Absolutely Gregory Melleuish. To try to not study western civilisation in a study of modern global civilisation would be like studying human anatomy by tossing at least half of the body and it's parts away. There are some who believe there is something called western civilisation that is completely distinct from the rest of the world's civilisation, and this is patently dysfunctional. Even to imagine that there is a distinct difference in the religious teachings of the east and west is a failure to investigate those teachings and social developments around them, with any depth. To imagine that the wars of the west and the east over two or three millenia were either devoid of religious influences in either sphere or wholly responsible for them, is likewise a highly biased view of the data that is readily available about the history of war and conquest. Today, some of the despotic and corrupt societies are those that are exporting buddhist philosophy. I suspect that such an export has been undertaken especially because of the openness that buddhist teachers have found in the west compared to the 'stuckedness' of the societies fo the east. It may well be that the west will be the true flourishing of the eastern philosophies, even those of middle eastern bridge: judaism, christianity and baha'i. It should be noted that the 'west' is indeed the negotiation of greek philosophy with monotheism with paganism and rsistances of old europe

just found these by Thomas Sowell;

"the next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many conservatives there are in their sociology department ."

"Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good."