A Modern Look at the Trojan Horse, the Death of Caesar and a White Bear that is just a Bear.

How three stories point to our Western culture's decline yet offer a path to Western revival.

Nov 27, 2024

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The decline of great civilisations is rarely the result of a single blow from an external enemy. Instead, history shows us that internal weaknesses lay the groundwork for collapse, with external forces exploiting existing vulnerabilities.

The stories of the Trojan Horse, Julius Caesar's death and a Norwegian fairy tale about a white bear that became a handsome prince stand as enduring parables—cautionary tales for any society that refuses to confront its flaws while misunderstanding outside threats.

Most of us remember the stories from our high school days. In the Trojan War, the Greeks, unable to breach the walls of Troy by sheer force, played on the greed, false piety and foolishness of the leaders of Troy. The Greeks built a massive wooden horse and convinced the Trojans it was a divine offering. Despite warnings from the prophetess Cassandra and the priest Laocoön, the Trojans, blinded by hubris and in a party mood, brought the horse inside their walls.

As the Trojans slept, Greek soldiers who were hidden inside emerged and opened the gates for their army.

Similarly, Julius Caesar’s rise to power in Rome did not solely result from his ambition or clever scheming. The internal corruption, factionalism, and ineffectiveness of the Senate allowed him to amass such authority. When the senators assassinated him, blaming him as the cause of the Republic’s decline, they failed to address their systemic flaws. The Republic fell into chaos, leading to the very autocracy they feared.

Today, the West faces its own Trojan horses and internal Caesars. While external enemies—whether Islamist movements or geopolitical rivals like Russia and China—seek to destabilise Western liberal democracies, the greatest threat may already be within the Western gates.

Our society is beset by cultural fragmentation, ideological rigidity, the inability to differentiate between self-hatred and humility, and an unwillingness to confront uncomfortable truths.

The Western Problem: A Disconnect With Reality

The West, particularly Canada, the United States, Australia and Europe, faces a problem of its own making. We pride ourselves on diversity, tolerance, and pluralism and cling to an idealism nurtured in the soil of the aspirational idea that all people, no matter how cultural and religious teachings have shaped them, come out of the moral and cultural oven as identical and perfectly shaped Western liberals.

We think it is noble to assume everyone is like us. Oh, some may despise Western liberals, call Jews Satanic and openly plot the demise of both Jews and Christians. But many Western liberals respond by saying - okay, if those who hate us feel and think that way, it’s our fault; our historical and present sins justify the actions of our enemies. Thus, our enemies can do no wrong - it is always our fault. This self-effacement is somehow framed as ‘understanding’ and ‘sympathy.’

The sympathisers of our enemies fantasise that if our enemies are exposed long enough to our goodness, they will eventually come around.

Our thinking echoes the Norwegian tale of “East of the Sun”, in which a poor peasant family is visited by a giant white bear who offers them wealth in exchange for their youngest daughter. The girl agrees and is taken to the bear’s magnificent castle. While she sleeps, a mysterious man joins her every night, though she cannot see his face.

Eventually, curiosity improves, and she lights a candle to see who he is. She discovers that the bear is a handsome prince under a curse. However, by breaking the condition of not seeing him, the curse tightens, and he is whisked away to marry a troll princess in a castle “east of the sun and west of the moon.”

The girl embarks on a perilous journey to rescue the prince. With the help of magical gifts and determination, she defeats the trolls and frees the prince. His transformation from a bear to a prince is complete, symbolising the shedding of his “beastly” exterior to reveal his true self.

But Western kindness, our magic gifts, and determination will not similarly break all the curses, and bears do not turn into handsome princes. Such thinking places hope before reason and looks for root causes that are always framed as being our fault—the useful idiocy Lenin spoke of.

