JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
- 16,756
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Can a Dying Civilization Defeat ISIS and Radical Islam? - Breitbart
If we are honest we must face a very dark and sobering fact: The outcome of this war is far from certain. We are proud of being a nation of can-do optimists, but we are also a nation in denial about a culture in a tailspin.
How can we win a war to defend our own civilization when we no longer believe that our civilization is worth the sacrifice required to defend it?
How can we win this war if our educational system is so rotted to the core that our worst enemies have the ability to recruit all the help they need from our own youth?
How do we win if our government cannot name the enemy and when it does play fight, the corporate lobbyists spin all the politicians in circles chasing more campaign donations?
If we are honest we must face a very dark and sobering fact: The outcome of this war is far from certain. We are proud of being a nation of can-do optimists, but we are also a nation in denial about a culture in a tailspin.
- The real enemy is not “over there” in Syria and Iraq, or in Paris or London. The enemy is already here in our homeland, and I am not speaking of terrorist cells, Syrian refugees, or radical imams. I am speaking of the accelerating rot in our own culture.
- “Where were you, Daddy, when we were waging the war on terror?” Oh, well, I was watching reality TV. On TV, the good guys always defeat the bad guys. And I can always change the channel.
- The war with ISIS and its Islamist allies is what historian Samuel P. Huntington called a “clash of civilizations” in a book by that title in 1996.
- Tocqueville warned us 200 years ago that we would never be defeated by an invader, but we could abandon liberty by adopting a “soft tyranny” of democratic corruption.
- The early 20th century economist Joseph Schumpeter gave a similar warning about the inevitable corruption of morals that comes with capitalism’s triumph. If everything is permitted in an open marketplace, higher values will be replaced by cheaper ones— and there is no principle within pure capitalism to halt that cultural degeneration.
How can we win a war to defend our own civilization when we no longer believe that our civilization is worth the sacrifice required to defend it?
How can we win this war if our educational system is so rotted to the core that our worst enemies have the ability to recruit all the help they need from our own youth?
How do we win if our government cannot name the enemy and when it does play fight, the corporate lobbyists spin all the politicians in circles chasing more campaign donations?