If God Goes, the West Goes

From time to time events occur which illuminate clearly the forces at work in the world. In 1988 Jesse Jackson organised demonstrations at Stanford University, one of the most expensive and prestigious centres of learning in the USA. Spearheading the multiculturalists’ crusade against Stanford’s Western Civilization core curriculum for freshmen, Mr Jackson led massed protestors in a march across campus chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go!”

Mr Jackson and his supporters had argued that the required reading from the Bible, Marx and Greek philosophers was too biased in favour of Western culture. They eventually managed to have Western Civilization replaced with the Cultures, Ideas, and Values (CIV) program. After much controversy and negative publicity concerning the change, Stanford eventually replaced CIV with the current IHUM (Introduction to the Humanities) program.

In her new book The World Turned Upside Down Melanie Phillips is searching for a unifying theory…