Recently, we had Morrocan youth checking passports and hunting Jews in Amsterdam - an action planned weeks before the soccer match with Ajax. Surely those wild, violent youth must have been recent immigrants, not yet transformed by the kindness of Dutch society? In Canada, we had pro-Hamas hooligans breaking windows and burning cars at Concordia University in Montreal, all the while the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, a Montreal MP, fiddled away his time at a Taylor Swift concert. He was busy exchanging friendship bracelets with 14-year-old girls and could not return to Montreal.

In Amsterdam, most of the Jew hunters were second and third-generation Muslim immigrants. Such persons often exhibit stronger tendencies toward religious fundamentalism than their first-generation counterparts.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the polling data that measures Muslim attitudes on core social and political issues.

Christopher Hitchens once said, “The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” Yet, the West has become so enamoured with multiculturalism that it often fails to think critically about the contradictions within its society.

According to polling data from Pew Research, significant proportions of Muslims worldwide support Sharia law, consider homosexuality immoral and believe in restrictive social policies that stand in stark opposition to liberal democratic values. For example, in South Asia, 84% of Muslims favour enshrining Sharia law, and in the Middle East-North Africa region, the figure is 74%. These are not fringe opinions but mainstream beliefs within large portions of the Islamic world.

Yet, the West continues to assume that cultural values and belief systems are fundamentally interchangeable as if there were some magic assimilation pixie dust that, when tossed in the air at borders, brought transformation.

In the United States, Muslim acceptance of homosexuality just topped 50% in a 2017 poll. In the United Kingdom, a survey indicated that 52% of British Muslims disagreed with the statement “Homosexuality should be legal in Britain.” In Canada, a 2016 survey found that 36% of Canadian Muslims believed homosexuality should be accepted by society.

Thomas Sowell observed, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, tell them what they want to hear.” The tendency to avoid hard truths for fear of appearing intolerant has led to a failure to confront the incompatibility between certain values held by Muslim populations and those of liberal democracies.

Cultural Relativism: The Mistake of Equivalence

Another flaw in the West’s approach is the automatic assumption that those who commit violence in the name of Islam are somehow not “true” Muslims. This idea is rooted in the modern liberal assumption that all cultures, people, and belief systems are equally valid—a notion that writer Sam Harris called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

To deny that certain acts of violence are motivated by Islamic doctrine is not only intellectually dishonest but dangerously naive. Like all religions, Islam contains multitudes—texts, interpretations, and practices that vary widely.

However, the existence of Medina Muslims—those who embrace the later, more politically and militarily assertive parts of Muhammad’s life and teachings—cannot be ignored. As the historian Bernard Lewis famously noted, “For many centuries, Islam was the greatest civilisation on earth. But this self-assurance has been replaced by rage and a desire to blame outsiders.”

This rage is manifested in the actions of groups like Hamas, ISIS, and the Taliban, all of whom draw legitimacy from Islamic religious texts and traditions. While many Muslims oppose such violence, the undeniable reality is that these bad actors do not operate in isolation. They thrive in environments where sympathies for political Islamism, if not outright support, are widespread.

Lessons from Christianity’s Reformation

If the problem is not just individuals but doctrines themselves, then the question becomes: Can Islam reform? During the Reformation, Europe was torn apart by religious wars, heretic burnings, and intense sectarian conflict. But Christianity evolved.

Over centuries, the rise of secularism, humanism, and the Enlightenment diminished theocratic control. The Edict of Nantes, the Peace of Westphalia, and eventually the Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke laid the foundation for religious tolerance and the separation of church and state.

Hitchens once quipped, “Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer explains anything important.” Christianity’s loss of explanatory power in the face of scientific discovery forced it to retreat from its political and social dominance.

Islam has yet to face such a reckoning on a global scale. However, reformist thinkers within the Muslim world, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, are beginning to question and challenge its traditional frameworks. Ali, born in Somalia, was indoctrinated into the culture of the Muslim Brotherhood and later became a refugee in the Netherlands, eventually abandoning Islam, becoming an atheist and then converting to Christianity.

However, she must face off with Western Liberals who still believe that the handsome prince is coming. Perhaps the death threats and the need for bodyguards helped her shed any romantic take on the inherent nobility of all people.

