What is Western Thought?

The west, western culture, western civilization and western thought are the subjects of this blog. I intend to explore the quality of western thought and the effect that it has had on today’s world. I hope that you will help me in this exploration but first I must define this term-- western thought. Western thought, as I see it, is the culmination of ideas that started with the Greeks and was brought to fruition in the European Renaissance and the Enlightenment. These ideas may have begun with the Greeks but these ideas are an amalgamation of many cultures and creeds.

Western thought is not one thought or belief. It is a diversity of ideas that have created both conflict and concord. If freedom is the ideal of the west then slavery was the negation. If Adam Smith’s economics is the engine that has powered America to world dominance, then Karl Marx’s communism is dogma that has contended for its own supremacy. Yet—both these men were raised and educated in the West.

Now, at the start of the 21st century, I have to ask what western thought has brought us. If you look to the negative then it has brought the world to the edge of economic collapse, unleashed the horrors of terrorism and caused our certain demise from climate change.

So what should we think of these ideas and beliefs that have brought us to these desperate times. How should we view western religion – whose main creed is of that of peace and love—yet has created so much hate and war. And what of science and industry, which has led to the invention and operation of machines that many say are bringing about the demise of the planet?

I intend, like Descartes, to break the theories of the west down to the smallest concept. To examine each part for what truths and falsehoods it holds. I believe that when I reassemble what I have deconstructed that it will adhere. It is because western thought is so diverse that it can adapt and change. It can evolve as it did to end slavery in this country, as it did to end the soul crushing power that Soviet Communism held on Eastern Europe. And it will solve the problems the world faces today.

I am a Conservative Man

Oh how so? What are your theories?




My first theory concerns the liberty of man. There is no hand that controls man--only his intellect and wit. An educated man will live a good life.


I can see no better economic system than a free market with Adam Smith’s invisible hand, where there is equal opportunity for an educated man to work in an economy and provide for himself in happiness.


There is law and the handmaiden to the law is government. The government is a visible hand and is always open and honest and responsible to man. And man is responsible for government’s good order. So it must needs be that the government’s hand is opened to take a minimum amount of taxation to operate in good order. And man will be willing to pay a fair tax for the provision of his chosen government.


Government the visible hand of law will be open to help citizens in need. For the welfare of man, the Church--all churches and creeds--are handmaidens to the law and the resource of all welfare. Man and markets should sustain self-reliance. Government’s hand is closed only to market influence. I know the best theory of government is a constitutional democratic republic--The United States of America.


My conservative theories contain all the great notions of the United States of America, which can be no better, said than, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”


As a conservative fellow I will always strive to live a good life for the sustainability of the tri-unity of free man, free markets and good government.


God bless America.