During his closing monologue on the Friday edition of his HBO show “Real Time,” comedian Bill Maher stated that there has been an attack on the ideas and thinkers of Western Civilization in academia, even though “The ideas that came through Athens, Rome, London, Paris, and, yes, Philadelphia, are what make life good for most people in free societies today,” and “all marginalized people live better today because of Western ideals, not in spite of them.”
Maher began by saying, “For all the progressives and academics who refer to Israel as an outpost of Western Civilization like it’s a bad thing, please note, Western Civilization is what gave the world pretty much every goddamned liberal precept that liberals are supposed to adore: individual liberty, scientific inquiry, rule of law, religious freedom, women’s rights, human rights, democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech, please, somebody stop us before we enlighten again. And since one can find all these concepts in today’s Israel and virtually nowhere else in the Middle East, if anything, the world would be a better place if it had more Israels. Of course, this message falls on deaf ears to the current crop, who reduce everything to being only victims or victimizers, so Israel is lumped in as the toxic fruit of the victimizing West, the irony being that all marginalized people live better today because of Western ideals, not in spite of them.”
Later, he added, “Now, it is true that, for too long, we didn’t study enough Asian or African or Latin American history, but part of the reason for that is, frankly, there’s not as much to study. Colleges replaced courses in Western Civ…with world civilization classes, which is fine in theory, but what it meant in practice is you read queer poetry of the African diaspora instead of Shakespeare. And I’m sure there’s value in both, but, as usual, America only ever overcorrects. And so, we’re at this place now where the words ‘Western Civ’ became kind of a shorthand for white people ruined everything. But they didn’t ruin everything. No, they didn’t live up to their own ideals for far too long and committed atrocities, but people back then were all atrocious, not just the white ones, depending on who had the power. But it was the Western Enlightenment that gave rise to the notion that the law of the jungle should be curbed.”
Maher concluded, “The ideas that came through Athens, Rome, London, Paris, and, yes, Philadelphia, are what make life good for most people in free societies today, that the individual [has] value and even the powers that be must submit to the rule of law, that punishment should not be cruel and unusual, that the accused…get a trial, that there is such a thing as a war crime. Why is it that every other culture gets a pass, but the West is exclusively the sum of the worst things it’s ever done? You think only white people colonized?”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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