The Fight for Civilization in Higher Education
13th February 2024
The idea that Western civilization ushered in an age of oppression, cultural destruction, environmental degradation and all manner of human exploitation, is bittersweet. I don’t mean that it tastes like coffee or dark chocolate. I mean bittersweet the vine, Celastrus orbiculatus, with the colorful orange-red berries. This kind of bittersweet grows at a phenomenal rate, ascending into the canopy and strangling trees. If you drive north out of New York City, you will pass endless miles of arboreal carnage. Tens of thousands of roadside trees are draped in the deadly vine. It is an invasive Asian species that, once established, is impossible to eradicate. And while its fall berries are attractive and make for good floral arrays, they are inedible.
Hatred of Western civilization is the bittersweet of the college curriculum. It is an invasive idea that once ensconced in the classroom strangles every other idea in the minds of many students. It reduces the world into a neat division between the Evil West and the Innocent Rest. In this arrangement, the latter maintain their innocence no matter what they do. Hamas is but the latest beneficiary of this indulgence. Montaigne found nobility in his 1590 essay, “Of Cannibals,” in the Brazilians who cooked their enemies for food. Western intellectuals been busy ever since devising excuses for those who prize primitive appetite over civilized rule.