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The “locust years” was how Winston Churchill described the Thirties, the decade that started with the Great Depression and ended with Germany’s invasion of Poland that sparked the most destructive war in history.
Could we be reprising the follies, delusions, and hubris of those years?
Between the two world wars, the allies who had won the first sank into civilizational exhaustion and moral ennui. The horrors of the Great War turned “never again”––the pledge to never, ever repeat such carnage––into pacifism, socialism, naïve internationalism, communist terror, reckless disarmament, totalitarian police states, and finally appeasement of a feral aggressor. All these ills guaranteed that the slaughter would indeed return––worsened by the holocaust, gulags, millions of refugees and displaced persons, atomic bombs, and the massive destruction of cities in Japan and Germany, an apocalypse wrought by the most civilized and advanced countries in the world.
The West today may seem to be light-years from the Thirties and its lethal dysfunctions, and the monstrous violence that decade bred. Even so, in many respects, our cultural decay, political corruption, and zany stupidities are willfully undermining not just our foundational political institutions, but science itself, not to mention common sense and traditional wisdom. These unprecedented, suicidal attacks on our civilization are breeding the swarms of locusts that may devour us.
First, the threat of large-scale wars is growing, ignored or dismissed by too many of those responsible for defending our lives and interests. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a case study in how to make sure such aggression will happen and perhaps succeed. Like Hitler, Putin had signaled for years his intentions and motives––to rebuild the Russian Empire lost in 1991, along with half the Soviet-era population. Nor was his ruthless willingness to use devastating force against civilians unknown, not after his brutal pacification of Chechnya in 1999-2009. Yet each move in his aggression was met with diplomatic braggadocio, school-marmish scolding, and useless sanctions.
And just as Hitler’s serial aggression and violations of the Versailles Treaty in the Thirties were met with bluster by the Allies and the League of Nations, so too Putin’s territorial grabs in South Ossetia and eastern Ukraine, culminating in the 2014 seizure of Crimea, were met with empty rhetoric and Swiss-cheese sanctions. And once Biden skedaddled from Afghanistan, leaving behind hundreds of our citizens, thousands of our Afghan allies, and billions in weapons–– at the cost of 13 murdered American soldiers––why wouldn’t Putin try conclusions and restart his ambition to swallow Ukraine whole?
Now we are entangled in an expensive war––at least $115 billion and counting––that currently is stalemated, with no feasible way out through negotiation or even withdrawal, considering the enormous moral hazard that a Russian victory would confront us and our Nato allies. And given Russia’s overwhelming advantage in population, and Putin’s traditional Russian penchant for sacrificing wholesale his own citizens, time is on his side.
Meanwhile, China has been busy too, buying access and loyalty throughout the world, including Latin America, our geopolitical backyard, while at home it is building a powerful military that may not be the equal of ours, but is still big enough for Xi to gamble that an attack on Taiwan will be met with bluster and sanctions. More despicable, our “money doesn’t stink” corporate hegemons are happy to help finance China’s ambitions, even as it steals our intellectual property, sells us solar panels made by slave labor, burns megatons of dirty coal for energy, and brutalizes its Uighur minority.
Yes, China––its economy reeling and its people in a demographic death-spiral––in the long run is likely to become a failed state But as Adam Smith said, there’s a lot of ruin in a nation, and we might add, a lot of ruin that such a failing nation can inflict on its way down. We can’t afford to keep ignoring China’s threat in the hopes that it will collapse on its own.
Then there’s Iran, a state still in existence only because of its third largest oil reserves, and Western weakness––most notably Barack Obama’s and some Nato allies’ disastrous “nuclear deal” that has in effect given Iran a clear path to possessing nuclear weapons, and billions in funds for financing not just that effort, but the regime’s aggression throughout the region–– including training and arming jihadist terrorists with American blood on their hands.
Yet the current administration continues to beg Iran to rejoin the deal, even as the mullahs have allied Iran with Russia and China, selling oil at a discount to China, and sending missiles and drones to help conquer the same Ukraine we are spending billions to defend.
