Sir Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation: The Smile of Reason"

From enlightenment to revolution and republicanism - Lord Clark traces the ideological journey which led from the great palaces at Blenheim and Versailles to Jefferson's Monticello.

Sir Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation: The Pursuit of Happiness"

In this ninth episode, Lord Clark reflects on the nature of 18th century music, the work of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, and - after discussing the painter Watteau - considers that some of its qualities are found in Rococo architecture.

Sir Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation: The Light of Experience"

In this eighth episode of Lord Clark's "Civilisation" series, he examines the revolutionary change in thought that replaced Divine Authority with experience, experiment and observation.

The Demise of Great Books

From The Daily Texan
By John Davidson

The latest chapter in the long, depressing story of classical liberal education in America is unfolding here in Austin, where the University of Texas has recently snuffed out a nascent Great Books program.

The tale began in 2002, when UT philosophy professor Robert Koons and a few others started working to establish a program focused on Western civilization and the Great Books. Their idea was to develop an alternative liberal arts curriculum that would require undergraduates to read, systematically, seminal western texts such as the Bible, the works of ancient Greece and Rome and the American founding documents. This was considered radical at UT.

Koons and his cohorts persevered despite stiff opposition, and last fall the Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions began offering classes. It was, by all accounts, a smashing success: Students were signing up, alumni were sending checks (Koons raised more than $1 million) and a speaker series sponsored by the program was hugely popular. It seemed that classical liberal education was experiencing a renaissance at UT.

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Top 10 Books Every College Student Should Read

From Human Events
By Harry W. Crocker III


1. The Bible You can’t be considered a literate person without having read the most important book in the history of Western Civilization.

2. Caesar’s Commentaries I think it was Will Durant who said that Western Civilization is Caesar and Christ. So, as with the Bible, you might as well go to the source.

3. Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (or Montesquieu’s harder to find
Considerations on the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline) As we all know, empires and republics can decline and fall. Machiavelli wanted to learn from the history of Rome how to preserve a republic -- and so should we.

4. Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Not a conservative book (though Gibbon was something of a conservative Whig) but a great one: History is the most important subject.

5. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France All conservatives pay lip-service to this classic, not enough have actually read it. That’s a shame because it is memorably, beautifully written and provides a necessary check on the unreflecting populism of some conservatives.

6. James Boswell, The Life of Johnson Dr. Johnson reminds us that the first Whig (liberal) was the devil and that a truly conservative approach to politics is anti-ideological, anti-statist, and anti-political: “How small of all that human hearts endure that part which laws or kings can cause or cure.”

7. Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind College students who declare themselves conservatives should read Kirk so they’ll know something of what they’re declaring.

8. Shakespeare, Henry V All college students are potential leaders; here’s Shakespeare on leadership.

9. Siegfried Sassoon, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston Part of the impoverishment of the conservative mind these days is that it has no idea what it wants to conserve (or restore) in large part because so many conservatives don’t bother to cultivate a conservative imagination by reading novels. Sassoon didn’t become a political conservative (and a Catholic convert) until later life, but this brilliant, evocative, gentlemanly book shows a conservative society (which he loved) that produced a generation of heroes, like the author himself, a veteran of the Great War.

10. George Orwell, Collected Journalism Orwell was another professed Socialist who was in many ways conservative. For a college student, he’s a great tutor on how to write and how to recognize (and avoid) the politicization of language, an area where many political conservatives seem utterly tone deaf as “gender” replaces “sex,” “abstinence” replaces “chastity,” and “perception” becomes relative rather than acute. All of this is freighted with politics, which the left understands but our own folks don’t.

Mr. Crocker is the author most recently of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War.

Teutoburg Forest: The Battle That Saved the West

From The New American
By John Eidsmoe

September, 9 A.D., Kalkriese Hill, northern Germany: the Germanic warriors waited in grim silence. Three Roman legions, commanded by General Publius Quintilius Varus, advanced across the Rhine into Anglo-Saxon territory. The Romans hoped to expand Roman power, Roman law, and Roman culture. The Germans hoped to preserve their Teutonic laws and institutions and their way of life.

Probably neither side realized that the Battle of Teutoburg Forest would decide the course of Western law and Western civilization for millennia to come.

And now, in the year 2009, the 2,000th anniversary of the battle, very few Americans have even heard of the battle, and fewer still understand its significance.

Contestants and Stakes

The ancestors of these German warriors had lived in these fields and forests for centuries untold, possibly arriving with the great Indo-European migrations around 2000 B.C. They farmed and hunted, living in rural compounds consisting of several homes, usually occupied by relatives, with other compounds or villages a few miles away. They worshipped their pagan gods, like Wotan (Odin) and Donnar (Thor), who represented forces of nature, and they lived by the old Teutonic virtues: keeping one’s word, valor in battle, loyalty to family and community, and hospitality to strangers.

