Eyeguy, I understand what you are saying. But what guarantees that the items you list will endure? Our constitution? That depends on you and I and 52,000,000 others who will put our lives on the line to defend it. The people in those countries are indestinguishable from “us.” Parts are interchangeable. Raise a Western child there, and he will think like them. Raise a third world child here, and he will think like us.
What I am suggesting is not that there are not valid ideals and institutions in place that have made the West great, but how fragile those ideals and institutions really are.
If you don’t thinks so, just look around your country today. Just scan the headlines here on FR.
“Eyeguy, I understand what you are saying. But what guarantees that the items you list will endure?”
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Not a damn thing.
We are steadily marching toward a coarsened, less free, more primitive culture daily.
I just thought you wanted a list of essential predisposing conditions for civilized culture. I’m with you on their fragility and the elegiac reality that their predominance and primacy in our society, is diminishing rapidly.