My conservative friend Fred recently wrote that he is anxious about losing the values of our Western European heritage—values that have contributed so much not only to the development of America, but to the world as a whole. It is not an anxiety I share, but it is an anxiety worth taking seriously, because it did not arise out of nothing.
Western European history and philosophy are, undeniably, foundational to American politics, economics, social structures, and public values. Much has been built on that foundation, incorporating gifts from other cultures and traditions—though often reluctantly and imperfectly. Societies grounded in a single cultural worldview tend to experience the introduction of other heritages and perspectives as a threat rather than a gift. America was no exception. Its settlement involved the conquest and displacement of Indigenous peoples on the one hand, and determined resistance to non-Northern European cultures on the other—cultures brought here by immigrants and by enslaved Africans.
In recent decades, America’s dominant Eurocentric worldview has been challenged, particularly within the academy and among some liberals eager to demonstrate their open-mindedness. That challenge has sometimes gone badly off the rails. Western European civilization and learning have been caricatured, demonized, and dismissed in ways that are both intellectually lazy and politically foolish. Matters were made worse by the romanticization of other civilizations and Indigenous cultures as inherently wiser or morally superior, accompanied by a kind of self-righteous posturing that condemns one’s own inheritance while selectively appropriating the symbols and practices of others.
In some elite colleges and universities, the Western canon has been demoted to secondary status; in a few cases it has been eliminated altogether, replaced by histories and literatures chosen less for depth or influence than for their exotic appeal. That shift—highly publicized and poorly explained—has convinced people like Fred that there is an organized effort underway to erase everything they have held dear and replace it with alien cultures in which there will be no place for them. They are wrong—but not wrong without reason.
Western civilization has, in fact, brought light into the wilderness. It has opened pathways to greater freedom and greater prosperity for more people than any civilization before it. That achievement should be acknowledged and celebrated—but not canonized to the exclusion of all else. The Eurocentric worldview has too often been willfully ignorant of contributions made by the rest of the world and its many cultures. Learning about those contributions, honoring them, and welcoming new peoples and new ways into our multicultural nation are not betrayals of Western values. They are expressions of them.
America has been moving in this direction for a very long time. American English itself is filled with words, phrases, and ways of thinking drawn from Hispanic, African, and Asian cultures. Americans of European descent are slowly rediscovering the wisdom of Indigenous peoples and the indispensable insights they offer about environmental stewardship and ecological balance. Asian philosophy and literature are steadily entering the mainstream of our shared intellectual life. And we are only beginning to acknowledge that Africa was never “the darkest continent”—that its many peoples, histories, and traditions have much to teach us about who we are and where we came from.
What most impedes our ability to receive these gifts is not Western civilization itself, but the reluctance of the dominant white culture to allow others to speak clearly in their own voices—not as supplicants, not as symbols, but as equal members of society.
It would help if certain academics climbed down from their intellectual high horses and showed a little humility. Let the new be added to the old. Honor the virtues of both. It would also help if some liberal activists did the same. Too often, in both word and deed, they suggest that greater justice for some requires less justice for others—the same transactional nonsense they rightly condemn in conservatives.
America must be a nation capable of absorbing what is good and virtuous from every culture represented among its people. It must also be honest about what is unvirtuous in every culture, including its own. That honesty is not an act of betrayal; it is the knowledge necessary for a society that seeks to move forward toward ever greater justice—for all, without exception and without apology.