The Outstater
History Matters, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez
IT IS EASY to make fun of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and her flubs. It is clear she doesn’t understand the dynamics that created America or her own heritage. But she is not alone.
It would be surprising if there are 20 Indiana legislators who would fare better. Surveys of how little this generation understands of Western Civilization are so discouraging that they have quit conducting them. There is a hole in our education system where there should be a complementary history of the heroic achievement that is the West.
The depth of our civilization and its sophistication is encapsulated in a cutaway drawing of a random 18th century British war ship, one similar to those that broke up the Atlantic slave trade. A Twitter commentator quips that the ship in itself “surpasses by magnitudes” the aggregate historical achievements of entire continents.
Does any of this have to do with being “white” or speaking English? Not necessarily. What is required is a deep understanding, one accumulated through the sweat and blood of centuries, of how the world works as opposed to how somebody or other wishes it would work. Some societies/cultures understand that and some don’t.
A book making this critical point is Dan Hannon’s compelling 2013 masterpiece “How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World.” Read it; you will be better for it, and so would have been AOC.— tcl
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