And they lived under the ancient Teutonic common law. The Germans practiced a highly decentralized form of government, with law based on custom and administered by a local council (witan) composed of all free men, who served both as a lawmaking body and as a jury for civil and criminal cases.¹

But Rome threatened to change that. They, too, were a Western people, who probably came to Italy during the same Indo-European migrations. At one time Rome was a republic, governed by the Senatus Populus Que Romanus (Senate of the People of Rome, or SPQR) under the Law of the Twelve Tables. But in the century before the birth of Christ, the Roman republic gradually gave way to the empire. Power became centralized in Rome, and the Senate was reduced to a figurehead, rubber-stamping the emperor’s edicts.

And the Roman Empire was gradually expanding northward. Around 50 B.C., Julius Caesar decided to subdue Gaul (France). The various Celtic tribes united under a chieftain named Vercengetorix; they fought bravely, but their ferocity was no match for the discipline of the Roman legions.

Rome then turned its attention to Germany. Some of the southern German tribes, those south and west of the Rhine, succumbed to Roman rule. But those east of the Rhine, and especially those of Saxony, resisted.

As these Germanic warriors waited for battle, they knew they were facing the wrath of the most powerful army the world had ever seen. The Roman army was divided into 28 legions, each consisting of approximately 5,000 soldiers. The legionnaires were exceptionally well-disciplined, and they were in superb physical condition. In addition to 70-80 pounds of armor and weapons, each soldier marched carrying a 40-pound pack. Their primary weapons were spears, but they also used the gladius, a short two-edged sword that was well suited for thrusting, slashing, blocking, and parrying. They also carried rectangular shields that, when locked together in formation, made them almost invulnerable to attack. They used a battle formation known as the maniple, similar to the Macedonian phalanx, but looser and more flexible and therefore effective on a variety of terrains.

The 17th, 18th, and 19th legions had been sent to Germany, and Emperor Augustus had appointed Publius Quintilius Varus governor of Rhineland. Varus was a patrician aristocrat and a skilled diplomat who had rendered great service to Rome on foreign fields, but he had little actual battle experience.

The Germans lacked the discipline of the Romans, and their steel was of inferior quality. But they possessed more than size, strength, and courage in battle. The army consisted of all able-bodied freemen, and they fought with shields, spears, battle-axes, and occasionally large broadswords, more powerful than the Roman gladius but more difficult to use in close infighting. They commonly attacked using a wedge formation, and cowardice in battle was punishable by death. They fought with machine-like efficiency in smaller groups but were unused to fighting together in large armies.

This time the Germans had a chieftain named Hermann, perhaps better known at that time by his Latinized name Arminius. Born a prince of the Cherusci tribe, Arminius had been raised in Rome as a hostage, and he received military training and became a Roman officer. He learned Latin and received Roman citizenship, an honor bestowed on non-Romans only for exceptional service. His years of service to Rome gave him a thorough understanding of Roman military strategy and tactics, and of the Roman mindset. But he had not forgotten his Germanic heritage, and as a young man he returned to his German people. Arminius managed to unite some of the northern German tribes and instilled in them a passionate desire to preserve their independence from Roman domination.

Varus, the Roman commander, and Arminius, the German commander, knew that northern Germany was a tinderbox that needed only a spark to erupt into a major conflagration. Rome claimed authority over northern Germany; the German tribes had not accepted Roman rule but had not yet openly revolted.

Arminius devised a brilliant strategy. He caused a rumor to reach Varus that two German towns east of Teutoburg Forest had openly revolted against Rome. As expected, Varus decided that a display of force was necessary to suppress this revolt and prevent it from spreading to other parts of Germany. He led his three legions, totaling up to 20,000 men, across the Rhine and into Teutoburg Forest. And Arminius planned his ambush.

East of the Rhine, in Teutoburg Forest, is Kalkriese Hill. A narrow road stretched from west to east along the northern edge of the hill. For several miles the road runs between a marsh to the north, known as the Great Bog, and Kalkriese Hill to the south. The narrowness of the road, as Arminius knew, would force Varus to march his army only eight men abreast, and therefore he would have to spread his legions over several miles. Arminius knew his German warriors could not match the disciplined Roman legions in open battle, but he also knew the Romans preferred to fight on open terrain and were less effective in woodlands and marshes.

