THES

There's an article in the Times Higher this week by Richard Drayton about the rise of empires. There's one almost throwaway comment that, I think, bears repeating out of context:

"[A]s Spain's conquistadores burnt Arawak villages they carried the cross; today we drop cluster bombs, murder civilians and torture prisoners of war in the name of democracy and human rights."

Well, exactly. And I think we can all agree that this means that democracy and human rights are therefore fundamentally flawed concepts of which we need take no notice. Furthermore, anyone who continues to believe in democracy and/or human rights after their use as a (to quote Drayton again) "myth of shared virtue" is just undertaking an exercise in self-delusion.