On the intellectual bankruptcy of moral equivalence

By David French

The Third Rail examines the disputes that divide America. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Theres a pattern emerging in parts of the right. It goes something like this. Yes, Russia is wrong to invade Ukraine, but And what follows the but is invariably an avalanche of excuse-making and false moral equivalence. NATO provoked Russia, Ukraine provoked Russia, orand this is my favoriteWestern wokeism provoked Russia.

Earlier this week the extraordinarily popular Canadian professor Jordan Peterson released a lengthy (and immediately viral) video that represented the virtual platonic form of the argument that Russia is wrong, but If you have a spare hour, Id urge you to watch his entire lecture, if only to understand a view you may not hear much in your daily life.

I want to focus on a specific claim by Petersonthat Russia has not only gone to war to protect itself from what he describes as Western degeneracy, but that our alleged degeneracy robs the West of the moral high ground in the conflict. Heres a key quote:

And what is this degeneracy? Peterson talks about radical gender ideology, the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson (yes, really), and her reluctance to define a woman during her confirmation hearings. Heres more Peterson:

Petersons moral equivalence does not (yet) hold majority Republican support. While Republicans are less likely to support Ukraine in the conflict than Democratsand less likely to support strict economic sanctions against Russia and sending military support to Ukrainestrong majorities still oppose Vladimir Putin.

Petersons beliefs, however, are still worth addressing, and not just because they undermine American support for an ally that is directly confronting one of our nations chief geopolitical foes. His beliefs also lead to a sense of unjustified existential despair about the state of our own civilization and culture.

In short, while the West has problems, it is not degenerate by any reasonable historical measure, and there is no reasonable comparison between the virtue of NATO and Russia. To argue otherwise is to be ignorant or to engage in gravely deficient moral reasoning.

The rights disproportionate commitment to moral equivalence in the Russia-Ukraine war is explained partly by pure contrarianism (opposing anything the elite supports) and partly by a profoundly negative view of modern Western cultural life, and a prewar view of Putin as a muscular representative of specifically anti-woke Christian nationalism.

Theres no question that Putin has forged a close relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church, but that is an indictment of the Russian Church, not an endorsement of Putin. Hes a brutal war criminal who employed his military in indiscriminate attacks against civilians in the wars in Chechnya and Syria well before the wholesale slaughter in Ukraine.

Moreover, its hardly the case that Russia itself is a hotbed of religious fervor. Its far more secular than the United States (53 percent of Americans say religion is very important in their lives, versus only 16 percent of Russians). Russia has a substantially higher murder rate than every member of NATO, including the United States. It suppresses religious freedom, and it has one of the highest measured abortion rates in the world.

Is Russia defending itself against Western degeneracy and protecting the Christian faith? No, its distorting and appropriating Christianity to inflict its own pathological criminality on a peaceful nation and its innocent people.

Petersons critique of the West as degenerate or insane rests largely on the existence of radical gender ideology and illiberal wokeness that does have profound influence in a number of key Western cultural institutions, including the academy, large corporations, and much of the mainstream press.

Yet the Western-protected regime of individual liberty and the rule of law not only protects its citizens from the worst excesses of authoritarians on the left and the right; it protects the mechanisms of internal critique that can and do lead to reform. Moreover, even with wokeness abroad in the land, NATO countries remain among the best places in the history of the world to build a life and raise a family.

Neither America nor its Western allies have ever been perfect. Weve always been profoundly flawed. Indeed, the United States that fought World War II was far more degenerate or pathological than it is today. We liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny and Asia from Japanese despotism at the same time that we maintained an apartheid-like Jim Crow regime in the South.

But that did not render the moral high ground in the Second World War up for the most serious debate.

Ive long been a participant in the American culture war. I was a pro-life and religious-liberty litigator for more than 20 years before I became a journalist. I also know that its easy to lose perspective when you spend too much time immersed in domestic disputes. Most of us, however, get jolted back to reality when we see the true face of aggressive, authoritarian evil. A clash over whether to use the word woman or a person with the capacity for pregnancy is a moral and philosophical dispute that can be mediated through the instruments of liberal democracy.

A Russian cruise missile launched into an apartment building, by contrast, represents a truly different order of depravity. A nation or culture does not have to be perfect to be right, and make no mistakein the clash between the war criminal in the Kremlin and Ukraine and its NATO allies, the true moral high ground could not be more clear.

The rest is here:

Jordan Peterson Is Wrong About Russia, and the West - The Atlantic