No, Mr. Scruton

*Repentance* is what makes us strong. As St. Paul says, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” Taking for granted some virtue that God has struggled for *thousands* of years to inculcate in the West as somehow native to us and not entirely the fruit of God’s merciful love is precisely what fills us with the arrogance and pride that are the besetting sins of the West in this hour–the things the make us weak, the things that invite judgment. Mistaking our graciously granted privileges for our native goodness is what makes us weak. Failing to give God the glory and heaping it on ourselves in the form of praise for “Western values” (as though we invented this stuff ourselves and are not the recipients of grace)–all of that is what makes us weak and ripe for judgement.

One of the standard rules of thumb in modern discourse is this: when you hear somebody trumpet “Western values” in detachment from the Christian tradition what that virtually always means–whether it is some Lefty going on about “tolerance” as an excuse for lust or a Righty going on about “industry” or “thrift” as a cover for avarice–is the attempt to take some virtue that is actually the result of the grace of God in our culture and claim it for ourselves without mentioning the reality of things like a) our sinfulness and the crucifixion of the Son of God that was necessary to destroy it or b) the resurrection of the Son of God that is the fountainhead of all that is good in the West (or anywhere else for that matter). In short, it is a proclamation “To us alone be the glory.” The more we in the West attempt the project of creating a society in which God is shoved out of our civilization while claiming the virtues which the Son of God alone can guarantee a culture (including, as the gospel made clear yesterday, forgiveness of sins), the more we are building Babel, not the kingdom of God.