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Good Times Create Weak Men
“Dinosaurs and man. Two species separated by sixty-five million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?” — Dr. Grant, Jurassic Park
I wish Michael Crichton were alive today. I enjoyed his surprisingly deep and refreshingly honest approach to science fiction.
Western civilization is the newcomer in the global political ecosystem. It isn’t natural, isn’t an obvious product of the rough evolutionary pressures that drive cultural development. It’s an outlier, something exceptional for the value it places on every individual, the range it offers – or strives to offer – every person to live a full and rewarding life. It’s the product of a long line of extraordinary men and events that reached its apotheosis in the great American Experiment, and that brought with it widespread prosperity and freedom never before experienced by mankind.
Western civilization is all those things, but it isn’t natural. It isn’t inevitable. It isn’t favored, privileged, or guaranteed. And it isn’t the world’s majority position.
It’s easy for us to think of the civilization we enjoy as the norm, as safe, as the reference state to which everything else is compared. It’s a mistake to believe that. The reality is different: civilization as we understand it is a minority player on the global stage, with enemies everywhere — within and without — eager to tear it down and replace it with something much closer to the natural and historical state of man.
Communists and socialists and tyrants from China to Russia to Brussels work to undermine the world we take for granted. The woke nihilists who instruct and disrupt our universities nip at the heels of civilization like so many hyenas, weakening one by one the institutions on which they unwittingly depend for their pampered existence. One of America’s great political parties treats the institutions that constitute the framework of our civilization as hindrances to the realization of their progressive agenda, unmindful of the disaster they invite when they tear down centuries of supporting structure to erect their unworkable Utopian vision.
In the Middle East, Israel, the lone outpost of Western civilization in a world of barbarism, is savaged by the antithesis of modernity, an oppressive theocracy that enslaves its believers in seventh-century misery. The banshee cries of the attacker echo in the corridors of the West’s most elite institutions of higher learning.
And the United Kingdom, the mother of the Anglosphere and the fount of our very conception of Western civilization itself, is being gutted from within by a toxic mixture of relativism and Islam and civilizational ennui and environmental paganism that is on the brink of destroying the birthplace of modernity.
What we enjoy isn’t natural. It isn’t guaranteed. And, despite it being self-evidently and demonstrably superior to its more primitive alternatives, there is no certainty that it will survive.
The barbarians are rising up and, if we are not yet overpowered, we are certainly outnumbered.
Published in Culture
Better in some respects, depending on your frame of reference. To some people, we are the barbarians who cannot adapt to their higher civilization.
Especially the ones who seem to think they’re women.
Henry, I have little of substance to add to your excellent post, other than I agree completely, and the context is powerful, challenging and terrifying.
May we find enough strong men to defend and maintain this unnatural condition for another generation.
“A Republic if you can keep it”
Beautifully written, Hank. Thank you.
Related: St-Exupery on transmitting the passwords–or not.
That’s a powerful statement, David. Thanks.
Good, depressing analysis, HR. Well-written, as usual.
Excellent post, Henry. You are right, we are living an unnatural existence, and thank Heaven for that.
I find it heartbreaking. Our modern conception of human rights is largely an inheritance from the British, yet today the British are among the most-surveilled people in the world and free speech has been tossed out the window.
Mark Steyn pointed out almost 20 years ago that this could be as much caused by as it is a result of the lack of social confidence that is reflected by not having enough children.
Excellent post as usual, HR.
And I don’t think it is a coincidence that Western Civilization’s civic traditions and its protestant Christian traditions are decaying in perfect synchronization.
Walls cannot protect us if we let the barbarians in to live among us.
We cannot cower behind them. We have to restore our sense of propose.
But even to the right, this is anathama.
We must be as honeybadgers. Incredibly resistant and tactically ferocious.
It is hard to fathom the danger we are in as a society. Most of us have little experience with a low trust society. I am not talking about run of the mill disillusionment with important institutions that seemed reliable, predictable, and fair-ish. I am talking about dog-eat-dog reality.
The British did not recognize their “constitution” has a serious flaw.
Parliament has nearly unlimited power. There is no Madisonian separation of powers to create friction or opposition. As it should in an era when the people are sovereign, the monarch, head of state, has been reduced to a ceremonial role. The Supreme Court is a creation of Parliament and does not have the power to rule laws unconstitutional. There are no states with separate status and powers. Over the years, counties and districts have become nothing more than administrative extensions of the central government.
