Niall Ferguson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali offer some good insights into the West and the values that made it great. Ferguson's essay points out that modern navel-gazing grievance studies in the academy (Ferguson calls it "microcosmograhia academia") are not teaching the values that made the West great, and, in fact, they often denigrate the West. Hirsi Ali nites that "by reducing Western civilization to the worst excesses of its history, and by leaving out the best it has brought forth—to repeat: women's equality; the abolition of slavery; individual freedom; religious tolerance; freedom of expression—[modern acedmia] makes a common mistake."

It's short. A whole book on this score would be helpful. ( )