"Another Sort of Learning" by James Schall
Cause dat be raczits
Hey, Hey!
Ho’, Ho’!
Western Civ
Has got to go!
I seriously doubt there is a tenured professor on any campus today who could effectively teach a WC course of yesteryear. There are some who show signs of competency in clear-headed thinking, Mike Adams being one. The ones who could fill the role of department head, such as Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell, are well beyond their professorial prime.
I have received from Major-General Hull and Brigadier General Walker your unanimous address from Lexington, animated with a martial spirit, and expressed with a military dignity becoming your character and the memorable plains on which it was adopted.
While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence.
But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
An address from the officers commanding two thousand eight hundred men, consisting of such substantial citizens as are able and willing at their own expense completely to arm and clothe themselves in handsome uniforms, does honor to that division of the militia which has done so much honor to its country.
Oaths in this country are as yet universally considered as sacred obligations. That which you have taken and so solemnly repeated on that venerable spot, is an ample pledge of your sincerity and devotion to your country and its government.
bump
Where has the author been for the last 20 years? The Western Canon, Comp Lit, etc., all were bled out in the late 90’s.
We have custody of our 10-yo grand daughter. She is in a charter school where two years of Western Civ is required. Every graduate there has received college acceptance,and averaged over $80k in scholarship money.
I used to teach Western Civ but we were told it had to become World History. So I include some segments on India, China, the Mongols, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas. But still devote the bulk of the course to Western civilization. I go by what I think is important for an educated person to know about. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, the European Middle Ages, the Renaissance...they have done more to shape our modern civilization than the non-Western civilizations.
Ping!
My son has a “great books of western civ “ curriculum in his Honors Program at college. So at least some students are getting grounded in the good stuff. (MS State)
Suicide of the West. James Burnham. 1961, IIRC, 1963 at the latest.
It’s deliberate.
Cultural Marxism
This is closing the barn door after the horses have gone. Somehow our “great thinkers” and activists on the Right have failed to effectively fight back against 60 years of attacks on Western Civ. The only organization I know of that’s making any positive moves is the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). Lynne Cheney was one of the movers and shakers in getting the organization rolling but it’s vastly underfunded and overpowered by the academic Left.
"Another Sort of Learning" by James Schall
My Columbia—the college of the 50s and early 60s required two years of study in Western Civilization (Contemporary Civilization) with a year invested in philosophy, religious texts, political movements and changes, etc and a final year in the humanities and arts and music. What a wonderful education it was and each Columbia graduate had a broadly similar base of education to draw on in discussions into his future decades.
I hear all that was wonderful in learning about the glories of our common past from which a distinct cultural ethos of America was born is gone now. Replaced by negative deconstruction of every facet of human endeavor in the West for the past 3000 years. It is the work of “little” men to destroy “giants” because they were part of their time and culture, overlooking the good that they did to become worthy of their titles and honors.