Western Civilization Deserves To Be Preserved

 While the conservative media is in a tizzy over the fact that (surprise!) Fauci lied, I thought it might be interesting to go a different direction.  Today, at Townhall.com Rob Jenkins has a piece entitled No, Western Civilization Is Not About 'White Supremacy'. The thesis of his piece is that, contrary to what you hear practically everywhere, Western Civilization is about the melding of the best of a other civilizations. But it is not cultural appropriation, it is rather cultural appreciation. After all, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

Western civilization is not specifically Christian, but it is heavily influenced by Christianity and Christian thought, and could not exist without it. Like everything else man does, there are plenty of acts throughout the history of Western civilization that are not pretty. And we acknowledge these things. Interesting that no other civilization acknowledges its own wrongdoing. Stop and think about it. Do the Muslims, the Chinese?  What does this say about these other cultures with which people wish to replace Western civilization?

Before we go on, perhaps we should define “Western culture.” It is essentially the marriage of Judeo-Christian morality with classical (that is, Greek and Roman) intellectualism. It privileges reason over emotion and the individual over the state. Its central tenet is that, through their own efforts, a person can rise above their circumstances.

Western culture is not now nor has it ever been perfect. But it has given us a wealth of great ideas: that all men (and women) are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with natural rights, that we can learn much (if not everything) about our world through careful observation and experimentation, and that we must love our neighbor as ourselves.

It has produced the technological advances that have made modern life so relatively carefree and comfortable--such that, in the West, our “poor” now live better (and longer) than the royalty of years past. Western culture has also given us much beauty, in the form of art, music literature, and architecture, as well as an appreciation for the even greater beauties of nature. For those reasons, Western culture represents the best that humanity has yet produced.

Western culture and the civilization that arose because of it has been under attack for decades. In the 1960s, students, egged on by their professors chanted things like "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go." But it was fairly clear to all that this was youthful rebellion for most. Time, family, and earning a pay check would cure most of them. But the professors didn't seem to grow out of this childish phase. For them, it was ego. After all, shouldn't they, the super educated ones, be the rulers of society? Were they not the inheritors of Plato? Were they not his 'philosopher kings'?  But people saw through that ploy too.

But give them props for the "never say die" attitude. It must be the messaging.

Still, we are told that Western culture is racist because Western nations once practiced slavery. Yes, they did. But what that indictment ignores is that virtually every culture in the history of the world practiced slavery, including in Africa and North America long before Europeans showed up. For most of recorded human history, slavery was the status quo. One group of people conquered another, and those that weren’t killed were captured and enslaved.

It was Western culture, in Europe and North America, that eventually put an end to that abominable practice (although it still exists in some parts of the world). And the reason the West was motivated to do so was that slavery is ultimately incompatible with our core belief in the worth of the individual. It took us a few hundred years to get to that point, true, and many thousands perished in the effort. But we did finally get there—precisely because of our cultural heritage, not in spite of it.

Furthermore, contrary to the popular narrative, Western culture has never been tied exclusively to “whiteness.” Its roots can be traced back to North Africa and the great library at Alexandria, as well as to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. It has also absorbed and incorporated, over the centuries, the best that other cultures have to offer, as is readily apparent in today’s music, literature, and fashion.

Once upon a time, through the miracle of the printing press (and it is a miracle) a middle class American family could order and receive a collection of "Great Books" that spanned from Plato and Aristotle to Marx and Engles. Yes, I read the Communist Manifesto from these Great Books. Not all the ideas presented here were necessarily "good," but it was up to each individual to read, think, criticize, understand, and eventually form his or her own set of ideas. Shakespeare, Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, but also Miles Davis, Thomas Sowell, Tennyson, but also Langston Hughes and Richard Wright are all part of Western civilization.  And there's more, so much more: great art, powerful science and mathematics.

Science specifically arose in Western culture and no where else.  True science is based on the idea that at any moment, what you think you know may be falsified.  It is never settled, and everything is always just a theory; something penciled in that we treat as fact for now, but that may be erased later.  The theory of gravity has not been falsified yet, but if it can be, our understanding of the universe would be completely upended.  That is REAL science.  So saying that, for instance, Climate science is settled says to me that there is precious little science involved.

Western civilization is made up of bits and pieces brought here from elsewhere, like souvenirs brought home from a trip abroad, but then nurtured, expanded upon, until something else emerges. That bulwark of ideas and principles, literature, music and art, so hard won, deserves to be preserved.

I have a particular fondness for Renaissance music. But the history of the Renaissance era is that it was a period of rediscovery of things lost. Perspective in art, for instance. The writings of the Greek and Roman philosophers, which had been preserved by the Arabs. The discovery of the number zero, which also came from the Arabs, as well as al gebra or algebra. The Chinese, under Mao, destroyed much of their culture, and one hopes they will one day rediscover it, preserved by Western Civilization. It is a favor perhaps paid forward.