I think "western values" are too loaded, as you say, it often implies Judeo-Christian underpinnings. Question is, can we define universal human values, and if so, what rights and wrongs should we include. Years back I read a book by Emmanuel Levinas. The most difficult book I ever read in my life. He tried to define the very basics of ethics, that is, the desire to do good (the desire to do good is a simple definition of ethics, but it's harder to define the specifics).
One thing that Levinas defines as universally bad is "causing suffering and humiliation" (unwanted of course, BDSM folks are obvious exceptions). But in this case, this is not enough. One might claim that the offending facebook post caused him undue mental torment. Levinas also has a positive definition of ethics. As I said, "Totality and Infinity" is one of the most difficult books I ever read, so this short summary doesn't do justice for its complexitiy and richness. However, I'll try.
Basically, he says that we have to have an infinite desire for the Other - which includes the desire for the Other's otherness as well. Sounds redundant, I know, but bear with me for a moment. This desire has two components, one is the desire to know (that is, basic human curiousity) and the other is the desire to preserve the otherness of the Other. An opposing movement is what he calls a totalizing movement. He defines it by the presumption that we can have total knowledge of the Other, that is, we can strip the Other of all it's secrets, achieving a total knowledge of the other (therefore robbing it from it's very otherness: once we believe that our knowledge of the other is Total, the image we have and It becomes the same). At this point he introduces the metaphor of the Face of the Other, and the movement towards the other as communication (we question the other to know more). In fact, he says that this otherness is the very basis of communication - once the Other has no secrets, there isn't much to talk about. Therefore we question the Other to know more (curiousity) but also question the totality of our knowledge at every point, simultaneously possessing the desire to preserve some measure of otherness.
I know all this seems far fetched, but the point, I believe, is that curiousity is one leg on which ethical behaviour stands on, the other being not only a respect for the otherness of the Other, but even love for this otherness, that feeds back to our own curiosity, keeping the discourse on going. The first step of every authoritarian entity is to deny the possiblity of discourse, to forbid language so to speak, the very means by which otherness can be expressed, approached, and cherished.
Levinas himself was religious (jew) - but interestingly, according to his own tenets, one can deduce that religions in general are totalizing - they do not allow for an infinite universe. Well, of course I don't know all religions, but let's just say that all religions that pose an entity that possesses a totality of knowledge, an All Knowing God are by nature totalizing. In an infinite universe, such totality is impossible. In fact, the very definition of infinity is something beyond (+1), something that is not part of the totality of any system. The Other's secret that must be preserved as well as approached via discourse.
Anyway, I'm not sure this all makes sense to anybody, but if you want to read an intellectually challenging book, I highly recommend Totality and Infinity. As far as I know, it's one of the very few attempts to define ethics in absolute terms... most of what we consider "western values" are relativistic, their truth(s) easily traced back to a very specific context, to an ontology.