Does the West Have a Future?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/25/21

            Christmas is here and we should experience it with gusto. Who but the most hard-hearted doesn’t take joy from seeing children made happy or from sensing the general spirit of joy that clings in the air? Such joyous spirit, however, doesn’t last throughout the year. It eventually succumbs to forgetfulness as our thoughts turn to a new year and to hope for a better one.

            The last two years have been challenging for Americans. The coronavirus has been no more disruptive than the nation’s political and cultural divide, a reality that is sometimes necessary. For two years cities have been plundered and the plunderers ignored. Language such as “transforming America” indicates that many citizens simply don’t like America. The right to bear arms is seriously questioned. Science has been politicized. Scientists, formerly objective searchers and researchers for the truth, have become bureaucratic whisperers into the ears of the king. We are tasting tyranny. Thankfully, the discontent of the American worker poses a challenge to the ruling class of both political parties.

            Yes, it’s 1776 all over again. The Tea Party isn’t dead. It’s very alive, infiltrating the body politic under different names. But back up beyond that. It’s 1215 when the very king of England was forced to sign the Magna Carta. Even before then, everywhere man yearned to be free, as in ancient Rome where Cicero passionately defended the rights of free men under law. Alas, back before Rome, the stalwart Greek, Pericles (a Trump-like figure in that he was a man of wealth who energized the working class) advanced democracy and the participation of commoners.

            The Greeks were the first westerners. One would have found no glimmers of self-rule in ancient Babylon, or China, or Russia. What America’s founders gave us was the full flower from a root, a stalk, and a bud that grew in Greece, Rome, and Britain. Its soil and nutrition was the Judeo-Christian ethic.

            We call it western civilization, one quite unlike that of the lands east of the Mediterranean.  Most American students study it for the first time in 10^th grade World History. College students study it under the simple title, “Western Civilization.” Fundamentally the values of western civilization have been representative democracy, the worth of the individual, liberty, equality, freedom of thought, capitalism, private ownership, and freedom of religion. One doesn’t typically associate these values with China, Russia, tribal Africa, or the small Southeast Asia nations.

            How do these values fare today?  “Western Civilization” was once a required course in virtually every American university. This requirement ended by 2010 when it became voluntary or was replaced with a course called “World Civilization.” And what was wrong with teaching the history and values held by western nations? According to Jesse Jackson what was wrong was the “Euro-centric, white male-domination” which these values led to. In 1988 at Stanford University, Jackson led a demonstration around the campus with students yelling, “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s gotta go.” Caving to Jackson, Stanford opted for “multiculturalism,” catapulting the term to prominence and replacing “Western Civilization” with “Culture, Ideas, and Values.” Call it the birth of cancel culture.

            The Twentieth Century was the American Century. America led the world economically and militarily. Her confidence was wrought of victory in two world wars and an ever growing economy. However, since 2010, the Trumpian interlude notwithstanding, that confidence and leadership have waned. How could it not when political and corporate leaders defend every crazy notion that comes along (cultural Marxism, “equity,” transgenderism, guaranteed income, unabated globalism)? How could it not when America’s military is chased from Afghanistan by ruffians?  How can universities yield knowledgeable, productive citizens while yielding to students’ demands for a warm, mothering environment?

            Western civilization’s greatest achievement has not been art, philosophy, or even scientific advancement. The marvel of the West, particularly America, has been the preservation of individual liberty and respect for the common man. The deplorable common man knows something is wrong when a guy says he is a girl, or when parents become the target of the FBI for speaking out about what their children are being taught.

            Cicero wrote, “Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever.”  The Bible states, “For lack of knowledge the people perish.” If western civilization dies, America dies. But there’s hope. Over half of the nation’s governors are conservative Republicans, most of whom are speaking out boldly for localism and common sense. The 2022 election is looking better every day for conservatives.

 It wasn’t debt forgiveness, guaranteed incomes or one nation under therapy that our founders sought. It was freedom wrung from bold risk, ruggedness, and common sense, qualities that must be reclaimed and reclaimed fast.

 

Roger Hines

12/23/21