A man offered his aging father a chance to return to his homeland one last time, he declined. After miraculously surviving the war as a bomber navigator for the RAF, he had sailed to America to start anew. Living out his quiet retirement in a small Midwestern town, he was content to stay were he was. His explanation was his England no longer existed. Like the British Empire, it had vanished. When he left, the sun still never set on “Great” Britain and its lands, and the young still respected the old. He preferred to have in his memory that place he knew, than soil it with reality.

A life long German diplomat conferred similar feelings. The German Ambassador to an African country was looking to the world, wondering where to retire. His homeland, as he related, was no more. In fact, he said many German cities were no longer German, and the rest of the country was not far behind. Rather than watch his country be destroyed from within, he too preferred to live with his memories. Better that than face the reality that the Germany he had known was being bred, and bullied, out of existence.

Now Britain and Germany still exist; the former to a greater degree than the latter, at least for now. Merkel has, by design or ignorance, set her country on the path to extinction. Brexit might save the rest of the British Isles the current fate of London, but whether the this will mean its lasting salvation is still to be seen. Like ocean waves beating upon a shore, the left is eroding the country’s soul; it will take constant vigilance to contain the damage, let alone affect some level of repair.

Democracy, John Adam’s said, never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. It is not, of course, Democracy at fault, but the liberal society it nurtures. For a society to last, and a culture to endure, it must be steady. Not prone to spurts of violence or sudden changes. Of course, for modern liberalism and the left in general, radical change (violent or otherwise) is its bread and butter. It never rests on its laurels. but seeks new ways to destroy all that lies before it. Eventually, in a fit of rage it turns on itself.

Sometimes, the pattern happens very quickly, like during the French Revolution.  From starry eyed idealism, its purveyors quickly devolved into a bloody out of control mob, and finally dictatorship. In other instances, where the resistance to its spread is strong enough, the decay of society is slower. Decades can pass as the culture, families, and institutions are undermined. Still, the end is the same; society goes into death throws as it becomes fractured beyond recognition.

Today, across Western Civilization, this pattern is well advanced. In Europe, the unfettered immigration has sped up the trend toward chaos. In America, the country is also divided in ways that are tearing it apart. Debauchery, once unheard of, is not only spoken of publicly, but even heralded as admirable. Colleges hail violent riots as free speech, and conservative speech as violence. Similarly, community protectors are being publicly defamed while pariahs and killers are lionized; all to the applause of those too ignorant to understand they are poking holes into a sinking ship. What is being witnessed is a modern social breakdown; a replay of the societal collapses seen throughout history. In this sense, the modern left is as much the symptom as it is the disease.

Western Civilization, as Burke recognized, was the epitome of what societies could become. The left simply can’t accept this self-evident fact for what it is. For them, there can be no this is better than that, for such a belief would undermine all they stand for. They would have to engage in value judgements, and think upon what is better, or what is worse; something they are fundamentally opposed to doing. So instead, they promote a valueless society where miraculously each group can go about declaring what is right in their own eyes while avoiding conflict with others. What the left calls a multicultural society, and conservatives call a fractured one.

The writing is on the wall, and in pages written by civilizations long dead. Rome did not die of over extension, or outside conflicts. Rome lost what it meant to be Roman, the decline into irrelevance was merely an overdue epitaph. Rome as an idea, and a way of life, had already passed by the time the Goths entered the city gates. The same can be said of the fate of most great civilizations. The West is also entering into its own death spiral, and is closing in on a point of no return.

There are but three causes of societal collapse: Natural disaster, conquest, and a breakdown of cultural ties. Of the three, the last is by far the most common, and often is a prelude to the second. A religion who sees itself as no better than any other is one step from extinction, and a country that does not revel in its past, but despises it, is lost. Their people soon will be driven by demagogues, providing purpose for lives devoid of it. Even if they avoid this fate, with no will to survive their demise is still made certain.

The dissolving of Western institutions, the abandonment of its traditions, and disrespect for the past shows the West is far along the path to its extinction. It will take a concerted effort to avoid the fate of those who have traveled this road before, far more than is being exerted at the moment.

 

“The Conservative Mind”

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