So our two nuclear-armed international rivals, and a third likely to join both soon, are creating dangerous facts on the ground while the leftist Dems distract themselves with pronoun etiquette and other “woke” hobby-horses. Worse for our prestige and deterrent power, they are hounding an ex-president with four specious indictments obviously meant to weaken and distract the most potent political rival of the current failing president, as well as protect Biden from the consequences of his crime-family’s influence-peddling and bribe-fishing.
Our feckless foreign policies, then, are on a trajectory that could lead to a global conflict for which we are not preparing, or even taking seriously. But equally dangerous are culture-war fads that reject science, common sense, and reality itself. The fringe pseudo-scientific belief that biological sex is not as determinative of a child or young person’s identity as are his subjective, transient feelings and neuroses, has generated policies destructive not just to the person subjected to puberty-blockers, hormone treatments, and grotesque, disfiguring surgeries, but to the integrity of the family as an institution critical to our success as a people.
We’ve seen this assault on the family played out in schools subjecting children as young as kindergarten to unsuitable sexual and identity content without parents’ knowledge, let alone permission. And horribile dictu, recently a Maryland district court denied parents’ right to question curricula and “opt out” their children from exposure to it. In an astonishing act of judicial hubris, the court proclaimed that “the plaintiffs’ asserted due process right to direct their children’s upbringing by opting out of a public-school curriculum that conflicts with their religious views is not a fundamental right.”
The fact is, limiting the authority of the family and the parents’ right to be the premier authority for raising their own children, has long been a tactic of totalitarian states that concentrate and monopolize power. It’s no coincidence that Barack Obama, who promised the “fundamental transformation” of the United States, tripled “transgender surgeries” between 2016 and 2019, in part a result of state and federal laws requiring that “transgender care” be covered by health-care providers.
Following that totalitarian playbook, the “woke” Dems are weaponizing children in order to undermine the traditional mores and rights of parenthood. The family is the most important building-block of the larger society, a source of beliefs, principles, and moral authority that challenges the centralized, intrusive power and authority of the state.
Indeed, as the commentator “Tail Gunner Joe” wrote recently, communism mobilized children to help destroy the regime’s enemies. Mao Zedong during the 1966 Cultural Revolution “infamously used university students, and other younger children, as foot soldiers to carry out mass beatings and destroy important cultural and historical institutions.” Similarly, “In Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, children were also enlisted as foot soldiers, prison guards, and executors of public shaming of non-compliant adults. The weaponization of children and adolescents is a marked feature of left-wing movements across the globe.”
So it’s no surprise that the “woke” target school curricula, and with the help of the FBI and DOJ, harass and interfere with parents’ rights to raise their children according to their own religious and ethical principles: “The American Left has ensured that children occupy an increasingly active role in our country’s political and culture wars. Childhood no longer exists outside the realm of conflicts between adults. If anything, children are now being told that they must take center stage as the voice of moral righteousness on the most controversial issues of the day.”
Weaponizing children makes sense. Particularly in the modern West, children freed from the hard realities of existence more typical of history and the non-Western world, develop outlandish expectations, making them vulnerable to proselytizing activists. Most children and adolescents are by nature narcissists and drama queens who think histrionic emotion is more important than facts, coherent arguments, and reality’s limits to gratifying their utopian obsessions. That’s why they need good parents help them mature and put away childish things.
The “woke” war on the family in pursuit of radical changes in sex identities and biological fact is a harbinger of disasters to come. Like locusts, such bizarre and preposterous ideas, and the looming global war we are neglecting, eventually will devour our constitutional order and the unalienable rights and freedoms it has bestowed upon us.
I am reading Thomas Paine’s Common Sense for the first time. Such lovely 18th century prose, such clear thinking, such high expectations of the reader. I was struck by the fact that he backs all of his arguments, against monarchy for example, with quotes from scripture. He relies on the cultural knowledge and belief in the Bible of his readers to make his points, not only clear, but irrefutable. This was the foundation of our Republic. How far we have fallen.
How far we have fallen.
More like we were dragged down by a greedy, venal and supremely manipulative elite. Of course, the average Joe is at least as guilty as his “betters” for letting it happen.
