Few intellectuals can match the extraordinary popular success of Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari. In two best-selling books, Sapiens and Homo Deus, he tackles the big questions about the human condition and its future. Harari’s wide-ranging, macro-histories have clearly struck a nerve with the public. Yet his account of our collective past assumes that the biological, scientific version of human nature provides the true and full explanation of what we are. Writing in City Journal, Sir Roger Scruton notes that Harari’s reductive view of history skirts the rather gaping matters of human self-consciousness and self-awareness. In the end, writes Scruton, Harari’s histories are about homo without the sapiens.
France is in the Crosshairs, but the Target is Western Civilization
Theodore Dalrymple in Law & Liberty crystallizes the recent riots in France to a simple equation: “Whole generations have been taught and come to accept that Western civilization consists of slavery, exploitation, and massacre.” Tearing it all down – not merely reforming it – is therefore not just understandable but desirable. Dalrymple disposes of the delusional trope that these are “student” protests, noting the preponderance of Muslim migrants committing the mayhem.
For a luminous glimpse into the singular civilizational achievements the rioters would tear down, read this C2C article by Patrick Keeney.