Arminius and his warriors constructed earthworks on the north side of Kalkriese Hill. He probably placed 5,000 warriors behind the earthworks, 5,000 in the woods behind them, 7,000 on the northeast slope of the hill, and 1,000 at strategic points in the marsh north of the road. As Peter S. Wells wrote in The Battle That Stopped Rome,

The Germans waited nervously behind the sod wall. Some of the older men, who had fought against the Roman legions during the campaigns of Drusus, Ahenobarbus, and Tiberius, or who had lost kinsmen in battles with those armies, hated the Romans with passion and were eager to attack the troops and to kill as many as they could. But most were frightened, even terrified, at the prospect of confronting the dreaded legions in face-to-face combat.

In September of 9 A.D., Varus and his legions entered Teutoburg Forest. At this point, a torrential downpour occurred. And with the legions and their wagons bogged down in the rain and mud, Arminius and his warriors attacked.

The attack began with a barrage of spears thrown through the air. Wells estimates that each of the 5,000 warriors behind the earthworks could have thrown one spear with accuracy every four seconds, so within 20 seconds the Roman legions could have been struck with as many as 25,000 spears. Wells writes,

Within ten seconds of the start of the spear barrage, the marching units disintegrated into chaos. The attacked soldiers stopped walking, in order to try to defend themselves. Since they were marching in close formation and few could see much beyond the men immediately around them, those behind kept marching forward and crashed into their fellows. At first, soldiers farther back in the column were unaware of what was happening toward the front, and they kept pressing on.… Like a chain-reaction highway crash, men piled into one another.…

Wounded, dying, and already dead men quickly covered the track, making movement increasingly difficult for the others. The scene was one of complete chaos — spears falling like hail, men collapsing and gasping, even those not yet wounded struggling to remain on their feet, and occasionally frenzied horses and mules crashing through the swarm of troops. Within minutes, thousands of Roman soldiers lay dead or dying, pierced by spears, while others struggled to stay on their feet and to use their shields for shelter.

With a deafening war cry, the German warriors then leaped over the earthworks and charged into the Roman ranks. “For the first time in their lives,” writes Wells, “they saw Roman legionaries — representatives of the imperial power that marched with impunity through their lands, bribing their chiefs and subverting their politics — powerless and helpless.”

Some authorities believe the battle was over in an hour; others believe it stretched out over three days. Possibly the outcome was clear after the first hour, but skirmishing continued for three days as Roman survivors fought their way back to the Rhine. But this is clear: Arminius and his German warriors had won a resounding victory. Of the 15,000-20,000 Roman soldiers, fewer than 1,000 survived. German losses were about 500 dead, 1,500 wounded. News of the defeat caused consternation in Rome. Suetonius, in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, wrote that Emperor Augustus banged his head against the palace walls, shouting Quintili Vare, legions redde! (“Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!”) But rather than face the ignominy of defeat, Varus committed suicide after the battle. And the 17th, 18th, and 19th legions were never restructured, which is unique in Roman history.

The Course of History

More battles between Rome and the Germans took place in the years that followed, but the Rhine was firmly established as the northernmost boundary of Roman expansion. And as a result, northern Germany and Scandinavia remained free from the influence of Roman culture and Roman law.

The areas of southern Germany that fell to Roman domination largely adopted the centralizing features of Roman law. The Code of the Visigoths, governing what is now Spain and southern France, contained many features of the Roman Theodosian Code, and on Christmas Day 800 A.D. the Pope crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor: “Charles Augustus, crowned by God, great and peace-giving emperor, life and victory!” Although he was a devout Christian and a great ruler in many ways, Charlemagne governed largely according to Roman law, combining it with some Christian and some Germanic elements. And in 911 A.D., after King Charles the Simple of France gave the Normandy peninsula to the Viking jarl Hrolfr (Rollo), Rollo and his Norman descendants, including William the Conqueror, likewise adopted French customs and the Romanized law of France.

But in northern Germany, especially among the Angles and the Saxons, the old Teutonic common law continued, with its emphasis on individual rights and decentralized government. And in Scandinavia the Viking law was similar to it, in some ways even more decentralized than in Germany.

In the late 400s A.D., after the Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain, the Angles and Saxons of northern Germany and the Jutes of Denmark migrated to Britain. After securing the land from the raids of the Picts and Scots, these tribes established a kingdom based upon the old Teutonic common law. Britain became known as Angle-land, or England, and in keeping with Teutonic concepts of decentralized government, the land was divided into seven kingdoms: the Saxons occupied the southern kingdoms of West Saxony (Wessex), East Saxony (Essex), and South Saxony (Sussex); the Angles occupied the northern kingdoms of East Anglia, Northumbria, and Mercia; and the Jutes occupied Kent in the southeast. Roughly speaking, each 10 families were led by a tithing-man, each 50 by a vil-man, each 100 by a hundred-man, and each 1,000 constituted a shire, headed by an eolderman (shortened to earl) and his assistant, the reef. The reef was a law-enforcement officer, and the term “shire reef” became “sheriff.”

