August 6 and August 9 mark the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and 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. We have seen the contemporary results – the 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.

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 civilization wishes to traverse? Are we to remain self-exiled victims of our own life-repudiating self-absorption?

Paul Kokoski

Hamliton, Ontario

Canada