The Disease

The Old Western Disease by Jonah Goldberg

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450807/monument-removal-western-disease-new-york-columbus-statue-removal

Excerpt: Monument removal is a symptom of the perverse Western desire to blame itself for everything. The virus seems to be approaching its breakout phase. We could be looking at a full-scale epidemic here. Zika? Ebola? Flu? Nope. We don’t have a great word for this sickness yet. “Iconoclasm” — i.e., the destruction of images and monuments that offend this mob or that — comes close, but the toppling of statues is just one acute symptom of the fever. Indeed, the fight over Confederate statues is just a discrete and more understandable eruption of the larger trend. This stuff has been happening for decades. One of the first outbreaks involved the word “crusader.” The term hurt the feelings of people who didn’t know what they didn’t know. Left-wing historians (and the Islamists who love them) convinced themselves that the Crusades were a trial run of Western imperialism and colonialism. They were, in fact, largely defensive wars intended to beat back the aggression of Muslim colonizers. Even the organization Campus Crusade for Christ changed its name to “Cru” lest people get the wrong impression.