Thomas Paine was refused burial by numerous Christian cemeteries after his death, due to the decidely anti-Christian writings he produced later in life.
Paine’s time spent in France seemed to have destroyed whatever Christian faith he might have had once had.
More’s the pity.
I’m sure he still regrets that mistake to this very day…
…literally. :/
I understood your point John and sadly agree. Most people like to blame “them” for what is sure to be our ‘locust years’ without revival, but we’ve all had a hand in this downfall of America, even us Christians, with our cowering away from difficult issues and choosing to remain silent so as not to be pointed out by liberal zombies. Jesus didn’t cower and He certainly wasn’t silent. If there was ever a time to speak boldly the Word of Truth, that time is now…but we all probably should spend some time on our knees asking forgiveness first.
2 Chronicles 7:14 “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
John,
For the time his prose was meaningful. However, he ran afoul of G. Washington when his radicalism found no further vent. Eventually, T. Paine fell back into obscurity where he belonged. He, was about Paine after all.
John,
He was opportunist.
Most of the media is now doing all it can to hide the true facts folks like Mr. Thornton warn us about. How many of our younger generation know who Dr. Thomas Sowell is and what he stands for?
They all should but most do not. And neither do their parents.
The Founders were men of erudition and sagacity. They were products of the Enlightenment who deserve to be venerated, warts and all; not disrespected and vilified, as the vile Dumb-o-crats seek to do.
View Tucker Carlson’s interview today,on line, of Victor Orban to understand something about Russia.
Equally important was Tucker’s recent 52-minute interview with Douglas MacGregor, although some writers at Frontpage will, sadly, be outraged with MacGregor’s (apparently correct) predictions and recommendations. These two interviews are the best things I have seen lately, to the extent that, if I am arguing with someone who has not seen them, there really is no point in continuing, and it is sad.
Been having trouble finding the MacGregor interview. Any suggestions on where it might be hiding?
Lol. Sorry to laugh hoss, but since it’s a Tucker Calson interview, you should know where to find it. ;D
It’s on Twitter (X) of course, under Tucker Carlson’s feed.
Great interview. I watched it.
“Facts are stubborn things…”
Regardless of Putin WE have made this into an existential threat against the vast and nuclear armed Russian nation and it is daylight MADNESS..
No, Vladimir Putin made this an existential threat. We had an obligation to help defend Ukraine pursuant to the 1994 Budapest Accords in which Ukraine (stupidly) gave up its nuclear weapons. Barack Obama ignored that obligation because he wanted Putin’s help with that idiotic Iran nuclear agreement.
My first reply to you is “awaiting moderation.” Why? Because I mentioned Mr. Carlson’s previous interview with a former professional soldier? If this keeps up, perhaps I will have to stop my donations to the freedom center.
Great interview. Orban is, unusually, a very wise man in a field that lacks wisdom. It’s a pity that there are not many more like him. Most “leaders” are money-grubbing, power-hungry hacks. Orban and, in his own opinion, Trump, are cut of a far superior cloth.
Glord, Bruce, why don’t you spend at least a few hours–if not days–actually studying Putin, instead of parroting media drivel?
Putin rolled into Ukraine when he did precisely because he wanted to recapture the Crimea BEFORE Ukraine joined NATO.
Putin has not, and will not, attack any NATO-member country. He is not Hitler, he is not suicidal, and the relationship between Russia and Ukraine stretches back a THOUSAND YEARS.
When the Hell has Ukraine ever been “independent?” Do you EVER study world history??
Russia was born in Kiev. Russia and Ukraine have been either melded or welded together for CENTURIES.
You have no respect for History or tradition. You’re a typical post-modern Westerner. Life begins with your birth and History ends with your death,
SMH
Russia wanted to join NATO, and was rebuked, Soundly.
If you NATO-worshippers were sincere, you would have have welcomed Russia into NATO decades ago when it asked to join, IMMEDIATELY and GLADLY.
Ukraine would have followed Russia into NATO. “And they all lived happily ever after.”
But, no. NATO isn’t about peace, or defense. It’s just a giant money and ego pit. “We have always been at war with Eurasia.”
