To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad, and safe at home – only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.
Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.
So, the great achievement of Western civilization – consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit – was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature.
But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright.
As a result, the once prosperous Greek city-state, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded – as civilization went headlong in reverse.
We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis.
We talk grandly about the globalized Great Reset. We blindly accept the faddish New Green Deal. We virtue signal about defunding the police. We merely shrug at open borders. And we brag about banning fertilizers and pesticides, outlawing the internal combustion engine, and discounting Armageddon in the nuclear age – as if on autopilot we have already reached utopia.
But meanwhile Westerners are systematically destroying the very elements of our civilization that permitted such fantasies in the first place.
Take fuel. Europeans arrogantly lectured the world that they no longer need traditional fuels. So, they shut down nuclear power plants. They stopped drilling for oil and gas. And they banned coal.
What followed was a dystopian nightmare. Europeans will burn dirty wood this winter as their civilization reverts from postmodern abundance to premodern survival.
The Biden Administration ossified oil fields. It canceled new federal oil and gas leases. It stopped pipeline construction and hectored investors to shun fossil fuels.
When scarcity naturally followed, fuel prices soared.
The middle class has now mortgaged its upward mobility to ensure that they might afford gasoline, heating oil, and skyrocketing electricity.
The duty of the Pentagon is to keep America safe by deterring enemies, reassuring allies, and winning over neutrals.
It is not to hector soldiers based on their race. It is not to indoctrinate recruits in the woke agenda. It is not to become a partisan political force.
The result of those suicidal Pentagon detours is the fiasco in Afghanistan, the aggression of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the new bellicosity of China, and the loud threats of rogue regimes like Iran.
At home, the Biden Administration inexplicably destroyed the southern border, as if civilized nations of the past never needed such boundaries.
Utter chaos followed. Three million migrants have poured into the United States. While some cross over clandestinely, others clear border stations without an adequate audit, and largely without skills, high-school diplomas, or capital.
The streets of our cities are anarchical – and by intent.
Defunding the police, emptying the jails, and destroying the criminal justice system unleashed a wave of criminals. It is now open season on the weak and innocent.
America is racing backwards into the 19th-century Wild West. Predators maim, kill, and rob with impunity. Felons correctly conclude that bankrupt postmodern “critical legal theory” will ensure them exemption from punishment.
Few Americans know anything about agriculture, except to expect limitless supplies of inexpensive, safe, and nutritious food at their beck and call.
But that entitlement for 330 million hungry mouths requires massive water projects, and new dams and reservoirs. Farmers rely on steady supplies of fertilizer, fuels, and chemicals. Take away that support – as green nihilists are attempting – and millions will soon go hungry, as they have since the dawn of civilization.
Perhaps nearly a million homeless now live on the streets of America. Our major cities have turned medieval with their open sewers, garbage-strewn sidewalks, and violent vagrants.
So, we are in a great experiment in which regressive progressivism discounts all the institutions, and the methodologies of the past that have guaranteed a safe, affluent, well-fed and sheltered America.
Instead, we arrogantly are reverting to a new feudalism as the wealthy elite – terrified of what they have wrought – selfishly retreat to their private keeps.
But the rest who suffer the consequences of elite flirtations with nihilism cannot even afford food, shelter, and fuel. And they now feel unsafe, both as individuals and as Americans.
As we suffer self-inflicted mass looting, random street violence, hyperinflation, a nonexistent border, unaffordable fuel, and a collapsing military, Americans will come to appreciate just how thin is the veneer of their civilization.
When stripped away, we are relearning that what lies just beneath is utterly terrifying.
Yeah, we’re f’ed. The days of colonial revolution are long past.
Excellent points.
Oil is still king, despite the Greens.
Yes but it goes beyond that, as you know. Oil is what F”s us financially but leftism is what F’s us socially.
But i’m preaching to the choir. And I hate metaphors.
Good point.
When the power was out for some days here a few years ago, due to the wildfires, the stores couldn’t take cards or check checks, so I told the Pakistani store guy that “Cash is King”. He liked that 🙂
Blog.reaction.la
Jim, the owner of the site posits that what we are seeing is the result of Western theology run amok.
