I came away from this article without understanding what the "Western Model" is. Does anyone have an accurate and concise definition of the model this article is attacking?
Is the "Western Model" Christianity or atheism? Does it involve capitalism or social democracy? Does it involve interventionism or isolationism? Should the government tarriff imports, or subsidize national industry? Does the "West" nationalize industry, or privatize it? Is constantly raising taxes and expanding the government "Western" or "Eastern"?
Francis Fukuyama's definition is "liberal democracy", i.e. democracy, rule of law, human rights, etc. And few could object to that. But I guess Mishra argues that description itself is an inaccurate description of what the system in the West looks like, and that what was actually starting to take over the world in the late 90s and early 00s was "government as practiced in the West", e.g. capitalism, colonialism, oligarchies, etc. The main message I took away from the article was something like "to see why Western-style institutions are failing to take hold in the world, we have to look more clearly at the failings of Western-style institutions".
I think you'll find that more than 50% of the world population object to it. Let's have democracy ! For example, the prime example of anti-human rights behaviour, killing gays, is favored by ideologies that together have ~72% of the total human population (and is a quite popular idea in most of them). I mean everybody knows about this in muslim countries, but it's no different in a number of Indian states, or African dictatorships with a LOT of people in them.
Europe and America, together, are around 700-800 million people, or a little under 10% of the total world population.
And ... Europe has a muslim population that is at 6-7% and growing rapidly, and those people are most definitely not in favor of human rights, rule of law, and absolutely not in favor of democracy (well, to be honest, most actual muslim immigrants are very much in favor of that, because they've seen and felt the alternative. But they let, even demand, their kids be educated by islamists, and very few of them share their parents' viewpoints. And of course second-generation muslim immigrants are using violence, just like their counterparts everywhere else, which ironically means they often attack newly arrived muslim immigrants. Or at least, that's how it works in Brussels. For example muslims in Brussel use violence against women to enforce their idea of "correct" marriages (no ethnic mixing, no religious mixing, no faction mixing, and especially no converting religion), but a lot of people ran away from muslim countries in the first place because they married "wrong" in some way or converted.
There are other large factions in Europe (like the extreme right, which is 20%-30% of the total population, the fact that it's mostly outlawed makes it hard to tell. If you're living on the countryside, it's far more than 20%) these factions are certainly not uniformly in favor of human rights (at least, you might say they feel the need to be selective about who receives those rights)
Every year the world is looking closer to what it was in the early 20th century. Of course, this means the current wars are but a slight taste of what's to come.
Governments built on the ideals of the secular enlightenment, self-rule, representative democracy, property rights, and human rights.
The Guardian has its head so far up its, apparently, profitable anti-US/anti-NATO biases, that its more or less become a subtle mascot for authoritarian and autocratic single-party regimes.
There's little to be gained from feeding troll articles.
I don't think you can argue that the western ego isn't bruised and battered in recent times. There have been a lot of false starts in the past 20 years where we were hopeful western ideas would take hold in places where they haven't:
- Fall of the USSR, and what appears to be its rise again
- Arab spring turning into unstable nation states, instead of nice representative democracies
- Iraq
- Afghanistan (time will tell)
Then again, this article ignores the swelling middle class in a lot of southeast Asia. And also, conflict exists everywhere and is often a defining characteristic for nations. For example, the author didn't seem to have a true grasp of American history. The most important war we've ever fought was with ourselves, turning us from a loose collection of states into a single nation-state. Why is it surprising that other countries are going through that on their own watch?
Flagging is such an option. It's not a downvote, but it can be used against extreme off topic or flamebait posts. (You need to have enough karma to be able to flag posts).
If the Western Model is so broken, why are so many people from all over the world risking their lives trying to get into Western countries? There are economic reasons (probably for the majority), but there's also the powerful appeal of democracy, justice, freedom of speech, acceptance of so-called alternative lifestyles, freedom of religion and other human rights. It would be a mistake to reduce the Western model to hardcore profit driven capitalism.
And if you lived in Brussels, you'd see the effect of this. Freedoms in Brussels, whether we're talking freedom of speech (constant violence is opposing it), freedom of ideology (honor killings, anti-Jewish attacks, ...), freedom of marriage (again violence and killings), freedom of ... they're all under attack from exactly that group. And the presence of that group is making security measures that also limit freedom a necessity (I mean that the presence of these groups is pushing other political factions to reduce liberties). Those security measures include limiting freedom of speech, e.g. "correcting" history books on the Armenian genocide, downplaying the fact that Turkey was on the wrong side in both world wars, "correcting" away that Muhammad committed religious genocide and re-introduced slavery. Holding up Moorish Spain as a bastion of tolerance, removing mention of the constant massacres the Moors committed, and of course stating that the hatred of the other city states against the Moors was caused by racism, not by the constant attacks, the massacres against Spaniards, or the fact that Moors kidnapped citizens from the other city states' ships and sold them into slavery, or the fact that Moorish piracy and raids destroyed their economies, isolating them within their walls, for centuries. Hell, even the positive statement that muhammad had something to do with the spread of the legal principle of jurisprudence had to go.
I have little doubt that the same is happening in Paris, Madrid, Berlin, ...
> It would be a mistake to reduce the Western model to hardcore profit driven capitalism.
True. But hardcore profit driven capitalism is pretty much the only western value that's not under attack from immigrants. Actually, it is a little bit, but only a little bit.
Is the "Western Model" Christianity or atheism? Does it involve capitalism or social democracy? Does it involve interventionism or isolationism? Should the government tarriff imports, or subsidize national industry? Does the "West" nationalize industry, or privatize it? Is constantly raising taxes and expanding the government "Western" or "Eastern"?