The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.

The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.

Empires, essentially, create order. In their absence, you don't end up with lots of happy, little nation-states full of people sitting around campfires singing John Lennon's "Imagine." What you end up with is civil war, anarchy.

I can't imagine having a conversation about 'Celebrity Big Brother' in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps- competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization.

To make a living space, there first had to be a killing space.

The rise of the West is, quite simply, the pre-eminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ.