Tag: Liberalism

The Psychology of Liberalism

Modern liberalism is characterized by a set of beliefs that stand in such strong contradiction to what we know about human nature and society that some authors believe that a psychological assessment of this movement will give insights that cannot be gained by simply identifying its claims and demands. In this tradition, the Catholic reactionary Andy Nowicki has published a short book called The Psychology of Liberalism: Character Study of a Movement.

It should be noted from the outset that the author does not have in mind what today would be called “classical liberalism,” although one could argue that all forms of liberalism have some beliefs in common (a point that he addresses at the end of the book). On the other hand, the author’s analysis does not just refer to those who self-identify as liberals, but to all those who (unconsciously) state their beliefs in the framework of liberalism, which includes most contemporary conservatives.

Nowicki identifies the promotion of tolerance while excluding oneself from its requirements as the essence of the psychology of liberals. This is not a straightforward issue of hypocrisy because, in their own mind, they are the truly tolerant. This lack of recognition that they do not value diversity at all is what characterizes the liberal mind. “But should one point this out to liberals, one discovers to one’s perplexity that what is apparent to people of below-average intelligence is not necessarily so to a victim of “doublethink,” no matter how clever and well read the latter might be,” he writes.

Liberals often counter that tolerance does not require “tolerance of the intolerant,” but then re-define tolerance in such a manner that tolerance requires conforming to liberal ideas. Such selective and circular reasoning constitutes modern liberalism.

One thing that puzzles the writer is how liberals can persist in believing that they are an oppressed minority who speak “truth to power” when they are the status quo in the media, academia, public policy, etc. But as he correctly notes, progressives have to believe this or be faced with the uncomfortable fact that they are not fighting power but exercising it. And that their demands for tolerance are not demands for justice but commands to conform.

Nowicki observes that liberals reject the doctrine of “Original Sin,” but only to resuscitate the doctrine in a secular and highly selective manner, where it seeks to induce guilt in people who belong to a certain groups (males, individuals of European descent, etc.) and place other groups beyond all criticism.

Liberal guilt is concerned with abstractions; the “system” is to blame. Those who prosper under the system, the “privileged,” ought to feel guilty, even if they themselves  have done nothing personally to oppress or tyrannize others. Liberal guilt, again, is corporate; it is no respecter of persons, but rather of groups. While original sin is applicable to everyone, liberal sin only taints those groups which it designates as “privileged.”

Of course, many liberals themselves are part of the privileged. As Nowicki notes, the more prestigious the school, the more likely that it promotes a liberal outlook. These “limousine liberals” can hardly claim to be among the oppressed but they do see themselves as a vanguard for the oppressed. The problem is that their translation of the concerns of the oppressed are highly contestable. Feminists may claim to speak for women but most women reject feminism, labor unionists speak on behalf of the workers but many workers are not supportive of unions. Black community leaders justify and excuse violence that is condemned by many ordinary black people. Undeterred, the vanguard considers such objections as evidence of the degree that the victims are brainwashed to condone their own oppression, which produces a perfect, circular, self-justification of liberalism.

As with tolerance, liberals also have a complicated relationship with anger. When liberals are angry it is because they are outraged about injustice and oppression but when their opponents are angry this indicates “hate.” As a consequence, anger from the right people reinforces the correctness of liberalism, while anger of the wrong people indicates an inability to reason and “insensitivity.” One might add that if we recognize that in many cases liberals are those who yield power, their anger takes on a different, darker, dimension. It is not the anger of the victims of oppression but the anger of rulers who are provoked by people not conforming to their views.

Closely tied with progressive thinking is the cult of self-esteem. “..where Marxism aimed at redistributing the wealth, self-esteemism wants to redistribute the praise. Marxism, self-esteemism, and all other humanistic philosophies pragmatically fail because they ignore the obvious reality – that we are all unequal.” Self-esteem is a necessary condition for “empowerment” and liberals show little restraint in exercising political  power on behalf of the powerless, despite their obligatory “Question Authority” bumper stickers.

