Tomorrow marks the anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and (later) Nagasaki which brought a sudden end to the long Second World War. We might have expected that such expressions of man’s inhumanity to man ultimately might have conferred upon our societies the wisdom to truly value life and liberty.

Unfortunately, in the years following World War II, after the collapse of Nazism, the West voluntarily succumbed to a new dictatorship of relativism that is no less evil than the fascism that preceded it. This new tyranny recognises nothing as being definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of satiating one’s own ego and desires.

We have seen the contemporary results – nihilistic yet impeccably democratic legislation that repudiates life itself! I am thinking here of existing, enacted and pending articles of legislation that legalise various drugs, prostitution, contraception, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia, and genetic manipulation. Human beings are not raw materials to be exploited or commodities that can be bought and sold. To suggest otherwise is to endorse a macabre interpretation of progress.

Today, the West cries for liberation from the tyranny of modernity being imposed by liberal governments as they seek new and ingenious ways of undermining morality and embracing nihilism. Is this the path western civilisation wishes to traverse? Are we to remain self-exiled victims of our own life-repudiating self-absorption?

I suggest that the initial step to halting this demoralising slide toward an anti-life state philosophy is available to us today. But this will also take a great effort on the part of us all. We need to re-examine the godless assumptions that we permit to serve as the foundation of our own individual lives. We need to go beneath the surface, without yielding to the propaganda of the enlightenment with its false promises. Then and only then will we be able to breathe a new and vibrant culture of life back into our society.

Perhaps, in time, and through the promotion of a culture of life, western civilisation – indeed all peoples and nations – will come to experience a new liberation based on the realisation that it is not selfishness or war but truth that sets us free.

Paul Kokoski

Hamilton, Ontario

Canada