Woolly thinking

For Niall Ferguson, writing in yesterday's Telegraph, "Western Civilization" is just a vacuous phrase and "civilisation" much too woolly a term.

I have never entirely bought the theory that the future will be dominated by the clash of civilisations. For one thing, the term "civilisation" has always struck me as much too woolly. I know what a religion is. I know what an empire is. But, as Henry Kissinger might have said, who do I call when I want to speak to Western Civilisation? Anyone who crosses the Atlantic as often as I do quickly learns how vacuous that phrase has become.

Really? Guess I must be a slow learner.