After offering such level-headed insights about modern liberalism, Nowicki seeks to make sense of the fact that progressives undoubtedly share certain features with Christianity (such as a belief in universalism, a “golden future when all shall be well,” and a missionary mindset) but also reject certain aspects of Christianity. I must admit that I find his discussion of the similarities more persuasive and decisive. I doubt it is a coincidence that political correctness has been perfected in the country that was settled by Puritans with a strong sense of guilt. His case against liberalism seems to depend quite strongly on designating it as an individualist, nihilist movement, but after spending a lot of pages documenting its ultra-moralism and collectivism that is not completely persuasive either.

It is correct that liberalism seeks to undermine much of traditional morality, but it also aims to strengthen and purify certain aspects of it to the point where it has to exclude other aspects, including the divine derivation of morality. At some point, progressives recognized that this requires a break with Christianity itself, but its moralist eschatological framework remained intact, albeit in a secular form. Of course, this sets the stage for a never-ending debate between Traditionalists and secular zealots about which values really matter because their is no meta-perspective agreed to by both parties that can mediate such disagreements.

There is a strain in social thought that attributes the existence of  oppressive and murderous regimes to a lack of recognition of objective values. One problem that has plagued these kinds of theories is that the regimes in question were never composed of card-carrying nihilists. The outlook of their leaders may not always have been universal, but they were strongly convinced of the truth of their moral views. In a sense, one could argue that this is inevitable because power needs a claim to legitimacy to grow and persist. A regime that would claim that truth, morality, and progress is nonsense and that it is solely pursuing its own self-interest against the interests of the people is not ensured a long existence. It is also doubtful that real nihilists will be drawn to the political process and public policy.

It is not really possible to predict the outcome of a society composed of people who do not recognize the existence of objective morals (or “rights”) because we have never been in such a state. But we can reasonably claim that morality is not dependent on the discovery of God-given or absolute values and will thrive whenever people with shared and competing interests recognize the need for coordination and rules.  The evidence for this can even be observed in the world of the great apes and prehistoric humans. The source of complex moral behavior may not have been a supernatural being but something as “trivial” as the discovery of fire.

One does not need a “coherent argument” against Nazism when its policies clearly contradict the interests of many people. Arguments are often powerless in the face of coercion and violence and the best one can hope for is to establish an equilibrium in which resorting to violence will be a self-defeating strategy. Ironically, such as state of affairs is prevented as long as those seeking power can command submission by claiming some mysterious legitimacy for their conduct.

The power that liberals exercise, and that others of different ideological persuasion enjoyed in times past, goes beyond what is needed to coordinate and regulate mutually beneficial human interaction. The ideology of modern liberalism looks particularly incoherent and tortured but, as the author has so perfectly identified, this should be expected if one claims to fight power and hold it at the same time. This feature of modern liberalism also explains why the libertarian socialism that preceded the rise of the Protest Generation to power looks at least somewhat coherent compared to its contemporary form, in which the “libertarian” element has strangely disappeared.

Nowicki believes that in the end liberalism will self-destruct because as its dark nihilism will be recognized and practiced by society, no moral order will be possible.  An alternative perspective is that liberalism still draws upon the residual moralism and herd behavior of Christianity and as soon as that is recognized people will no longer submit to its demands and more enlightened arrangements will emerge. Yet another perspective is that power and struggle have followed humans since they were great apes and that the real difference between us and them is that we can create elaborate thought systems that seek to “justify” such behavior. As a consequence, we can get too carried away by the analysis of “ideas” and pay insufficient attention to the dynamics that regulate power. It is only quite recently that evolutionary theory and economics seek to identify the biological basis and “micro-foundations” of political power.

Andy Nowicki is one the sharpest observers of contemporary liberalism that I know and it is unfortunate that his little book on the peculiar reasoning of modern liberals is now out of print. Unlike his book on suicide, there is no strong language or treatment of sexually explicit themes in this book. As such, there is no excuse for contemporary liberals to read it. If they would, many of them would prefer to skip his relentless assault on the incoherent nature of their ideology and focus on the “no morality without God” message, which I suspect, is an easier target. Such an approach would not be possible in the case of the atheist conservative Gustave Le Bon, whose 1898 classic, The Psychology of Socialism, analyzed socialism as yet another manifestation of the religious mindset and group hysteria that needs to be overcome.

Survival of the unfittest

Reading the book today, Survival of the Unfittest (1927) by Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, it has all the elements that ensured its descent into completely obscurity: concerns about human degeneration, advocacy of eugenics, and classical liberal views on state and political economy.

