When the Boomer generation came of age in the 1960s, cultural historian Klaus Fisher observed that a significant subset of these twenty-something pampered kids had the leisure "to break the generational ties that usually safeguard historical continuity."
They were alienated from the mainstream because they considered themselves different; they were special, superior and enlightened.
The most radical became student activists — members of "the movement" or the "new left."
These self-righteous student radicals condemned the American system, as immoral, oppressive, evil, and they were convinced they were the anointed ones destined to restore peace and beauty to the United States.
Then-Harvard professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, reacting to the shallowness of those students, wrote they were "persons who had apparently scarcely had an adult conversation in their full four years."
Social critic, Roger Kimball, described them more succinctly as "of the privileged, for the privileged."
Despite their flaws, these radicals went on to pursue elitist careers in journalism, publishing, law, and particularly, academia where they begat a new generation of elites.
They and their heirs waged war not only against American traditions, mores and history, but on Western Civilization.
For example, in the 1980s, the Rev. Jesse Jackson led a gang of protesters on the Stanford University campus screaming "Hey, hey, ho ho, Western Civ has to go."
This was the beginning of a battle that persists to this day and is the subject of Douglas Murray’s new book "The War on the West."
Murray, an associate editor of the British journal, The Spectator," is an accomplished commentator on the human condition. In his previous work, "The Madness of Crowds," Murray noted that in the "latter part of the twentieth century we entered . . . an era which defined itself, and was defined by its suspicion towards all grand narratives."
The collapse of religion and political philosophy as guides for our day-to-day existence has been replaced with identity politics whose aim is to "politicize absolutely everything . . . to turn every human relationship into a political power celebration."
This development, Murray argues, has caused to crowd derangement.
"In public and in private, both online and off, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like and simply unpleasant."
In "The War on the West," Murray picks up where "Madness of Crowds" left off.
Radicals who want to destroy our Judeo-Christian foundation have been waging war "remorselessly against the roots of the Western tradition and against everything good that the Western tradition has produced."
"Civilization itself is often a polite euphemism for cultural racism," Ibran X. Kendi, a leader of the movement, has declared.
Aristotle (384 B.C.–322 B.C.) has been dismissed as the "father of scientific racism."
His legendary work "Politics" has been linked by nonsensical leftists "with the alt-right and its 'chilling' embrace of Western civilization."
Just about every leading philosopher — Plato, Aquinas, Kant, Hume, Mill — are racists.
The European Enlightenment, in the words of the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, was merely "a conspiracy of dead white men in periwigs to provide the intellectual foundation for Western imperialism."
The pseudo-intellectual system being constructed in our times, Murray writes, is "entirely opposite the idea of rationalism and objective truth; system dedicated to sweeping away everyone from the past as well as the present who does not bow down to the great god of the present: me." There is now only "my truth."
Absolute relativism is being pursued in every field of study — even mathematics.
Math, like Western religion, literature and science, is "elitist, privileged and, of course, inherently racist."
Because Mathematics is based on formulas, rules and logic, it "promotes white supremacy thinking."
Deconstructionist educators claim that 2+2=4 is "part of 'hegemonic narratives.'"
Thus, it "excludes other ways of knowing."
But condemning math and most every other subject taught in schools as symbols of white supremacy means standards "will be lowered or expunged altogether."
The result: kids graduating from high schools and colleges throughout the nation lack the basic skills to think critically.
Their heads are merely full of propaganda slogans.
Hence, when challenged, their replies are limited to name calling. Anyone who dares to question their world view is dismissed as a racist, or homophobe, or misogynist, etc., etc., etc.
The greatest shame is that kids are being taught that Western Civilization has never got anything right. Even the development of individual rights, religious liberty, and pluralism are denounced as a sham. Diversity of opinion is dismissed as "white supremacist B.S."
Murray laments that students "are offered a story of the West’s failings without spending anything like a corresponding time on its glories."
They will never understand, he concludes, that it was Western culture "that gave the world lifesaving advances in science and medicine, and a free market that has raised billions of people around the world out of poverty and offered the greatest flowing of thought anywhere in the world. . . . "
And that’s a shame.
George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of "The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact," and "Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy." Read George J. Marlin's Reports — More Here.
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