If you want to identify the most harmful idea in the world, it would be hard to avoid the phrase “Western values.” From over here, it doesn’t sound so bad. In North America and Europe, the expression is simply a commonplace bit of chauvinism, a historically naive way to suggest that various good things – equal rights, multiparty democracy, the rule of law, open economies, freedom of speech – were the product of, or are uniquely held by, European-origin cultures. However historically and geographically inaccurate, we don’t mind the phrase because it represents a set of hard-won qualities we’re rightfully eager to possess and defend.
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