At a time when free speech and basic principles of equality and liberty are under attack from woke progressives, the best answer to the crisis may not be so much political as it is educational and spiritual. JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin is joined by scholar Spencer Klavan, author of the new book How to Save the West, Ancient Wisdom for Five Modern Crises.
Klavan argues that the great texts of Western thought stemming from the twin poles of that civilization—Athens and Jerusalem—as well as Greek philosophers, the wisdom of the Bible and religious learning, are essential to the preservation of society. The writings of the American founders also provide a framework for understanding contemporary problems. Those who claim that these works by “dead white males” are only for Europeans or whites are wrong. They are universal in nature and appeal. The riches of Western civilization must be embraced rather than tossed aside.
“By entering into those traditions, we actually enter into a kind of communion that goes beyond all of the ways that the woke would like to divide us up. Beyond race, gender, sexuality—all these things that are supposed to now be the be-all and end-all of our identity. There’s actually only one route out of that, and ironically, it’s the route that the woke most condemn, which is the route of the Western tradition,” says Klavan.
Klavan asserts the importance of faith in the Western tradition and says the attempt to replace it with a belief in “science” is bound to fail. Science explains how nature works but not about what is good or virtuous. Faith in Dr. Fauci doesn’t give us any real answers about how or why we live. “That is a far, far cry from anything that Isaac Newton or Johannes Kepler would have recognized as science. This is mythology, the religion of science. And it’s really operative far, far beyond COVID, although COVID is where we all started to see it most clearly.”
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