None Dare Call It Savagery

Plato and Aristotle by Raphael

By Kyle Bristow

Russell Kirk, a former history professor at Michigan State University and the first American to earn a doctorate of letters at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, once remarked that “Michigan State University’s chief function [is to] deprive the young people who pass through its gates of whatever prejudices and moral principles they bring with them, to send them out into the world having given them nothing in return in the way of values or understanding to help them come to terms with the realities of life.” I believe that the observation he made nearly half a century ago is as true today as it was then.

In the humanities and political science classes, students are oftentimes immersed in the ideology of cultural relativism by their professors. Cultural relativism dictates that there are no good or evil, civilized or backwards cultures, but rather, that all cultures are morally equivalent.

By asserting that the West is no better than foreign cultures, the professors who preach cultural relativism are doing a great disservice to their students. Rat-like, the haters of Western civilization gnaw at the foundation of our culture.

Is it that radical to suggest that Western civilization is superior to foreign cultures?

The West has produced great authors, such as Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe, and has produced great musicians such as Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven. Although the indigenous peoples of Africa and the Americas have produced intricate dances for pagan tribal rituals at the camp bonfire, their “art” is by any fair measure inferior to the works the West has produced.

Westerners, compared to the peoples of lesser civilizations, have an innate desire to explore and learn. Hernán Cortés, Leif Erikson, Christopher Columbus, and Marco Polo traveled vast distances in their explorations. Is it any surprise that the same civilization that produced people who explored the ends of the earth also produced the people who put mankind on the moon and sent rovers to Mars?

The brilliant minds of Westerners have invented the airplane, the automobile, and the computer; cured diseases like Polio and Smallpox; and have given the world political theories such as democracy and republicanism. Certainly an African invented peanut butter and the indigenous peoples of the Americas gave the world popcorn and chocolate, but by any fair measure, the technological innovations of the West are superior to those of lesser cultures. In fact, at the time of Christopher Columbus’ arrival to the Americas in the fifteenth century, the indigenous people there had not progressed past the Copper Age, had not even figured out how to domesticate animals, and had not even invented the wheel—they were still living in the Stone Age. Perhaps if the indigenous peoples were less interested in capturing and sacrificing people to Huitzilopochtli and cannibalizing one another, they would have made some kind of technological and societal progress.

Technology, however, is in and of itself not the defining mark of superior culture, for ordered liberty is. With the blessing of ordered liberty, the people of a civilization are able to live in peace, which allows for them to achieve prosperity.

The Greeks and Romans gave the world liberty and law, respectively. The Enlightenment gave the world the free market, liberal democracy, and the desire to come to terms with reason through a better understanding of science. Britain’s Glorious Revolution of 1688 emphasized liberty and constitutionalism. The West has a long and proud history of perfecting ordered liberty—which is something that most of the world has yet to even attempt to achieve. Totalitarianism in Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East, and socialism in South America exist because of a lack of ordered liberty.

With all the blessings that Providence has bestowed upon the Occident, Westerners have felt obliged to spread their ideals and principles to the less fortunate. Hernán Cortés, Godfrey de Bouillon, Francisco Pizarro, and countless others were dispatched by the West to introduce Christian salvation to heathen lands.

We are the heirs to a great tradition. We should be proud of who we are.


Kyle Bristow was until recently the chairman of Young Americans for Freedom chapter of Michigan State University, which had become famous due to its lively and controversial meetings under his leadership.