By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
 
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      ''Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!'' --Presidential contender Jesse Jackson, in 1988, joining students at Stanford University. 

       Attacking Western Civilization is nothing new, as Anthony Esolen reminds us in "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization" (Regnery, 340 pages, notes, index, $19.95).
 
       He doesn't quote Jesse Jackson in the book--that was my idea--nor is there a mention of Allan Bloom ("The Closing of the American Mind") nor is there even a passing reference to another defender of Western Civilization, Daniel J. Boorstin ("The Seekers," "The Creators," "The Discoverers.") 
 
        Esolen, a professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island and an acclaimed translator of such Western Civilization classics as Dante's "Divine Comedy," uses the Politically Incorrect Guide format to show how Western civilization is under attack.
 
        At universities and in the media, professors and pundits decry Western civilization as exploitative, destructive, and without value. Bringing his conservative Roman Catholic faith to the discussion, Esolen--like Boorstin before him--shows how liberal iconoclasts preach an "every culture is equally important" doctrine to show how the West laid the cornerstones of all modern civilization, including historical, artistic, and intellectual achievements.
 
       Esolen lauds Christianity and Judaism in his survey of Western Civilization, lamenting the destruction of the overwhelmingly Christian cultures of North Africa and today's Middle East by "Jihadist Islam" beginning in the 7th Century (Pages 133-135).  Esolen implies that Christianity was not imposed upon the region by force, the way he says that Islam was, but this is an arguable point once Rome and Constantinople adopted Christianity.
 
       One could argue that Esolen neglects the contributions to science, mathematics, and medicine of resurgent Islam, often spearheaded by Jews living among the Muslims.  Many scholars have argued that Jews were more accepted in majority Islamic countries than in Christian ones, and might cite the expulsion of the Jews of England in the 13th Century and the similar action by Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain in 1492, after the Muslims had been defeated.
 
       Many of Spain's Jews fled to the cosmopolitan city of Salonika in what is now Greece, but until 1912 was part of the Ottoman Empire. Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived relatively peacefully for many centuries in Salonika, under the relative tolerance of the Ottomans.
 
       Esolen's book should be read with one I recently reviewed on this site, Benjamin Wiker's "10 Books That Screwed Up the World" (http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/080521-kinchen-columnsbookreview.html) since many of the thinkers and writers deemed harmful to Western values are mentioned in both books.
 
      Wiker contributed a blurb on the back cover of Esolen's book: "With a mind and heart well-formed by the very best that has made Western civilization both civil and great, Esolen vividly portrays our four-millennia drama in though, politics, the family, art, poetry, architecture, war, peace, and the blessed intricacies of everyday life...."
 
       Now that's a blurb to die for, and it's a very good concise review of Esolen's book.
 
       When I was an English major in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Western Civ was a part of the curriculum, with no Marxist professors around to attack Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, and the great Greeks and Romans.
 
       Sometime in the 1960s--I date it to the so-called "Free Speech Movement" at the University of California Berkeley--political correctness reared its ugly head and Western civilization was assailed for "colonialism," "imperialism," and "racism" as its defining characteristics.
 
       Esolen says that guilt-ridden Western leaders and public figures speak of their cultural patrimony in disparaging terms that they would never dare to use about a non-Western culture.  And in the academy, "multicultural"-minded professors flatter students into believing they have nothing really to learn from Sophocles or Shakespeare.
 
       Esolen is one of the team-teachers of Providence College's Development of Western Civilization Core Curriculum and is a worthy defender of the faith.  I recommend his book, along with the others mentioned.
 
       To quote an author cited approvingly by Esolen several times: "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."