Read on Twitter
I’m not defending the Western canon only on utilitarian grounds of social cohesion, because lots of people happen to have read certain books.
I’m defending it because it is superior. Because it records and inspires the greatest cultural and political achievements in history.
I’m defending it because it is superior. Because it records and inspires the greatest cultural and political achievements in history.
We must all get over our squeamishness about this. It is not racist or chauvinist to say. It is not even “rooted in” prejudice or imperialism. It is an assessment of world history and artistic merit, defensible on those grounds.
The use of past and present sins—of which every nation, every people, every human, is guilty—to relentlessly discredit one set of traditions called the West is nothing like a good-faith critique or intellectual endeavor. It is a mere act of hostility and carries no water with me.
Our fetishistic terror of this accusation—that we are hateful if we love our culture—ends us up in positions of retreat and weakness. We don’t read Homer “because every educated person needs to.” That’s a cop-out. We read him because he’s great, and teaches greatness.
