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The Age of Discovery was not a morality play. It was a capability leap. Between the late 1400s and the 1600s, Europeans built a durable system of oceanic navigation, mapping, and logistics that connected continents at scale. That system reshaped trade, ecology, science, and eventually politics across the world.
None of this requires sanitizing what came with it. Disease shocks, conquest, extraction, and slavery were not side notes. They were part of the story. The problem is what happens when modern retellings keep only one side of the ledger. When “discovery” is taught as a synonym for “oppression,” history stops being inquiry and becomes a single moral script.
What the era achieved
The Age of Discovery solved practical problems that had limited long-range sea travel: how to travel farther from coasts, how to fix position reliably, and how to represent the world in a form that could be used again by the next crew.
Routes mattered first. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope and helped establish the sea-route logic that linked the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean world. That made long voyages less like stunts and more like repeatable corridors.
Maps made it scalable. In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller’s map labeled “America” and presented the newly charted lands as a distinct hemisphere in European cartography. In 1569, Mercator’s projection made course-setting more practical by letting navigators plot constant bearings as straight lines. These were not aesthetic achievements. They were infrastructure for a global system.
Instruments and technique followed. Mariners relied on celestial measurement, and Europeans benefited from earlier work in the Islamic world and medieval transmission routes that carried astronomical knowledge and instrument development into Europe. This is worth stating plainly because it strengthens the real point: the Age of Discovery was not magic. It was the synthesis and scaling of knowledge into a logistical machine.
Finally, there was proof of global integration. Magellan’s expedition, completed after his death by Juan Sebastián del Cano, achieved the first circumnavigation. Whatever moral judgments one makes about the broader era, this was a genuine expansion of what humans could do and know.
What it cost
The same system that connected worlds also carried catastrophe.
Indigenous depopulation after 1492 was enormous. Scholars debate the causal mix across regions, but the scale is not seriously in dispute. One influential synthesis reports a fall from just over 50 million in 1492 to just over 5 million by 1650, with Eurasian diseases playing a central role alongside violence, displacement, and social disruption.
The transatlantic slave trade likewise expanded into a vast engine of forced migration and brutal labor. Best estimates place roughly 12.5 million people embarked, with about 10.7 million surviving the Middle Passage and arriving in the Americas. These are not “complications.” They are central moral facts.
And the Columbian Exchange, often simplified into “new foods,” was a sweeping biological and cultural transfer that included crops and animals, but also pathogens and ecological disruption. It permanently altered diets, landscapes, and power.
A reader can acknowledge all of that and still resist a common conclusion: that the entire era should be treated as a civilizational stain rather than a mixed human episode with world-changing outputs.
The Exchange is the model case for a full ledger
A fact-based account has to hold two truths at once.
First, the biological transfer had large, measurable benefits. Economic historians have argued that a single crop, the potato, can plausibly explain about one-quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900. That is a civilizational consequence, not an opinion.
Second, the same transoceanic link that moved calories also moved coercion and disease. That is not a footnote. It is part of the mechanism.
The adult position is not denial and not self-flagellation. It is proportionality.
Where “critical theory” helps, and where it can deform
Critical theory is not one thing. In the broad sense, it names a family of approaches aimed at critique and transformation of society, often by making power, incentives, and hidden assumptions visible. In that role, it can correct older triumphalist histories that ignored victims and treated conquest as background noise.
The failure mode appears when the lens becomes total. When domination becomes the only explanatory variable, achievement becomes suspect simply because it is achievement, and complexity is treated as apology. The story turns into prosecution.
One can see the tension in popular history writing. Howard Zinn’s project, for example, explicitly recasts familiar episodes through the eyes of the conquered and the marginalized. That corrective impulse can be valuable. But critics such as Sam Wineburg have argued that the method often trades multi-causal history for moral certainty, producing a “single right answer” style of interpretation rather than a discipline of competing explanations. The risk is that students learn a posture instead of learning judgment.
A parallel point is worth making for Indigenous-centered accounts. Works like Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s are explicit that “discovery” is often better described as invasion and settler expansion. Even when one disagrees with some emphases, the existence of that challenge is healthy. It forces the older story to grow up.
But there is a difference between correction and replacement. Corrective history adds missing facts and voices. Replacement history insists there is only one permissible meaning.
Verdict: defend the full ledger
Western civilization does not need to be imagined as flawless to be defended as consequential and often beneficial. The Age of Discovery expanded human capabilities in navigation, cartography, and global integration. It also produced immense suffering through disease collapse, coercion, and slavery.