Each shire was governed by a council known as the witan, composed of all freemen in the shire. The witan at first served as both a legislative body and as a jury to try civil and criminal cases, but eventually the legislative and jury functions of the witan were separated. Once a year all of the witans of the kingdom met together in a grand council called the witangemot.²

When the Anglo-Saxons first came to Britain, they still retained their pagan beliefs. But the Celts converted many of them to Christianity, around 597 Archbishop Augustine arrived from Rome to further their Christianization, and by the late 600s England was a Christian country. The Laws of King Aethelbirht, baptized by Augustine in 601 A.D., reflect a Christian perspective, as do the Laws of King Wihtraed (691-725 A.D.) of Kent and King Ine of Wessex (688-725 A.D.). King Alfred the Great’s Book of Dooms (890 A.D.) began with a recitation of the Ten Commandments and was interspersed throughout with Old Testament and New Testament references.

Viking raids on the British Isles began around 787 A.D., and Vikings soon ruled large portions of England, Scotland, and Ireland. King Alfred repelled the Viking advances and entered into a treaty by which the Vikings could rule areas of northeastern England north of a line called the Danelaw, with the further requirement that the Viking King Guthrun become a Christian. Viking law and Anglo-Saxon law developed out of the same Teutonic background and were very similar. The Viking witan was called the thing and met at the call of any freeman. A judge or lawspeaker, called the godi, presided and was elected to a three-year term. Once a year he was required to recite from memory one-third of the Viking law code, so the entire code was recited over his three-year term.

In 1066 A.D. William the Conqueror (a descendant of Hrolfr or Rollo) of Normandy defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, and England fell under Norman rule. William did not try to change everything at once; he left the witangemot intact and gave it the French name parliament. But he and his successors worked to centralize government under the Norman monarchy, while the Anglo-Saxons and their Viking allies struggled to preserve local shire government.

The Great Charter

In 1215 A.D. the English people, particularly the Anglo-Saxons and their Viking allies, chafed under the tyranny of the Norman King John, and they looked for leadership to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, of Lincolnshire, a Viking settlement north of the Danelaw. Archbishop Langton instructed the barons and bishops on their duty to interpose themselves on behalf of the people they represented against the tyranny of the higher magistrates. He supervised the drafting of the Magna Charta and commissioned Robert Fitzwalter as the Marshall of the Army of God and Holy Church, and together they met King John at Runnymeade and forced him to sign the Magna Charta, which guaranteed the ancient God-given rights of Englishmen. But the struggle against the forces of centralized power continued during the ensuing centuries, culminating with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, and the American Declaration of Independence of 1776.

Meanwhile, in Germany Arminius had been largely forgotten. But in the 1500s Martin Luther, who had studied law before becoming a monk, defended the old Teutonic common law against the usurpations of the Holy Roman Emperor. He revived the memory of Arminius and called him by the Germanicized form of his name, Hermann the Liberator, and cultivated him into a national hero.

In 1839, construction commenced on the Hermannsdenkmal, a large statue of Hermann atop a pavilion near Detmold in the Teutoburg Forest. A similar statue and pavilion can be seen on a hill west of New Ulm, a German community in central Minnesota, called the “Hermann Heights Monument” but better known to local residents as “Hermann the German.” Standing atop the monument with his sword held aloft, Hermann defiantly faces east toward Rome (and also toward Washington, D.C.!). Besides the observances at Kalkriese, Germany, New Ulm will hold a celebration the 2,000th anniversary of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest on September 17-20, including a battle reenactment (www.hermannmonument.com), and the city of Hermann, Missouri, will hold a Victory Celebration on September 23-27 at which a Hermann statue will be dedicated (www.historichermann.com).

And well they should. Hermann the Liberator not only preserved the freedom of northern Germany and Scandinavia, he made possible the transmission of the common law to England and, eventually, to America.

And what of American freedom in 2009? The land of the free chafes under the rule of a government that dwarfs that of Rome, under a president who seeks more power than even King John could imagine. Hermann the Liberator, Alfred the Great, Archbishop Langton, George Washington, we need your likeness today!

John Eidsmoe is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, pastor with the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, professor at the Oak Brook College of Law & Government Policy, and counsel to the Foundation for Moral Law in Montgomery, Alabama.

