Posted on 09/29/2022 9:42:31 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
Civilization is fragile. It hinges on ensuring the stuff of life.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
"civilization went headlong in reverse" -- this is PRECISELY where we are and all of us on FR and the conservative sphere know it and see it every day. Can an entire civilization slammed into reverse gear save itself? Is the transmission stuck in reverse?
Prof. Hanson wrote his first article on this topic two years ago which was published in National Review:
The Thin Veneer of American Civilization. It's gotten MUCH worse in the past two years.
Prof. Hanson has been getting more and more pessimistic (as have most of us). Those of us who see what's happening feel hopeless in our ability to turn it around. We are suffering from two or three generations of Americans educated in radical leftist public schools. Soon our progeny will not know of the great USA that we all grew up in. They will only know a collapsed Western Civilization that hates itself and cannot do anything.
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.
Another great essay from VDH. Who knew that civilization was necessary for mankind to achieve greatness? Certainly not the libs.
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson
Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.
As a reminder, Professor Hanson has asked that we do not post the full article of his writings. Thank you for following the link to finish his article.
“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.”
There’s one word for it - AFFLUENZA - the disease of not appreciating what you got.
Hanson is the best. The perfectly rational man in an increasingly irrational world. He is the one political commentator actually worth reading. I wonder if he is a closet Freeper.
“And what in your comfortable urban life has ever prepared you for that decision?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPcZ_5uCldg
I would find Hanson’s laments more convincing if he, and most of what is laughingly called the California conservative movement hadn’t run and hidden every time the question of the mexification of California was raised in the 1990’s. Little too late to blabber now Vic. We are approaching a Spain June 1935 crossroads. I am sure the very wise conservative essayists will have some sage words as the leftist hit squads are hunting normals down.
They are destroying our basic natural right to survive as a species.
VDH wrote a book on it in 2003 warning it was happening!
Where’s your book?
That’s a little late to point with alarm at the wetback flood. Hanson and the bulk of the Gopers spent the 90’s in hiding to a avoid be called the deadly R word (racist).
“not appreciating what you got.”
Nor appreciating the HUGE toil and sacrifice that many generations before you endured to get us to this highly successful point in civilization.
People are just too indoctrinated and too stupid to realize how fragile civilization really is.
When I grew up in the 50s and 60s, I honestly and naively thought the USA was indestructible.
“I wonder if he is a closet Freeper”
Me, too. Very rarely does he mention what he reads that influences him, but I would be surprised if he isn’t a regular here. His themes and the themes on FR regularly echo back and forth.
It was a 1994 ballot initiative (by THE PEOPLE) to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibit illegal immigrants from using non-emergency health care, public education, and other services in the State of California.
Voters passed the proposed law at a referendum on November 8, 1994. The law was challenged in a legal suit the day after its passage, and found unconstitutional by a federal district court on November 11. In 1999, Governor Gray Davis halted state appeals of this ruling.
This was a huge shot by the people of CA to stop the madness. But the GD FEDERAL government put an immediate stop to it. So much for "our democracy." As a result, the state was flooded with illegals and now stopping it is almost impossible.
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“They are destroying our basic natural right to survive as a species.”
In one of his recent podcasts, he and Sammie Wink were discussing Natural Law as the origin of our civilization.
Two things keep us from being utter savages.
People with guns.
Food on the grocery shelf.
Take those away, and Mad Max becomes non fiction.
But with years of massive immigration, most of it of the illegal kind, and adding in all those they birthed 'off the books,' so to speak, there must be many millions more mouths to feed today.
I’d add warm homes in winter. And the lib kooks are working dry hard to take away all three. But most people don’t see that.
I have heard of it and the Gopers were as pleased with it as Bush-Rove Inc were with the Swift Boaters.
Good piece, as usual. What lies beneath that thin veneer is bright, elusive butterflies-for-brains.
“bright, elusive butterflies-for-brains”
LOL. Yep, that describes them. Nearly as good as Rush’s classic “skulls full of mush.”
I'd prefer the medieval milieu to any of our filthy commucrat controlled rat nest cities.
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