This essay explains the nature and universal value of Western civilization and why the efforts to replace its teaching with “Afro-centric” and “Latino-centric” studies are based on racism and imply the destruction of education. It demonstrates that by the standard of the value of knowledge, modern Western Civilization is both the most advanced civilization in the history of the world and also can and should be adopted as one’s own civilization by everyone everywhere, irrespective of his race or ethnicity.
These are the sections of the essay:
•The Nature of Western Civilization
•The Universalizability of Western Civilization
•The Standard for Judging a Civilization: the Objective Superiority of Western Civilization
•The New Racism
•The Devaluation of Knowledge
•Western Civilization and the State of Education
The essay's standard for judging civilizations is their ability to acquire and apply knowledge. The greater that ability, the higher is the civilization. It is by this standard that modern Western Civilization must be judged the highest form of civilization in the history of mankind.
The essay shows, moreover, that Western Civilization is open to everyone, i.e., to people of all races and ethnicities and that the superiority or inferiority of any given culture or civilization is strictly a matter of ideas and values, not racial membership.
On this basis, it argues, for example that even descendants of American Indians should agree with the proposition that Columbus discovered America. Because if they are educated and thus have made the fundamental ideas and values of Western Civilization their own, they will regard Columbus as having opened up the Western Hemisphere to what are now their ideas and values, which previously resided only in Europe. In other words, they will identify with the civilization and culture of the modern world, not with the primitive civilization and culture, indeed, the outright savagery, of their ancestors.
Today’s educational and intellectual establishments believe that civilization and culture are racially determined and that Western Civilization is the civilization only of white men. Blacks, Orientals, Hispanics, and others somehow racially secrete, as it were, their own civilizations. And because all races are equally good, all civilizations and cultures are equally good, including civilization and savagery, according to the establishment view.
This is racism of the same kind as practiced by 19th century Europeans, when they observed the marked cultural inferiority of peoples of non-European descent. They assumed that cultural inferiority implied racial inferiority. Today’s racists retain the same mistaken linkage between culture and race, only work it from the starting point of race rather than culture. In the process, they conclude modern civilization and savagery are of equal value.
The essay shows that this approach constitutes a total devaluation of knowledge and that when widely introduced into the educational system is a formula for the destruction of civilization.
These are the sections of the essay:
•The Nature of Western Civilization
•The Universalizability of Western Civilization
•The Standard for Judging a Civilization: the Objective Superiority of Western Civilization
•The New Racism
•The Devaluation of Knowledge
•Western Civilization and the State of Education
The essay's standard for judging civilizations is their ability to acquire and apply knowledge. The greater that ability, the higher is the civilization. It is by this standard that modern Western Civilization must be judged the highest form of civilization in the history of mankind.
The essay shows, moreover, that Western Civilization is open to everyone, i.e., to people of all races and ethnicities and that the superiority or inferiority of any given culture or civilization is strictly a matter of ideas and values, not racial membership.
On this basis, it argues, for example that even descendants of American Indians should agree with the proposition that Columbus discovered America. Because if they are educated and thus have made the fundamental ideas and values of Western Civilization their own, they will regard Columbus as having opened up the Western Hemisphere to what are now their ideas and values, which previously resided only in Europe. In other words, they will identify with the civilization and culture of the modern world, not with the primitive civilization and culture, indeed, the outright savagery, of their ancestors.
Today’s educational and intellectual establishments believe that civilization and culture are racially determined and that Western Civilization is the civilization only of white men. Blacks, Orientals, Hispanics, and others somehow racially secrete, as it were, their own civilizations. And because all races are equally good, all civilizations and cultures are equally good, including civilization and savagery, according to the establishment view.
This is racism of the same kind as practiced by 19th century Europeans, when they observed the marked cultural inferiority of peoples of non-European descent. They assumed that cultural inferiority implied racial inferiority. Today’s racists retain the same mistaken linkage between culture and race, only work it from the starting point of race rather than culture. In the process, they conclude modern civilization and savagery are of equal value.
The essay shows that this approach constitutes a total devaluation of knowledge and that when widely introduced into the educational system is a formula for the destruction of civilization.