¹ It is unclear at what point in history the Germans developed this Teutonic common law. Some believe it existed even before the Indo-European migrations, while others believe it did not take shape until after the Anglo-Saxon settlement of the British Isles. This author believes the Teutonic common law was largely developed at least before the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

² A good discussion of Anglo-Saxon common law may be found in Frederic Seebohm, Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law (Longmans, Green, & Co.: 1911); Francis Owen, The Germanic People: Their Origin, Expansion, & Culture (Barnes & Noble: 1960, 1993); and W. Cleon Skousen, The Making of America: The Substances and Meaning of the Constitution (National Center for Constitutional Studies: 1985), pp. 54-59.

Sir Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation: Grandeur and Obedience"

In this seventh episode of the classic series, Lord Clark examines the Rome of the Counter Reformation and the work of Michelangelo and Bernini.

Sir Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation: Protest and Communication"

In this sixth episode of Lord Clark's classic documentary, "Civilisation," he examines the effect of the Reformation in 16th century Europe.

Sir Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation: The Hero as Artist"

In this fifth episode of Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation," he examines "The Hero as Artist" and looks at how Pope Julius II sponsored men like Michelangelo and Raphael.

Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation: Episode 4, "Man: The Measure of All Things"

In this episode, Lord Clark visits Florence, Urbino and Mantua to reflect on the centuries of Renaissance civilization.

Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation: Episode 3, "Romance and Reality"

In episode 3 of our continuing series, Clark journeys from the Loire through Tuscanny and Umbria, to the cathedral at Pisa, as he explores the apirations of the later Middle Ages in France and Italy. Previous episodes may be seen here: Episode 1, Episode 2.

Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation: Episode 2, "The Great Thaw"

Continuing the superb "Civilisation" series, Episode 2 traces the sudden re-awakening of European civilization in the 12th Century, from Cluny, through the work of Gislebertus at Autun, to it's high point; the building of Chartres Cathedral. Our posting of Episode 1 is available here.

Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation: "The Skin of Our Teeth"

In our estimation, Sir Kenneth Clark's 1969 made-for-TV documentary, "Civilisation," is the finest program of its kind ever produced. In the first segment, "The Skin of our Teeth," Clark examines Western Civilization in the six centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire. From the Byzantine world's Ravenna to Iona, the Holy Isle of the Celtic Hebrides, and Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen, he unravels the extraordinary story of how European thought and art were saved by 'the skin of our teeth'.

The program is timeless, and its insights seem even more poignant in our own day. Clark saw civilization threatened by a new barbarism in 1969. That threat is more imminent now; the barbarians are inside the walls and live among us. Christianity can and will endure in civilizations other than our own, but this brilliant and beautiful documentary distills the essence of all that is worth preserving in the civilization of the Christian West.

We hope to post future episodes when they become available on YouTube. A superb book which accompanied the series is available from Amazon.

Saudi Intellectual: “If it were not for the accomplishments of the West, our lives would have been barren”

From Averroes Press
By Tarek Fatah

It is rare today to read of Saudi intellectuals or Arab thinkers who are willing to reflect on Western civilization and its contribution to all of humankind. Dr. Ibrahim Al-Bulehi is one such individual. In an interview with the Saudi newspaper Okaz, Al-Bulehi states without reservation that “Western Civilization Has Liberated Mankind.”

When asked by the reporter about the Muslim contribution to Western Civilization, Dr. Al-Bulehi responds with a clarity that is almost unheard of in the Arab world. He says:

“When we review the names of Muslim philosophers and scholars whose contribution to the West is pointed out by Western writers, such as Ibn Rushd, Ibn Al-Haitham, Ibn Sina, Al-Farbi, Al-Razi, Al-Khwarizmi, and their likes, we find that all of them were disciples of the Greek culture and they were individuals who were outside the [Islamic] mainstream. They were and continue to be unrecognized in our culture. We even burned their books, harassed them, [and] warned against them, and we continue to look at them with suspicion and aversion. How can we then take pride in people from whom we kept our distance and whose thought we rejected?”

In the interview published April 23, 2009 Dr. Ibrahim Al-Buleihi calls on the Arabs to acknowledge the greatness of Western civilization, and to admit the deficiencies of their own culture. He states that such self-criticism is a precondition to any change for the better.

Ibrahim Al-Buleihi is a member of the Saudi Shura Council, the national consultative body whose members are appointed to advice the Saudi King and his government.

Following are excerpts from the Okaz interview as reproduced in the Arab web magazine, Elaph

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Becoming Barbarians

Hungry, rootless, and revolutionary, the Right has adopted the habits of the horde.

