In his remarks in Washington, before leaders and citizens from across the globe, Os posits that we in the West find ourselves in a civilizational moment.
Through gathered consequences over a long period, the West has allowed into its heart alien ideas of freedom, inspired not by its founding principles of dignity, civility and reciprocity, but by a distorted view of freedom rooted in unbridled power. This spectre of power without principle has long brooded over Eurasia and is now well entrenched in the West via the ideas of the French Revolution and its heirs. Perhaps the strongest influence of these distortions can be found in the very last written words of the very last book of Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously summarized his world as “the will to power, and nothing besides.”
Will the West rebuild its civilizational foundations? Are decline and fall inevitable? Or will ours be a story exile and return? The choice belongs to leaders and citizens of the West, and so do the consequences.