Go ahead and clutch at your skirts and jump up onto a chair, squeaking in fear over Russia. Russia, meanwhile, will continue to NOT invade into any NATO countries.
I’ll ask again, though: Why didn’t men like you enthusiastically embrace Russia into NATO when she made it clear she wanted to join you???
Hypocrites.
Neo-cons.
You don’t fool anyone but yourselves., and other fools.
Putin derangement syndrome is a sign of not yet achieving totally independent thought in those who claim a discernment outside of popular propaganda.
When has Ukraine ever been independent?
Google “Kievan Rus”.
For that matter, Google “Bosphorus”. Not the one in Turkey, the one in Crimea.
Ukraine is actually much, much older than Russia, going back to at least the Trojan War. Muscovy stole the “Rus” part of Kievan Rus to try to give itself legitimacy.
Russia was born in Kiev I have posted this many times, in other threads.
Still, there’s no denying it wasn’t Ukraine that grew into an empire, with Russia as part of it. It was the other way around.
Reality is what it is, and all that.
Given Ukraine is essentially Russia’s birthplace, you can see why they’d be so emotionally attached to it.
All,
And now you know how inanimate objects become idols, e.g., “she” referring to “Russia”, et al. In this context I’m specifically referring to humanity – – humans.
Putin is a scumbag, thug and tyrant. Being a nationalist and appearing traditional doesn’t mean that he’s any kind of friend to liberty or America.
Africa’s child soldiers is another example of using/abusing children for power (the movie BLOOD DIAMOND, while fiction, gives a good example of that phenomenon).
ADDENDUM
Upon reflection, after reading your Bio, I see you certainly HAVE studied world history.
You just can’t seem to relate to Russian thinking at all, it seems.
You just wanna shake those blue and yellow pom-poms at us and join The Comedian in demonizing Russia.
Why not? It’s the cool kids’ club.
Still, calm down. Putin isn’t going to initiate any hostilities towards NATO.
You’ll need to wait for whoever comes AFTER Putin to perhaps have any real concerns in that arena…
We have today something else that George Orwell predicted Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia perpetually at war. The military industrial complex is in full control.
The UN in its training materials uses Oceania as the fictional nation that needs to be saved from disaster.
They are openly hostile to freedom. Oceania is governed by the all-controlling Party, which has brainwashed the population into unthinking obedience to its leader, Big Brother.
While the Injustice department hunts down parents opting out of transgender school policies.
Illegals who are from Terrorist run countries are planning the next 911 and I bet it’s going to be
even more horrifying.
This will be on the Democrats and there feckless voters.
That’s if our country is still standing.
”This will be on the Democrats and there feckless voters.”
Yes it will, and I doubt it will be forgiven as if it was a difference of opinion, or good intentions gone wrong.
“And just as Hitler’s serial aggression and violations of the Versailles Treaty in the Thirties were met with bluster by the Allies and the League of Nations”
________
What bluster? Appeasement, surely. This is the 2nd time lately I’ve had to wonder of Thornton even thinks about what he writes.
Purely semantics. Bluster is defined by noisy meaningless threats. Appeasement by any other name.
In addition, The Democrats are loading up America with third world invaders without a common language, education, means of support and knowledge of our Constitution. Whom, with taxpayer dollars will be moved to vote Democrat. They want to lower the voting age to 16 so those very children
Indoctrinated with spirit of the age claptrap vote for Marxism. Devotion to climate change dogma will impoverish and weaken the west. And we are emasculating men. What would an enemy of a civilization do differently than our own uniparty?
Children should not vote. I also agree with Ann Coulter in her opinion that women should not vote, but we probably can’t put that genie back in the bottle after all of these disastrous years of allowing it. (And like Ann Coulter, I am a woman.) It would be political suicide for any politician to suggest it.
Vivek Ramaswami would like to raise the voting age to twenty-five, when the brain has finished maturing. (I think that forty might be a better age.) Vivek has some good bumper-sticker slogans and ideas, though personally I think he is too young and naive to be President.
Yes. And, re: China, do not forget Tibet. The largest area colonized since WWII. And brutally suppressed despite no threat or aggression towards China. And now not mentioned in the media.
