But there''s a lot of that crap out there put out by people who think of themselves well to the left of Mike Royko. I get this, in fact, from my co-clerk, who responds to my admittedly reflexive First Amendment absolutism with stuff about, the First Amendment is just a tool for white men like you to oppress women and minorities. I wouldn't understand, you see, since I occupy a hopelessly priviliged subject position.
And if you don't know me well enough by now to realize that I would neither commit the ridiculous non sequiter of an argument by implication you attribute it to me nor pull a punch if I had one, you haven't been paying attention.
Sure there are reactionary scholars who talk claptrap about Western Civilization. Wasn't I quoting Strauss a while ago? But so? Must there be no more Dante and Shakespeare because those guys are assholes? (Milton too, to rope you in.)
Btw. Brad says we should say that Ellington is ours because he is human. Well, human covers a lot of ground. I will leave out snide remarks about Hitler being human too, because after all I was saying American or Western, and he was surely Western. Hitler I mean. But unless you want to deny that cultural continuity has any value at all, there is a sense in which Ellington "belongs" to the Americans and to Western music in a way that, oh, I don't know, Confucius does not, particularly. He's none the worse for that. He's just in a different tradition. That's an historical fact, with no more objectivity than the notion of a cultural tradition, but no less objectivity than that. However, even though Western Civilization has a certain sort of objectivity, that doesn't mean it's superior. Just that for Westerners, it's ours.
As far as superiority goes, I recall Gandhi's joke. Asked what he thought about Western Civilization, he replied, "It would be a good idea." But jokes aside, there are things Western culture has to offer the world, things that are, yes, superior, such as liberal bourgeois rights and Marxist social analysis. Others can take these over and make them theirs, and I hope they do. To some extent they have. Then these things not just ours. But they are no less ours for being no longer just ours and no less superior in those respects to the other offerings on display, such as the caste system and fundamentalist Hindu nationalism, to take two rivals from India.
--jks
In a message dated 00-01-23 13:45:15 EST, you write:
<< --jks, a white male American of European descent (who doesn't feel guilty
> about it . . .
Why in the hell should you? This is the first time I have seen that
moldy nonsense used by anyone to the left of Mike Royko. It
is an unprincipled implication that anyone who opposes you on
the particular argument is saying you ought to feel guilty. . I
In any case, extremely distinguished scholars in the United States
and the U.K. do very seriously maintain the objective reality (so
to speak) of "Western Civilization." The WSJ has printed letters
speaking of Indian cruelty and hinting that that makes the present
repression of Indians legitimate. I really don't see why you chose
to take this particular exchange personally. Shall there be no
more cakes and ale?
>>