In the course of my library research at @HooverInst today I found the 1962 Declaration of Paris issued by the Atlantic Convention of @NATO Nations meeting held in January 1962. Here is the key passage (verbatim): “The Atlantic peoples have inherited a magnificent civilization whose origins include the early achievements of the Near East, the classical beauty of Greece, the juridical sagacity of Rome, the spiritual power of our religious traditions and the humanism of the Renaissance. Its latest flowering, the discoveries of modern science, allows an extraordinary mastery of the forces of nature. (…) Thanks to that civilization and to the common characteristics with which it stamps the development of peoples participating in it, the nations of the West do in fact constitute a powerful cultural and moral community.” Question: Some six decades later, would you find an expression of such profound admiration, self-confidence and pride in today's pronouncements about what the West indeed stands for?