NYT Asks: Are Western Values Losing Their Sway?

Even a person most uninterested in geopolitics, if you ask them, will probably tell you that Western values are universally sought after and it therefore is a noble goal to attempt to spread them. We all witnessed the celebrations at anchor desks across the Western world at the beginning of the Arab Spring. What a wonderful time it was for democracy, we were told. Our values were (supposedly) sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa like never before and we were all getting teary-eyed just thinking about it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how that all turned out.