity", based on Islamic scripture, is the Taliban's paramount claim to morality. To us, such claims are obscene - even more obscene than the claims of Berlusconi - and it is difficult to credit that such extreme fundamentalists can actually believe their own dope.
Presumably, some do and some don't. If they are incapable of doubt, then they are dangerously fanatical. Yet if we are capable of doubt, we can be described as "naive fools", "fifth columnists", "fellow-travellers" and worse. What kind of morality is in play here? A Berlusconian kind, surely, for you can fairly apply different standards only to different categories.
It is reasonable to argue that nobody should have to tolerate the intolerance of the utterly sectarian Taliban. That being so, why should we have to tolerate the jihad on free speech, which is being conducted by the more intolerant forces of Western "civilisation"? Because that's free speech, too? OK. But free speech doesn't include the right to abuse the right to free speech by fomenting racism. Consider the Clinton-baiter Ann Coulter, author of High Crimes and Misdemeanours: The Case Against Bill Clinton, writing in Jewish World Review on September 28th.
"Not all Muslims may be 'may be' - how kind! terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims - at least all terrorists capable of assembling a murderous plot against America that leaves 7,000 people dead in under two hours.
"How are we to distinguish between peaceful Muslims and the fanatical, homicidal Muslims about to murder thousands of our fellow citizens? Are the good Muslims the ones who lead quiet lives, pray a lot and obey the law? So did the architects of Bloody Tuesday's mass murder."
Coulter's prescription is that all Muslim non-citizens should be deported unless they "agree to spy on the millions of Muslim citizens unaffected by the deportation order" or are "sponsored" by a US senator.
In another rant, she argues that it is "completely useless" to search her bags at the airport because there has not been a "rash of hijackings by Connecticut WASP girls". Dear, oh dear! Among her other suggestions is for the US to invade the countries in which people cheered the attacks, "kill their leaders and convert them presumably the people not the dead leaders to Christianity". There's the "civilisation" of one Connecticut WASP girl (mind you, Coulter's a mature-looking "girl", but no matter). What can you say?
Attacked America cannot and ought not be expected to do nothing, but if it uses a brutality greater than the brutality it is trying to eliminate, what then? Look at your TV screens and you'll see aircraft-carriers, nuclear submarines, fighter aircraft, bombers, soldiers and an array of high-tech weapons. You'll also see lines of Afghan refugees, some with donkeys, others walking barefoot towards Pakistan, and even starving children, crawling because they are too weak to walk.
Not only thousands of miles but centuries seem to separate the US from Afghanistan. In short, you see awesome technology on one side and appalling deprivation on the other. How technology (not just the various communications technologies) affects our sense of morality is an intricate matter. But if its very existence promotes the idea that its possessors automatically have a superior civilisation, we're in trouble. Might as well say that the bloke driving a Mercedes is morally superior to the fella riding a bike.
We know that, in politics, both right and left have mixed records which include crimes against humanity. We know the same is true of many religions, cultures and civilisations, too. No doubt Islam has its Berlusconis and Coulters who degrade the civilisations they claim to represent. Then again, to see groups of people as "civilisations" is ultimately a selective act, a way of ordering and managing history. Religions, of course, offer clearly distinct groupings, but there's more to civilisations than religion . . . or, for that matter, technology.
Perhaps what's most worrying about Berlusconi's remarks is not just that he made them, but that, as one of the wealthiest media moguls in the world, he controls technologies which can disseminate his crassness.
Muslims, Allah knows, have their own problems at present. But with boors like Berlusconi controlling so much media, Western "civilisation", however you define it, clearly has problems too. It's not just the dumbing down of typical Berlusconi TV that's the great problem - it's that dumbness can rise up to such influence. At any rate, that seems to me to be the moral of a deplorable story.