Authors such as Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, who posit that survival of the fittest is an immutable law of nature, are challenged to explain how natural selection can give rise to degeneracy, or, as he also calls it, the “survival of the unfittest.” Armstrong answers that:

To say…that Natural Selection is no longer operative in man is nonsense, because natural law is immutable. But any given law may produce different results to-day from those of yesterday when new factors arise to complicate matters. Thus, if we make unfitness in any way more advantageous for procreation than fitness, this will tend to make Natural Selection cause the survival of the unfittest instead of the fittest.

In his chapter on “Humanitarian Legislation” he identifies socialist public policies as producing a reproductive advantage to the “unfit:”

By heavy taxation we penalize success; by the dole, the Poor Law and public and private charity in a hundred forms we encourage the weak, the defective, the shiftless and the unsuccessful, not only to continue in their present condition, but to breed freely. We even give them extra help for every child they produce, and although the amount given may be insufficient to keep that child in comfort, yet to the improvident and the selfish it acts as a real incentive, for it is certainly made to yield, in many cases, extra comforts for the parents, even if the child goes hungry in consequence.

Armstrong rejects the argument that social legislation is required “by the demands of morality:”

To force everybody to do what you think is moral is not to make men moral. A good action must be voluntary; therefore let any man whose Christianity may move him that way save his poorer brother. But you cannot in the name of morality force anyone to do so.

In the same way, if thrift is a virtue it cannot be compulsory. By forcing people to insure you cannot teach them thrift or make them thrifty. In fact, you kill thrift as a virtue.

A substantial portion of the book is devoted to substantiating that welfare- and unemployment benefits, instead of reducing poverty and misery, instead increase it. To make his argument  he relies on “logical inquiry by the inductive and deductive methods:” statistics and economic reasoning. In particular, Armstrong is greatly concerned by the existence of unemployment benefits without an obligation to engage in productive work. As a consequence, the incentive to find work is reduced and productivity declines, which further impoverishes the nation. As far as involuntary unemployment and the “inability” to work is concerned, the author remarks that “trade union rules..are far oftener responsible for such “inability” than is anything else. Then, again, the inability to work does not, unfortunately, bring with it inability to procreate…”

In today’s terminology, the author is very much a “supply-sider” who thinks that all obstacles to create wealth should be eliminated and that productivity, not re-distribution of income, is the real source of prosperity. He also anticipates the rise of a class of welfare and tax recipients.

In every part of the country, especially the great towns, there has now grown up a new and dangerous class, a mass of humanity dependent on the payer of rates and taxes. Before the change, a man had no right to vote, that is to take part in the government of others, unless he were at last independent and able to support himself. Now he helps to govern those who maintain him. This great host of paupers and semi-paupers is already organized in the Socialist interest and has become a factor which can decide elections.

Naturally, as many 19th century classical liberals, Armstrong was strongly opposed to the idea that everyone has the right to vote:

I see no reason why the vote should be called a right. It used to be said, “No vote, no taxation.” Is it not equally just to cry, “No taxation, no vote?”

He has little patience for democracy and politicians:

God save us from the politicians! Perhaps some of the nations of Southern Europe are wiser than we in their generation. They have abolished the politicians – and democracy.

In his chapter on “Government” he describes the transformation of liberalism as it unfolded in Europe and the United States:

Since the true definition of liberty is the power to do anything that in no way causes suffering to others (future generations being included in the term “others”), the proper function of legislation in a free country is to determine what specific acts do cause suffering, and prevent them. The further we get away from this, in legislation, the worse we fare. When Liberalism, leaning more and more towards Socialism, begins to regulate our lives by legislation that has since become oppressive, the excuse was that laissez-faire involved the oppresssion of  one class by another. Under this pretext it abandoned the great principle of individual liberty that had been its main characteristic up to that time. But having once abandoned this principle, “Liberal” statesmen began to indulge in a great deal of lawmaking that interfered with the individual without having anything to do with the prevention of oppression. Thus began the new tyranny.

Under democratic government, each party, when in power, considers itself under the obligation to invent new laws, often under the pleasing name of “social reform,” with a main view to adulating the mass of voters. These enactments interfere more and more with the order of our lives, and oblige all to subscribe to the pet theories of idealists, or the latest scheme elaborated for winning the applause of the mob, cheating it into the belief than an open sesame has been found to the earthly paradise.

