Commentary
The following is an excerpt by Bruce Pardy from “The 1867 Project: Why Canada Should be Cherished—Not Cancelled,” a new book of essays by 20 Canadian critical thinkers edited by Aristotle Foundation president Mark Milke.
Modern Western civilization grew out of the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. The ascendancy of reason in human affairs produced the scientific method and later the Industrial Revolution. Add in the rule of law, individual liberty, private property, and capitalism, and you have the basic recipe that has raised much of humanity out of poverty and oppression over two centuries.
Four academic doctrines—Critical Theory, Postmodernism, Social Justice, and Critical Race Theory—are moving the world, or at least the West, from this triumph to decline. These doctrines reject Enlightenment values such as open inquiry, individual autonomy, free speech, scientific skepticism, and even reason itself. They claim to champion equality, peace, and social cooperation, but instead promote identity politics, elitism, and centralized control. They are the four doctrines of the apocalypse….