Ayaan Hirsi Ali has seen it all. Born in Somalia, married-off, underage, to an abusive husband, forced into FGM, escaped to the Netherlands, where she got death threats from Islamists for writing the documentary "Submission", which got the director himself, Theo van Gough, killed. She fled to the United States when the Dutch government made clear it would not protect her.
A free-thinker, a politician, a feminist, a public intellectual. A brave woman.
Here she offers spot-on observations and analysis, on why, for all its faults, the liberal West is better than other "isms".
After looking (briefly!) at socialism, islamism, authoritarianism and tribalism, she asks "You don’t like any of those -isms?" and goes on:
Well, maybe Western civilization is not so bad after all. It’s not perfect, but it is clearly the system that provides maximal peace, prosperity and freedom. The classical liberal system based on Enlightenment values has done more good for the world than any other system or civilization. Western civilization’s medical and scientific leaps eradicated smallpox, came close to doing so to polio and measles, and brought a host of other infectious diseases under control — most recently COVID-19. Is it a coincidence that the most efficacious vaccines were devised in the US, Germany and Britain, rather than China or Russia? [Read more] [Archive]