And lacking a written Bill of Rights, the people have no standing to influence the state. Outside of elections. It makes one appreciate the foresight of our founders.
One must consider the source of opinions. It is absurd to grant all opinions equal weight. I question the value of the opinion of people from primitive cultures and debased religions.
One of the reasons I like using the common cup for Communion is that it is a barbarian practice for everyone to drink out of the same cup. You could also call it primitive. (My wife opts for an individual cup, but she’s not a barbarian like I am.)
Dear Lord.
The countries that slaughter civilians by the tens of thousands (in Israel’s case), or far more (in the case of us and the Brits), are the “civilized” ones?
The countries that have pro-sodomy parades and both uphold, and seek to spread, the whole trans perversion, are the “civilized” ones?
The country that publicly defends anal sodomy of prisoners is the “civilized” one?
Those darn homos. What’s the point of freedom of religion and speech when people can got and be gay?
I reject your characterization of the war against Hamas as a “slaughter of civilians by the tens of thousands.” Urban warfare has high collateral costs, and Hamas makes that especially so with its affinity for civilian casualties. We don’t know how many innocent individuals have died in Gaza since the fighting started, and we don’t know who killed them. I believe Israel is fighting a necessary war and making a greater effort than most countries would to avoid unnecessary non-target casualties.
Yes, I believe Israel is fighting as a “civilized” nation should.
Some people in America participate in “pro-sodomy” parades, as you put it. Some participate in pro-abortion parades. Some participate in pro-life parades. Some participate in Independence Day parades. A wonderful thing about America is that even people who embrace unpopular minority positions are allowed to express their enthusiasm for those positions, within limits set by safety, etc.
I’m bored to death by the gay movement, but I don’t share your view that it’s sinful. I respect your right to say that you think it’s sinful, and I respect the right of the queer guy down the street to flounce about in women’s tights.
And yes, I think tolerating fringe behavior is “civilized.”
That is not a civilized position, and a civilized country should reject it. I’m not convinced, however, that Israel as a country actually defends the practice of sexually torturing prisoners, though I can believe that there are some in Israel who do: not everyone in even a civilized country is civilized.
I never have claimed and never will claim that Israel, America, the United Kingdom, Australia, or any other nation is perfect or flawless. I merely say that western civilization is the best mankind has achieved so far, and that Israel is an outpost of western civilization in a region otherwise vastly inferior, civilizationally, to the west.
It’s reality. We’re not used to seeing it in the way you lay out. This is what I talk to my pastor/boss about. He doesn’t quite get what I’m saying.
Henry, first and foremost, please permit me to commend you on your restraint in responding to these [ ] observations of a member of Ricochet; I have had much more difficulty both understanding this kind of dislike for one’s own Nation and in reamaining as serenely dignified you have been in responding to these comments.
I have written, probably far too often, of the problem I have in anyone expressing support, of any level, for the Hamas animals (I was even chastised for calling them what they are — animals) who are simply not humans created in the image of the God I worship. Civility and the Code of Conduct weigh in favor of my leaving it there, except to note that here is an item which just appeared on X (@Vivid) , re-posted by Mark Levin on his page, about the “world of barbarism” you so soundly decry. I note my full agreement with and endorsement of Levin’s description of these [ ]s : “Heinous monsters”. How one can defend these animals to any extent whatsoever is simply beyond me and I only wish I could express that sentiment in terms as eloquent and patrician as yours. But, alas it is not to be. Thank you for your civility; it is a model for all of us here.
The IDF recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages last night. They were found dead in a tunnel in Khan Yunis. Hamas kidnapped Israeli civilians alive on October 7, tortured them in an underground tunnel, and executed them. The Palestinians are the most evil people on Earth.
These are human beings and were entitled to life. Those who took them hostage, tortured them for God knows how long and then executed them are —– animals.
You don’t execute animals for killing. Sometimes you remove them from the possibility of more killing, but it’s not a matter of justice. Humans who do such murders do deserve execution as a matter of justice, though.
A lion or a bear may kill you but it won’t torture you for fun.
Probably not, but if lions are anything like our cat when it was younger, it would drag out the actual killing so it could get in some extra practice in chasing and attacking.