From The American Conservative
By Rod Dreher

Perhaps it’s a measure of the depths of my cultural pessimism, but when I take a sounding of the conservative predicament these days, I find myself not asking, “What would Reagan do?” but rather “What would Benedict do?” Benedict of Nursia, I mean, the 5th-century founder of Western monasticism, the man most responsible for preserving European Christian culture through the Dark Ages.

The Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre famously ended his landmark 1982 book After Virtue with a gloomy meditation about the collapse of a common moral sense in the West. He suggested that we were too far gone into nihilism and relativism to save and that those devoted to the traditional virtues should consider hiving off, as Benedict and his followers did in Rome’s final days, to build communities that can withstand the incoming tide of chaos and despond. MacIntyre wrote that our unawareness of how lost we are “constitutes part of our predicament,” one that can only be adequately addressed by “another—and doubtless very different—St. Benedict.”

What could that mean for conservatives today? That we should consider what I’ve come to call the “Benedict Option”—that is, pioneering forms of dropping out of a barbaric mainstream culture that has grown hostile to our fundamental values. The case for traditional conservatives to make a strategic retreat to defensible perimeters, so to speak, has become even more appealing since 1999, when Paul Weyrich issued his famous fin de siècle call for conservatives to pull back radically from “a [cultural] collapse so great that it simply overwhelms politics.”

The barbarians are upon us! That’s what I told an audience not long ago in a speech in Austin, Texas. The next day, I drove home to Dallas, went to bed, and had a dream that has haunted me since.

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Freedom Is Not A Pendulum

From NewsWithViews.com
By Margaret Goodwin

The periodic swings from one party to the other in control of our government often give rise to the analogy of a pendulum. A pendulum swings from one side to the other, always passing through the equilibrium position at its center. This flawed analogy leads to the illusion that our country's political swings from left to right also pass through a stable center that is fixed and permanent.

History belies that illusion. Throughout the history of civilization, there has never been a government that did not eventually come to an end, either through defeat in war or corrosion from within. The Roman Republic lasted 500 years before it gave way to the Roman Empire, and that too collapsed after a few hundred more years. Ancient history? Yes, indeed. But the rate of social, political, industrial, technological, and cultural changes on the global scale have accelerated, not decelerated, from ancient to modern times. Change happens much more rapidly than it used to.

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Youth for Western Civilization Group at Vanderbilt Stirs Furor

Founders of the local branch of Youth for Western Civilization Devin Saucier, left, and Trevor Williams at the Parthenon in Nashville. SANFORD MYERS / THE TENNESSEAN

From The Tennessean
By Jennifer Brooks

Meet the Youth for Western Civilization.

Its members, 13 strong and counting on the campus of Vanderbilt University, are out to "promote the survival of Western civilization and pride in Western heritage."

The club has sprung up at seven colleges around the country in the past few months, sounding a warning cry against "radical multiculturalism," "mass immigration" and the "leftist occupation" of America's college campuses.

To its critics, it's the new face of intolerance on America's college campuses.

At a YWC-sponsored event at Vanderbilt last week, protesters outnumbered club members by a margin of 10-to-1. The Southern Poverty Law Center has the group's national founders on a watch list, suspected of ties to white nationalist groups.

Vanderbilt sophomores Trevor Williams and Devin Saucier, who founded the local chapter last fall, say it's their critics who are intolerant.

A matter of perception

"We're not racists," Saucier said Friday, sitting on the steps of Nashville's concrete Parthenon, a monument to the kind of Western heritage he believes is vanishing from college textbooks today — squeezed out by lessons on non-Western cultures and non-Western heritage.

In other circles, Youth for Western Civilization is being hailed as a bold new right-wing youth movement, out to light a fire under fellow conservatives and wrench the national debate back to the topic of immigration.

The group had its coming-out party at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., in February.

"There are four policies on campuses that have led to the subversion of Western values," Williams said, ticking them off one by one.

"Mass immigration without regards to assimilation. Illegal immigration. Affirmative action. And multicultural ideology."

Almost every large wave of immigration in American history has sparked a backlash. The Chinese, the Germans, the Italians and now Hispanic immigrants have stirred fears that a wave of newcomers will overwhelm the national culture, breed crime and weaken the nation.

In the mid-18th century, the Know-Nothings railed against the hordes of Irish immigrants, who sent their children to separate schools and held allegiance to a foreign pope.

Reminded of the legends about "No Irish Need Apply" signs that used to hang in shop windows, Williams thought about it for a moment, then said, "They probably had the right idea … at least, until (the Irish) assimilated."

