Several weeks ago, in
Warsaw, President Trump issued a ringing endorsement of Western
Civilization. He praised Western values
and cited Western music, literature, and religion as a legacy of which
Europeans and Americans could be proud.
Within days, the American
Left counter-attacked. In outlets, like
the Atlantic Magazine and the Washington Post, writers expressed outrage at the
implication that figures such as Beethoven and Shakespeare had done something
special. This assertion was nothing less
than a coded argument in favor of racism and white supremacy.
I, for one, was amazed by
this line of reasoning. When journalists
endorse freedom of the press, I am with them.
But when they defame the cultural advances that made this freedom
possible, they expose the brain-dead status of contemporary progressivism.
The Atlantic is a magazine
of ideas. As such, it has been very
influential. But who invented this
format? Meanwhile, the Washington Post
is a mass circulation newspaper. So who
initiated the printing press as a mode of public communication? Why, it was Westerners of course. These innovations were not developed in
Africa, or China, or India.
Think of how much we owe to
Western civilization. It is responsible not
just for great music and literature. Who,
after all, gave us modern science, the industrial revolution, state-of-the-art
medicine, the airplane, the railroad, the computer, free public education,
television, reading glasses, the fork, the mechanical clock, the pocket, or the
chimney?
More importantly, who gave us democracy, the
Bill of Rights, or religious tolerance?
It wasn’t the Chinese. It wasn’t
the Africans. It wasn’t the
Indians. These tools, without which, the
writers at the Atlantic could not spout their egregious nonsense, evolved first
in Europe and then spread to our shores.
But more than this, the
folks who made these contributions were primarily Caucasian. That’s right, they were white. Is this something of which we should be
ashamed? Should folks of European
descent deny their heritage just because some other folks might be offended?
The Chinese made some
wonderful contributions to civilization.
They gave us moveable print and gunpowder. The Indians also made superb
contributions. They gave us the modern
numbering system. The African has
likewise advanced our knowledge, most notably in Egypt.
In celebrating what white
folks have achieved, there is no need to denigrate what these others have done.
But neither do we enhance the impact of
non-Europeans by denouncing the inputs of the West. Fake history is fake history. Promoting a sanitized version of the past
cannot erase what actually happened.
Contemporary liberalism is
shot through with fantasies and well-intentioned insults. In the name of political correctness, it now demands
that everyone be equal in every respect—whether or not this is the case. As a result, it is dumbing down our culture
and hastening its decline.
Everyone deserves an
opportunity to succeed, no matter what the skin color or ethnic
background. Nonetheless, a person’s
chances are not advanced by intellectual fictions. Did this tactic, for instance, help the
Russians when they claimed to have invented everything from the airplane to the
automobile?
Worse yet, what alternative
to modernism are the hyper-liberals proposing? It surely cannot be a variation
of Chinese socialism or African tribalism.
Left-wingers like to criticize capitalism and the free market. Yet these have furnished humanity with
greater freedom and prosperity than any previous form of social organization.
True, western nations have
sponsored slavery and sexism. But they
also supplied the intellectual tools and democratic institutions to move us
beyond these. Can this be said of
socialism, anarchism, or Asian autocracy?
The Bible tells us, “You
will know them by their fruits.” If so, most
of the fruits of Western Civilization have been very nutritious. If they are allowed to further ripen, they
may yet become tastier and more wholesome in their extent.
Simply burning down the
orchard is no answer. Intellectuals, who
in their hatred of Trump, hope to excise every shred of human progress do none
of us a service. By making skin color
the sole criteria of acceptability, they disseminate the very racism they
abhor.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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