Now that Will Wilkinson is back from his Teutonic debauching, The Fly Bottle is overflowing with typically excellent offerings.
Goldberg pretends to loathe grab-bag culture, but he and his ilk do it just the same when they pick Christianity over Celtic paganism and individual rights over collectivist subjugation. However, conservatives attempt to camouflage that their preferences are just preferences by constructing a highly selective narrative about “Western Civilization” that gives their preferences the illusion of intrinsic worth as necessary keystones of their fictitious cultural edifice. I’m not being postmodern here. I’m being descriptive.
Of the essentials of Western Civilization, Goldberg writes:
… some of the ingredients for Western civilization I have in mind are such categories as Christianity and religion in general, sexual norms, individualism, patriotism, the Canon, community standards of conduct, democracy, the rule of law, fairness, modesty, self-denial, and the patriarchy.
Why not Stoic mysticism, collectivism, military nationalism, absolute monarchy, slavery and the Napoleonic Code? Why don’t these go in Jonah’s grab bag?
Top notch stuff.
