Sometimes the best defense of Western Civilization is a thorough confession
When I was a
kid, Western Civilization seemed as eternal as the ancient granite hills
threading through my hometown. Christian churches were packed on Sunday. Even
forms as minor and ephemeral as jokes and song lyrics assumed, in the hearer,
proficiency in a cultural heritage from Ancient Greece to Shakespeare to NASA.
You couldn't understand Cole Porter or Johnny Carson without having been
baptized into this heritage. The day began with the Pledge of Allegiance and no
one sat that out or even made rude comments or eye-rolls. Classroom walls
featured silhouette profiles of Washington and Lincoln.
That everything had changed hit me hardest when I was teaching. I might casually allude to a line I assumed everyone knew, like, "In the beginning … the earth was without form, and void … and God said, Let there be light: and there was light." Or, I might use a phrase like "ex nihilo," or "fiat lux." And I would be met with complete incomprehension. The Vietnam War. Nothing. The Greek Miracle. Blank stares. Normandy Beach. Huh?
