| by Paul Craig
Roberts
( December 24,
2012, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) Christmas is a time of traditions. If
you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are
sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient
roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only one in five American families
put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the
season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas
tree on the White House lawn.
 |
Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life. Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.
Gifts are
another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings
who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than
they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization
of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas
sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember
others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.
The decorations
and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that
has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.
In our culture the
individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot
down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on
injustice.
This empowerment
of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual
a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical
government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the
products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God
so values the individual's soul that he sent his son to die so we might live.
By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.
Formerly only
those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity
have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair
play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create
commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.
The result was a
land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our
values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a
diverse people who became one.
In recent
decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the
individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement
are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or
respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and
connect us to our culture are being silenced by "political
correctness" and "the war on terror."
Prayer has been
driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life.
Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political
ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged
practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due
process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.
Diversity at
home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture
and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the
world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A
person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day
after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law
-- except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.
All Americans
have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers
in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and
protected the weak. Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the
horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions
of people were exterminated in the 20th century by National Socialists in
Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members
of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political
authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of
Muslims in seven countries have already been murdered and millions displaced,
because their religion does not submit to Washington's hegemony.
Power that is
secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and
religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of
his dictatorship as "unlimited power, resting directly on force, not
limited by anything." Washington's
drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely
on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.
Christianity's
emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and
Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration
of Christ's birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls
and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding
onto even by atheists.
As we enter into
2013, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving,
hangs in the balance. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West
sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls,
or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring
head?
Paul Craig
Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of
the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous university appointments and is
Contributing Editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal.
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