Talk disturbs some

No one has accused the local chapter of YWC of being a hate group, but its talk of assimilation and the preservation of Western culture above all others gives many people pause.

"It's totally fine for them to talk," said Southern Poverty Law Center spokeswoman Heidi Beirich, whose organization tracks hate group activity around the country.

But the language the group is using, she said, "To us, it's racism, pure and simple."

Many recognized hate groups, from the Ku Klux Klan to the Council of Conservative Citizens, begin their mission statements with a rallying cry to preserve this country's Western heritage.

"When I hear a statement like that, I have to wonder — is it a euphemism for white civilization?," said Frank Dobson Jr., director of the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center at Vanderbilt.

"A lot of groups use language that's veiled, but still the intent is clear."

Immigration lecture

Last week, the YWC sponsored an evening lecture on immigration by former U.S. Treasurer Bay Buchanan, who shares the group's views on immigration and assimilation. The event attracted more than 100 protesters, all organized over the course of a single weekend by Vanderbilt junior Erica Santiago.

"All week long, I've been seeing the signs they put up against immigration," said Santiago, standing in a long line of protesters formed at the entrances to the lecture hall last Monday night, holding up pro-immigration and pro-diversity signs.

"We came here to show our disapproval. To show people that this is the face of Vandy," she said.

The message Santiago gets from this group is that immigration weakens America, and she finds that concept unacceptable.

"My mother came from Colombia. You want to take my entire existence away."

To become a recognized student organization on campus, groups must show that there is no existing campus group with similar goals and that others on campus are interested in joining their proposed organization.

Youth for Western Civilization met those criteria, filled out all the necessary paperwork and lined up a faculty adviser, said Courtney Salters, director of student governance in Vanderbilt's Office of Student Organizations.

Vanderbilt was aware of the unsavory rumors swirling around the group, she said, but found no evidence that YWC was involved in harassment or hate speech on campus.

The Southern Poverty Law Center issued a warning last month that the national founders of Youth for Western Civilization, Marcus Epstein and Kevin DeAnna, have posted to white supremacist Web sites in the past.

Youth for Western Civilization say DeAnna is the sole founder of the group. And DeAnna denies that he or Epstein has racist leanings. He blames the allegations on a "crude, tribalistic instinct that's opposed to us."

Williams and Saucier started out in the College Republicans club at Vanderbilt. The group met once or twice a year, they said, and everyone wore suits and talked about getting ahead in the party and maybe, at some point, going out and canvassing for John McCain.

Frustrated, they started looking for a group with fire in its belly. A group that could go toe-to-toe with the liberal activists on campus.

Broad agenda

The YWC's agenda spans the political and cultural spectrum. It picketed a campus production of The Vagina Monologues, branding it pornography, and invited Bay Buchanan to lecture on immigration and assimilation.

At the moment, Williams is planning a YWC-sponsored lecture series on opera and its importance in Western culture.

March was Multicultural Awareness Month at Vanderbilt, but "there wasn't a single event about Western culture," Saucier said. "Our contributions have been heavily overshadowed. We're kind of that [forgotten] voice."

But for all its opposition to multiculturalism on campus, Youth for Western Civilization welcomes it in its own ranks.

On Saturday, Saucier and Williams called in with the news that they'd recruited their 13th member — Neelam Khan. She's a Memphis-born Muslim of Pakistani descent, and YWC won her over at the Bay Buchanan speech.

"I absolutely loved it," she said. "I found I really agreed with everything they said. I felt so comfortable with them, and we agree on so many topics."

She sees nothing at odds between her Eastern heritage and her membership in a group that believes Western culture should predominate in this country.

"I love my culture, I love my heritage, but having lived here all my live, I identify more as an American," she said.

United In Hate

Book Review by Ben R. Furman

United In Hate -- The Left's Romance With Tyranny and Terror is a book that examines the seamy underbelly of the radical Left which considers Western society and its values an anathema. Dr. Jamie Glazov, the Editor of FrontPage Magazine, methodically details the causational factors that have lead modern Leftists to adhere to the death and destruction mantra of tyrannical Islamic Jihadists.

The Twin Towers are destroyed, 2973 people die in the attack and the radical Left cheers; the war in Iraq is won and the Left expels a disgusted sigh; totalitarian thugs kill innocent millions that the Left justifies as a “cleansing” required to forge a utopian society; suicidal Jihadists shred shoppers in malls with nail bombs and are excused by the Left as door-matted victims striking back at their oppressors; women are vilified, stoned, mutilated and killed by radical Muslims as Leftist feminists remain silent, save here in America where they rail mightily against a country club that’s denied membership to a female executive.

