Mathematicians: they always want bloody definitions.

My own opinion is that

"The West" is "Anglo-Saxonia". But by saying "The West", the Anglo-Saxon speaker manages to convince Western Europeans that their interests are taken into account, too.

or

when the Anglo-Saxons say "the West" they just mean Anglo-Saxonia, but by saying the west they keep the rest of us happily subservient.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides

One way to consider Migeru's objection alongside thatbritguy's definition is to delve back into the history of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

The "Western Project" as it existed after the Fall of Rome until the Renaissance had been usurped by regressive forces which presented the old Greek and Roman classics in "translated" format, which enabled them to control the meaning of classical abstraction and logic. This gave them great power. To a degree, the Renaissance coincided with the European arrival of the actual classical texts in the originals. These were mainly guarded by Arab scholars in the previous millenia. However, as with the arrival of Marcus Musurus in Venice, the access to the originals created a new wave of thinking which contradicted those Europeans who had previously guarded and translated the fundamental underpinnings of Western thought.

I'm trying to point out that this idea that we have of the West has been usurped many times in the past by anti-classical powers, and they do it normally through mistranslation, misapprehension of the terms. This not only occurs because the culture becomes crude and reductive (i.e. stupid) but sometimes even our greatest thinkers (Heidegger for instance) do great violence to classical texts and the origins of Western thought. Of course, one may regard Heidegger's refashioning of Western thought to be a form of progress in itself.

This is why it's so difficult to characterize the West. Essentially, it's been defined by groups with vastly different agendas. I might look at how appeals for the "freedom of speech" have been cast recently in the US by progressive actors and their, well, enemies. Even the words "freedom of speech" mean something vastly different to various people.

The flame of Western thought and culture rises and falls according to the relative level of education of its citizens. It has to be true that any reduction in our basic human rights and freedoms coincides with a lack of education and critical thinking.

Ack.

Trust you to pick the complex topic.

This is partially a semantic debate, you can't really have a discussion about "clash of civilizations" without agreeing on some terms, notably "civilization."

And then of course, what you, Colman, are really complaining about is intellectual dishonesty. But I don't think we'll find a solution to that any time soon.

The fact is, there are as many ways to define "The West" as there are to define "Europe" and they all contain a bunch of agendas. What's frustrating is when people deny the agendas.

I'm not sure how this came up? Did someone suggest "charity" is a value uniquely connected with "The West"?

A lot of people in the international development field believe that the North-South axis is a better way to describe the concepts we're discussing here, e.g. the North-South Institute in Canada.

It's all just sort of semantics, isn't it?  Can't we just say Rich World and Poor World and stop pretending?

I'm working on a longish essay touching on this at the moment, "Spengler, Byron, and Towards a European Nationalism", which will be posted here when it's ready. I want to finish one focusing Byron himself first though, as it's tied to the other.

Can't quite say when it'll be done though. And I'm sure quite a few will blow their tops when it is ;)

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Very difficult question.  I don't even know where to begin.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

I was in the middle of writing a diary I had titled "What are the Values of the West?" when I started thinking about Dr Who. and spent 3 hours playing some flash game on a Dr. Who website, and subsequently back arrowed out of the new diary entry page.  

I divided ideas of the West presented by the TransAtlantic Right into three ideas:

1. Race, in this the demographic decline of the west is seen as the loss of "white power" as the power of Europe + British settler societies (USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand)

2.  Religion.  The West is the Christian world being defended against a rising Islamic threat.

3. Heritage.  The West is heir to the legacy of rational thought, and a scientific examination of the world, and this legacy is superior to all others.

The first two make most people uncomfortable, but a disturbing number of people who are nominally of the Left embrace the 3rd idea freely.  Think about the people who say the look down on others not because of race or religion, but because they believe that those who reject the western heritage are irrational.  It's a distinction made not on race or religion but the belief that science and knowledge can provide one true way of viewing all things in the world, and that those who disagree are inferior.  

The Right is quite willing to "defend"  the West, ut rarely will they say what the hell exactly that means.

I would put forward as the basic doctrine of the West, the statement of union between Europe and North America as the Atlatic Charter. From these 8 statements flow a moral mission for the West.

The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.

First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;

Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;

Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security;

Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Winston S. Churchill

Freedom for fear and Freedom from Want form for me the basis of what "the West" means, and they were the key princples put forward by Eleanor Roosevelt when drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so much of which has been willfully cast aside in pursuit of neo-liberal globalization.  Some of the more prominent lapses that spring to mind whil reading through the declaration.
Article 23

   1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
   2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
   3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
   4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

*Article 9

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

We in the West had such lofty ambitions, and look at what our governments do in our name now.....

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

But that's neither true - there are many limits on questioning and debate - nor all that unique.

Are there limits? I'm not talking about specific cultural or political debates about specific issues, but a process. I don't see this process happening to anything like the same extent in other cultures.

The two foundational values are:

Collaborative curiosity
Abstract and externalisied, rather than specific, personified, or contingent, values

Collaborative curiosity produced Western science and technology. Other cultures bimbled around with algebra for a while, but it was a fleeting interest. In the West the process of being curious about reality, building formal maps of it, and generally trying to work out how it's put together, has been a consistent interest for more half a millennium now - with a good start from the Greeks another half a millennium before that.

