“We must steadfastly and uncompromisingly proclaim the fundamental principles of human liberties and democratic liberties which are the common heritage of all English-speaking peoples and which found their vivid expression in the American Declaration of Independence, including the Great Charter of Freedom, the Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, the Grand Jury Clause and, finally, the English Common Law. It is a quote from Winston Churchill’s famous Fulton speech, which he delivered on March 5, 1946.
Defeated in the parliamentary elections and formally out of power, Churchill remained one of the most influential figures in the world and, at the invitation of US President Truman, visited Westminster College in the then-still provincial town of Fulton, Missouri, where he delivered his historic speech. The following emphasis of Churchill is striking in the quote: the positive phenomena that are to be spread worldwide derive exclusively from English and American political and legal culture.
We are dealing with a peculiar “Anglo-centric fundamentalism,” which then developed in the policies of Reagan (see the statement about the “evil empire”) and Thatcher. And if we look deeper, the Fulton speech laid the groundwork for the most common trick in modern politics, when values (which may be “right”) become a blackjack for foreign policy and are thereby… devalued. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this was the case in previous centuries as well; it’s just that the second half of the 20th century saw the beginning of the modern phase of making values with the help of blackjack.
No sane person would object to human rights and democracy. But the way the United States tried to spread those beautiful values in, for example, Iraq, was highly discrediting to those same values. In such cases, they lose their inner meaning and become a fundamentalist religion. The Christian religion is also one of the highest achievements of humanity. But what the Crusaders did, for example, hardly has anything to do with that teaching. The Russian Orthodox faith and the preservation of traditional values also do not, as such, contain any negative charge. But when they sound like a justification for attacking Ukraine, the positive charges disappear.
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Dividing the world, the country, or even your district of the city into “good” and “evil” groups, even by choosing very valid criteria, seems dangerous to me. That leads to a peculiar narrow-mindedness which, if possessed by the masses, leads to dramatic consequences. Mostly, it doesn’t matter to me in which “sphere” a given person or group is a fanatic: Islam, Christianity, Communism, or… human rights. Bringing value orientations into international relations contributes to that devaluation process. This applies to empires, which claim that they embody good and others – evil, and small states, which are allegedly forced to choose between this “good” and “evil.” It turns out that pampering Putin is slavery, and flattering Biden supposedly leads Armenia on the development path.
Ukrainian nationalists in various places also fight against the Russian language, claiming it is the language of “aggressors and villains.” It seems that Putin’s monstrous (really monstrous) policies have anything to do with the Russian language.
American soldiers also killed civilians in the 20th and 21st centuries and bombed cities tens of thousands of kilometers away. What, we’re not supposed to speak the language of Shakespeare and Faulkner?
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
“Aravot” daily 19.09.2023
