It is rarely acknowledged – though British poet Wilfred Owen and composer Benjamin Britten do so explicitly in the poem “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young” which Britten used to form a key portion of the libretto of his “War Requiem” – what was originally intended, in my view, to be the core overriding value of the Abrahamic faith current of western civilization, the Patriarch Abraham being the common root of the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

That primal rudimentary concept is described in the Old Testament in Abraham’s handling of his son, Isaac at the outset of our civilization’s lineage. Had Abraham not followed the right path in that case back then, we would have nothing of what has become our multi-millennial-long cultural tradition.

What was so special, imperative and important, about Abraham’s handling of Isaac?

Britten’s “War Requiem” libretto in part, sung by a baritone and soprano (old man and boy), is taken from the chilling World War I poem by Owen..

“So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Issac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, fire and iron, But where the lamb for this burnt-offering? Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, And builded parapets and trenches there, And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son. When lo! an angel called him out of heaven, Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, Neither do anything to him. Behold, A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns; Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him. But the old man would not so, but slew his son, – And half the seed of Europe, one by one.’

In other words, the monstrosity of the 25 million soldiers’ lives lost in the four years of World War I are owing to the rejection of God’s command to Abraham that he spare Isaac.

Now, this is sin, if ever it was. This is what eons of our civilization’s rejection of the edict to Abraham regarding his son has produced.

Indeed, it is to the brutal way in which our culture has empowered the heinous abuse of its young men by its older ones that blame lies for the most terrible outcomes of our civilization.

This is a revelation that almost no one wants to acknowledge. In fact, it is at the core of what goes by the term of “feminism” actually stands for, even though too few even among proclaimed feminists recognize it. The movement rightly is composed of women and, pardon the word choice, effeminate men. They stand for humanity’s survival through the throwing off of male supremacy in all its forms and everywhere.

It needs to be noted in this context that both Owen and Britten counted themselves among such “effeminate” men, openly homosexual at that.

In the case of World War I following the death of Owen and the Armistice, there was a robust feminist movement rooted in the (correct) notion that male chauvinism was responsible for the impossible carnage that was the Great War.

This led to the swift adoption in the U.S. of the 20th amendment giving women the right to vote for the first time, and an equal rights movement that nearly produced a mandate for equal pay.

Notice that the minute that was held up, in the century since we are still no nearer such a constitutional mandate than we were then.

Latest advancements in the anti-abortion movement, including some of the most inhumane excesses coming out of Texas, is only a lawful progression of this reactionary counterrevolution and will only get more extreme until the forces of the legitimate feminist movement rise up en masse.

Will our culture, grounded as it is in the Abrahamic tradition, finally take the step it has so ruthlessly rejected that the God of Abraham commanded as the precondition for our progress?

Will the feminist mandate at last spring us free to shape a new world free of war and dedicated to the global solutions that will allow us relief from want and suffering?