This is different from just making up mythological wackiness because it sounds funky and cool. The West is the first culture to attempt to make sense of reality formally, collaboratively, and persistently, rather than just making up stories about it.  

Externalised values are the basis of humanitarianism. If values aren't contingent on specific qualities - including race, gender and skin colour - then it becomes harder to justify discrimination.

While no one is going to claim that we do this perfectly, where else in history can you find egalitarianism and anti-discrimination as an enduring stated goal? The implementation comes and goes, and we're certainly better at it at some times than others. But the point is the goal exists, and it exists explicitly.

Combining both of those you get free speech and free debate, with implied tolerance for diversity. Curiosity can't flourish where free speech is banned.

Again, these are unique goals. Free speech and tolerance for diversity are not standard issue in other cultures. The fact that we don't practice them perfectly doesn't modify the fact that - again - they remain a goal we aspire to.

The fact that there are regressive movements within Western countries who don't support these values is also not a good way to argue that these values don't exist.

In fact if anything it proves that Western values exist. Because when we see Bush promoting torture we know that he's betraying them - even if we can't necessarily articulate exactly how, or why.

For me the West is reincarnation of good ancient Roman and Greek democracy economically based on slavery (in new form of ruthless exploitation of population of so-called third world countries corrupting their elites and middle classes by holding grip on international media currents and using seducing media images of prosperous Western societies). In such societies even middle classes can debate new forms of slavery in third world at the same time supporting politicians and corporations which enslave (rape in Iraq, pollute in Sakhalin etc) the world's poor.

In my mind "The West" is a misnomer as it includes nations from different horizons. It represents the 1/3rd of humanity that is responsible, actively or through passivity, for the current pauperisation of the other 2/3rds.

Better late than never, eh?

I am only really comfortable with using "The West" to refer to a comparative geographical location.  There is nothing homogenous enough about it to assign certain values or characterists to it.  And those values and characteristics will inevitably pop up in the more easternly located cultures as well.  It's simply a short cut, a cheat sheet used for making arguments and taking position which don't hold as much water when you bother to actually cite whom or what you are refering to when you say "The West".  

I use the phrase all the time.  But let's be honest, geography isn't our problem.  Unchecked, corrupt, capitalist economic policy, inequality and injustice, ignorance and unchecked, corrupt religious policy are some of our problems...  Unfortunately, anyone can commit any of these crimes, regardless where they happen to be parked on the globe.    

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

one finds a slightly different idea of what the West is. It is the dominant group of rich nations in the world. They tend to be predominatly white skinned and Christian and see theeir ideals as better or more important than the ideals of those in other countries. The West is arrogant and does not listen as it knows best. Other Western values include greed, the worship of money and lack of respect for family. I could go on but I think the point is made. This is not the notion of the West that the West wants to hear, but to ignore it is to accept the reality of it.
Personally as a westerner living outsdie the West I have learned that there may be more truth than one wnats to admit.  

"The West" is that geographical area which was the first to succeed in widely mounting cast bronze cannon on ocean-going sailing ships.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

To understand what is the West, it ought be useful to imagine the world without the West. Or more mildly (perhaps), imagine that the West had no influence to the Rest of the World. No Enlightenment, no modern science, no Industrial Revolution, but no Crusades, overseas collonization either. The dominant impact of the West is actually a dominant feature of Western Civilization as well. Without the West, many of "Western" things would have happened anyway, in different order and wqith different relations, and most certainly much later.

The West is a leading and dominant civilisation on the Earth, for good and for bad. We brought much prosperity (and perhaps happiness) to ourselves and many others, but also much pain. We set standards of rational enquiry and governing, but also standards of greedy exploitation. Societies elsewhere (or at other times) had been developing lethargically slowly, compared to us. The modern state of other continents or societies is determined by the success of adoptation to Western expansion. For example, Africa is in a dire state not because of what it was, but because of how it was (not) keeping up with the West. From other perspective, the speed of Western development might be "abnormally" high, and the whole World might be biting dust soon because of that. As a leading civilisation, the West entered uncharted stages of organization long ago. We are bound to be wrong or overzealous somewhere... Hopefully, we can learn lessons in time.

Bluntly said you could say it's a division between those who want to emphasise the negative traits of the western culture and those who want to emphasise the positives.  This is a classical situation when political issues are involved and I guess unavoidable.  

It might be that many people have much more nuanced views but when politics is mixed into such philosophical issues nuances are drowned in the political debate.  This is why nuances seldom are popular in political campaigns and elections because it becomes a race of ideas and the more simple it is to grasp the faster it will sink in.  I am afraid that is also very much the situation in the world today.  It is not a clash of civilizations, but it has become a race of ideas and cultural preferences.

I have come to the conclusion that it is more important for me to emphasise the basic values of Democracy and Human Rights than defending other cultures in this debate, much because of the violent attacks of a little minority of religious fanatics on the basic rights and freedoms we enjoy, and the defining moment was the Danish cartoon incident.  It was not the cartoons in itself that needed defending but the right to publish them and when the publishers, whatever you might think of them, were receiving death-threats and embassies were burnt to the ground, I came to realize that this was the result of some twisted views of "western values" and an irrational way of letting out their anger at everything western and thus had to be contested and I sadly had to admit that a nuanced debate would not suffice.

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