Trade unions, too, add ever to the number of rules and regulations that restrict liberty. The leaders, being often ignorant of the first principles of economic science, everybody is ordered to kow-tow to rules of behaviour based upon the most mischievous fallacies, such as those which purposely limit output, and those which prevent men from passing one district or one trade to another, when the needs of industry so demands.

Thus is democracy proving itself more fatally despotic than any autocracy. No emperor ever thought of reversing the process of evolution; but democracy, with its chance majorities, obtained by rhetoric of self-seeking demagogues, may succeed in doing so; not be superseding natural law, but by using it in ignorance for suicidal purposes – playing with forces it does not understand.

Armstrong devotes a whole chapter to spelling out his views on morality. He rejects the idea that a literal reading of the Bible should be the source of morality. “Fortunately, in our own times, this attitude is more characteristic of farmers in Tennessee than of educated Englishmen.” Similarly, he rejects the idea that the State or conventions provide us with an unambiguous set of moral rules. His own answer, however, may leave many people equally puzzled when he suggests that nature should be the source of morality as it seeks to avoid unnecessary suffering and “the happiness of all.” Armstrong’s emphasis on nature as the basis of morality seems to partly be motivated by his aim of criticizing a number of practices such as the unfair treatment of unwed mothers, puritanism, monogamy, and hunting for sport. Whereas some of his ideas on equality and political economy may be construed as “reactionary,” on many life-style issues and Christian fundamentalism, he is clearly in the progressive camp.

Although Armstrong is very concerned about a scenario where “the more intelligent and efficient…become relatively sterile, while the shiftless, decadent classes breed like prolific animals,” his case for eugenics does not depend on the presence of dysgenics:

It should be said at once that the need for eugenic reform in no way depends upon where the truth lies in the controversy about degeneration. Whether we are deteriorating or not we need this reform, for it is just as desirable to progress more rapidly if we are moving slowly as it is to stop degeneration if it is going on.

Like modern-day transhumanists, Armstrong seeks to accelerate human evolution so that we may one day even “conquer Death, and eventually Time and Space.” As to the question, how Eugenic Reform can be accomplished, he advocates abolishing public policies that discourage those with undesirable traits to procreate. He rejects involuntary euthanasia, is agnostic about segregation, and endorses sterilization for the “grossly unfit.” But because he believes that politicians have little interest in the long-term fate of humanity, he devotes a significant portion of the book to the idea of establishing voluntary communities that seek the accelerated progress of humanity.

Amusingly, while Armstrong believes that the “undegenerated Englishman…has no moral or intellectual superior among the world’s people…perhaps he is a trifle more inclined towards hypocrisy, intolerance and obstinacy than most progressive races.” Another defect of the English are the physical characteristics of the English. In particular, the typical English women with their “large feet, masculine stride and flat or angular form.”  Not to speak of the poor eyesight and poor teeth of the English:

How much pain, how much ill-health, and how much physical ugliness are due to bad teeth! The breath becomes offensive and the digestive and other organs seriously damaged. Even the heart itself is affected by abscesses due to caries. No defect, in fact, is more far-reaching in its effects upon other organs. Yet here in England of ours, even our children, a few years after receiving their second teeth, are already nearly all of them suffering from this grave trouble. Furthermore, it is undoubtedly hereditary. The truth is, in fact, little short of this: As a race we are in serious danger of losing our teeth altogether.

Charles Wicksteed Armstrong does not expect that the benefits from eugenics will result from exclusive selective breeding within one country and he actively advocates efforts to select for the most desirable traits of different populations, such as the Mediterranean people.

Armstrong himself may have been blessed with “longevity genes” because in 1961 the Eugenics Society congratulated Mr. Armstrong on achieving his ninetieth year. His old age allowed him to witness both the birth but also the decline of the eugenics movement. A casual search on the internet reveals little information on the life and ideas of Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, despite the renewed interest in the history of eugenics. His concerns and his constructive solutions, on the other hand, have not disappeared.

