In some Islamic countries, for example, women are still forced to wear hijabs and burqas and are known to be raped as punishment for refusing to cover themselves. These women cannot walk by themselves in the street, open a bank account or own property. In Saudi Arabia women were only recently allowed to drive a car. In certain Muslim countries women are not allowed to get proper education.
In contrast consider this telling statistic from the United States:
Women, as a percentage of college degrees: 56%
Women, as a percentage of medical school students: 50.5%
Women, as a percentage of law school students: 51.3%
“Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.”
— Jesse Jackson
“Western Civilization is not, for me, a curriculum of democracy and reason and greatness; it is a history of inequality and oppression,” writes Scott Ross, a teacher. Mr. Ross is by no means a rare ideological outlier among his peers. The view he holds has been taught and propagated at universities across the United States and Western Europe for decades. The situation has become so dire that Yale University has recently cancelled its formerly excellent course called “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present,” because it was allegedly too Eurocentric. Some among the shrinking number of universities that still offer such courses use them merely as a platform to attack the very culture whose achievements they are supposed to teach. The alleged oppressiveness of the West is the leitmotif that dominates their critiques. This view has boiled over into the larger society and is commonly held today by those on the political Left. We have seen a disturbing display of this mindset during the recent riots when “protesters” kept methodically attacking and destroying symbols of Western culture.
Although it is true that various forms of oppression have been practiced in the West over time, oppression is by no means unique to the West. Oppression has been, in fact, a feature of every civilization that has appeared on the face of this earth. We could say that human history is – in one way – a history of oppression: It has common for those with power to exploit, trample upon and take advantage of their fellow human beings. There is nothing particularly surprising about this, since selfishness and rapaciousness are prominent aspects of human nature.
What makes the West unique, however, is that it is the only civilization to reject oppression and deem it both wrong and immoral. Western civilization stands as the only culture that has had the compassion and humanness to make a deliberate and systematic effort to eliminate oppression and tyranny not only from within its own territories but also in other parts of the world. Central to this enterprise has been the concept of human rights. It was Western thinkers who came up with the unprecedented and novel idea that all men (and women) are entitled to certain fundamental inalienable rights which they possess simply by virtue of being human.
This is how Encyclopedia Wikipedia sums up the evolution of this revolutionary concept:
“Ancient peoples did not have the same modern-day conception of universal human rights. The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights which appeared as part of the medieval natural law tradition that became prominent during the European Enlightenment with such philosophers as John Locke, Francis Hutcheson and Jean-Jacques Burlamaquiand which featured prominently in the political discourse of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter half of the 20th century possibly as a reaction to slavery, torture, genocide and war crimes, as a realisation of inherent human vulnerability and as being a precondition for the possibility of a just society.”
Please note carefully: The concept of universal human rights was developed wholly and exclusively within the Western Tradition. Some of the landmark public declarations where this singularly western principle has been annunciated include the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights, The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No other civilization has had the inclination and generosity to extend such rights to the common man. Most of them have, in fact, strongly resisted such efforts in the past, and they still do so today.
Universal human rights are a quintessentially western project. The idea that the king and the pauper, the great and the small, the rich and the poor have the same intrinsic worth and as such are entitled to the same considerations and privileges is not only uniquely western but also inimical to the mindset of every other civilizational streams. Thankfully, Western civilization did not stay with theory only. Over the centuries it has managed – with fits and starts – to evolve a system of governance which translated its lofty ideals into social reality. This achievement has been effected through a form of government which is today known as Western democracy.
According to Encyclopedia Wikipedia, the characteristic feature of Western democracy is “equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people.” This is a reasonably fair and accurate description of this distinctly Western form of government. Notice especially the phrase “all people,” which means every person regardless of their social standing, gender, race, creed or sexual orientation.
Thanks to its highly evolved institutions based on respect for the inherent dignity of every individual, Western democracies today treat all people equally before the law and protect the rights of every person regardless of their status or accidents of birth. To ensure maximum fairness, western societies take special care to protect the civil rights of those who belong to groups that have historically found themselves at increased risk of oppression. By instituting the rule of law and guaranteeing the equality of rights, Western democracy has for the first time in history relieved the common man from his long-standing legacy of oppression. Having suffered millennia of domination and tyranny, ordinary people fortunate enough to live in Western style democracies can be free at last.
Not only has the West succeeded in eliminating oppression and extending equal rights to all, it is the only civilization that has seriously attempted to embark on such an enterprise. In all other civilizations, human rights and privileges were the domain of only the privileged few. And those privileged few were invariably black, brown and yellow males, depending on the geographic location of the civilization in question. It apparently rarely occurred to these men that other classes of people in their societies may also be entitled to the same rights and considerations they themselves enjoyed. Instead they treated the rest of the population as objects to be used and exploited for their own benefit and pleasure. And more often than not, those powerful black, brown and yellow males exercised their power over their fellow men (and women) with considerable selfishness and ruthlessness. That’s why tyranny, systemic oppression, exploitation, abuse, and discrimination have always been part and parcel of every civilization save for the sole bright exception of the West. It seems that among all privileged male classes across racial groups, it was only white men who possessed the sufficient empathy and compassion to consider their fellow citizens worthy of the same human rights they themselves felt entitled to.
Perhaps the best way to quickly illustrate the immense difference between the West and other civilizational streams is to contrast the situation of some classes of people in Western democracies with their counterparts who live in societies based on nonwestern values.
Islamic civilization: Women in hijab, 21st century
In some Islamic countries, for example, women are still forced to wear hijabs and burqas and are known to be raped as punishment for refusing to cover themselves. These women cannot walk by themselves in the street, open a bank account or own property. In Saudi Arabia women were only recently allowed to drive a car. In certain Muslim countries women are not allowed to get proper education.
Oppressed? Young western females partying
In contrast consider this telling statistic from the United States:
Women, as a percentage of college degrees: 56%
Women, as a percentage of medical school students: 50.5%
Women, as a percentage of law school students: 51.3%
In a number of African countries where the influence of indigenous African civilization is still strong women are subjected to female circumcision. There are no known health benefits to this practice which in many cases results in severe complications and side effects. The primary purpose behind this procedure is apparently to deprive women of the possibility of experiencing sexual pleasure. Thus, these unfortunate African women are reduced to being sexual objects for the pleasure of men and receptacles for their sperm as child bearers.
African civilization: Young women forced to undergo circumcision, 21st century Read the rest of this entry »
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