Ideas are inferior to pop songs in one respect: they have no top 40 charts. If they did, the hit single to top the charts for global policy debates for three years running would have been entitled “Sunset in the west”. A plaintive, sometimes despairing tune that knocks western self-confidence, its refrain is that the western world has precious little to be confident about. Like all pop songs, it is a gross simplification of reality.
思想观点有一点不如流行歌曲：没有40大思想排行榜。如果有这样的排行榜的话，有一种观点会连续三年登上全球策略辩论类排行榜榜首，那就是“西方的没落”。这是一首悲情、有时带有绝望色彩的歌曲，动摇着西方人的自信心。它在副歌部分反复唱道，西方世界值得自信的东西少得可怜。和所有的流行歌曲一样，它也是对现实的一种粗略简化。
The latest instalment of western declinism comes courtesy of Time, whose last front featured a crimson-tinged image of a masked English hoodie in front of a flaming car, with the caption: “The decline and fall of Europe (and maybe the west)”. The article rolls together English riots, Standard & Poor’s downgrade of US debt, and the eurozone debt crisis in “a new reality impossible to ignore: the West – and most immediately Europe – is in serious trouble.”
最新一篇关于西方没落的报道承蒙《时代》杂志(Time)提供。它的上一期封面是一幅深红色调的照片，照片里一个戴面具、穿连帽衫的英国人站在一辆燃烧的汽车前面，封面标题是：“欧洲（甚至是西方）的衰败和没落”——The decline and fall of Europe (and maybe the west)。文章将英国骚乱、标准普尔(Standard & Poor’s)下调美国债务评级和欧元区债务危机糅在一起，认为出现了“一个不容忽视的新现实：西方，尤其是欧洲，陷入了严重的麻烦”。
If this thesis seems particularly seductive after another bad season in rich countries, it is neither new nor original. A string of recent books propound the idea that the political and economic model developed and pursued by the western world stands little chance in the beauty contest of alternative models – especially those offered by the big emerging nations. Explanations of western inadequacy range from unsubtle (Dambisa Moyo’s How the West Was Lost) to sophisticated (Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order). More and more non-western leaders imply or say flat out that the west can no longer claim to teach others.
虽然这种观点由于富国度过了又一个糟糕的季度而显得尤其蛊惑人心，可实际上，它一点也不新颖，也非原创。最近出版了一系列书都提出了一个观点，即西方世界发展和追求的政治和经济模式，在与其他模式、尤其是新兴大国提供的模式相竞争时，毫无胜算可言。关于西方模式缺陷的阐释有粗有细，粗略如当比萨•莫约(Dambisa Moyo)的《西方如何没落》(How the West Was Lost)，精深如弗朗西斯•福山(Francis Fukuyama)的《政治秩序的起源》(The Origins of Political Order)。越来越多的非西方领导人或委婉或直白地表示，西方再也没资格教训其他人。