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The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization
American Greatness ^ | September 28, 2022 | Victor Davis Hanson

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 ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: civilization; democrats; destruction; liberals; vdh; veneer; victordavishanson
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To: null and void; aragorn; EnigmaticAnomaly; kalee; Kale; AZ .44 MAG; Baynative; bgill; bitt; ...

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21 posted on 09/29/2022 2:25:55 PM PDT by bitt (<IMG SRC=' 'width=50%> )
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

if an important dem lib issue passed in a big blue state while the GOP held the WH would a GOP Prez move to sink it? Of course not. Only Gopers play by the rules written and unwritten.


22 posted on 09/29/2022 2:40:03 PM PDT by robowombat (As am I, but it isnot any of my business that the people of GOrth,He looks like the sex all y one )
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To: bitt

Bump


23 posted on 09/29/2022 2:50:42 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
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To: tomkat

I’d prefer that citizens get permission to go all medieval on the urban scum.


24 posted on 09/29/2022 3:04:52 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (“I used to be nothing but a Deplorable Clinger, but I've been promoted to Brigadier Ultra-MAGA”)
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To: dfwgator

That was a brilliant series. It couldn’t be made today.

L


25 posted on 09/29/2022 3:09:50 PM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
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.
If you can't eat, you can't live. Think, America.

But we "think" we're so special. We "think" gender and racial justice is paramount to all else. Sorry, dudes, when the farms can't deliver to the cities, "justice" no longer exists.

Spoiled is as spoiled does: insipid, stupid, and self-destructive.
26 posted on 09/29/2022 4:25:46 PM PDT by nicollo ("I said no!")
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To: nicollo

Look a little bit ahead and you find there will NOTHING manufactured. Steel and aluminum plants worldwide are shutting down because of the high cost of energy. Nitrogen fertilizer is too expensive because if is made from natural gas. All plastics are made from oil. This effort to kill all fossil fuels means that there will be NO PRODUCTS on any shelves.

The stupid and inept belief that solar and wind can power an industrial society and shutting down fossil fuels before there is any replacement is going to plunge the globe into serious depression. It won’t end until the “green” revolution is stopped dead.


27 posted on 09/29/2022 4:55:06 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (“I used to be nothing but a Deplorable Clinger, but I've been promoted to Brigadier Ultra-MAGA”)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

And when it crashes they will blame the deplorable or hard right wingers. In other words, US! I feel we are headed for some very very rough times.


28 posted on 10/02/2022 6:06:46 AM PDT by Rummyfan (In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. )
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

VDH is a National Treasure, and this article is brilliant. Everyone should read this.


29 posted on 10/06/2022 4:47:38 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

And who was in power in 1994 at the Federal level that caused that referendum of the people to be overturned? Methinks it was Billary Clinton!


30 posted on 10/06/2022 4:54:30 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

People who don’t respect civilization eventually lose its protections.


31 posted on 10/06/2022 4:58:50 PM PDT by Justa (If where you came from is so great then why aren't Floridians moving there?)
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