Victor Davis Hanson writes:
Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.
Leisure and affluence have deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer need worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright.
Now Westerners are systematically destroying the very elements of our civilization that permitted such fantasies.
Few Americans know anything about agriculture, except to expect limitless supplies of inexpensive, safe, and nutritious food at their beck and call.
But that entitlement for 330 million hungry mouths requires massive water projects, and new dams and reservoirs. Farmers rely on steady supplies of fertilizer, fuels, and chemicals. Take away that support—as green nihilists are attempting—and millions will soon go hungry, as they have since the dawn of civilization.
Perhaps nearly a million homeless now live on the streets of America. Our major cities have turned medieval with their open sewers, garbage-strewn sidewalks, and violent vagrants.
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.
We are relearning that what lies just beneath is utterly terrifying.
It’s completely unfathomable how easily and quickly civilization is disintegrating, simply because we are allowing it - without a shot fired.
Instead of learning from history, people have become even more ignorant of it, and more susceptible to destructive propaganda.
I bought this years ago. If you can find a PDF to download, this is an excellent book for “dealing” with a Failure of Civility:
Jeanne - I believe you that it is a very useful book. But when the conditions of life in America will have deteriorated to such an extent that individuals must struggle and battle for survival, the Republic will have been lost. Is that time near?
Do you reason that time is near? You all keep talking about it. It can go quickly.
Does VDH think that time is near? Do you think to wait until it is here to make plans or even consider what you should do?
Will the Republic be going, gone, hanging on, struggling back? I don’t know any of these things…except that it can happen quickly, and we don’t intend on being caught unprepared to struggle back with it, or survive what is happening.
Just offered the book as information.