The Good, The Bad, and The Politically Correct

[Note: This little essay was originally published in March 1999 in The Beacon, the journal for Mensa in Massachusetts. It was nominated for a "best of the year" award but did not take home the prize.]

It has become fashionable among intellectuals to discuss only the negative aspects of Western Civilization while noting only the positive aspects of other cultures. In part this is a healthy reaction against the narrow-minded prejudices of the past. Earlier generations of Western scholars viewed their own culture with unjustifiable smugness while carelessly dismissing other civilizations as inferior. Learning to view all societies with greater objectivity was an intellectual triumph.

Unfortunately, many contemporary thinkers have moved to the opposite extreme, advocating views as narrow-minded and distorted as those they set out to correct. Where Western Culture was once seen as the pinnacle of human progress it is now regarded as thoroughly, and even inherently, corrupt. Where Non-Western cultures were once treated with contempt they are now often described as if they were little paradises inhabited by saints.

[Note: In spite of my criticism of one point in Zinn's book it is an excellent book that everyone should read. It tells many stories about injustices and wrongdoing in the history of the United States that are not told often enough. If you are interested, you can click on the link here and buy the book right now.... https://amzn.to/3SItZg8]

Overly-simplistic views like these have now become prevalent. We can find typical examples in the first chapter of Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1980). This book deserves to be read, and admired, for its relentless presentation of the many cruelties and oppressions that have stained U.S. history and that have long been neglected by textbooks. There is much to criticize in our past and Zinn takes on the task with great enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, the vision is one sided. Some evil deeds are dragged into the open for public condemnation while others are excused or ignored. The criterion seems to be, not the moral or immoral nature of the acts themselves, but the cultural identity of those performing the acts.

Alarmingly, this type of thinking is more likely to inspire future injustices than to work against them.

An example of this can be found in Zinn's description of the Spanish conquest of the New World. The conquistadores are portrayed as the villains while the Indians are innocent victims. Of course this is a fair interpretation of what happened. The Spanish were clearly the aggressors. The picture becomes confused when we notice that the wars of Spain against the Indians are treated as atrocities while the wars of Indians among themselves are not; apparently because they resulted in relatively few casualties.

We are not told that the Indians lacked economic systems capable of supporting sustained warfare. We are not told that Indian military technology was not sufficiently advanced to inflict great damage on an enemy. Apparently, we are supposed to conclude that the lower casualty rates characteristic of purely Indian wars are a sign of moral superiority rather than, as seems more likely, a sign of economic and technological deficiencies.

Zinn's desire to portray the Spanish as "bad" and the Indians as "good" forces him into the intellectually dubious tactic of condemning the evils of Spanish warfare while excusing the evils of Indian warfare.

Far more disturbing is Zinn's treatment of the Aztecs. The Spanish conquest of this Indian empire naturally receives the usual condemnation. When dealing with thousands of human sacrifices to Aztec gods, however, the moral rules seem to change. We are told that "the cruelty of the Aztecs... did not erase a certain innocence...." An incredible statement! Spanish atrocities are condemned while Aztec atrocities are pardoned. Many Indian tribes were conquered and enslaved by the Aztecs. They were forced to deliver up their sons and daughters to be murdered in honor of foreign gods. It is probably safe to assume that none of these oppressed peoples would have listed "innocence" as a notable Aztec quality.

My point here is not to excuse the evil deeds of the Spanish, or even to condemn the evil deeds of the Indians. My point here is that we must seriously question the moral judgement of any writer capable of condemning the atrocities of one culture while excusing even mass murder committed by a culture which he prefers.

In order to understand the world, we have to see it clearly. To make the world a better place, we have to know what good and evil are. We have to support the good and oppose the evil wherever and whenever they may be found. By ignoring the good in cultures we dislike while excusing the evil in cultures we prefer we may so distort our thinking that we will be unable to distinguish right from wrong. We will have made great progress when we learn to assign praise and blame based on the nature of the acts performed rather than the cultural identity of those performing the acts.

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[Note: In spite of my criticism of one point in Zinn's book it is an excellent book that everyone should read. It tells many stories about injustices and wrongdoing in the history of the United States that are not told often enough. If you are interested, you can click on the link here and buy the book right now.... https://amzn.to/3SItZg8]

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Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Wayne Gadway