Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Go East, Young Man?

... and no, I'm not referring to the growing exodus out of California, although "Are you thinking about leaving?" is a common question among friends these days.

Instead, I'm referring to the trashing of Western civilization in the Academy and in public. I'm getting near the end of Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals which has an extensive section on the history of slavery. In that section, he points out that only the West, led by the British, moved to stamp out slavery around the world. In fact, outside of the West, the idea that slavery might be morally wrong didn't occur to anyone. 

I had to work this morning and now I want to go downstairs and watch Newcastle get thrashed by Liverpool, so I'll close with these questions.

If we ditch Western Civilization, will slavery make a comeback? Without the Christian foundation of the West, what is the moral first principal arguing against slavery? The Chinese don't seem to have one.

Hmm.

These cheese-stuffed hot dogs wrapped in bacon have nothing to do with the post, but if you eat enough of them you will die.

3 comments:

Tom said...

You know Costco sells their foot-long hot dogs with regular hot dogs now. A cheese-stuffed, bacon-wrapped foot-long sounds like a pleasurable death sentence...

ligneus said...

I forwarded this post to several friends, one in particular who is a Green and ditched the Church some years ago. They don't understand what they're doing.

One Brow said...

Like most western/southern states, California is growing in population, not shrinking.

If we ditch Western Civilization, will slavery make a comeback?

I don't take seriously anyone who proposes ditching Western civilization. I'm not aware of any significant person who wants to.

Without the Christian foundation of the West, what is the moral first principal arguing against slavery.

Historically, there is a very good argument that the teachings of Paul are responsible for the egalitarian notions that led to the creation of modern notions of the equality of all people. That said, all you need to maintain them is cultural inertia. In order to lose these notions, some world view would have to come along to replace them, one with more appeal than the notion that all people are equal. In a society as as much wealth inequality as ours has, I don't know what that would be.