Sir, - Harold Evans, writing on "The American Century" (The Irish Times, September 20th), states that in the present century the US "has sustained Western civilisation". This is untrue. America has sustained Western power and dominance since Western Europe, after the second World War, ceased to be able to do so. In the course of this sustaining action, the American rulers and the ethical preachers they endorse have overthrown Western civilisation and replaced it with a new ethical system.
A civilisation is, essentially, a set of rules of behaviour, subscribed to by rulers and ruled throughout an extensive territory for a long time. The rules of Western civilisation are well known. For example: "Massacre and abortion are grievous crimes. Christian morality guides the making of laws. Men's work and women's work are different. Chastity and frugality are admirable virtues. Homosexual relations are an unnatural vice. Women are legally subordinate to men. They are to be treated as persons, not as sex-objects. A girl who bears a child without a committed father is a disgrace. Age has authority over youth. Pornography must be denied circulation."
America began the replacement of the Western ethical system when its rulers, in 1945, declared their atomic massacres virtuous, went on to manufacture thousands of weapons of massacre, and threatened to use them again. Subsequently, the American rulers and preachers have led the West into a general overthrow and replacement of the long-standing Western rules. In the American universities "Western civilisation" means "oppression and patriarchy". In our own mass media, the new, post-Western rules of right thinking and behaviour are preached day in, day out.
Civilisations come and go. The European or Western civilisation had to end sometime. But to state that it has been "sustained", when it has been noisily and triumphantly overthrown, is to display crass ignorance of the present situation. - Yours, etc.,
Desmond Fennell, Smithfield Dublin 7.