How to Destroy Western Civilization and Other Topics

Book excerpt: Peter Kreeft presents a series of brilliant essays about many of the problems that undermine our Western civilization, along with ways to address them. "These essays are not new proposals or solutions to today's problems," he says. "They are old. They have been tried, and have worked. They have made people happy and good. That is what makes them so radical and so unusual today." In his witty, readable style, Kreeft implores us to gather wisdom and preserve it, as the monks did in the Middle Ages. He offers relevant philosophical precepts, divided into various categories, that can be collected and remembered in order to guide us and future generations in the days ahead. Kreeft emphasizes that the most necessary thing to save our civilization is to have children. If we don't have children, our civilization will cease to exist. The "unmentionable elephant in the room", he tells us, is sex, properly understood. Religious liberty is being attacked in the name of "sexual liberty", in other words, abortion. Kreeft encourages us to fight back—with joy and confidence—with the one weapon that will win the future: children.