A healthy civic memory holds both sides of that ledger. It teaches the costs without denying the achievements, and it refuses any ideology that demands a single moral story as the price of belonging.
References
Bartolomeu Dias (1488) — Encyclopaedia Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bartolomeu-Dias
Recognizing and Naming America (Waldseemüller 1507) — Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/collections/discovery-and-exploration/articles-and-essays/recognizing-and-naming-america/
Mercator projection — Encyclopaedia Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/science/Mercator-projection
Magellan and the first circumnavigation; del Cano — Encyclopaedia Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ferdinand-Magellan
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Juan-Sebastian-del-Cano
Mariner’s astrolabe and transmission via al-Andalus — Mariners’ Museum
European mariners owed much to Arab astronomers — U.S. Naval Institute (Proceedings)
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1992/december/navigators-1490s
Indian Ocean trade routes as a pre-existing global network — OER Project
https://www.oerproject.com/OER-Materials/OER-Media/HTML-Articles/Origins/Unit5/Indian-Ocean-Routes
Indigenous demographic collapse (1492–1650) — British Academy (Newson)
Transatlantic slave trade estimates — SlaveVoyages overview; NEH database project
https://legacy.slavevoyages.org/blog/brief-overview-trans-atlantic-slave-trade
https://www.neh.gov/project/transatlantic-slave-trade-database
Potato and Old World population/urbanization growth — Nunn & Qian (QJE paper/PDF)
Click to access NunnQian2011.pdf
Critical theory (as a family of theories; Frankfurt School in the narrow sense) — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/
Zinn critique: “Undue Certainty” — Sam Wineburg, American Educator (PDF)
https://www.aft.org/ae/winter2012-2013
Indigenous-centered framing (as a counter-story) — Beacon Press (Dunbar-Ortiz)
https://www.beacon.org/An-Indigenous-Peoples-History-of-the-United-States-P1164.aspx
If you missed what I’m talking about please look at the post from this Sunday’s The DWR Sunday Religious Disservice – Why Classical Islam and Western Liberalism Face Deep Tensions.
1) “You’re Confusing Islam with Islamism. The Problem Is Politics, Not the Religion.”
Steelman: Islamism is a modern political project. The ugly stuff is authoritarianism in religious costume. Islam as faith is diverse and reformable. Reformers exist. So don’t blame the religion for the politics.
My answer: The distinction is real. It just doesn’t rescue the claim.
Modern Islamism didn’t invent the collision with liberalism. It accelerated it. The collision is older, because it sits inside a legal tradition that treats divine law as public law, not private devotion.
Start with the liberal baseline: your right to change your beliefs without state punishment. The ICCPR treats freedom of thought, conscience, and religion as including the freedom “to have or to adopt” a religion of one’s choice, and bars coercion that impairs that freedom.[1] Yet apostasy laws still exist as state law in a chunk of the world. Pew counted apostasy laws in 22 countries in 2019.[2] That’s not “Islamism only.” That’s a standing fact about legal systems and what they’re willing to criminalize.
Then there are the asymmetries that aren’t modern inventions at all. The Qur’an’s inheritance rule that the male share is “twice that of the female” is explicit.[3] So is the debt-contract witness standard that requires one man and two women in that context.[4] You can contextualize these. You can argue for limited scope. You can try to reinterpret. But you can’t pretend the hard edges arrived in the 20th century.
So yes: reform is possible. But the obstacle is not merely “bad regimes.” It’s the weight of inherited jurisprudence plus institutions that treat that inheritance as binding.
If you want a clean test, use this: Is conscience sovereign? Including the right to leave the faith without legal penalty. Where the answer is no, liberalism exists on permission, not principle.
2) “Western Civilization Has Its Own History of Religious Violence and Oppression.”
Steelman: Christianity did crusades, inquisitions, heresy executions, and legal oppression. Liberalism took centuries. So singling out Islam is selective and hypocritical. Islam may simply be earlier in the same process.
My answer: Fair comparison. Now use it properly.
The West didn’t become liberal because Christians became nicer. It became liberal because religious authority was structurally pushed out of sovereignty over law and conscience. That’s the real lesson.
If “Islam can modernize” is your claim, then define modernization. It means a public order in which equal citizenship is non-negotiable and the right to belief and exit is protected in law.[1] You don’t get there by vibes. You get there by institutions.
Tunisia’s 2014 constitution is a useful example precisely because it shows the tension in plain language. It says the state is “guardian of religion,” while also guaranteeing “freedom of conscience and belief.”[5] That’s the struggle in one paragraph: which sovereignty rules when the two conflict?
