<Silvio Berlusconi...declared that he and his host "consider that the attacks on New York and Washington are attacks not only on the United States but on our civilisation, of which we are proud bearers, conscious of the supremacy of our civilisation, of its discoveries and inventions, which have brought us democratic institutions, respect for the human, civil, religious and political rights of our citizens, openness to diversity and tolerance of everything."

"...We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilisation, which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion."

As if to rub salt in the wound, Mr Berlusconi added: "This respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries".



At the risk of causing a few brains here to explode, he is largely right.

Disregarding his scattered syntax, which is probably due to tranlation problems, disregarding his mislabeling of Western Civilization as "Christian," and disregarding his erroneous painting of all Islamic nations with the same broad brush (Kuwait is not the Taliban), he's right.

If the citizens of our nation had not been trained since kindergarten to believe that our country's culture is a vast wasteland compared to the glorious cultures of other lands, this would be obvious to us.

Just ask yourself how many people were crowding the borders to get into the U.S., vs. those crowding to get into Afghanistan, even before the war.

* * *

A definition of Western Civilization, in one excruciatingly long sentence, that I've always liked:

"From the perspective of intellectual and cultural content, Western civilization represents an understanding and acceptance of the following: the laws of logic; the concept of causality and, consequently, of a universe ruled by natural laws intelligible to man; on these foundations, the whole known corpus of the laws of mathematics and science; the individual's self-responsibility based on his free will to choose between good and evil; the value of man above all other species on the basis of his unique possession of the power of reason; the value and competence of the individual human being and his corollary possession of individual rights, among them the right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness; the need for limited government and for the individual's freedom from the state; on this entire preceding foundation, the validity of capitalism, with its unprecedented and continuing economic development in terms of division of labor, technological progress, capital accumulation and rising living standards; in addition, the importance of visual arts and literature depicting man as capable of facing the world with confidence in his power to succeed, and music featuring harmony and melody."



- Dr. George Reisman, Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University's School of Business and Management in Los Angeles.

Excerpted from an article, "Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism" in The Intellectual Activist, Volume V, No. 4, April 30, 1990.