Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
Eight years ago, I began the Quixotic quest to have the State of Idaho require that all High School students take and pass a course in the history of Western Civilization in order to earn graduation. Thanks to a partnership with Financial Analyst Les Atchley, the idea survived years of stasis. I am happy to report that Idaho Senator Ben Toews, Representative Joe Alfieri, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, and leaders within the Idaho Department of Education are now making a significant step towards achieving this goal.
The one common factor in every civic controversy within today’s United States is a question of what constitutes our shared identity as Americans. The loose alliance of Leftists that besets traditionalists has been working for generations to redefine our cultural identity from being the Judeo-Christian West into some variant of Secular Utopian Communitarianism.
Such a radical transformation cannot ever succeed, unless one of two basic strategies is employed.
The first is a manufactured revolutionary crisis that would call our very survival into doubt. In a panic, many human beings would stampede and willingly reduce themselves from citizens to slaves to survive. This has been tried since 1917 in Russia, Germany, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere.
Such crises always produce totalitarian tyranny and mega-death. The Communist or National Socialist Party’s leadership proceeds to try to kill their way to their perceived paradise. As French Revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre once said, “Virtue without Terror is useless”. Only when people are possessed by a gut-liquefying fear of imminent death are they truly willing to fundamentally change. The Left embraces this notion with hope.
The other approach has worked to alter the more developed societies of the West. Social evolution over generations can alter the fundamental character of a culture or civilization. By systematically controlling formal education, high culture, and popular culture the rising generations can be taught unprecedentedly radical doctrines as if they were self-evident truths.
Simultaneously, the telling of the stories that inform young people of who we have traditionally been can be sabotaged, either twisted out of all recognition or excised entirely.
Influenced by such propaganda, young people may simply never discover their cultural heritage. They may never be effectively acculturated into their own shared identity. Generational amnesia results, where great-grandchildren would be unrecognizable to their ancestors as being members of the same society. The old identity dies over time because it is thoroughly mischaracterized or forgotten.
This is what has happened in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and countless other Western nations. As a direct result of over a half-century of de-emphasizing the systematic teaching of Western history, a critical mass within our societies have literally forgotten who we are.
Most young people never even learned how an individual can pursue satisfying answers to the question, “Who are we as a people, as a nation, and as a culture?” In place of a thoughtful introduction to our cultural identity, including religious, philosophical, and cultural elements, young people have been fed a caustic admixture of rigidly ideological rhetoric and a reflexive intolerance towards any dissent from conformity to this groupthink.
Try thoughtfully exploring any controversial matter beyond the safe space of ideological consensus with a young person. See how quickly it takes for the young person to become enraged and decry such questioning as Hate Speech. The more highly educated the youth, the more likely that this abject rejection of critical thinking will occur.
Learning who we are does not automatically lead to a young person adopting conservatism or libertarian ideals. Quite the contrary, the West is unique among all the world’s cultures and civilizations in that it produces a powerful advocacy for idealistic, reformist, liberal, radical, socialist, or communist viewpoints. No other society permits the kinds of criticism of the status quo as practiced in these Leftist ideologies.
In many of the more culturally traditional US states, citizens and legislators are demanding a restoration of the systematic teaching of our shared Judeo-Christian Western heritage to all students. In Idaho, I have been a part of a committee to establish standards for teaching the history of Western Civilization to High School students.
This new course, “Western Civilization, Grades 9-12”, adheres to core content designed to teach students who we are as a society. It has students explore what is distinct about our Western identity.
What makes the West the only human society to industrialize, conquer the world, go to the moon, and develop the internet? What makes the West unique in developing concepts of universal and inalienable human rights as well as functional free societies where citizens exercise these rights? Precisely where do the ideals that our Founding Fathers established in our Constitution come from? Why are free speech, freedom of religion, and the right to defend
these rights so critical to preserve any ongoing freedom?
As conceived by the committee at this time, this course would be a two semester, one full school year optional elective. It might someday soon become a graduation requirement. It would begin with the study of Ancient Greece and end with Napoleon’s defeat in 1815; after the American, French, and agricultural revolutions. This is at a moment when the West was on the
verge of industrializing and becoming humanity’s first worldwide society.
It was seen by the committee as impossible to include into a single year the study of civilizations before Ancient Greece. For the same reason, the study of how the West industrializes, conquers the world, develops nationalism and socialism, fights two world wars and a cold war, and develops down to the present day was left out. Perhaps the second half of current European History courses, which cover the period after 1815, could be adapted to bring student up to the present.
This is not precisely what I had originally imagined. However, it is a worthwhile step in the right direction: a practical and necessary intermediate step closer to the goal of having all students study the history of the West from creation through contemporary times. It would teach students the origins of our American identity.
It is well past time for the rising generation of Idaho students to be properly introduced to their own cultural identity, to the whys behind so much in our free society. “Western Civilization, Grades 9-12” repairs a fundamental deficiency within our High School curriculum.
The standards for this course are now open to public review. Find them at the first link below, and offer what thoughtful insights and constructive criticism that you have at the second.
The New Western Civilization, Grades 9-12 Standards:
https://www.sde.idaho.gov/academic/standards/files/standards-review/western-civ/Western-Civilization-Grades-9-12-Draft.pdf
Public Comment Form (before July 13, 2025):
https://form.jotform.com/251816618951161