Discussions about decline today are mostly confined to cultural decline, although Prof. Richard Lynn has published books on both Dysgenics and Eugenics with similar concerns as Armstrong. The word “eugenics” has gone mostly out of favor with those in favor of human genetic enhancement, but contemporary transhumanism can be said to carry forward the legacy of liberal eugenics, but with a stronger emphasis on individual choice. A good example of a recent argument in favor of human genetic enhancement is Gregory Stock’s book Redesigning Humans: Choosing our genes, changing our future. Even the interest in overcoming death has it contemporary counterparts with publication of books about the Scientific Conquest of Death.

Common political fallacies

In Cato Journal, Volume 28, No. 1 (Winter 2008), the independent scholar Anthony de Jasay reviews four common fallacies (as presented in the works of John Stuart Mill, Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, and Armen Alchian) that many social scientists and political journalists keep repeating without rigorous analysis.

The first fallacy is that production should be governed by the laws of economics, but that distribution needs to be decided by society. As de Jasay points out,

“Output is distributed while it is produced. Wage earners get some of it as wages in exchange for their efforts; owners of capital get some of it as interest and rent in exchange for past saving. Entrepreneurs get the residual as profit in exchange for organization and risk bearing. By the time the cake is “baked,” it is also sliced and those who played a part in baking it have all got their slices. No distributive decision is missing, left over for “society” to take.”

Although these slices can be distributed again by society, this will constitute a secondary redistribution, usually involving coercion.

The second fallacy is that the aim of public policy should not be equality of outcomes, but equality of opportunity. Such “equality at the starting gate” assumes that equality of opportunity and equality of outcome can be separated. But unless opportunities are equalized at the point where acquired advantages are at a minimum (at birth), maximizing equality of opportunity would require stripping away the advantages people have acquired before the starting gate, and continuous intervention in outcomes to equalize opportunities between generations.

The third fallacy is that in a just society individuals must have a right to the greatest possible liberty compatible with the same liberty for all. As de Jasay has pointed out in detail in his writings, the proviso “compatible with the same for others” is meaningless because it is without substance. In its current form it means that I am at liberty to do anything I want (including violence and theft), provided others have the same liberty as well. Clearly, this is not what advocates of this position intended. More troubling to de Jasay is the fact that liberty is presented as a “right”:

“What is deeply worrying about this thoughtless misuse of the word “right” is that it can be straightened out at a single stroke by simply assuming that every feasible act is prohibited unless we are somehow granted a “right” to perform it, in which case it becomes a liberty. It takes a right to lift it out of the universe of prohibitions.”

The fourth fallacy is that society has a right to modify, transfer and revoke property because property rights are granted and defended by “society.” As has been discussed in the first fallacy about production and distribution, redistributing property would be tantamount to ignoring the fact that all who have helped to produce property have already been remunerated in the process. As in the case of a “right to liberty”, the “right to” part is redundant:

“Like all liberties, the kind we call property exists and is exercised within the rules that prohibit certain wrongs (torts). Staying as it does inside the rules, it needs no separate right to exist and be exercised. Nor does it make sense to think of an obligation imposed on all not to do against property what the rules prohibit them from doing anyway.”

Anthony de Jasay: Parrot Talk: The Repetition of Common Fallacies (PDF)

Rights: nonsensical, empirical and hypothetical

If there is one thing that characterizes contemporary political discourse, and contemporary political liberalism in particular, it is the obsession with “rights.” Individual rights are absolute, or “trumps,” that do not permit to be overridden by collective goals, and can only be defeated by another trump. But since every right implies a corresponding obligation (a cost), increasing the number of rights we have also increases the number of obligations. If many of these rights are perceived to be equally important, or to be weighed differently in different circumstances, the scope and depth of collective choice will expand and creation and enforcement of rights will come to reflect the moral and political fashions of the day. Of course, this will largely defeat the trump-like nature that rights were supposed to have in the first place.

The fundamental question is where these “rights” come from in the first place. Rights are supposed to be “self-evident,” can be deduced from God’s will, the logic of reason, or the nature of man, etc. Unfortunately, attempts to find a solid foundation for rights have not been very fruitful, and even philosophers that agree on the same foundation for rights have often derived wildly different conclusions about the nature of those rights. But despite the failure to find objective evidence (either empirical or logical) for the existence of rights, “rights-talk” increasingly dominates public discourse. This is not just confined to modern “egalitarian” liberalism but has been a dominant feature of libertarianism as well, as evidenced by the writings of Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard, and the early Robert Nozick.

