Obama Presidency Marks End of Western Civilization: Argumenty i Facty, Russia

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From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Barack Obama

Does the election of Barack Obama as the 44th

president of the United States mark the end

of Protestant ethic as the guiding principle

of American society and of Western civilization

itself? Victor Trostnikov lays out his case below.

Argumenty i Facty, Russia

Obama Presidency Marks End of Western Civilization

"What kind of person Obama is, we don’t know. Americans don’t know either. But the biracial Obama is associated with the kind, soft, personable Uncle Tom. And the people chose to make the White House his cabin, having exiled Anglo-Saxons from it for making such an incredible mess. What will emerge in place of Western civilization is not yet known. But it's obvious that this civilization, in its current form, came to an end in 2008. Like the Roman Republic, the West is clinging to life, and in doing so may make an even greater mess."

By Victor Trostnikov

Translated By Yekaterina Blinova

January 21, 2009

Argumenty i Facty - Russia - Original Article (Russian)

It seems that you and I are living at a turning point in world history. The only time in the known past to compare it with is the first century B.C. - the fateful hours, as Tyutchev put it in his poem Cicero .

Amid internal strife and clinging to life, Republican Rome left history's stage, and with it the entire ancient world. In its place an empire was about to emerge - the cradle of new, Christian civilization.

In the year 395, the Roman Empire was divided into West, with the capital in Rome, and East, with its capital in Constantinople [Byzantium]. Each went its own way.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE WEST

476: The fall of Western Roman Empire under the onslaught of the Germanic tribes.

800: The restoration of the Empire by Charlemagne.

843: The Treaty of Verdun [The division of empire by Charlemagne's three sons . The beginning of feudalism.

1073: The election of Pope Gregory VII, whose reforms made the Catholic Church the most influential force in the West. The Church took into its hands not just spiritual, but political power. [Gregory VII affirmed the primacy of papal authority and instituted the new canon law governing the election of popes by the college of cardinals ].

1517: The Protestant Revolution - the revolt against the intervention of the Catholic Church in all spheres of life. The proclamation on the principles of individualism, which are the basis of the capitalist order, and the principles of rationalism, which are at the root of science. [photo left: Martin Luther, whose 'Protestant' ideas altered the course of Western civilization ]

1620: Puritan Pilgrims landed at Cape Cod in North America. In subsequent years, they were followed by members of other Protestant faiths, who intended to start life again on the new continent in accordance to their religious beliefs. The ideology of "healthy egoism" which stimulated competition, the cult of lone-superman who overcomes all obstacles on his way to "success," and the motto "time is money," which accelerated business activity, led to the rapid development of production and the accumulation of vast wealth. This made the United States a leader in the Western world.

1929: The Great Depression - the first alarm bell which indicated the presence of a flaw in the liberal economy. It turned out that the principle "every man for himself" doesn't automatically lead to cementing the general welfare. The Depression lasted several years and "burned out" only due to the flames of the Second World War. [The Great Depression began the day of the great crash of October 29, 1929 and in the United States, ended definitively with the onset of World War II ].

1945: The beginning of the formation of the "socialist camp" which forced the West to adopt countermeasures, particularly the "Marshall Plan ," which turned into an unprecedented act of U.S. government intervention into the "free market." So the Communist threat delayed the onset of the deconstructive unwinding inherent in the Protestant order.

But rallying the West for the purposes of confronting the Soviet economy didn't stop this departure from Protestant ideals. In the watershed years of the 1960s, two landmark events took place: Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, after which Negroes began their transformation from a discriminated class and began to emerge as a privileged one; while the works of Doctor Alfred Kinsey kindled a "sexual revolution" that overturned the doctrines of Puritan morality upon which America was based.

THE HOUR HAS STRUCK …

Strictly speaking, nothing that has occurred is particularly extraordinary. Smart and insightful people have long felt the presence of a certain self-destructive seed at the heart of self-absorbed Western civilization. So thought the Slavophiles [school of thought that opposed Western influence] , philosopher Vladimir Solovyov , and Dostoyevsky mentioned this dead-end in A Writer's Diary. But the first scientific forecast was given in the beginning of the twentieth century by Oswald Spengler (photo, right), in his book that was translated into Russian under the name "Decline of the West ." This work convinced many. But most envisioned this process as a lengthy and gradual one. In fact, everything has happened much more quickly.

Posted by WORLDMEETS.US

Two thousand eight years after the birth of Christ will for many centuries to come be written in huge letters. We are contemporaries during this grand tectonic shift in the fate of humanity. This is the result of two factors simultaneously at work.

First of all, a new crisis within the liberal economy struck on a global scale, having been let off its leash after the disappearance of the communist threat. Second, there has been an unexpected psychological rejection by the American people of the last remnants of the ancient protestant self-reliance - the model of the perpetually righteous American government that pushed people "to the wall" (expression by British economic historian Arnold Toynbee ). This image was supported by presidents who were invariably Anglo-Saxons, "white devils," as Jack London called the breed. For the last among them, Bush, the passion for "pushing to the wall" was especially maniacal: at the slightest provocation - bomb! But this was agony.

What kind of person Obama is, we don’t know. Americans don’t know either. But the biracial Obama is associated with the kind, soft, personable Uncle Tom. And the people chose to make the White House his cabin, having exiled Anglo-Saxons from it for making such an incredible mess. [Uncle Tom was the central character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, he best-selling novel of the 19th century and second best selling book of the 19th century. Illustrating the evils of slavery, Uncle Tom was the dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his White master. ].

What will emerge in place of Western civilization is not yet known. But it's obvious that this civilization, in its current form, came to an end in 2008. The West is clinging to life, and in doing so may make an even greater mess.

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