Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western
Masochism
By Pascal
Bruckner
(Princeton University Press, 256 pages, $26.95)
The problem with us rugged individualists is we are hard
ones for collective guilt. Maybe our forefathers did some pretty
awful things — who hasn’t? — but that’s between them and their
gods. All we ask is you leave us out of it. We may have inherited
their genes, but not their sins. And certainly not their money —
not that mine had any.
America, being the land of rugged individualists, is an
especially irksome place to the eternally guilt-ridden European.
Because we stubbornly refuse to sackcloth and ashes, we can never
experience the “comfort of redemption.” Not a problem. We’ll get
by with the comfort of beer and television.
This explains why there is so much anti-Americanism “over
there.” The haters hate us because their ancestors produced
fascism, communism, genocide, slavery and imperialism and they
feel like hell about it. Then they see us happily going about our
business and they demand we stop acting so innocent and smug.
They throw the Trail of Tears up to us. Jim Crow. McCarthyism. We
remind them that we saved their butts in two world wars, and they
hate us even more. They get rankled when we speak up (or worse,
do something) about genocide and human rights in the lands of the
oppressed, when, as every “guilt peddler” knows, we should be
flagellating ourselves and seeking repentance.
Since the West has pleaded guilty to all charges and then
some, we naturally cannot be trusted to do the right thing, or
even know what the right thing is. That was Germany’s excuse to
stand idly by during the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and it will
be Germany’s excuse for the next hundred years. “Our past crimes
command us to keep our mouths closed,” writes novelist Pascal
Bruckner in his engaging new book-length essay. We dare not speak
out lest we open ourselves to charges of hypocrisy by every
tin-pot dictator or terrorist leader. How dare we condemn bin
Laden when Custer massacred the Sioux? Oh, wait, the Sioux
massacred Custer. You get the point.
This kind of fuzzy thinking is freely on tap in Western
Europe and in the current White House. “From existentialism to
deconstructionism, all of modern thought can be reduced to a
mechanical denunciation of the West, emphasizing the latter’s
hypocrisy, violence and abomination,” Bruckner writes. It was a
conceit that reached its peak in 2001 when so many Western
intellectuals praised the Twin Tower attacks as America’s
comeuppance, when the oppressed finally struck back.
This faux remorse is actually a ragged disguise masking
feelings of moral superiority. We have become our parents and the
rest of the developing world is our naughty kids whose misdeeds
can be blamed on their parents’ sins (colonialism and racism). No
wonder their development remains stunted.
Our historical guilt has now gone to such absurd extremes
that it threatens basic liberties like free speech. In one
example, Bruckner argues our unwillingness to offend Islam means
the death of religious satire. At least religious satire of
Islam. (Though I suspect episodes like Comedy Central’s censoring
of South Park was an instance of fear and cowardice, not
political correctness.)
THIS COLLECTIVE historical guilt is puerile and
destructive, Bruckner writes. Our good deeds vastly outweigh our
bad. “There is no doubt that Europe has given birth to monsters,
but at the same time it has given birth to theories that make it
possible to understand and destroy these monsters.” No culture
has been without sin, therefore none of us should be pointing
fingers or throwing stones. But if, god forbid, somebody does
start throwing stones — or bombs — some one needs to have the
moral courage to put an end to it.
Europeans were once as proud of their heroes and traditions
as Americans. Today they are uncomfortable honoring anyone save
Gandhi or Mandela. But the West has a lot to celebrate, writes
Bruckner, everything that falls under the general heading of
Western Civilization: Democracy, the rule of law, human rights
and equality, for starters.
Every once in a while I like to pick up a book heavy with
ideas. Often, with French philosophers, the going is rough and
seldom worth the effort. Most like to conceal their lack of ideas
amidst a jungle of vapid and opaque prose. Bruckner’s Essay
on Western Masochism is, happily, the exception. He is a
true individualist and his prose is clear and consequential, and
you don’t have to be a masochist to read him.
