Western Ideas Work

John Stossel on Feb 18, 2026

Trigger warning:

The following discusses themes of race, gender, "hate" speech ...

Author Heather Mac Donald takes a lot of heat. She writes about race, crime, diversity, gender, merit -- and says things that got her shouted down on college campuses.

She points out the absurdity of the left's attack on Western civilization.

"For the left to claim that the West is the source of inequity in the world," she says, "oppression, racism, the crushing of minority voices, of indigenous populations, that is so ignorant! It is so blind to the reality of history ..."

Westerners "brought the rule of law, science, brought engineering to cultures that for millennia had lived with devastating disease (and) poverty."

"Progressives" blame white Europeans for slavery and colonialism, but she says it was the West that "began rethinking this entire project. It was England ... trying to end the transatlantic slave trade. They blockaded the coast of West Africa ... They spent 13% of their naval resources to try to stop that trade."

"The ideas that the left uses to discredit the West are uniquely Western ideas. The West came up with ... equal rights, tolerance, of freedom from religious domination. These are all Western ideas that now the left hurls back against us and say, 'You're not perfect in them.' No, we're not, but no other civilization is as well."

The way she talks, it sounds as if, until recently, leftists prevented people from pointing out the benefits of Western ideas.

"They pretty much did! They controlled the elite establishments, dominated universities, dominated the curriculum," Mac Donald says.

It's telling that the West is so open to criticism, that it empowers those who criticize it.

"Western civilization subjects itself to this corrosive acid of unending critique. ... That's what made us the success we were. ... Do not accept superstition. Do not accept authority.'"

But now leftists blindly accept progressive dogma dished out by colleges.

"You have these college students acting out little psychodramas of oppression and rebellion, pretending that they're questioning authority when they're not. They're simply parroting the anti-colonial rhetoric that they're getting from their universities," Mac Donald says.

Of course, that rhetoric is based on truth. Early Americans were racist.

"It is understandable that we have a guilty conscience when it comes to all issues related to race because of our centuries-long betrayal of our founding ideals and not being willing to accord black Americans, the same rights as we proclaimed, were inherent in all human beings ..." Mac Donald replies. "But we have way overcorrected."

Another example: trigger warnings.

"Trigger warnings were specifically demanded by females who now drive academic culture. They have been the biggest enemies of free speech on college campuses for decades now. ... Females, hilariously, get to claim that they're marginalized even though they're about two-thirds of the student body."

She says the left now classifies hate speech as any dissenting speech: "If you disagree with theories about ubiquitous white supremacy or post-colonial hegemony in Israel or endemic sexism, you're a hater! Your hate speech has to be canceled, and you're driven off campus."

Mac Donald was screamed at by students at Claremont McKenna College trying to prevent her from giving a talk that included a slide titled "Blue Lives Matter."

She goes out of her way to face her critics because she says Western Ideas are worth defending.

"Western civilization gave us the beauty of the scientific method, with this insatiable curiosity members of the West have had. Europeans had to figure out planetary motion, navigate the globe, figure out geology, figure out physiology. ... We're all ignorant beneficiaries of that. I couldn't possibly replicate any part of the knowledge that has given me everything that I take for granted. We shouldn't be ingrates. We should be grateful and know our history."

You can see our full interview at JohnStossel.com.

Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of "Government Gone Wild: Exposing the Truth Behind the Headlines."

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