This business of traditional societies rebelling against the incursions of modernity is not about the ethical decadence of the modernist value system so much as it is about an affront to the power position of the customary leadership, be that leadership clerical or secular, mullahs and rabbis or strong man power-wielders and despots. Were the objection to modernity truly along the lines of proper decorum between men and women, and the preservation of the traditional values, those issues could be worked out through a judicious embrace of some of the enlightened values the modern world had developed but coupled and tempered with a reverence for the traditional values the ancient world has left for us as a legacy and a birthright, much the way the Modern Orthodox Jews try to do it.
The wholesale rejection of Western values is a rejection of the development of the modern world's political innovation – the establishment of legitimate authority as the dominant form of social control. Those who pretend to the promotion of social control by anyone other than a legitimate authority – be it a god as the author of holy writ, or a party as the trustee of a sublime vision for humanity, or some leader who is father to the servile people under his rule – are pretending to holding the power in their own hands and are unwilling to delegate power over society to those disinterested players who would resist power's corruptions and temptations.
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