We are living through the end-times of the civilizing mission – universal human rights having been its most ubiquitous modern expression. As a form of secular Christianity, human rights were turned by Europeans into global rules through imperial power, then international law and organizations.
After 1945, Europe’s long, slow moral and political decline was disguised for decades by US power. Now the West is fracturing. The world in which global rules were assumed to be secular, universal and non-negotiable is one built on the belief that there is a deep consensus about human rights worldwide – but this is only an assumption with plenty of countervailing evidence.
