New Hope in the Culture Wars

The Culture of Freedom
by Kevin Donnelly
Institute of Public Affairs, 2016, 114 pages, $9.95
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Kevin Donnelly’s new book, The Culture of Freedom, represents a defiant shot fired in Australia’s “culture wars” and it comes at an important time in this struggle. It also helps to define a new phase in this epic battle of ideas.

The “culture wars” in Australia involve a great many intellectuals and academics on the politically correct Left who stand resolutely against their few intrepid challengers on the Right. In this battle of ideas, the vastly better-resourced, strategically well-placed and immensely more numerous politically correct Left, which sees itself as both indisputably virtuous and intellectually sophisticated, seeks to preserve and extend its ideological control over Australian cultural and educational life as well as promote its policies for the transformation of society according to its beliefs. In this struggle, those who defend the politically correct Left establishment risk very little, while those who challenge it risk a great deal, possibly their careers and reputations, since the standard approach of the politically correct Left establishment is to deny those who challenge them access to decent careers or to deny them opportunities for upward social mobility or to vilify them until they are driven out of the public arena entirely.

Traditionally, the culture wars have involved a poorly-resourced, numerically small, intrepid few among the intellectual and academic Right seeking to call to account those on the Left whom it sees as deceptively biased or factually at fault, for example when writing history, and also to promote intellectual freedom, such as greater freedom of speech. But in recent years the terrain on which the culture wars are fought and the language by which they are defined have widened. The culture wars are increasingly seen by many of those involved as a struggle to protect and preserve Western civilisation from its formidable detractors.

The liberal and conservative think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs recognised that the culture wars had widened. So had Dr Kevin Donnelly, who has campaigned in the area of education for greater intellectual freedom and against the disturbing decline in standards in Australian schools. It is therefore understandable that the Institute of Public Affairs has combined with Dr Donnelly to produce a book that defines and defends Western civilisation and identifies what threatens it.

In this book, Western civilisation is presented as besieged from within and from without. It is besieged from within by intellectuals and academics who preach that while the West claims to be civilised and promote freedom it is actually racist, exploitative, oppressive, unjust and therefore not worth defending, and deserves either radical transformation or defeat. It is besieged from without by the Islamic fundamentalist jihadism expressed in the brutality of the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and militias. This is the ground where, in The Culture of Freedom, Dr Donnelly makes his stand.

Dr Donnelly begins by pointing out something that he probably believes he should not need to say, and would not have to say if Western civilisation were not under siege. He reminds us all that Western civilisation is unique, special and valuable and it has been extremely successful. It has produced rich cultural gifts, a legacy of great art, architecture, music and literature. Its political institutions, legal systems, social customs and conventions have produced societies that provide the highest standards of living in every sense—material, spiritual and aesthetic—a quality of life in the twenty-first century that would have been beyond the imagination of people a century ago. Its commerce, science, technology and medicine have not just benefited those who reside in Western nations but have also helped eradicate diseases and hunger for many who live elsewhere. He praises both the Christian tradition and secularism for contributing to the ethos of a civilisation that values individual liberty, toleration, social justice and the sanctity of human life.

He also praises its approach to seeking truth through reason, and through the application of empiricism and the modern scientific method, which applies systematic observation and experiment to gather data to test or revise ideas about the nature of things. This allows for enormous innovation and a phenomenal expansion of organised knowledge. It is a civilisation worth promoting and defending.

So what went wrong?

Rapidly rising during the 1960s, when it was known as the New Left and the hippie counter-culture, the politically correct Left has in a few decades achieved phenomenal success in the Western world. In Australia it has achieved near-domination of the mainstream media, education system and academia, and almost total domination of the arts and entertainment industry. Professing concern for designated “victim” groups, it became hostile to the status quo, preaching radical reform or revolution, romanticising political leaders like Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara.

The dimension of this social and intellectual movement that Dr Donnelly singles out for his severest criticism is its academic and philosophical dimension: postmodernism. What was once known as Marxist theory morphed into neo-Marxism, which then morphed into “critical theory” which then morphed into postmodernism.

According to the new orthodoxy of postmodernism, the Western literary canon was deconstructed to demonstrate what were claimed to be its underlying unjust power relationships along the lines of race, ethnicity, class and gender. Traditional academic subjects and disciplines, such as History, were denounced or transformed to promote political correctness by featuring themes such as patriarchy, inequality or racism. In academic inquiry, empiricism was often sidelined in preference to delving into the texts of postmodern theorists. Frequently, the value of reason as a path to truth was dismissed, and a pervasive relativism prevailed where, for example, Western science was treated as only one form of the many sciences of the world.

In the school curricula, political correctness is imposed and great events in the development of Western civilisation are downplayed or ignored, such as the signing of Magna Carta. The literary canon is barely studied, in favour of contemporary Australian literature that routinely promotes the values of political correctness. In these texts, themes like racism, patriarchy and socio-economic inequality are often given optimum treatment.

It is not surprising that there are students who pass through secondary school and on to university Arts and Humanities faculties who eventually see their Western civilisation as contemptible and not as something to value or defend.

So where to now?

The politics of political correctness may be reaching its high-water mark. Most of the demands of the politically correct Left that can be seen as fair or reasonable have been achieved, such as the rejection of racism in public life or the achievement of equal opportunity for women in education and employment. These campaigns won supporters on both Left and Right.

But with so many of the campaigns of the politically correct Left having been won, those radicals who want to push the agenda much further can now appear extreme, bizarre and ridiculous. The official banning of the use of certain words at several Australian universities, and the introduction of “trigger warnings” to staff and students to protect designated “victim” groups from potentially upsetting material encountered in their studies, seem Orwellian and profoundly disturbing to many reasonable people. Political correctness is losing the middle ground, and the catch-cry of “political correctness gone too far” has become common, even among some left-wing commentators.

Meanwhile, the popular vote that saw the United Kingdom decide to leave the European Union dealt a blow to the progress of the internationalism favoured by the politically correct Left and saw a reassertion of the principle of national sovereignty. In the US the businessman Donald Trump openly campaigned against political correctness, to defy the majority of the media and many in his own Republican Party to win the Presidency.

As the policies of the politically correct Left lose the support of sensible and decent voters who once gave them supremacy in many dimensions of public life, they will face increasing trouble politically and their assault of Western civilisation may be compromised. Many on the Left and Right share an appreciation of reason and values such as free speech, and regard social reform as a means of improving Western civilisation rather than undermining it.

Another source of optimism is the internet. It is liberating and it may help save the best of Western civilisation against its opponents and detractors in the education system. A vast amount of knowledge is only a few mouse clicks away. On the internet, you can read the classics of the Western literary canon if you have been denied them by school curricula. You can also readily find material to counter the politically correct indoctrination in schools. Students forced by their teachers to accept as fact the “Stolen Generations” thesis presented to them in class in the film Rabbit-Proof Fence can find online Keith Windschuttle’s systematic rebuttal “Holes in the Rabbit-Proof Fence”. And it is in the thrill that comes from the revelation of the empirical truth over ideologically-driven falsehood that hope can be found.

Yes, Dr Donnelly is right, Western civilisation is under threat. But there is hope. Yet he believes that the rescue will be difficult. He declares that the “stranglehold” of the politically correct Left on the academic institutions and school curricula has to be broken if there is to be any “renewal or reformation”.