Morocco’s family-law reforms are another example of the same dynamic. Over time, reforms have expanded women’s rights in areas like guardianship and divorce.[6] But even current reform proposals acknowledge a hard limit: inheritance rules grounded in Islamic law remain, with workarounds proposed through gifts and wills rather than direct replacement.[7] Again, that’s not a moral condemnation. It’s the mechanism. Reform runs into inherited authority.
So yes: the Western analogy shows change is possible. It also shows change is not automatic. It is conflict, choices, and enforcement.
3) “You’re Ignoring Diversity in the Muslim World and Overgeneralizing.”
Steelman: Nearly two billion adherents across many cultures and legal systems. Outcomes vary widely. Some Muslim-majority societies are relatively pluralistic. Sweeping statements are unfair.
My answer: Diversity is real. It just doesn’t settle the core question.
Different outcomes prove the future isn’t predetermined. They don’t prove the underlying tension disappears. In practice, “moderation” usually correlates with one thing: how far the state limits religious jurisdiction over public law.
Indonesia is the standard example. Its founding philosophy, Pancasila, is explicitly framed as a unifying civic ideology with principles including belief in one God, deliberative democracy, and social justice.[8] That civic framing matters. It can restrain sectarian rule. But it doesn’t end the conflict.
Indonesia’s newer criminal code debates show how quickly “public morality” and “religious insult” can become tools against liberty. Reuters’ explainer on the code flagged concerns over provisions related to blasphemy and other speech constraints.[9] Human Rights Watch argued the updated code expanded blasphemy provisions and warned about harms to rights, including religious freedom.[10] Reuters has also reported concrete blasphemy prosecutions, including a comedian jailed for jokes about the name Muhammad.[11]
So yes: diversity exists. Outcomes differ. But the recurring fault line remains: whether the state treats conscience and equal citizenship as the top rule, or treats religious law as a superior jurisdiction that liberalism must negotiate with.
Closing
The best objections don’t erase the problem. They refine it.
The conflict is not “Muslims are bad.” That’s a cheap and stupid sentence. The conflict is structural: a comprehensive religious-legal tradition claiming public authority collides with a political order grounded in sovereignty of individual conscience.[1]
You don’t solve that conflict by saying “it’s just politics.” You don’t solve it by reciting Western sins as a deflection. You don’t solve it by pointing to diversity and declaring victory.
A liberal society survives by enforcing liberal public order: one civil law for all, equal rights as the baseline, and no religious veto over belief, speech, or exit.[1] If you refuse to name that clearly, you don’t get “coexistence.” You get drift. And drift always has a direction.
References (URLs)
[1] OHCHR — International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 18
https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights
[2] Pew Research Center — Four in ten countries… had blasphemy laws in 2019 (includes apostasy law count) (Jan 25, 2022)
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/25/four-in-ten-countries-and-territories-worldwide-had-blasphemy-laws-in-2019-2/
[3] Qur’an 4:11 (inheritance shares) — Quran.com
https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/11-14
[4] Qur’an 2:282 (witness standard in debt contracts) — Quran.com
https://quran.com/en/al-baqarah/282
[5] Tunisia 2014 Constitution, Article 6 — Constitute Project
https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Tunisia_2014
[6] Carnegie Endowment — Morocco Family Law (Moudawana) Reform: Governance in the Kingdom (Jul 28, 2025)
https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/07/morocco-family-law-moudawana-reform-governance?lang=en
[7] Reuters — Morocco proposes family law reforms to improve women’s rights (Dec 24, 2024)
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/morocco-proposes-family-law-reforms-improve-womens-rights-2024-12-24/
[8] Encyclopaedia Britannica — Pancasila
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pancasila
[9] Reuters — Explainer: Why is Indonesia’s new criminal code so controversial? (Dec 6, 2022)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/why-is-indonesias-new-criminal-code-so-controversial-2022-12-06/
[10] Human Rights Watch — Indonesia: New Criminal Code Disastrous for Rights (Dec 8, 2022)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/08/indonesia-new-criminal-code-disastrous-rights
[11] Reuters — Indonesian court jails comedian for joking about the name Muhammad (Jun 11, 2024)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesian-court-jails-comedian-joking-about-name-muhammad-2024-06-11/
Western civilization, in its liberal form, rests on a remarkable set of principles: that religious belief should be voluntary, that individual conscience is sovereign, and that the rights of the person take precedence over both state and religious authority. These ideas are not universal human defaults; they are hard-won cultural and philosophical achievements, shaped by the Enlightenment, the Reformation, and centuries of political struggle. They are not shared equally by all religious or ideological systems.
