In Defense of Western Civilization: Intellectual Ammunition Against the Multicultural Assault
July 19, 2016
“The literatures of Greece and Rome comprise the longest, most complete and most nearly continuous record we have of what the strange creature known as Homo sapiens has been busy about in virtually every department of spiritual, intellectual and social activity. That record covers nearly twenty-five hundred years in an unbroken stretch of this animated oddity’s operations in poetry, drama, law, agriculture, philosophy, architecture, natural history, philology, rhetoric, astronomy, logic, politics, botany, zoölogy, medicine, geography, theology,—everything, I believe, that lies in the range of human knowledge or speculation. Hence the mind which has attentively canvassed this record is much more than a disciplined mind, it is an experienced mind. It has come, as Emerson says, into a feeling of immense longevity, and it instinctively views contemporary man and his doings in the perspective set by this profound and weighty experience. Our studies were properly called formative, because beyond all others their effect was powerfully maturing. Cicero told the unvarnished truth in saying that those who have no knowledge of what has gone before them must forever remain children; and if one wished to characterise the collective mind of this present period, or indeed of any period,—the use it makes of its powers of observation, reflection, logical inference,—one would best do it by the one word immaturity.” ― Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man
Anyone remotely aware of the dynamic interplay of ideas and events in the world for the past several decades is well aware that in the media, in the academy, and in the corridors of power, Western Civilization is under a vicious and aggressive assault. Here are vital unapologetic defenses of the West and its definitive legacy in shaping the world:
How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity, by Rodney Stark
How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.; (EWTN series The Catholic Church: Builder of Civilization; online at YouTube and at EWTN)
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, by Anthony Esolen
Civilization, by Kenneth Clark; (BBC TV series Civilization); online at YouTube (here)
Phoenix: The Triumph of the West, by J. M. Roberts; (BBC TV series The Triumph of the West; select episodes online at YouTube)
The Great Books of the Western World, by Mortimer J. Adler (Author, Editor), Clifton Fadiman (Editor), and Philip W. Goetz (Editor)
Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate’s Defense of Liberal Democracy, by Ibn Warraq
Boettke on Rothbard and Libertarianism