Are we doomed to return to the Dark Ages?

Adam Bosworth points out that the modern industrial world would not have been possible without the renaissance and the spirit of scientific and intellectual inquiry that it fostered. In his younger days, he "...assumed that mankind understood that freedom to think, to reason, and to experiment were paramount and that any irrational intolerant irrational beliefs that threatened these freedoms or, even worse, abused or injured people in the name of some mystical or fanatic cause were horrific reminders of the past."

His blog post points out that he observes with dismay that mystical and irrational beliefs continue to cause many of the world's leaders to "... turn their backs on the spirit of reason and inquiry."

Perhaps part of the reason for this is that very few people are now learning about the history of Western Civilization. As George Santayana once stated: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

An overwhelming majority of the faculty at American colleges and universities are irrationally opposed to the rational, captialist, free-enterprise system. They are opposed to it to such a degree that they are also opposed to teaching the history of Western Civilization that gave rise to that system. The situation, as described in this article in Opinion Journal, must be serious when an institution like Yale University forfeits a $20 million donation to support a curriculum in Western Civilization simply because "...Yale's faculty had little interest in teaching such courses."