Wednesday, January 22, 2014

The Last Generation of the West and the Thin Strand of Civilization

But the old alarmist scenarios — a nuclear exchange, global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps, a new lethal AIDS-like virus — should not be our worry. Rather our way of life is changing not with a bang, but with a whimper, insidiously and self-inflicted, rather than abruptly and from foreign stimuli. Most of the problem is cultural. Unfortunately it was predicted by a host of pessimistic anti-democratic philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and Spengler. I’ve always hoped that these gloom-and-doomers were wrong about the Western paradigm, but some days it becomes harder.

3 comments:

rexxhead said...

(Going t work '...in part because they know they will die if idle and thrive only when busy, and in part simply because “they like it.”'

Which is why, at age 70, I'm about to take on a fresh contract.

Something must be wrong with me.

Sean said...

I like Hanson, but like a lot of conservatives, he wouldn't dream about saying what really needs to be said. Regime change, and quick. That means force, and force means violence, because the left never lets go while it lives. As well as that the left intends violence for us. So, he and the rest play the Marquise de Queensbury Rules, Mr. Nice Guy, and the left smilingly just lets them, and takes all the marbles, and then intends to take their lives too. It's a lot like watching the Jews in 1938 again, while everyone debates and shouts and argues, the Nazis(always were leftists, too)take action, and squelch all opposition. Forward, all right, to the ovens. Do I ever hate this crap.

Paul X said...

"We forget that the obligations of the working to care for the 70-80 million who genuinely cannot work become more difficult, when the 90 million who can work for all sorts of reasons won’t."

What obligation? Here is the source of the problem, accepting that it is legitimate to steal for the "right" purpose. Once you accept that, all the rest follows.

Hanson, and those like him, are the cause of the problem. There is no obligation. Charity is a personal choice, not a government mandate.