What is Western Civilization?

 Taking on the big questions since 2006.

Is it, as Robyn Pennacchia suggests, a dog-whistle term which "sounds less obviously white supremacist than just saying 'white'"?  That would explain its presence in the rantings of Putin, DeSantis and similar demagogues.  Their western civ requires constant vigilance to protect it from "globalists," wokeness and unisex bathrooms.  That's not a civilization I can support.

Is it an identifiable tradition of free thought and speculation more or less founded by Socrates and informing the best that is said and written by fallible men and women of good will to which we still look for some way out of here?  I dunno.

Is it everywhere under assault?  Always.

Last January an art professor at Hamline University was fired for showing her class a painting of the Prophet Muhammad, after more posted warnings than there are at Chornobyl.  Because someone is always eager to be offended, which is why they enroll in a university rather than a madrasa.

This week the principal got the push from an actual Christian madrasa, Tallahassee Classical, for allowing a photo of Michelangelo's David to be shown to a class on Renaissance art.  "Pornographic!" squealed parents.  This guy.

Justice Potter Stewart said he knew porn when he saw it, but he's dead so we can't ask if he's aroused by this, which has been making Florentines all sweaty since 1505.  David's subsequent sexy activities as king of Israel are barely hinted at by the sculptor, but you can read all about them in your Bible.

Except possibly in the Davis School District of Utah, where someone filed a challenge under the state's new "sensitive materials" law, calling the Bible -- yes -- "pornographic."  The district's communications director says they have to take all such complaints seriously, even when they come from someone appalled by the censoring of, say, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon who thought, "Right, I'll go after the other one to make my point."  Which, if it is the case, good for you, Utah person.  People in the minority have to throw whatever grit they can in the machine.  

I don't know that that is the case.  Could just as easily be one of those silly people with too much time and nothing better to do.  I'm just an old country blogger trying not to think about Bonhoeffer.  (They came for the books but I don't use libraries.  Then they came for the artworks...)

Vice has a piece about Monica Cole, who calls herself One Million Moms and rails against "indecency" in everything from commercials to Sesame Street.  The Southern Poverty Law Center nevertheless takes this deluded woman seriously enough to list OMM among its hate groups.  Who am I to argue?  I just wonder when they'll get around to opera.  It's a niche part of the culture but it's four hundred years old and sooner or later the hate groups will run out of mainstream things to hate.  If it's Renaissance sculpture today it could be Mozart tomorrow.  

Too bad, because if Americans gave opera a chance they'd find it's a good fit.  For example, there's the story of a girl who catches her boyfriend sleeping with a married woman.  She tells the woman's husband and he kills the boyfriend.  That's either Cavalleria Rusticana or every third country song.  In the first act of Die Walkure a brother and sister elope; by the third act the sister is pregnant.  In Arkansas that's called dating.  Their son grows up to slay a dragon, which is almost the same as a dinosaur, and I believe people in Kentucky think that happened.  Then he falls in love with his aunt -- Arkansas again?  In Don Carlo the title character is a little too close to his stepmother...well, I could go on.  If you think the devil is real, opera's got you covered -- from Faust to The Rake's Progress he's right there messing with people.  Elitist?  I don't think so!

There's a problem, of course -- drag.  Any number of operas require women to portray men, even Hansel und Gretel, which children might be exposed to/groomed by.  And if the Million Moms figure out what's happening musically in the second act of Tristan und Isolde, or the prelude to Der Rosenkavalier, her head might explode.   

High culture!  Western civilization!  Let's claw them back from the haters.  We're still trying to grapple with the people who enjoyed Beethoven quartets and then reported for work at the gas chambers.  The cinematic masterpieces that promote the most disgusting racism.  The paintings created by people whose private lives were appalling.  I can't define Western Civilization but I know it when I see it being destroyed.