The Economist has an article detailing the spread of anti-Darwinian ideas from the U.S. to other countries around the world. (The article is also reproduced on Richard Dawkins’s site.) It’s unfortunately no surprise to find that the ideas are finding fertile soil in Muslim countries; they’re also having an impact in Russia and Brazil, where groups are beginning to challenge the teaching of evolution in schools.
The article shows how ideas—no matter how preposterous—can move around the globe as rapidly as commodities nowadays. It also shows that thinking about “globalization” simply as either good or bad is silly. Global markets and communication networks make offshoring backward pathologies as easy as spreading ideas of human rights, freedom and reason, which is why it’s vital to defend the latter with vigor. When Westerners fail to do so out of fear of being “imperialist,” they should realize that much more noxious Western ideas will be exported anyway.
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