Recently, I have heard much talk about Dartmouth Review mentor/National Review Assistant Editor/Cheatmonger/English Professor Jeffrey Hart speaking to the freshman class during Orientation Week. I cannot fathom the great controversy.
If I am familiar with Hart's politics, he is going to speak on Western Civilization's accomplishments and how every student of Western Civilization should be acquainted with certain fundamentals of Western art, slavery, science, literature, police statism and philosophy.
Isn't this a good thing? After all, aren't we all students of Western Civilization? It seems to me that all Hart is trying to do is preserve the dominance of Western Civilization -- a task that both you and I benefit from. It is unfortunate that the people he is helping most by undertaking this task are those who deride him. I am speaking mainly of the suburban youth of America, a significant number of whom attend places like Dartmouth. Perhaps Hart's recommendation in The Review that troubled areas need more police needs to be acknowledged by the Town of Hanover.
Those of us who consider ourselves open-minded, liberal or pro-social change must re-examine the big picture and stop rousing rabble before the police crack down on us (I read Leviathan and realized that fear of authority is the glue of any society, especially Western Civilization).
Why are we at Dartmouth? To learn more about ourselves and others? Some of us. To find our true selves? Some of us. To seek knowledge about the world in all its spheres of thought? A few of us. To learn a lucrative and marketable profession like our cake-eating parents? The overwhelming majority of us.
Without the likes of Hart, crusader for American hegemony, most of us would have no Wall Street job to retreat to, no summer home in Maine and no J. Crew clothing. Without the likes of Hart, most of us in America's rich, upper crust would have no role in the world economy. America would have no upper crust -- just a couple of dry, old edges like ones cut from sandwiches.
Some of us speak of drastic change and a just, new social order. But how many of us are really ready for some kind of revolution? Most of us cannot imagine a world without a home, a phone or electricity (a condition which does exist in the United States), much less a world without a successful and thriving economy to employ us. Most of us cannot imagine a world without the First Amendment, much less a world without a well-established government and social order.
While we criticize Western Civilization for its racism or sexism or agism or commercialism, we have no better plan. In fact, we continue to reap the benefits of living in the world's most powerful country and Western Civilization's most successful enterprise -- the United States of America.
Unless there are some of us willing to foreclose on our homes, and unless we want to give the billions of dollars worth of real estate back to the Native Americans and unless we want to de-vest ourselves of the cotton clothing which was the fruit of slavery, then it is time to shut up and be an American.
Despite his ideology, Hart is to be commended for his courage in defending Hobbesian, self-interested democracy against the interlopers who would seek to destroy it. Luckily for Western Civilization, there are more passive people (academics and voters) and conservatives than planless pro-change "activists." According to Hobbes, it was planned that way.