Classical Islam, in its orthodox jurisprudential tradition, is not solely a private spiritual faith. It is also a comprehensive legal and political system (sharia) that historically integrated religious authority with governance. From its earliest centuries, Islam expanded through a combination of military conquest, trade, persuasion, and migration. While conquest played a significant role in some regions, conversion in others—such as Southeast Asia—was often gradual and voluntary. The fusion of religious and political authority remains influential in many interpretations, though its application varies widely across the Muslim world today.
One area of tension concerns apostasy. In traditional interpretations of several major schools of Islamic law, leaving the faith has been treated as a serious offense, sometimes punishable by death. This stands in contrast to the Western commitment to absolute freedom of belief and conscience. However, enforcement differs greatly: many Muslim-majority countries no longer prescribe capital punishment for apostasy alone, and reformist scholars argue that the Qur’an itself emphasizes no compulsion in religion (2:256) and that punishment should be deferred to the afterlife.Religious pluralism presents another challenge. Historical Islamic polities often extended protected status to Jews, Christians, and sometimes others (“People of the Book”), allowing communal autonomy in exchange for taxation (jizya) and certain restrictions. This system offered more tolerance than many contemporary societies of the time, yet it was hierarchical rather than egalitarian. Full equality before the law—a core Western principle—has not always been realized in states governed by traditional sharia interpretations, though modern reforms in countries such as Tunisia, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates have moved toward greater legal equality.
The status of women reveals further differences. In some countries applying strict interpretations of sharia, women face legal and social restrictions on dress, travel, marriage, inheritance, and testimony. Recent examples include compulsory veiling enforcement in Iran and severe restrictions under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. These practices draw from certain classical readings of Qur’anic verses and hadith. At the same time, it is worth noting that seventh-century Islamic law granted women rights to inheritance, divorce, and property ownership that were progressive compared to many pre-modern societies. Today, women’s rights vary enormously across the Muslim world—from relatively egalitarian frameworks in Indonesia and Tunisia to highly restrictive ones elsewhere—and Muslim feminist scholars actively work to reinterpret texts in light of contemporary values of equality.These differences are not simply “extremist misinterpretations.” Many stem from longstanding and mainstream interpretations of sacred texts and tradition.
Yet Islam is not monolithic: it encompasses a spectrum of thought, from rigid literalism to progressive reformism, and interpretations evolve over time and place.None of this is an indictment of Muslims as individuals. Millions of Muslims live peacefully and prosperously in Western societies, often embracing liberal values while maintaining their faith. Their successful integration is made possible precisely because Western secular frameworks limit the political reach of any religion—protecting both believers and non-believers alike.Recognizing the genuine tensions between certain traditional interpretations of Islam and core principles of Western liberalism is not intolerance; it is intellectual honesty.
At the same time, acknowledging Islam’s internal diversity, historical context, and capacity for reform prevents sweeping generalizations. A mature conversation requires holding both truths: deep differences exist, yet dialogue, mutual accommodation, and individual freedom remain possible. A civilization that clearly understands its own founding principles—without either naivety or hostility—is best equipped to preserve them while extending hospitality to those who share its public square.
Read on Twitter 1/ Here’s a fun thread on how to ruin Western civilization. *Except it’s not so fun because it’s sort of happening…
Some might find my analysis and analogies somewhat controversial, but at least it will be thought provoking. 
2/ I’m going to borrow from the Nobel Prize winning philosopher Bertrand Russell’s “A History of Western Philosophy” (published 1945). It’s a dense read, but it’s packed with insights that help make sense of some of the more alarming ideological trends underway today. 
3/ One of the more interesting sections examines the differences between the society and dominant philosophy of Greek antiquity and that of early Christendom. Later on, I’ll tie this to some of the corrosive ideologies currently ascendant. 
4/ Whereas Greek society was concerned with the “joy and beauty” of present life, the early Christian world through the Middle Ages was concerned about sin and salvation. Russell persuasively argues that early Christian philosophy reflected the gloom of pre-Renaissance times.
5/ Life after the fall of the Roman Empire was tough: wars, pestilence and widespread poverty were a marked turn from the height of the Roman world (and before that the Greek city states). A philosophy focused on the afterlife was understandable, though it led to stagnation. 
