RUTHFULLY YOURS

When I entered college in 1972, the ’60s generation of activists had eliminated all but two requirements to graduate: one semester of a physical science and two semesters of Western civilization.  Fortunately for me, the science requirement was dropped my sophomore year, leaving Western civ as the only course mandated by the school.

Even the left realized the value of studying our roots as a civilization – at least the left of 45 years ago.  But the creatures who call themselves leftists today carry no such intellectual baggage.  It has been drummed into their tiny brains that Western civilization – a civilization that created the modern world with all its grevious faults and stupendous successes – isn’t worth examining.

So say the overwhelming majority of students at Stanford University, who voted down a proposal to require two semesters studying our roots by a 6-1 margin.

Daily Caller:

The ballot initiative was promoted by members of the school’s conservative-leaning Stanford Review. If passed, it would have called for Stanford to require that all freshmen complete a two-quarter course covering “the politics, history, philosophy, and culture of the Western world.” Stanford once possessed a similar requirement, but eliminated it after a student campaign in the 1980s that denounced it as fostering racism, sexism, and other perfidious -isms.

Supporters managed to collect 370 signatures on their petition, enough to include it as a ballot measure for Stanford’s spring student government election.

But it turns out Stanford has no enthusiasm for requiring the study of Western civilization. In election results released Monday, the proposal failed by an overwhelming margin, with 342 votes in favor and a whopping 1992 votes against.

In contrast, over 90 percent of students voted in favor of an initiative requiring the school to administer a new campus climate survey designed to find the rate of sexual assault on campus. The school already administered such a survey in 2015, but it outraged activists by finding a sexual assault rate of just 1.9%, which they deemed far too low.

The mere suggestion that Stanford require studying Western civilization had generated immense outrage among certain Stanford communities. A low-income advocacy group at the school suspended a member based on the suspicion that he wrote an anonymous piece supporting the proposal. A hostile column in The Stanford Daily warned that accepting the proposal would mean centering Stanford education on “upholding white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism, and all other oppressive systems that flow from Western civilizations.”

Of course, students would ostensibly be studying the creation of democracy – the irony of voting on the proposal lost on them – the slow, steady scientific progress that has created the computers they need, the industrial agriculture that feeds them, the video games and smart phones they’re addicted to, and a host of other accomplishments that would require a book-length treatment to do them justice.

So what about the status of women in non-Western countries?  Perhaps college-aged females in the U.S. should be given cliterectomies upon entering school.  That would show how advanced societies in Africa and Asia treat women.

Or perhaps we should adopt that hugely successful economic model used by Cuba and North Korea.  Everyone is perfectly equal – in abject poverty.

As for colonialism, it’s been more than 50 years in most cases – 60 in some – since the withdrawal of the Europeans from the colonies.  How much longer are white men going to be blamed for the incompetence, the savagery, and the greed of leaders in former colonies in Africa and Asia?

Let the Stanford students wallow in their ignorance.  They will be outclassed and outhustled by those who recognize what Western civilization has given us.  And why its accomplishments should be celebrated.