The West Is Good

By Tony Morley

Sunday, May 10, 2026

 

The past decade has seen many in the West engage in an unprecedented campaign of cultural self-flagellation and a rejection of Western and Enlightenment values. That the West is good rather than evil has become morally suspect at best and grounds for threats and violence at worst.

 

Polarized critics from within perceive the downfall of the West, preaching inequality, “down with imperialism,” “tax the rich,” environmental apocalypse, racial injustice and systematic oppression, fascism, and a hundred other pessimistic railings of the self-proclaimed champions of the proletariat.

 

From without, hostile foreign nations and countless proponents of anti-Western ideologies burn flags, call for “death to America,” the West, the rich, and the free, and denounce everything the West represents. The loudest and most extreme calls for an end to the West and Western values have come from people and cultures outside the West; however, in this most recent decade, many of the most vehement and obnoxious cries come from within.

 

They would ask you to ignore, reject, and dismantle the values, cultural norms, and institutions that have made the West a place where people flee to rather than flee from.

 

People with the ability to move freely elect, with almost no exception, to move from autocratic rule to freedom. From poverty and dearth to wealth and abundance. From hunger and want to satiation and plenty. From danger and violence to safety and peace, and from bleak prospects toward the opportunity for a better future. Those who already have these conditions may well elect to visit the world of those living without, but they almost never elect to move there permanently. Many moonlight in rejecting the West, but, if pressed, they’re not much keen on giving up what the collective Western cultural system provides. The unique synthesis of ideas, cultural adaptations, innovations, and institutions that have emerged from the West have become humankind’s blueprint for prosperity and progress. No other collection of values and ideas than those of the Enlightenment has resulted in freer, longer, healthier, and richer lives.

 

The Enlightenment was an abrupt pivot. It set European culture on a process of transformation from totalitarian monarchies and oppressive religious dogma to scientific rationalism, freedom, commerce, tolerance, and the idea of progress. The Enlightenment propelled the West toward the Industrial Revolution, which was, in turn, the launchpad for Western prosperity and power. Never before, since the dawn of humanity, had scientific or economic progress occurred at such a fevered pitch or for such a sustained period. The Industrial Revolution culminated with the first wave of globalization and the beginning of the great enrichment that would transform the West.

 

Between 1800 and 2025, average global life expectancy climbed from 28.5 years to roughly 73 years, while extreme poverty fell from roughly 80 percent to 10 percent. Over that same period, global child mortality, even in the poorest countries, plummeted from a little over 40 percent to 3.5 percent. By nearly every objective measure, living standards and the quality of life improved for the average citizen globally, from the United States to Uzbekistan. That said, while average global living standards have increased dramatically, they have not increased uniformly. Broadly speaking, where Western values have become established, prosperity, living standards, and access to the good life for the average person have flourished in lockstep.

 

We’ve become so detached from the cultural norms, institutions, systems, and values that created the wealth, prosperity, and high living standards of the West that we have largely forgotten they were the prime movers and driving forces in building that abundance. Capitalism, property rights, constitutional government, individual liberty, free markets, entrepreneurship, family values, the rule of law, and a belief that the future can and should be better than the past. These are values that make up a broader cultural system that is not just one of the many good cultures and societal systems — not a culture on par with others — but, thus far, the best system of civilization humanity has ever had.

 

We’ve been goaded, bullied, threatened, and canceled into turning our backs on these values. Too many Westerners have become tolerant or even supportive of such ideas as authoritarian socialism, theocracy, selective law enforcement, and violence against political opponents. The West risks losing ideological and intellectual ground first and foremost because those who once believed in Western values have lost their confidence in them. We have sunk into a complacency made possible by the absence of the very values we have ceased to espouse.

 

As with all cultural constructs that make civilization possible, it is belief in the system itself that binds together the mechanism of its operation. We will remain free and prosperous only if we believe that freedom and prosperity are worth striving for. If the Enlightenment values of the West don’t survive the next century, economic growth will contract, progress and living standards will falter, and the specters of autocracy, war, hunger, ignorance, illness, and poverty will rise again. It’s time we returned to respectfully saying, “The West is good.”