Throughout history, civilizations rise and fall. They fall for the same reason, by my reading of history: the lack of will to defend her, a cancer which starts not from the bottom but invariably from the top. A fish rots from the head, say the Russians, who ought to know. From Nero to Chamberlain, the elites evolve away from an understanding that retaliation against the lawless and the barbaric is not a vice but a virtue. They take the manifest blessings of civilization as a given and foist their own personal guilt and moral cowardice upon the entire city. They open the gates to the savage peoples who have always stood outside of progress and gentleness and culture.
It has always been this way. If you feel you see it happening now, before your very eyes, well… you are not alone. A society unwilling to enforce the laws that civilize it, that is unable or unwilling to see the advantages of civilization, a society led by the pampered, the narcissistic and the corrupt, is not long for this Earth. Our enemies look at us and see precisely these symptoms, and the symptons are worsening. Our unwillingness to retaliate when retaliation is called for – indeed, the uneasiness with the very idea of retaliation against betrayal – has them licking their lips in anticipation. They see all this decay and they are right to see it, for it is there.
One thing they do not see, however – also there. They do not see the Remnant. They do not see the power and resiliance of what the irreplaceable Victor Davis Hanson has referred to as “the Old Breed.”
Nock and Isaiah believed that the purpose of the Remnant was to rebuild a new civilization from the ashes of those destroyed by their own masters. And certainly to date this has always been their main function.
But there is something different -- just perhaps, something fundamentally different this time around. Because today, for the first time in human history, common people can communicate directly with one another. We are no longer dependent on spineless politicians and the jaded masters of the press to color our opinions of the world. For the first time in human history, the Remnant can reach out to each other on these gossamer threads of a world-wide web.
I believe – utterly – that this ability for the common person to communicate with other common people, this internet, will allow us to end-run the cycle of civilization. I believe it in my bones.
My friends, Western Civilization is not on its last legs.
Western Civilization is going to the stars. Count on it.
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