Mark Steyn, as he often does, reminds us that human history is not an unbroken tale of unrelenting progress.  In fact, there are many instances in history when cultures and peoples went backwards, whether voluntarily or not.  In this piece he notes that the Arab and Islamic worlds are moving away from the Westernization that was a hallmark of the thirty or so years after the Second World War.

We need to realize that when faced with political, social or economic distress, people tend to gravitate to whatever historical cultural norms or myths they find most appealing and that relates most closely to their own sense of community.  In the Arab world that is fundamentalist Islam, of one variety or another.  Ironically, that is not so much the case in Iran, which has a robust Persian culture and identity that pre-dates Islam.  But Iran shows us another historical tendency of peoples and communities...the tendency for a small group to sieze control and assure the dominance of their vision over competing ones.