“President Trump’s outspoken defense of Western civilization in his July 2017 Warsaw speech was a pointed reminder that one troubling characteristic of our time is the ongoing assault on the very idea of the West,” says Samuel Gregg in this week’s Acton Commentary. “This is most vividly manifested in the relentless use of physical violence by jihadists determined to terrorize us first into acquiescence and, eventually, submission.”
Nor, however, is there a shortage of efforts to dismantle Western culture from within. Sometimes this occurs through focusing on real evils committed by Westerners, such as slavery, while studiously ignoring or denigrating the West’s impressive achievements. On other occasions, the West’s deepest roots are condemned as inherently oppressive, burdensome legacies bequeathed by dead, white, logocentric men.
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