There has been a good bit of discussion lately, as there should be, about the best way to introduce democracy into Iraq. And it brought to mind a hot debate that was taking place in American academia along about 1994 ... a period when liberal thought in universities was not only the "in" thing; it was the only thing.
About that time a celebration was held at Columbia university marking the 75' year of the school's famed core curriculum devoted to the classics of democratic Western Civilization ... you know, the works of Aristotle, Plato, Locke, Shakespeare, Milton, Jefferson ... the foundation thought that has built the Western free world.
To the surprise of many college educators there was a strong outcry saying: "Hooray for Columbia." That favorable reaction shocked both political and intellectual liberals, and all across America there was a renewed attack on Western thought as biased, outdated, racist. In other words, Western thought was considered wrong because it came from (to use their words) "dead white males." The politically correct thing to do, these elite college types said, was to replace the classics of democratic Western thought with multiculturalism. In their eyes we should throw out our historic Western thought, and replace it with gender studies, class thought, rituals of the third world; you know, multiculturalism.
It seems to me if we're going to help the Iraqis, or anybody else, build a successful democracy, we here in America would do well to remember that Western Thought is the core curriculum for the most successful form of democratic government so far devised by man.
This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.
Thursday
August 7th, 2025
11:39AM
