Amy Wax: “Why are successful, peaceful, orderly, prosperous, technologically advanced, democratically sound countries so rare and so few, and why do they clump up in one tiny corner of the globe, namely Europe, the Anglosphere?  We also have Japan, which is a wonder, I think, in many ways, a very admirable country.  Perhaps Taiwan.  And why is the rest of the world essentially consisting of, in various degrees, failed states?  Why do we have a post-Enlightenment portion of the world and a pre-Enlightenment portion of the world?  And I guess, to be really crude about it, you would use Trump’s succinct phrase: Why are there so many shithole countries? Of course the moment you say that, people just get outraged: Oh, my God, you are a racist for saying that. And that, of course, lets them off the hook; they don’t have to answer the question, which is convenient."