What draws Leftists moth-like toward the annihilating fires of unbridled totalitarianism, or drives them to slavishly worship at the feet of dictators that kick them to the curb when they are considered no longer useful? Why does the Left cleave to a radical Islamic terrorism that vows to destroy all non-believers, including them? Dr. Glazov answers these and other “head scratching” questions in a court-ready presentation of the Left’s mindset that will make forensic psychologists proud.

The Left’s hatred and rejection of Western civilization, its freedoms and values, begins with an acute sense of alienation from it, and unable to “fit in” the Left believes radical societal change, regardless of the consequences, is necessary. After all it’s the West’s fault that the Left has no sense of purpose or direction. Although the Left vehemently argues against this premise, its words and actions prove Dr. Glazov’s case.

The ideological descendents of the communist/progressive Left that spent its capital hoping the West would lose the Cold War to the Soviet Union are today’s leftist core. Based on their hatred for the United States, the Left has forged a symbiotic relationship with radical Islam, whose hatred for America equals theirs. Both make it clear that they consider Western civilization evil and unworthy of preservation. Violent revolution is the Left’s path to change; the Jihadists’ follow the path of war and annilation.

Some might think Dr. Glazov has taken a wrong turn in his analysis of the radical Left’s agenda and beliefs. If so, they should read the scurrilous quotes of Michael Moore extolling the virtues of the “Iraqi freedom fighters,” or Ward Churchill’s and Jeremiah Wright’s crowing after 9/11 that “America’s chickens have come home to roost.” Or, they should examine the genuflexing before the world’s tyrants by the likes of Jimmy Carter, Sean Penn and Tom Hayden. Dr. Glazov’s take on the radical Left is correct and as sharp as a tightly focused laser.

Should the book cause even one radical Leftist to re-examine his or her contorted beliefs and return from the “dark side,” Dr. Glazov’s efforts will be a resounding success. A great thought provoking read!

The official release date of United in Hate is March 3. To pre-order the book on Amazon, see the Amazon widget in the column to the right.

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Ben R. Furman is the FBI's Former Counterterrorism Chief. He writes a blog at blackhawkpress.com/blog.

The Decline of the English-Speaking World

From The Brussels Journal

By Fjordman

I will defend all Western countries but I feel especially close to Britain, which makes it all the more sad to see how humiliated this once-great nation currently is. The English language once conquered the world. Now the rest of the world is conquering the English-speaking countries. If current trends continue, people in Singapore will know English while the nation that created the English language will cease to exist.

At the same time as sharia law has gained official recognition as a part of the British legal system and Muslims proudly talk about conquering the Western world, a British woman was arrested because of a supposedly "racist" doll she kept in her window. In al-Britannia a Muslim man can claim benefits for children with multiple wives and brag about subduing the country and reducing its traditional inhabitants to second-rate citizens or worse, but you cannot have a "racially insensitive" doll in your own home, at least not if you're white.

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Root Cause of the War on Christmas

From the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

Catholic League president Bill Donohue explains why the war on Christmas exists:

“The root cause of the war on Christmas, which is conducted almost exclusively by well-educated white people in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia—the very same people who like gay marriage—has almost nothing to do with fidelity to law (the First Amendment in the U.S.): it has to do with ideology.

“The ideology is plainly an expression of left-wing secularism, and it is nothing if not anti-Western and anti-Christian. At its worst, it is driven by hatred; at its best, it is driven by a defensive posture, a deep sense of embarrassment over the legacy of Western civilization. There is no historical or moral justification for either. Moreover, those who are pushing this agenda generally lie about their work.

“When Patricia Short, the principal of Will Rogers Elementary in Ventura County, California, says of the school’s holiday choir that ‘We can’t have anything with a religious reference,’ she is flatly wrong: not only is there no law barring religious songs being sung in the public schools, the courts have affirmed just the opposite (see the 1980 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Florey v. Sioux Falls School District). To show how duplicitous these cultural fascists are, consider that when a Jewish woman from North Carolina failed to get an elementary school to ban ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer,’ she pushed to get a Hanukkah song sung. So it’s not religious songs that bother her, just Christian ones.

“Want proof that hate is driving this assault? The head of the ACLU in New Hampshire, Claire Ebel, advises that if crèches are allowed in parks, it is permissible ‘for a display of satanic ritual.’ And this hatred of Christmas is not exclusive to the U.S. In England, Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary called Christmas ‘evil’ in a recent sermon. No wonder they are banning words like ‘bishop,’ ‘chapel,’ ‘monk’ and ‘nun’ from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. And all of this is being endorsed, if not promoted, by self-hating Christians, as well.”