Values? What values?

[ddstory]

Since we're about political populism this month, let's talk about values a little bit. This term which is most often used in the plural, and is being so overused in recent times for all sorts of occasions and purposes: from political debates to the regular Sunday sermon, from TV talk-shows to newspaper headlines. Some prefer to put some adjectives

Comments

[policraticus]

So what are these Western values that everyone keeps blabbering about?Rule of Law (This is the bedrock. In my opinion. If you have a stable judicial system that can be trusted to act predictably and with consistency you are more than half way to being "Western

[garote]

I agree that "rule of law" is the bedrock, with two qualifications:

1. The laws are NOT divinely inspired. (For example, clerics adjudicating Sharia law are not Western, no matter how stable or consistent their judgements are.)
2. If laws are not justifiably fair, there is little hesitation to change or even discard them, from the smallest local club all the way up to the largest federal institution.

So, while "rule of law" is bedrock, the details of law can easily drift over time, based on bedrock principles (mostly other things on your list).

[underlankers]

Rule of law is just a theory. Especially as relates to the American or French Revolutions. Revolution actually shits on Rule of Law and replaced it with rule of Dakka.

Limited government is a standard US selectively applied understanding. Government is limited purely by melanin count. For black people or Native Americans, there is no such thing as limited government.

Communism and Fascism are equally Western and both reject the Free Market. So did Throne and Altar absolutism. So did the Confederacy.

That raises the question of why secular conservatives don't exist in the West. It seems like the Le Pens and Hagees want Christendom instead.

Intellectual freedom until people use it in ways conservatives despised, you mean.

Chinese dynastic states invented most of the technology we use. Not the West, which built on a Chinese foundation.

The last two are universal. By that standard Toyotomi Hideyoshi was Western..