Are "western values" and "principles" really values and principles, or are they just convenient facade and slight preference put on and enjoyed during "good times"?

I’ve said this in a few different ways a few different times in the last several days:

As a student of history, I can’t despair now. The world, as a whole, is by and large SO MUCH BETTER than it used to be. As a woman of Irish decent, I’m not a starving serf of some minor English lord, with 6 kids I can’t afford to feed and six more in their graves. My friend of Chinese decent isn’t setting dynamite in a railroad tunnel for the price of a meal and a bed and enough opium to make it through the night. As bad as things are, they are consistently getting better. The injustices we’re facing are smaller and better injustices.

The arc is long, but it bends toward justice.

Now I don’t have any idea what “western values and principles” are, but I do know what my values and principles are, and I don’t intent on rejecting them no matter what parade of fascist baboons comes traipsing through the White House.

@Seek That is one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever written.

I think values and principles change all the time. I don’t say it’s good or anything, but it’s not constant. People choose whatever they think is right and good for them. Now I’m not sure what exactly do you refer to by Western values, but if they need to change to fill the needs of the majority, they definitely will.

I think it depends on the supposed need, or lack thereof, and one’s point-of-view.

Claiming to have different values and principles is a good way to differentiate between the worthy and the scum.

But, because of the scum, sometimes you have to sacrifice these virtues in order to win.

And winning, no matter what the cost to ones own psyche, is the be-all and end-all.

THAT is the only consistent value and principle.

”But, because of the scum, sometimes you have to sacrifice these virtues in order to win.”
Once you do that, you become the scum.

No, once you are deemed worthy, you cannot become unworthy. All you have to do is say The magic words and you have Eternal Security.

There is no such thing as true ”western values”, it is a spook or specter in application as much as morality; depending on which ”West” you go to, some of the values are a complete atrocity.

You might stick with the Klingons, they were at least truer to their doctrine.

At one time, western values and principles were defined by Hamarabi. Then they were defined by Socrates, Aristotle, Plato and so on. So whose western values are you challenging today?