In this article for Liberty Unbound, I examine why the West went ahead of the rest.

I argue that the West’s greatness cannot be explained merely by geography, technology, guns, steel, institutions, or economic systems. The deeper foundation was the West’s recognition of the sanctity of the individual, and from that, the development of reason, responsibility, creativity, morality, and social trust. Without this civilizational substrate, Western institutions, when copied by non-Western societies, often become hollow forms or even mutate into tools of corruption and tribal power.

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