We are the west.

On the 17th of January 1793 a king was executed.
His lifeless body secured the new reality of a liberal order in Europe. It would still take hundreds of years to completely colonise the political systems of the world but slowly, inexorably it would.
It was a triumph for humanism so long desired that the reaction itself cut wars after to wars to contain its radical spread. The royalists scrambled frantically to retain their traditional rights and yet had them eroded as parliament after parliament was proclaimed. These nationalist revolts forged the liberal world order, for with proclaiming the nation it also assumed that the people should have a voice. That no longer would it be the unelected and ineffective royalists who would run society.
Were all able to vote at the outset? Hardly. The vote was restricted in many places to landowning men, a tiny subset of any country. But liberal ideology could not justify such restrictions as it went forward and as the people agitated, screamed and fought they got their right to participate.
The west was born in the blood of royalists. Christendom fell as the uniting idea of the european world. In it's place rose the west, where allegiance to it was based not off your religion or skin tone but instead your countries adherence to the liberal world order.
Liberalism in its rhetoric fought for the rights of all humanity. The right to have a meaningful contribution to their societies governance. The right to a reasonable standard of living, first by security of property, then by assuring all people a similar ability to prosper in society. The liberal rights gave us the ability to speak against power and not be unduly imprisoned. Most of all however, it was sold on the belief that progressively we would move toward utopia.
Europe and the US were the shining beacons of Liberalism and under their power they pushed Liberalism on the world. Often they would use their rhetoric to kick old colonial regimes from their land. More often they would use liberalism as a reason to become new colonial powers of their own.
Liberalism bought itself power by capturing the minds of the many with ideas of a future that was better. And absolutely, it has ensured that billions are out of poverty. It has created godlike technology that consistently revoutionises the way we live.
Yet, it will kill us all if we let it.
Liberalism was once emancipatory. To be a liberal would be to be a radical 300 years ago. Capitalism provided power to those who did not have royal blood. By force of their will a person could possibly increase their wealth till they could overcome the aristocrats in power. This was good in breathing new life into the royalist system. Because the royalist system always had a problem with ineffective aristocrats being given jobs above their mental faculties, purely because of nepotism. Capitalism allowed the people who could generate revenue to rise in power and take a stake in governance.
But, of course, not everyone wanted to serve the royals. Some liberals dreamed of a world where all those men who could make it to the top of the capitalist game would run the show. This was a radical and emancipatory statement. That people rose through government on merit? That the divine chain of being was wrong? That god did not put his chosen in positions of power? That the king was just a man?
Not only was that radical it was heresy.