The West has lived in Middle Ages and after Renaissance tried to bring civilisation back, but there were Reformation and Counter-Reformation before things could move on with Enlightenment. Countries like Germany, Russia were always reactionary and the USA after an encouraging start fell in authoritarianism as well.
Freedom of expression and speech is no problem; monotheism is, once again. If reason was used there wouldn't be any problems, but monotheistic faiths in religion, politics and culture are the problem. A reasonable person will express his ideas with arguments and would be ashamed to be caught lying or making an evident mistake. That is not the case with monotheists. Monotheists believe in an unintelligible truth, so everything worldly is of no matter to them. They will try anything to convert anybody to their truth so they and the whole humanity can be saved.
Beliefs have ruined political and philosophical thought. Now everybody has a belief system about everything and doesn't have to defended it with knowledge and reason. People have become or stayed practically illiterate, unable to read a text or listen to a speech. There aren't any intellectual anymore, just hypersensitive celebrities.
Schools should be teaching virtues like taking responsibility -Trudeau's example of shouting fire-, but Trudeaus, Bidens, Johnsons and Merkels are controlled by people like Trump so money desides everything. Now that computers produce money in phony stockmarkets, nobody has to learn anything. Everything goes by trial and error.
If somebody's hurt, that's life, he can express his feelings and his thoughts as well. The West should adhere to the Ancient Greek Worldview, because that is what made the West great.
