by Ahmed Qerni

I have been meaning to write about this spat between two historians for a while but the holiday season took priority.  First of all, let me make my position clear: scholars like Niall Ferguson are distinctly responsible for giving intellectual cover to all kinds of unsavoury ideologies that are creating problems for the rest of the world today.  While their words may be walking a fine line, the images they conjure up in the minds of others lead to a two-tier world that is simply not acceptable to civilization as we know it.

In his book, 'Civilization: The Six Ways the West Beat the Rest' (I won't link to it), Ferguson describes the six 'killer apps' of the West that not only provided it deserved dominance, but seeks to justify an approach that may serve little more than a continued dominance at all costs.