The fall of Western civ, and why it still stands

In 1982, an article by Gilbert Allardyce in the American Historical Review (the granddaddy journal in the discipline in the United States) proclaimed the fall of the Western civ course, and a number of historians, offering ensuing commentary, largely agreed. From the 1960s onward Western civ was subjected to several related attacks. The attacks raised a number of important critical points, some of them going to the heart of the Western civ assumptions. It did indeed seem like the fortress was crumbling. But of course it did not collapse. We need to take a moment to look at the reasons for attack and at the reasons the attack did not entirely succeed (remember the US Senate vote in favor of Western civ, in 1994). Then we can return to the question of what next.