How do we reconcile the popularity of “rights-talk” with the lack of evidence for the existence of rights? The most obvious explanation is that by presenting an individual preference in the form of a “right” we depersonalize the nature of the claim. The “right” element confers credibility because it evokes truth, not individual preference. This effect is further enhanced by the fact that historically a lot of rights were assumed to be “self-evident” or derived from God’s will. The liberal philosopher Anthony de Jasay notes that the popularity of rights may be explained by its feature of hiding its redistributive nature and costs:

“‘Rights’ survive and crowd ‘goals’ out of circulation even if both convey the same substantive message, because rights-talk cheers and gratifies all who are accorded rights by it, and threatens no one overtly. Goals, on the other hand, unless they are innocuous, usually suggest not only the promise of something beneficial, but also the cost of attaining it, the effort it takes, and sometimes (in the case of visibly redistributive goals) an implication that if some gain by it, others must lose. Rights-as-goals are presumably easier to propagate and fitter to survive in the public consciousness than goals tout court.” (Anothony de Jasay, Choice, Contract, Consent: A Restatement of Liberalism)

Right can exist in an empirical sense when they reflect a contract between individuals to perform or refrain from certain actions. But in this case rights follow from actual agreement. The evidence that such rights exist can be found in a (written) agreement. And the existence of such rights is usually confirmed by both parties because it is advantageous for them to accept the benefits and obligations of the agreement. The situation is different in the case of rights that do not reflect (implicit) agreement by the individuals who have to incur obligations and costs. Anthony de Jasay notes that “a ‘rights-based’ political theory in general, and rights-liberalism in particular, is losing determinacy and self-restraint when it loses sight of where the burden of proof lies.”

The existence of specific rights and obligations are often defended with the argument that they reflect a “social contract,” similar to a contract between two individuals. A major weakness of this line of thinking is, of course, that such a contract has never been agreed to in reality. This would not necessarily present a major obstacle in case the rights involved would be minimal and non-distributive, but most modern rights do not have this characteristic. For example, an agreement to abstain from harming someone can be complied with by doing nothing, but an agreement that says that “every person has a right to food and shelter” comes with far reaching obligations that will not likely generate universal agreement.

Some modern liberal philosophers (such as John Rawls) do not prefer a social contract so “trivial” and claim that more extensive rights can be justified by means of an hypothetical contract in which rights are derived behind a “veil of ignorance” in which individuals are deprived of information about the individuating characteristics of the citizens they represent. This raises the question of what the relationship is (or should be) between such agreements and what actual individuals would agree to in real life. The reason why such hypothetical agreements should create moral (and legal) obligations in real life is that they correspond (or should correspond) to our conception of justice. Unfortunately, such a justification runs into the same problems as the more straightforward derivation of rights earlier; it lacks objective empirical or logical content. So far the only credible attempt to derive rights (or explain their existence) from non-moral premises is found in Hobbesian contractarianism as represented by Thomas Hobbes, David Gauthier and Jan Narveson.

James Burnham on liberalism and decline

James Burnham’s Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism proposes the thesis that modern liberalism is the ideology of a society in decline; its doctrines motivate and justify the contraction of Western civilization and reconciles us to it.

In the chapter “Liberalism vs. Reality” Burnham observes that liberals feel uncomfortable about power and force. Liberals are reluctant to use force against  ordinary criminals (which are, after all, just “victims” of an unjust society) but feel little hesitation to use it against those who are productive and successful.

It is not that liberals, when they enter the governing class…never make use of force; unavoidably they do, sometimes to excess. But because of their ideology they are not reconciled intellectually and morally to force. They therefore tend to use it ineptly, at the wrong times and places, against the wrong targets, in the wrong amounts.

Although Burnham ends his book by considering the possibility of a reversal of modern liberalism, the section that precedes it reads as follows:

Liberalism permits Western civilization to be reconciled to dissolution; and this function its formulas will enable it to serve right through to the very end, if matters turn out that way: for even if Western civilization is wholly vanquished or altogether collapses, we or our children will be able to see that ending, by the light of the principles of liberalism, not as a final defeat, but as the transition to a new and higher order in which Mankind as a whole joins in a universal civilization that has risen above the parochial distinctions, divisions and discrimination of the past.