Rebecca West argues that we are deluded if we think we can win a war by treating a savage enemy as if they were civilized. But she thinks we are diminished because of it. John Lewis says otherwise:
"Ms. West sees the central judgment that is needed to win a defensive war: that our people—our soldiers in particular—are worth more than savages and the "civilians" hiding them. The enemy of rational judgment, and a paralyzing moral premise, is egalitarianism—the idea that all people, cultures, and ideas are equal in value. Ms. West rails against this, but then—unfortunately, sadly, tragically—accepts this same premise herself. ... [she says] 'if the civilized society is to prevail over the barbarous one, it will necessarily and tragically be degraded by the experience as a vital cost of victory'"
Lewis offers an alternative view:
"There is an alternative, a morality that truly values human life, and pours its outrage and its weapons against the enemies of human life; it is called rational egoism. According to this code, acting to win a defensive war by any means necessary is a sublimely moral act—not a compromise with morality that is needed to remain alive, and not an act of debasing civilization in order to save it. It is morally good to destroy those who would start a global jihad to enslave millions to a dark-age theocracy, and to do so with the least possible risk to our own, valuable, people."
Read the whole article here and decide for yourself.
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