A War of Land or a War of Ideas?

At its heart, the Middle East and worldwide conflict is not about land or borders but competing ideologies. Islam, unlike Christianity, was not originally constructed as a religion for salvation but as a purpose-driven, stable, monotheistic faith that included a system for governance and conquest. Sam Harris pointed out that Islam is “not merely a religion but also a political ideology; it has a doctrine of war.” The Medina period of Muhammad’s life, during which he transitioned from a preacher in Mecca to a political leader and military commander in Medina, is often cited as the blueprint for Islamic governance.

This political dimension is embedded in the DNA of Islamist groups like Hamas, which see no distinction between religion and state. Their goal is not merely territorial but establishing an Islamic society governed by Sharia law.

Yet, as Sowell wisely noted, “The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.” In global conflicts, the question is whether the West has the moral clarity and resolve to defend its values or will surrender to relativism and incoherence.

The External Threat: A Coordinated Playbook

The threats facing the West are not merely ideological but also tactical. Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, state actors like Russia’s FSB, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) all operate with clear playbooks. They are the troll princesses. Their supporters are not making ad hoc reactions to Western policies but deliberate, long-term strategies to destabilise liberal democracies.

The Muslim Brotherhood, for instance, focuses on creating “centres of Islamisation” through mosques, schools, and cultural organisations. Their strategy is incremental: promoting Islamic values within democratic frameworks while working toward the eventual goal of Sharia governance. Meanwhile, the FSB (formerly KGB) continues Russia’s Cold War tactics of demoralisation, destabilisation, and exploitation of crises.

By amplifying societal divisions and promoting conspiracy theories, they aim to weaken the West from within. Social media has been so kind to them. AI Bots and living bots like Jackson Hinkle support the FSB.

China, on the other hand, follows what Sam Harris described as “the long game.” Through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative, intellectual property theft, and influence campaigns in academia and media, the CCP seeks to establish economic and technological dominance. They even enlisted former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien. Their aim is not merely to sow discord but to position China as the preeminent global power.

The West’s Failure to Respond

While external enemies have plans, the West seems to lack one. Worse, many in the West deny that a threat even exists. This results from what Harris called “moral confusion,” where the desire to appear tolerant overrides the ability to make moral judgments.

In Europe, for instance, the failure to integrate immigrant populations has led to parallel societies, cultural isolation, and radicalisation. The riots in France, the grooming gang scandals in the UK, and the rise of populist parties are all symptoms of this failure.

In North America, the reluctance to confront the ideological roots of Islamist extremism has allowed groups like CAIR to influence public discourse, often shielding radical ideologies under the guise of civil rights. How clever it is for aggressors to drape themselves in the cloaks of victimization. Within hours of 1200 being murdered in Israel on October 7, 2023, the anti-semites appeared, like the cicadas who come out every seventeen years; they were there all along but unseen.

Though Jewish bodies who had been burned alive in their homes were still warm, anti-semites, happy to employ a new moral contortionism that would make them brand themselves anti-Israel, but not anti-semitic, were celebrating the death of dancing Jewish and Arab teenagers and spreading their neverending anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli vitriol.

And such madness is found at my University of Guelph-(Humber), where the administration has aligned itself formally with a person who openly despises the West, who rejoices at the prospect of forces that would create more dead Jews, who dreams of Israel destroyed, and who endorses a Medina Islam. He and the administration (they have co-signed a human rights complaint with him against me) think it is hip and evolved to be open to an Islamic theocracy that would undermine the foundations of Canadian society, a society that my accuser hates - while he has no issue with enjoying its fruits. The administration believes their white bear will turn into a handsome prince.

Foolish university sympathisers, so seduced by liberal guilt, seem proud to make the University of Guelph the first university in the world to sack a professor for saying he stood with Israel and for calling Hamas Nazis because it hurt the feelings of a proud anti-semite who is unashamed to post videos of people joking about Jews making clothing from Gentile skin.

