Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • How We Are Different
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • Your Survival Guy
  • The Great Reset
  • COVID-19
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • The Swiss Way
  • Dick Young
  • Debbie Young
  • Key West
  • Paris
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Work to Make Money/Invest to Save Money
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

Is Western Civilization Really so Bad?

May 1, 2018 By Richard C. Young

Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, Paris, France. By Brian Kinney @ Shutterstock.com

Robert W. Merry, writing in the 15th anniversary issue of The American Conservative, explains that much of the assault on Western civilization today is really a “political maneuver to favor the so-called victim class.” That victim class, especially on college campuses, has taken wholeheartedly to the idea that it has been oppressed, and that the only remedy is the complete annihilation of the presumed oppressor. But can destroying Western civilization really benefit the world? Merry points to artistic expression, scientific inquiry, exploration and civic development as areas where Western civilization broadened humanity’s horizons in ways that changed the world. Would anyone really want to give that all up? He writes (abridged):

I also don’t understand why so many liberals go bonkers at the mere mention of Western civilization or the Western heritage. When Donald Trump in his Warsaw speech last year referred repeatedly to “the West” and “our civilization,” he was castigated by two writers for The Atlantic, Peter Beinart and James Fallows, who found it “shocking” that an American president would connect his country’s values to the civilization of its heritage.

What is the West? Its fundamental elements include the theology of Christianity against the confines of nature. It wasn’t by accident that the West invented the architectural flying buttress, making possible the Gothic cathedrals that soar into the sky. In painting, Western man employed light and shadow to burst through space and time, bringing dimension to the canvas and making the background a symbol of the infinite. And just when Dutch Baroque painting was reaching its fullest flowering with Rembrandt and his contemporaries, the West’s cultural momentum was picked up by the soaring new expression of Baroque music, reflected so powerfully in the cantatas and fugues of Bach.

In literature, the West developed a penetrating “biographical” approach, dealing with the entirety of a life, as opposed to the Greeks’ “anecdotal” approach, which concentrated on a single moment.

Western science similarly pushed outward through a preoccupation with the horizon and eventually outer space. The West moved beyond the confining Euclidian geometry of Classical times and developed the soaring mathematical constructions of calculus and physics.

The West’s impulse towards pushing out into new realms led to the Age of Discovery, the period of conquest, colonial overlordship, and eventually the era of Western global dominance. And yes, that system was unquestionably exploitative and often abusive, characterized frequently by cultural insensitivity and attitudes of superiority.

It is altogether appropriate and proper that this part of the story should be told, that the human costs attending the West’s rise should be recognized and discussed. But second, this is not a distinctly Western phenomenon.

Welcome to History 101, which teaches that the story of mankind is not of exploited good guys and abusive bad guys. It is of civilizations struggling for cultural expression and fulfillment against forces and pressures from others who would thwart them.

Much of this assault on the Western heritage is really a political maneuver to favor the so-called victim class (anyone whose ancestors suffered at the hands of the West) against the so-called privileged class (those whose ancestors imposed the suffering). It’s a brilliant ploy, and it’s working in many quarters, particularly on college campuses. But it has little to do with any reasoned interpretation of history.

Read more here.

If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for my free weekly email.

Related Posts

  • Bad Journalism, Bad Form, Bad Manners.
  • Is American Diplomacy as Bad as It Looks?
  • Remembering Breaking Bad With Badfinger
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Richard C. Young
Richard C. Young is the editor of Young's World Money Forecast, and a contributing editor to both Richardcyoung.com and Youngresearch.com.
Latest posts by Richard C. Young (see all)
  • NH Republicans Favor DeSantis Over Trump By a Big Margin - January 27, 2023
  • Will Western Tanks Be a Game Changer in Ukraine? - January 26, 2023
  • Is Putin’s Meat Grinder Working? - January 26, 2023

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • Stunned Democrats Against “Defund Police”
  • The Case for Individual Stocks: Now More than Ever
  • The Common Ground of Democracy is Sinking Beneath Americans’ Feet
  • Paris, The Palace Hotels: Part I
  • Ron Paul: “Freedom and Central Banking Are Not Compatible”
  • The Four Most Important Words in Investing
  • “The Losses are Taking a Toll on Their Health”
  • What to Do about China?
  • “An Epic Struggle Over the Definition of America”
  • The Fed – “Independent” and “Non Political” – Joins The Resistance

Our Most Popular Posts

  • Pfizer CEO Terrified of Real Questions About His Vaccines
  • America's Super States and Stocks that Respect YOU
  • Give Me Clean, Efficient Gas
  • How the Biden Administration Is Destroying Our Energy Infrastructure
  • Artificial Intelligence Is Coming, But It's Not Quite There
  • The Rich Seek More from Bank Accounts
  • Is Kevin McCarthy’s GOP Willing to Do What It Takes on Debt?
  • Strengthen Your Defenses Against Stroke
  • The Sound of Silence
  • Forty Years Ago, Jogging a Mile a Day and Still Going

Disclosure

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • CATO: Global Freedom Is in Sharp Decline
  • Biden Administration Destroying Retiree Fiduciary Protections
  • 4 Life Changing Words for Your Survival Guy: “You Should Try This”
  • Suddenly, Holding Cash Looks Good Again to Many
  • Anti-Carbon Crusaders in Davos Talk ESG and OPM
  • Is Passive Investing Already Passé?
  • Welcome to Hotel California, Where You Can Never Leave
  • What You’re Telling Me Matters
  • Can Banks Compete with Apple Pay and PayPal?
  • America’s Super States and Stocks that Respect YOU

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • CATO: Global Freedom Is in Sharp Decline
  • TIME FOR A GONDOLA? Little Cottonwood Canyon Jammed with Traffic
  • Biden Administration Destroying Retiree Fiduciary Protections
  • 4 Life Changing Words for Your Survival Guy: “You Should Try This”
  • Anti-Carbon Crusaders in Davos Talk ESG and OPM
  • Welcome to Hotel California, Where You Can Never Leave
  • What You’re Telling Me Matters
  • The Rich Seek More from Bank Accounts
  • California’s Wealth Tax Will Drive Out Remaining Rich Residents
  • Political Establishment Irate over Conservative Challenges to ESG

Don’t Believe ’em. They’re Coming for Your Gas Stove

NH Republicans Favor DeSantis Over Trump By a Big Margin

CATO: Global Freedom Is in Sharp Decline

The Telling Depth of Media Propaganda and Censorship

MEDIA BLACKOUT: No One Will Cover Pharma Exec’s Virus Confession

TIME FOR A GONDOLA? Little Cottonwood Canyon Jammed with Traffic

Copyright © 2023 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives