As always, Prager U is confounding. Their videos on religion and science are often the worst form of dreck, but their videos on history and politics are usually spot-on. The one below explains what set “The West” apart from the rest of the world. Why, starting about the 16th century, did western Europeans and their descendants begin to pull away from the rest of the planet in terms of standard of living, wealth, power? The people who hate the west and westerners claim it was because of slavery, war and imperialism, conveniently forgetting that slavery, war and imperialism are *universals.* Wherever westerners went, they encountered empires that enslaved and waged war. The Stanford historian Niall Ferguson here comes to much the same conclusion I long ago did, though he breaks it down to six points, where I break it down to three:
1: Science. The scientific method, the most powerful tool to understand the world as it actually is, was developed and perfected in western Europe.
2: Capitalism. If you want wealth generation, nothing comes close to capitalism. After centuries of systems such as mercantilism, actual capitalism broke out in western countries and colonies, and they started getting stinkin’ rich.
3: Democracy. Allowing people a say in how their lives are lived and governed turns out to be a dandy way to let people actually be happy about their lives. Coupled with capitalism, democracy lets people and populations decide to improve their lot; add science into the mix, and now the people have the *tools* to materially improve their lives.
One can argue about *why* western Europeans developed these three systems , and the rest of the world did not (or at least did not develop all three at the same time). But one cannot honestly argue that they weren’t the drivers of Western Civilization Exceptionalism. Science, Capitalism and Democracy are necessary and sufficient for massive progress. This has been proven in the 20th century: civilizations that had lived in feudal muck and mire for millenia without these three either adopted them or had them forced onto them, and shot forward. Those nations that did not adopt these, or outright rejected one or more of them, stayed backwards, surviving – if they did – on pure nastiness.