According to what is affectionately known as “Jimian theory” we are entering what he calls a “left wing singularity” or “holiness spiral”
When the priesthood (Harvard) becomes the dominant power, then the greater acquisition of power relies on greater “holiness” or rather the perception of “holiness”. As such there is an incentive for each ambitious priest to show sogns of greater holiness in order to achieve greater status
Hence its not enough to despise wealth, no, now we have to destroy it everywhere. Its not enough to preserve nature, we have to make it impossible to grow food. Loving thy neighbor now requires seducing his wife and raping his son.
According to Jimian theory a left wing holiness spiral only stops under one of two conditions.
Either it achieves a “left wing singularity”. Where each priest starts killing off any priest deemed insufficiently “holy” to the point where they wipe out the entire intelligencia.
Or a Cromwell or Stalin arises, who takes power and kills any priest that decides he is holier than that leader
The third option, where we shit these bastards down hard was done by Charles II, who packed all the lunatic puritans on a ship and invited them to never return
VDH and Tucker are helping me to maintain my sanity. Depressed, for sure, but at least sane.
Bannon will give you hope.
VDH is very sane, excellent point. Absolutely rigorous and logical in all his writing. He doesn’t try to be clever or brilliant.
So true. Victor Davis Hanson, Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are all National Treasures! The three of them show such courage and intelligence it’s inspiring to all of us who love this country and feel sick at heart to see it turned into this lawless Clown /World Banana Republic. I hope Nov 8 is a Bloodbath for the Democrats.
Stay with us! Don’t succumb! 🙂
Victor has a great way of concisely detailing diverse issues with inescapable examples and adding them to a big picture. Without the basics of survival our society will collapse. Unfortunately, the megalomaniacs currently in charge have the power, but haven’t a clue. While there is still time we must replace them. Are there still enough free thinking People to pull that off? That remains to be seen. I’m hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. God help us.
When we worship at the altars of Higher Education, Lucre, and Mammon, what could possibly go wrong?
One of the many Politically Correct idea’s which is tragically alive and well in both America and Europe the philosophy of multiculturalism which many Westerners are infected by the worthless , sick and unrealistic philosophy also part of the PC madness that is called “Cultural Relativity.”
Which is the concept that all culture are equal because this C.R concept teaches the foolishness that all values derive their meaning within the specific social content. This folly of thinking leads, or misleads, many people to view every position as only “opinion” and that truth is only relevant to the person or society holding that view. In other words, discovering actual truth in impossible.
Such C.R is absurd, nonsensical and contradictory. For example, to say “finding the truth is impossible” Is a statement of contradiction. For in making that statement that is saying, in essence, “I have found the truth which is finding the truth is not possible.” It should be obvious that this “Cultural War’ needs to and should have a solidly based in and on truth and not by a worthless “war of opinions” With the Left Wing ,with PC mindset of CR everything those of the Right says is just “opinion.” on a subject. Of course, that’s not so with the left in which everything they claim is be true is “true.” What a flip –flop!
Two other examples of the falseness of C.R. with its teaching that everything is only “opinion.” First is in the elate 1970’s two guys said “There are so many different religions that no one can ever know the truth about religion.” They were really saying that statement so dogmatically that they were self-contradicting. For they were saying that they know the truth about religion that is not one can know the truth about religion. Second, a shallow man in the 1980’s said when asked the question “Why do you always small talk ? You don’t ever talk about a topic that might have some value, as politics? After all , all thing are related “ That shallow C.R man replied “There are so many different political ideas that finding the true one is unattainable and all thing are not related.” The wisdom-less man was saying that he obtained the truth which is the he can’t obtain the truth and who does can is really truthfully say that all thing are not related in he can’t find the truth. How foolish, an obvious contradiction. What is needed to counter this nonsense C.R./P.C. is the concept of “Absolutism.” Which a definition of this, with the scope of the topic, is “An absolute standard or principle .”
In this cultural war it’s the Bible with its absolute standards and principles to stand firm against the extreme folly and foolishness of the CR and PC concepts. In conclusion, in this War of Ideas a firm foundation for truth may be found in the Bible and not the weak folly of CR. in which everything is “opinion.”