I”ll take issue with Putin wanting to “rebuild the Russian Empire lost in 1991,” for what it’s worth here.
The article was interesting, and the comments posted even more so.
Thank you DG.
I am old enough to remember the Soviet Union and nuclear attack drills in school. Reassembly of the Soviet Union is not in the best interest of the USA or of any free society. You cannot reason with a dictator. Putin will not stop unless he is stopped. Stop him before it is too late. Reagan is the greatest president of the 0f the 20th Century because he had the judgement and courage to ignore the noisy appeasement sentiment and do what was necessary to break the Soviet Union.
Robert, Putin would not–for any amount of money–invade into any NATO-member country.
He’s not suicidal or crazy, and he has no bone to pick with any NATO countries.
Ukraine, yes. Putin regards Ukraine and Russia’s 1000+ year long History to be worth saving. He would take all of Ukraine if he could (and still might), but will settle for the Donbass, Crimea, the land bridge etc etc
Basically, all the territory held right now by Russia would satisfy Putin for good. Russia’s Black Sea port region would finally be secure, and the rest of Ukraine could go back to becoming a Eurotrash welfare state holding drag queen dances and filming Pornhub videos.
He is NOT after NATO countries, I would bet my life on that.
Because he is a real;ist.
He could not beat ALL of NATO, and he does not wish to go nuclear for obvious reasons.
Good night.
Bruce, you would think that once the world and the United States started down this path in the 30s that they would recognize the signposts for the repeat pattern in the future and start mitigating the outcome. It is not a path of no return on their decision along the way to the Road to Hell. I don’t think there is a tipping point every four years, I believe it is a slow decline over 10 years. Then the world turns inside out and a following renaissance. I don’t think the next inside out will be kind to the United States
Try convincing the military/industrial complex the future is mitigating armed conflict. Instead of attempting to mitigate we have armed every tin pot dictator who feigns allegiance to “democracy” and, often, end up more involved in local disputes that do nothing but drain our treasury and supply our politicians with empty, rhetorical talking points. We were warned about “foreign entanglements” but have failed to heed that warning in the name of the holy dollar.
Brilliant analysis.
We need only to look at the results of Lysenko’s frothing hatred of Western reliance on genetics in growing grain or breeding livestock to see the inevitable consequences of our famine follies.. Unlike the USSR and China, we won’t have a productive, sane, moral nation we can go to buy food from when our 5 year plans fail miserably, every time. There will be no repository of grain, or good will, to save us from our malignant folly. Russia and China have a history of forcing perceived enemies into mass starvation. We are their primary target.
Our moral decay goeth before the fall. After WWII the name “Mengele” was synonymous with pure evil. His gruesome experiments included sex change operations, Nothing was too bizarre or cruel for his ideologically warped mind. He was considered a monster for many years after WWII but today is a medical pioneer of the transgender movement. Along with the millions of murders committed by the high priests of abortion our “civilization” can boast of high paid gender butchers in every major hospital We live in a period where respect for the sanctity of life has been overthrown by the thrill of death. Our hospitals are no longer loyal to a high moral code but since Obama, to ideological adherence, which in the case of Covid had hospitals killing people with useless “therapies” that were incontrovertibly proven to kill, not heal. Our hospitals are no longer institutions of healing but of ideology…enter at your own risk.
Its not the duty of the United States to fund Ukraine’s military or China’s military while destroying our own. Look at the millions of dollars of modern weaponry that was left in Afghanistan by Joe Biden for other adversaries of Israel and America.
All these armaments will have to be replaced. No matter the combatants the arms makers always win. By extension, the politicians whose districts house the munitions industries win by securing military contracts that “bring jobs” to the region. Further down the rabbit hole are those whose livelihoods depend on these jobs. Our involvement in almost every conflict on Earth is no accident. Find a politician who tells his constituents he’s voting against some intervention which, in turn, means the bomb factory there will close down and I’ll show you a politician with a very short career. How many more decades will we be told our efforts are to secure ‘peace”? The short answer is; when we get ourselves killed trying to use up all the weapons we’ve made.