The most dynamic forces in the world today are all Western cultural forces. Everywhere you look, across Africa and Asia, from Baghdad to Buenos Aires, a cluster of values that have deep roots in the history of the West is in operation. Starting with the Greeks and Romans through to the Scottish Enlightenment and the modern age, the most important of these values is the idea of liberty.
Just as the major conflicts in European history all arose from the collision of liberty with the forces and institutions that opposed it, Arthur Herman argues that so it is in the important conflicts taking place today. From the ‘war on terror’ to the changing face of Asia and the Pacific Rim, that same collision continues to fire the engine of history.
In this lecture, Dr Herman explores how a prosperous and culturally diverse world depends on the human freedoms embedded in a globalised Western civilisation.
