If you go to the great museums of the world, you'll see amazing beauty. Victoria and Albert comes to mind. The Louvre, Prado.. I have not been to the American ones but I understand they're exceptional.
But for all the beauty, the relics and the wealth often came from conquest. How many great museums of the world are in countries without empires?
Marco Rubio recently talked about Western Civilization and his script writer waxed lyrical. But he used it in the context of defeating the (in his view) lesser ones. He wanted us to unite just to fight the Other. What a waste. And that is precisely why we don't flourish as we should.
Western civilization is indeed great, but it is not the only great civilization--not by a long shot. Each has their amazingly rich and deep history and character.
For most of human history, China has been the dominant civilization in the world. We're just going to have to accept that it will happen again. That will happen whether we decide to fight them over it or not.
Promoting models with "right think" means our views are not self-evidently better. And the root of the greek side of Western Civilization is that they believed in examination of belief systems to find truth, not the adoption of official dictat. * (I'm no classical historian, nor do I play one on TV, so correct me if wrong.)
I am forever in your debt for Hermes btw. The agnoticism is one of its great strengths too, right?
Cheers.