These hurt feelings have been transformed and repackaged by the alchemic magic of the university human rights office into a modern bit of victimhood.
The human rights disciples march around the black heart of victimisation like Hajj pilgrims circling the black stone.

Winning the Battle for Ideas

Winning militarily is essential but not enough. As Thomas Sowell noted, “Ideas are not responsible for those who believe in them.” Indeed, only the reverse is true.

The West must counter not just its enemies' actions but also their ideas. Such requires a renewed commitment to the principles that underpin liberal democracies: free speech, individual rights, and the rule of law.

Aayan Hirsi Ali uses a beautiful phrase when she refers to the West looking at its culture as “cut flowers.” Cut flowers are beautiful, but even if you put them in water and have the best plant food added, they do not last forever. They are not able to get nutrients via their roots. Their roots have been cut off.

The West takes for granted all the blood and labour expended to get the West to where it is now, and fails to recognize the historical fragility and weakness of a Liberal democracy. Not only must the West look with pride at the historical roots of its civilization, but it must also remember that flowers need nurturing and tending.

The modern Western society, and its democratic capitalism, is the greatest society and culture in history. Of course, it is not perfect, but all the selective criticism is often childish and willfully without context.

We must stop being ashamed to be proud of this fact and say it. By any serious objective measure, it is irrefutable. But our culture and society need the tending, pruning, fertilizing, and all the work one must devote to living plants.

We cannot delude ourselves that our culture is strong, like some silk flower arrangement that will last forever; society and culture are alive, and the issue is not if they will change but how they will grow and change.

If we try to create a nice flower arrangement and disconnect the connection to the West’s historical roots, it will be like cut flowers, which look glorious for a short time but always die.

Education is a crucial tool to help ensure Western culture can flourish. The West must teach the value of its civilisation—not as being perfect, but as uniquely capable of self-criticism and improvement. It must also support reformist voices within Islam, offering platforms and protection to those who challenge extremism from within.

Finally, the West must regain its confidence.

Hitchens once said, “Take the risk of thinking for yourself; much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.” The West’s strength has always been its ability to think critically, adapt, and innovate. But this requires acknowledging threats, facing uncomfortable truths, and rejecting relativism, which equates all values as equal.

Modern society, particularly in the West, is increasingly plagued by self-hatred and self-flagellation, often cloaked under pretensions of virtues like humility, openness, and self-refinement.

Wokeism, with its relentless focus on historical injustices, systemic flaws, and collective guilt, has contributed to a culture that mistakes self-deprecation for moral growth. What should be a process of learning from history and striving for improvement has devolved into an unhealthy obsession with tearing down cultural foundations and individual identity.

True humility involves acknowledging flaws while building on strengths, yet wokeism emphasises only the former, leaving little room for pride in progress or achievements. Christopher Hitchens once warned against “masochistic and self-pitying apologies,” arguing that they diminish meaningful accountability.

Today, many institutions and individuals engage in performative acts of self-criticism, not as steps toward genuine change but as rituals of public penance meant to signal virtue.

Rather than fostering openness, this self-flagellation narrows dialogue, as fear of appearing complicit silences dissent. Thomas Sowell’s words resonate: “When you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

In the name of progress, this distorted view of humility and refinement erodes confidence, paralyses action, and leaves societies vulnerable to external threats and internal collapse.

Conclusion

The West faces a perfect storm of internal weakness and external threats. Wokeism and a spiritual vacuum created by secularism have left our society fragmented and struggling to defend its values. At the same time, external actors like the Muslim Brotherhood, FSB, and CCP operate with clear strategies to exploit these weaknesses.

Our lack of mooring has led us to worship at the alter of the female penis, to hate the nuclear family, to embrace a postmodern state that rejects any unifying belief system, and one that never ceases to find motes in the eye of the West while being blind to the beams in the eyes of those who make no secret of their desire to harm us.

The solution can’t be simply military victories but a renewed commitment to the battle of ideas—one that reasserts the strength of Western values while supporting reform and realistic levels of integration.

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