China, the West, and the Global Culture War

The most significant challenges facing Western nations today are arguably civilizational in nature and scope. They are not the result of imposition by any external enemy or force, nor of the typical fluctuations of economic cycles, but the product of deeper internal problems within the collective structure of these societies. They include problems in the domains of cultural and moral value systems, civic order and societal cohesion, family structures and intergenerational transmission mechanisms, and elite leadership capacity and legitimacy. Moreover, these challenges are civilizational in that they pose a potentially existential threat to the continuation of our civilization as a distinct and particular historical people, living culture, and polity.