Nothing is too big to fail, including civilizations, and ours is no exception. The decline of the West is historically inevitable, subject to the universal principle of entropy that functions on every plane of natural existence, including the cultural. The agencies by which it works on this level are readily isolated: the endemic vices and pathologies of human nature (greed, resentment, hatred, envy, sloth); the tendency to take for granted the benefits, rights and privileges that have been painfully won in the past and gradually squandered in the present; the eclipse of historical memory and the concomitant exhaustion of mental vigilance. Whether decline can be retarded is, of course, an open question, but one thing is certain: pushback is futile absent the recognition of the symptoms of decay.
Perhaps the most evident sign of civilizational devolution is the inability or unwillingness to acknowledge reality, to come to terms with things as they are, and to oppose the suppression of objectivity and its substitution by fantasy, illusion and wish-fulfillment.
-David Solway (a Melancholy Calculation)
(H/T: Instapundit)
