In the old days it would have been a relatively simple matter to have checked Hitler's territorial ambitions. … - Niall Ferguson

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And once, or twice, to throw the dice is a gentlemanly game, But he does not win who plays with Sin in the secret house of shame

Niall Ferguson

In the old days it would have been a relatively simple matter to have checked Hitler's territorial ambitions. All you'd have needed would have been the 1914 combination of Britain, France and Russia. Indeed, if such an alliance had acted decisively to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938, Hitler might even have been overthrown by his own military. But it was not to be.

Military, Ambition, Simple, Decisively, France

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So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.

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For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps- competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization.

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As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet.

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It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out.

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The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.

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