6/ In an age of “ruin,” a strict approach to spiritual matters took precedent over more earthly concerns. If “earthly hopes seemed vain,” what good was it, after all, to focus on statesmanship as opposed to the soul? Left neglected, civilization decayed.
7/ In a world where life was harsh, the notion of original sin must have especially resonated with many and helped rationalize a difficult existence. Unfortunately, as Russell highlights, the doctrine of “universal guilt” gave rise to future ferocity in western institutions.
8/ Such gloom, pessimism, doctrinal strictness and guilt was not conducive to a thriving public life outside the Church. In Russell’s words, this philosophy of the early Church led to an age that “surpassed almost all other fully historical periods in cruelty and superstition.”
9/ The Greek world’s focus on the present naturally lended itself to making sense of it. Sciences, arts and philosophy flourished. Whereas the early Christian world’s focus on sin and afterlife resulted in neglect of the institutions necessary for civilization’s preservation.
10/ Positivity, curiosity and the motivation to improve (hallmarks of antiquity Greece) are, unsurprisingly, more helpful in sustaining civilization than embracing, rationalizing and even institutionalizing hardship.
11/ Sidenote: since Medieval times, Christian thought has evolved – spurred by the Reformation. The Renaissance, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution (even America’s founding ethos) are testaments to its positive influence. [This was a focus of mine as a history student.]
12/ Now back to the decline of civilization. It’s happened before. It can happen again. I prefer it not! The main culprit long ago was an outlook that embraced and glorified victimization. It was borne out of real suffering, but only served to prolong struggling and malaise.
13/ Today, the doctrine of victimization and I’d add it’s close cousin – grievance – is again in vogue. Its destructive force caused a millennium of stagnation prior to the Renaissance and could very well hinder our current progress and living standards.
14/ These disastrous ideologies begin on society’s fringes before gaining broader acceptance. The most concerning today are “wokeness” and extreme progressivism (along with closely related democratic socialism). Likewise, the populist right has foolishly embraced grievance.
15/ Regrettably, the initial merit of these movements has been coopted by the masses for purposes antithetical to their origins. Wokeness and progressivism at one point focused on expanding civil liberties, not functionally curtailing them and undermining socioeconomic stability.
16/ Wokeness and extreme progressivism today no longer are ideologies seeking human improvement for its own sake, but are rooted in victimization and grievance, seeking vengeance in righting perceived wrongs – where only maligned groups benefit. It’s inherently divisive.
17/ Like the 4th and 5th Century Christians, they embrace victimization as a means to cope with life’s intrinsic challenges. However, instead of focusing on their own suffering and salvation, they turn their attention to the imagined source of original sin: systemic “inequities.”
18/ It’s a glorification of victimhood – even though much of the societal oppression is overblown. Rather than self-improve, the far left’s adherents seek to gain via the destruction of concocted sources of inequities: capitalism, the justice system, education, fossil fuels, etc.
19/ Sadly, in attempting to overthrow these very bedrocks of modern civilization, today’s far left activists fail to appreciate they are undermining any prospects for improving the lives of those for whom they “fight.” We should aspire to be equally prosperous, not miserable.
20/ The early Christian world’s embrace of victimization set back civilization 1,000 years. Today’s far left activists risk doing the same; and in their coercive process of doing so, they have become as true to the authoritarian and fascist spirit which they label their critics.
21/ Doctrines of victimization and grievance inevitably lead to destruction. Often violent, total and irrecoverable. In this regard, the most alarming ideological strain of the far left today is democratic socialism (history is not on their side):
22/ And for what it’s worth, Russell saw socialism in the same vein – a psychological offshoot of the doctrine of victimization. Little could he have known in 1945 how destructive socialism would prove – rivaling the civilizational collapse of the so called Dark Ages.
23/ Not that it’s worth much, but my advice to traditional liberals would be to disassociate from those peddling the malignant and divisive ideology of victimization. And to conservatives, to similarly disassociate from those whose politics are simply based on grievance.
24/ I’ve focused most of my criticism here at the far left, as that movement is most responsible for making life worse in my home of Chicago. But trends on the far right are troubling as well. For my longer take on US polity and politics, please see below:
25/ Civilization is precious and precarious. We should learn from history to ensure its future survival and our prosperity. We must combat malignant doctrines of victimization and grievance with Greek-like ones rooted in positivity. Otherwise, we’ll all burn down with Rome.
I guess this thread is resonating. For a brief exploration on why we may be prone to these ideologies, see below (approached it more in an investing context). Key point: across history, when life gets hard, people are more prone to psychological escape.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…