The great misconception at the heart of Western liberal democracy

There has long been a misconception at the heart of Western political and cultural life, one that traces its origins back to the Enlightenment. It is the belief that political rights and civil liberties in a given society are separate and detached from the level of economic development in said society, and that said economic development is the product of cultural rather than material factors.

This misconception has provided moral justification for the long and egregious history of colonialism and imperialism that has and contines to inform the West’s relations with the global south. Whether it has come under the rubric of “White Man’s Burden,” “Manifest Destiny,” “Humanitarian Intervention,” or “Responsibility to Protect,” the premise is the same: domination and control.

Over centuries cultures, states, and nations that have failed to mirror Western political, economic, and cultural values have been deemed ripe for domination, based on the mendacious assertion that Western values are universal values and, as such, a convenient if not simplistic measure of a given culture and state’s worth and rectitude. It describes an analysis, stripped bare of obfuscation, that would have us believe that the world exists on a blank sheet of paper, with its many and manifold complexities and challenges abstracted. The less…