The decline of Western civilization is too large and multifaceted for any one man to comprehend. When we all reach out and feel different causes and consequences, we may all be in the right.
Listen to this post: Twilight Patriot - 25 Feb 2019
A
lot of people believe that the Western world in general, and the United States
in particular, are in a state of deep decline. But they have a lot of different
opinions on what this decline actually looks like, and what started us on the
path to ruin.
Was
it the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913? The beginnings of American
imperialism in the Philippines and World War I? The New Deal and the end of
economic freedom? The Leftist overrun of the universities after World War II?
The sexual revolution? Judicial despotism and legal abortion? The loss of
manufacturing jobs? The fact that from Bush Jr. onward, nobody has cared about
the deficit?
And
those are just the usual suspects. There are dozens of more obscure events on
which some thinkers pin the blame. I can even recall having an intellectually
deep conversation with a man who believed that it all went downhill starting
with the disappearance of good investigative journalists in the 1980s.
So
is one of these perspectives right, and the others all wrong? I don’t think so.
And I don’t think all the confusion means that the decline is imaginary. It’s
real. Rather, I think our situation is very much like the story of the Blind
Men and the Elephant. Here is Saxe’s version in verse:
It
was six men of Indostan
To
learning much inclined,
Who
went to see the Elephant
(Though
all of them were blind),
That
each by observation
Might
satisfy his mind.
The
First approached the Elephant,
And
happening to fall
Against
his broad and sturdy side,
At
once began to bawl:
“God
bless me!—but the Elephant
Is
very like a wall!”
The
Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried:
“Ho!—what have we here
So
very round and smooth and sharp?
To
me 'tis mighty clear
This
wonder of an Elephant
Is
very like a spear!”
The
Third approached the animal,
And
happening to take
The
squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus
boldly up and spake:
“I
see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is
very like a snake!”
The
Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And
felt about the knee.
“What
most this wondrous beast is like
Is
mighty plain,” quoth he;
“'Tis
clear enough the Elephant
Is
very like a tree”
The
Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said:
“E'en the blindest man
Can
tell what this resembles most;
Deny
the fact who can,
This
marvel of an Elephant
Is
very like a fan!”
The
Sixth no sooner had begun
About
the beast to grope,
Then,
seizing on the swinging tail
That
fell within his scope,
“I
see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is
very like a rope!”
And
so these men of Indostan
Disputed
loud and long,
Each
in his own opinion
Exceeding
stiff and strong,
Though
each was partly in the right,
And
all were in the wrong!
The
decline of Western civilization is too big to be described by a single man, or
attributed to a single cause. But when we reach out and feel that something is
horribly wrong with the status quo, we’re not mistaken, even though we notice
different flaws. There is an
elephant. It has a lot of different attributes.
And we need to take all of them seriously.


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