Slogans and Clichés

By James S. Panero | Wednesday, May 15, 1996

I encourage everyone to take a moment and read Professor Mirollo's letter to the editor on the facing page. As you may know, this paper interviewed Professor Mirollo of Columbia for our last issue (TDR 5/1/96). I believe his letter is one of the finest and most reasonable The Dartmouth Review has received in some time. I think it also shows why the debate over the Western Canon will not be calmly resolved.

Professor Mirollo asks us to separate liberal/conservative ideology from the discussion of the Western Canon. Drop the slogans, drop the paradigms on both sides of the imaginary lines, and we can approach an educated resolution. Professor Mirollo is right: the answer does lie somewhere in the pragmatic middle — within the golden mean, if you will.

I wish we all could put down the mud for a moment. We could talk things over, with open minds. But I think this oversimplifies the nature of human debate. Indeed, this concept may be lost in its own ideology — an ideology of perpetual pragmatism.

When the lines of debate are drawn, the lines of debate tend to stay. Trench warfare can be futile, yes, but ask one side to drop their weapons. A bayonet right in the chest is what they get, all ideology aside.

The nature of the debate over the Western canon is totalistic. Few who oppose a core curriculum do so on intellectual grounds or for pragmatic reasons. Instead, the debate traces back to a deep-seated premise. The debate over a core has been derived from a disagreement over a Western canon, and opposition to the Western canon stems from the believe that the West has lead a corrupt history, that it is morally bankrupt. Therefore, the logic goes, other cultures should be studied in its stead.

Academia is filled with those who use an un-apologetic idealistic bent to attack the West. Their attacks are loud, consistent, and rarely intellectual. They use words like 'hateful,' 'racist,' 'Eurocentric,' 'Phallocentric' 'Heterocentric' to discredit the Western canon. These are not constructive criticisms. The phraseology stifles discussion. Rather than debate the message, they attack the messengers. Their tactics are bullish, coercive, and indeed quite successful. It hurts to be labeled 'hateful' or 'racist.' Many people throw in the towel to the ideologues of Western attack. Keep quiet, and it will go away...

Keep quiet, and it will all go away: the paradigms, the slogans, and appreciation of the Western legacy. When people cease to learn about it, people cease to know about it. When people don't know, people don't care. That's why so many college students today could not care less about a core curriculum and a Western canon. When students are not compelled to study the Canon, when indeed a loud and coercive segment screams to avoid it, it's no wonder few stand up for it.

So for those who support the Western tradition, it comes down to tactics. Certainly the history of the West has great flaws. Its legacy is dynamic and rich beyond comprehension. The West has taught us over the millennia to think in degrees, not absolutes. Professor Mirollo is right on that point. But those who now argue over the value of a Western education come with different premises. It's not about how much to study it, but to study it at all. The sides do not and will not see eye to eye. We see a debate full of 'slogans and jargon and clichés,' on all sides of the argument, precisely because we have even lost the common premise of intellectual discourse — a Western premise.

Imagine for a moment the entire legacy of the West embodied in a stone tower. Right now zealots are swarming around it, with ladders and picks, ready to chip away. When we are content to watch that happen, don't be surprised if, eventually, the very foundations go.

Slogans and Clichés

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