Here’s Republican Representative Steve King from Iowa (the same guy who keeps a Confederate flag on his desk) making a complete fool of himself after a panel member on the TV show he was a guest on said that the time of “old white people” is passing:

This ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie. I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization … [t]han, than Western civilization itself. It’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That’s all of Western civilization.

Do you hear that? The only significant contributions to civilization came from The United States or Europe. He doesn’t mean just “white people,” it just happens that Europe and the United States are dominated by white people, just a coincidence there.

Of course, he’s wrong on a number of levels. For example, writing developed in Mesopotamia, which I’m pretty sure is in the Middle East. And our numbering system? It’s called “Arabic” for a reason. See those stars up in the sky at night? A lot of them got named by Arab astronomers, who pioneered the field. Remember back in high school, in fact, when you heard about the “Cradle of Civilization”? That wasn’t in Rome. Not to mention things like gunpowder, the compass, and movable type, all invented in China. Many contributions in math (ever heard of Pythagorus?), astronomy, and metallurgy came from Africa.

But the most hilarious way that King is wrong comes from his very own statement. See if you can spot it:

It’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world.

That’s right: the one contribution that King himself would probably rank as the greatest contribution to civilization ever, the one that he mentioned in that very statement, and it most decidedly did not come from Europe or the United States.

Christianity.

What an idiot. Though, I suppose I can’t blame him too much: in the American education system, history and culture are taught pretty much as if only Western civilization mattered.