Western Civilization under Siege

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The following is from Thomas Sowell. Is Reality Optional? pp. 41 - 42.

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WESTERN CIVILIZATION HAS SURVIVED the invasions of Genghis Khan from the East, the Ottoman Empire from the South, and two world wars originating from within. But whether it will survive its own intellectuals is much more doubtful.

The battlefront is everywhere, but especially where the young are being taught—from the elementary school to the university. The sins of the human race are being taught to them as the special depravities of the United States or of Western civilization.

Deep thinkers like to talk about such things as the oppression of women In Western society—when in fact women have had a much lower position in Islamic cultures, for example, and girl babies were often routinely killed in parts of Asia. It was a Western nation—Britain—which put an end to the burning of widows alive on their husbands' funeral pyres in India.

Slavery is of course the trump card of critics of Western civilization. But the tragic fact is that this abomination has existed on every continent inhabited by man. The pyramids were built by slaves, long before Columbus discovered America, and human beings were bought and sold for centuries in Asia as well. Slavery existed in both North and South America before the first white man set foot in the Western Hemisphere.

Hard and painful as it is to realize today, leading moralists in many lands and in many centuries saw nothing wrong with slavery. It was precisely in the West—notably in England—that a moral revulsion against slavery and a movement to stamp it out everywhere developed in the late eighteenth century.

Only the unchallenged might of the British navy, patrolling the waters off Africa for decades in the early nineteenth century, brought the shipment of slaves to the Western Hemisphere to an end. The Czarist regime in Russia, though despotic by Western standards, stamped out slavery among Central Asians in its domains. The efforts of many Western powers to stop slavery within their empires and spheres of influence in Africa and the Middle East continued on well into the twentieth century, over bitter opposition by Arabs and Africans alike.

The West must accept its share of the blame for participating in the exploitation and degradation of human beings, but that is very different from taking the rap for everybody else—or allowing phoney history to poison its own children's minds today.

Gross double standards in judging Western and non-Western cultures have become so commonplace among intellectuals that few seem to notice it any more. Tragedies and injustices common to the human species around the world are referred to as flaws in "our society": Every ugly incident, however isolated, is immediately magnified in the media, and often treasured for years afterward as something to be resurrected whenever anyone dares to say anything good about America or Western society.

Meanwhile, many of the same intellectuals gush over foreign tyrants and brush aside their bloody oppression as mere stages on the road to a glowing future. At the height of Mao's "cultural revolution" in China—an orgy of intolerant repressions, terror, public humiliations and mass killings—Western intellectuals flocked to China and returned to say how wonderful it all was. Mao's little red book of sayings was a hot item in campus bookstores while he subjugated one-fourth of the human race and made them pawns and guinea pigs for his visions.

Abortions forcibly imposed on Chinese women nearing time to give birth aroused nothing like the indignation which our intellectuals express when racial slurs are uttered during a teenage brawl in New York. Horrors imposed by numerous authorities carrying out government policies in China are called regrettable "excesses" of "local officials," while any isolated assassin in the United States is said to represent a pervasive "sickness" of American society.

Those who habitually use such double standards are seldom poor or people with any personal reason for being embittered. Often they are some of the most fortunate and pampered people in Western society, including both highly paid media intellectuals and academics with soft schedules and numerous perks. Why these should be among the most venomous critics of the West—and the most blindly one-sided—is no doubt a long and complex story. However, spoiled brats have seldom been noted for their gratitude.

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Is he suggesting that the elite liberal left intelligentsia of America who hate America so much are the spoiled brat kids of rich people? I think that is an idea to reflect over.

The spoiled brat children of America’s rich, who in a way know so little of life and so lack in character and understanding, attend America’s elite universities and then take the highest level jobs and become America’s most influential and powerful.

Why these should be among the most venomous critics of the West—and the most blindly one-sided—is no doubt a long and complex story. However, spoiled brats have seldom been noted for their gratitude.

Spoiled children with little minds but great inherited wealth want to be important and distinguish themselves. How does a person with a little mind distinguish himself? He adopts all of the latest, most fashionable, avant-guarde, left-wing opinions and ideas and supports left-wing causes with radical zeal.

7 May 2024