Category: Decline of the West
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The Revolt of the Worthless
Across the land the erasure of history via the destruction of monuments and memorials is proceeding apace. The worthless and unaccomplished are attacking the memories of people of great worth and accomplishment. Where are the authorities to whom we have entrusted the preservation of civilization? In abdication, mainly. They lack the will to put a…
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The Age of Decadence
Jeff Groom: Emphases and comments added. Immigration increases to levels too high for effective assimilation, and new ideas and cultural norms displace those of the founding stock. Like Robert Putnam, Glubb stresses that immigrants aren’t inferior, but erode cultural cohesion. Indeed, Glubb notes that “many of the foreign immigrants will probably belong to races originally…
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Among the Iconoclasts
Glancing at my referrals, I noticed a link from a weblog by the name of Idlings. The entry, Among the Iconoclasts, caught my eye, and a good entry it is. Excerpt: You can see that the battle is already lost in the rising generation of ideologues: kids chanting slogans and marching lockstep round the elementary…
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Point of No Return
The 2020 presidential election will not be Biden versus Trump; Biden is but a shell, a puppet, a has-been on cognitive life support. The election will be Biden's keepers versus Trump. But even this observation does not cut deeply enough. 2020 will be a referendum on whether the people want the preservation of the Republic…
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Should Humanities Departments be Shut Down?
The following is from a reader who takes issue with Chad McIntosh's Euthanizing Liberty. Secondarily, he takes issue with me since I basically endorse McIntosh's contentions. McIntosh maintains that . . . the closure of philosophy departments, along with others in the humanities, [is] a good thing, for three reasons. First, institutions of higher education…
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The Bookman and the Rifleman
You know things are getting bad when a bookman must also be a rifleman if he intends to keep his private library safe from the depredations of leftist thugs who are out to 'de-colonize' it. You cannot reach these evil-doers with arguments, for it is not the plane of reason that they inhabit; there are,…
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Can the Humanities be Saved?
Excerpts from, and commentary on, John Gray, Why the Humanities Can't be Saved. HT: Karl White. It is hard to see why any sensible person would enroll in a humanities degree at the present time. A common argument used to be that the humanities taught students how to think. [. . .] This is not…
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Euthanizing Liberty
Chad McIntosh sees an upside in the recent closures of philosophy programs. I agree with him. In conclusion, I now see the closure of philosophy departments, along with others in the humanities, as a good thing, for three reasons. First, institutions of higher education have already devolved to the point that the humanities are a…
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The Owl of Minerva and the Consolations of Philosophy
It appears that a tipping point has been reached in America's decline. Our descent into twilight and beyond is probably now irreversible. Collective race madness blankets the land, the dogs of destruction have been set loose, and the authorities have abdicated. Should any of this trouble the philosopher? Before he is a citizen, the philosopher…
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A Country Not Salvageable
As a philosophic emollient one may reflect that all empires and civilizations must end, and ours is. America will remain as a place, a military bastion, a large if declining economic force. It will never again be, even by the low standards of humanity in such things, a relatively free and vigorous society. The world…
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Southern Heritage, American Heritage, Western Heritage
You thought the thugs were out to tear down the first. Then their actions made it clear that American traditions and values as a whole were in their sights. But it goes deeper still: they oppose our entire Judeo-Christian, Graeco-Roman legacy. And now comes the existential question: are you willing to fight to defend it?…
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Good Advice
If possible, avoid the near occasion of armed confrontation, assuming that such avoidance is consistent with manly virtue. But with hot civil war nigh, manly avoidance may not be possible. If push comes to shove, and shove to shoot, you had better be prepared both for the shooting and its aftermath. Intellectually, though, it is…
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Christianity has Civilized Us. But Islam?
Has Islam played any role in the civilizing of the peoples in the lands where it has held sway? Yes, of course. But when we consider Islamic penology, it is positively barbaric compared to that of the West. Of the five great religions, Islam seems to have had the least civilizing effect. Here: Iran’s judicial…
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Is Speech Violence? Culture War 1.0 and Culture War 2.0
Peter Boghossian: The rules of engagement relate to how we deal with our disagreements. In Culture War 1.0, if an evolutionary biologist gave a public lecture about the age of the Earth based on geological dating techniques, creationist detractors would issue a response, insist that such dating techniques are biased, challenge him to a debate,…
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Why the Right-Left Divide is Unbridgeable: Three Reasons
One reason is that we differ over values. That's bad. Worse still is that we differ over what is true and what is false. Disagreements about values and norms are troubling but not surprising, but nowadays we can't even agree on what the facts are. Worst of all is that we differ over what truth…