RealClearPolitics has the text of a Bill Maher monologue in which he does a heck of a fine job defending western civilization. Some key points, beginning with a list of its accomplishments.
Individual liberties, scientific inquiry, rule of law, religious freedom, women’s rights, human rights, democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech.
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.
Western Civ became a kind of 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, people back then were all atrocious. It's not just the white ones; it depended 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.
Why is it that every other culture gets a pass but the West is exclusively the sum of some of the worst things it's ever done? You think only white people colonized?
His entire monologue is worth reading, and it’s even sardonically funny. Either he or somebody who writes his stuff knows well the history of western thought.
