How is that going for us in the west?
Like, I believe in these rights. But I also think we should be open to questioning them when we’ve got anti-vaxxers and Holocaust deniers finding popular purchase among an increasingly and proudly illiterate population.
which societies, which failures, which "every" are you referring to, exactly?
This is currently not empirically sustained. I hope it will be, in the long run. But if Americans and Europeans keep voting for far-right and -left wing idiots, and China and its similars take the mantle of technological and scientific development, there is a real argument that Enlightenment values don’t apply perfectly in a world with social media and AI.