“Stand up for your civilization, man!”

April 28th, 2008 RWA Posted in News |

       I was hoping for a full-fledged assault on EXPELLED by National Review’s resident evolution aficiondo John Derbyshire, and while NR itself may have disappointed me, the Derb sure didn’t. He has a great takedown in today’s National Review Online, arguing that creationism is not just anti-science; it’s anti-civilization. It’s a point we’ve made here before (here and here)  but Derbyshire expresses this better than we ever could.  Science, argues Derb, is one of the great glories of Western civilization, whose ideas led directly to the American experiment, and anyone who calls themself a conservative should be as ready and able to defend it as much as any other of our great institutions. I strongly urge you to read the whole beautiful thing, but I’ll still give you the final paragraph, to give you an idea of what it all leads up to:

Which other of our civilizational achievements would you like to sneer at? What else from what Waugh called “the work of centuries” would you like to “abandon … for sentimental qualms”? You call yourself a conservative? Feugh!

For shame, Ben Stein, for shame. Stand up for your civilization, man! and all its glories. The barbarians are at the gate, as they always have been. Come man the defenses with us, leaving the liars and fools to their lies and folly.

      Bravo, Derb, bravo!

UPDATE: Derb responds to his critics, and says what’s on a lot of our minds:

A mature scientific theory is as much a glory of our civilization as is a cathedral or a university; and it is uniquely of ours. Other civilizations had temples, universities, systems of government, literature, philosophy; but only we of the West came up with scientific method, and the whole world owes the innumerable fruits of that method to us.

I am a huge fan of Western civilization. Thus, when people — well-educated people, who ought to set an example for the general — sneer at and spit on these majestic creations of the human intellect, I get mad. They are taking sides with barbarism. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Ben Stein ought to be ashamed of himself. And no, I won’t sit through his wretched movie.

And the applause never ends!