A Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen

Esolen, Anthony. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2008.

Our civilization is on the verge of disintegration. However, by recovering the best of our historic culture, philosophy, religion and government, the wisdom of our ancestors, we can recover the great things we’ve lost and continue to enjoy the advancements they’ve made possible. That’s Anthony Esolen’s message in this book.

Esolen is unabashedly conservative and religious. He sees this as keeping with the best traditions of the West. He wants to build on the hard won lessons of history, not throw it out because a new age supposedly calls for new thought.

He does not romanticize the ancients. The Greeks who bequeathed to us logic and democracy practice some of the worst kind of rhetoric and abuse of power. The Romans who had some wisdom in affairs of family and state pervert patriarchy with misused authority and undermine industry with slavery. Even the Church, with its worldview that made the best of Western Civilization possible, could go astray. If anything is consistent through history, it’s that evil people do evil things and even people of good intentions can fall short of their ideals.

Our age has dispensed with ideals. Many of the historic revolutions that advanced human happiness were surprisingly conservative in that they carried with them the best traditions of the past. The revolution we’re experiencing discards tradition as irrelevant and dangerously ignores the lessons of even the recent past. Government takes the place of God, or takes on nearly god-like power, scientific management of society supplants individual kindness and community and convenience and convention take over for law and ethics.

In spite of the alarm he sounds, Esolen is optimistic. Western Civilization, especially the Christian West, is built on hope, a hope in One who is good and active in accomplishing good in the lives of men. He doesn’t say abandon the present, but neither abandon our past, especially not the One that gives meaning to the story of human history.