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So now the left doesn't know what Western Civilization is?


Prominent elements of the left think it's about skin color, lol. No, more like liberty, citizenship, rule of law rather than men, egalitarianism, science, constitutionalism, productivity, free and open debate, an unmatched intellectual and artistic tradition, and yes Christianity, though with freedom of religion for all. Combinations of the above factors have typically resulted in superior organizational skills and innovation that, along with troops having a personal stake in the society they're fighting for, have usually led to conventional military dominance versus non-Western armies for the past 2,500 years.

These are deeply held cultural ideals accumulated over the millennia that aren't based on skin color. Western Civilization began in classical Greece and later spread to the rest of Europe, influencing most of the planet to varying degrees in the modern era. The Greeks invented citizenship as we understand the concept, meaning that instead of being merely subjects of a ruler they were stakeholders in a state to whom rulers were accountable. Kings weren't worshiped as gods and had limits to their powers, while some Greek city states ditched monarchy altogether to form various kinds of republics, most famously Athenian democracy. Policies were debated openly by voters and government officials, giving rise to the art of rhetoric. The Greeks also developed formal mathematics (complete with proofs), formal logic, and fields like philosophy, history, and medical study. Rome rose under heavy Greek influence and spread these values around the known world, along with Western architecture, engineering, and the functional alphabet we still use today.

Christianity infused the West with a moral/spiritual dimension it had previously lacked. Christianizing the Germanic barbarians who had taken down a Roman Empire that had rotted from within was the conduit through which they were gradually Westernized, laying the foundation for modern Europe. Some German cultural traditions were compatible with and even enriched Western principles, like a greater emphasis on individual liberty, property rights, and jury trials. Others, like human sacrifice and casual infanticide, were dispensed with by Christian preaching as gladiator games and similar classical pagan practices had been. The Christian West became the only civilization to independently outlaw slavery, an institution pervasive throughout the world for most of human history. It did so twice, first in Medieval Western Europe because it became seen as wrong to hold fellow Christians in bondage, and later with black slavery, a common African practice imported to the West in the early modern era by seagoing traders doing business with local tribes that was abolished with Christian activists leading the way. Afterwards Western powers, first Britain and then the US, used their strength to pressure Muslims and others to end slavery in the 20th Century. Our notion of universal equality is an outgrowth of the Christian belief that God loves and values every person, and it would not otherwise exist.

The Christian West also invented true science around 400 years ago, and for much of the past 1,000 years saw art and music flourish at a higher level than at any time in human history, from Michelangelo to Leonardo Da Vinci to Mozart to Beethoven.

Christianity, married to Western philosophy, provided a basis for natural rights political theory in the early modern era. Liberty and equality were now seen as universal rights given by God rather than preferences of the moment for a chosen few and dependent on the whims of the strongest armed force as even the Athenians had viewed them. The USA espoused these principles in its founding documents and revolutionized global politics. Religious freedom grew from them and because the twin developments of mass printing and mass literacy let people read for themselves that in the New Testament Christianity is supposed to be voluntary.

The rise of free market economics in recent centuries has created more wealth and lifted more people out of absolute poverty than anything else in history. Marxism is also an outgrowth of Western Civilization, though arguably representing its dark side, and one rejecting several core Western values even as it's proved seductive enough to be embraced by much of the non-Western world. In the Cold War the freer West proved stronger than the socialist version.

None of this has anything to do with skin color. Westerners tend to be "white" simply because Western Civilization happened to begin in Europe. Trump's comments about defending Western Civilization from terrorists were spot on. It's not even about religion per se, since some Muslims are thoroughly Westernized, especially in America. But Islamist ideology, militant Islamic theocracy that manifests itself in things like terrorism, honor killings, and strict sharia law, are antithetical to religious freedom and other Western values.





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The only thing the left knows about Western civilization is they want to DESTROY it which is why the Dems MUST be kept out of office!!

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to summarize the big a**opinion piece, which part of it made no sense...

*stop political correctness (even the progressives agree with you on this)
*God does not exist. You haven't seen him, I haven't seen him. What's the problem?
*Ancient Greece pretty much came up with a big chunk of wisdom that we still use today whether it be geometry, philosophy, etc.

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to summarize the big a**opinion piece, which part of it made no sense...

Which part did you have trouble understanding?

As for whether God exists, I disagree with you, but let's focus on the first point.

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Religious freedom grew because they got tired of killing each other and they realized that it was best to not have a state religion because that was only great when your sect was calling the shots. Some of the great developments came about a counter reaction to religion. Common law was a reaction against canon law.

Christianity has contributed to western development but also held it back at times. Recall the dark ages, inquisitions. Some western knowledge was actually preserved by the muslims and that helped contribute to the renaissance when the west recovered.

When the west was undergoing the dark ages, the arab and chinese world were undergoing golden ages. Then they stagnated whilst the west rose.

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They got tired of killing each other but Christianity also provided a basis for tolerance and separation of church of state (in the classic sense, not what modern anti-Christian activists in America mean by the phrase) that's clearly rooted in New Testament scripture. Muslims haven't gotten tired of killing each other (or "infidels"). Different religions yielded different empirical results.

Christianity didn't cause the Dark Ages. In fact it shone brightly then. Pagan and heretical barbarians destroyed the Roman Empire, causing the collapse of civilization. Scattered Christian monks preserved the seeds of learning and saved Western Civilization. They Christianized the barbarian tribes, which became the kingdoms that formed the foundation of modern Europe, and they spent centuries convincing pagan holdouts to abandon practices like human sacrifice, infanticide, and eventually even slavery. The Inquisitions didn't arise until the High Middle Ages when the Catholic Church had morphed into a more worldly, corrupt, hierarchical entity, but even their abuses have been distorted and exaggerated by anti-Christian propagandists.

The empirical impact of Christianity has been overwhelmingly positive on net, from hospitals to universities to science to charity to political freedom and equality to inspiring the world's greatest art to the belief that every human life matters and providing a basic framework for morality and meaning.

As for the so called Muslim Golden Age, as you sort of allude to they inherited a Westernized Hellenistic society after they conquered it in jihadist expansions. Unlike the fully barbarian Germans, who took down the western empire hard, the Arabs were literate and only semi-barbarian, so they preserved much (not all) of what they captured. But Muslims didn't really do much to build on that foundation. They were only relatively advanced by default, and not for long.

China was big and had some smart people but lacked dynamism.


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