Yes, there is only one Truth, as there is only one G0d. Yesterday we read That Chapter in Leviticus at shul and I am really not sure how our more enlightened brethren handled it. But it is Truth. G0d doesn’t give us orders for His benefit; He needs nothing. They are for our benefit. Following those rules leads to a sane, fulfilling life and a healthy society, but there has always been that pagan pushback that wants to do “whatever is good in its own eyes”. If I didn’t believe that G0d is in charge I would think that we were in serious trouble.
Exactly who is the “we” the author refers to here? It isn’t me. I suggest it isn’t a numerical majority in the United States. I may feel an American kinship with my neighbors (well, some of them) and in some ways with the culture ( especially the American culture of a few decade ago) but I don’t feel a kinship with the current government.
It is impossible to critique a republic when it is one in name only.
So, while this author has in recent other writings had a condescending criticism of President Trumps “style” asking if there could be Trump-ism without Trump and couldn’t we just. find someone with a different verbal style ( who drinks tea with his pinky in the air maybe?).
We like Trump’s style. We abhor green new deal lies. We are not sure we have representation. Thats the “we” to which I, for one, belong.
The Disenfranchised we.
Chcuo…you warmed my heart. You spoke truth that should be the only truth spoken. It’s all I speak about…Ukraine 7 decades of Deep State.. Russia is not a threat to us, but the World Order is going after him a second time. May Putin prevail!!
Zelensky is more corrupt than Putin. Zelensky is is more dangerous to the US than Putin. Putin has more to lose than Zelensky. The Russians would probably stop Putin from using a nuke in the Ukraine.
Ukraine has also been playing a very subversive role in internal US politics. I saw a video a few days ago of members of the Nazi Azov Battalion dressing to attack the US Capitol on J6. They can be heard saying, “Hurry, hurry!” in Ukrainian. They were one of the groups that broke in and caused destruction knowing innocent Americans would be blamed for it. An American journalist living in the Donbas region also reported that Azov Batallion marched in Charlottesville. I don’t doubt it. It always puzzled me that they were chanting a European (specifically Ukrainian) slogan: “Blood and soil!”. Lionel pointed out that if you put photos of Charlottesville side-by-side with photos of the Azov Batallion’s Nazi marches in Ukraine they are identical to each other. Now it makes sense.
Where America finds herself today is merely the Chickens Coming Home to Roost – aka the consequences of the whirlwind today’s America is reaping thanks to the wind sown by the 1787 cadre of Enlightenment and Masonic theistic rationalists (aka constitutional framers) when they replaced Yahweh with We the People as America’s Sovereign and His immutable moral law with their own capricious man-made traditions (aka the biblically seditious Constitution):
“[B]ecause they have … trespassed against my law … they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind….” (Hosea 8:1, 7)
Today’s America is reaping the inevitable ever-intensifying whirlwind resulting from the wind sown by the constitutional framers and fanned by today’s hoodwinked Christians and patriots who have been bamboozled into believing today’s whirlwind can be dissipated by appealing to the wind responsible for spawning the whirlwind.
For more, see Chapter 3 “The Preamble: We the People vs. Yahweh” of free online book “Bible Law vs, the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at Bible versus Constitution dot org. Click on the top entry on our Online Book page and scroll down to Chapter 3.
Then find out how much you really know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey in the sidebar and receive a free copy of the 85-page “Primer” of “BL vs. USC.”
The same media that insists Biden, Trudeau and Macron are competent, tell us that Putin is a raving Madman. Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus. He will succeed or we will lose.
Yes……………
Well there is only one country that has ever used nuclear weapons on other human beings. And that same country, by the way, has a nasty habit of blowing up fuel pipelines. Not to point any fingers, but much as I love my country, I fear its government.
“America is racing backwards into the 19th-century Wild West.”
That would be nice. The so-called Wild West was a place of law and a surprising degree of order, especially compared with the filthy, crime-ridden, chaotic Coastal cities. Most of the men were Civil War veterans and most of the women could shoot dinner. Or predators. As Robert Heinlein said, “An armed society is a polite society.”
If I could pick one of your articles to read aloud to the American Public this would be it.
The only puzzle not yet solved is why a mighty nation like ours is allowing this to go on and on.
George Zilbergeld