We are capable of winning this fight.
When I write about threats to Western civilization, I struggle to find the sweet spot between describing the myriad problems we face and my firm belief that we are capable of winning this fight. I do not think all is lost. I do, however, think that it is important for as many people as possible to recognize what our enemies are doing.
When we are being attacked from all sides — culturally, politically, economically, socially, parentally, morally, religiously, psychologically — it is sometimes difficult to recognize that these attacks are all connected. Those who wish to destroy Western civilization use every available weapon to hurt us. When we concentrate on nothing but “bad news,” though, we talk ourselves into premature defeat. We psych ourselves out. We give our enemies greater power over us than they have.
We cannot bury our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening. We also cannot allow what is happening to intimidate us into silence or cow us into submission. Ideally, we will become more vocal in articulating exactly what our enemies are doing, find comfort in the growing chorus of voices urging resistance, and become only more confident in our defense of Western civilization.
Sounding the alarm is not a call for surrender. Nor should hearing the alarm cause us to tremble. This is the time for courage and determination. When our Western ancestors faced similar dangers in the past, they did not hide or run away. They prepared themselves for hardship. They prayed. They retrieved hidden swords from thatched roofs, straw beds, and bales of hay.
In broad strokes, we know what’s happening. Open borders policies in North America and Europe are sabotaging social cohesion. Christianity is under attack. Reason, rationality, and scientific inquiry have been abandoned. Our shared history is continuously rewritten in ways that turn our ancestors into villains. Enlightenment ideals fostering individual sovereignty, personal freedom, and maximum liberty have been eroded by the pernicious encroachments of collectivism, Marxism, socialism, and communism. Virtue is mocked, while sin is celebrated. Unchecked desire, envy, and instant gratification have supplanted temperance, humility, and self-restraint. The indulgence of personal fantasy has superseded the pursuit of eternal truth. Schools, governments, and cultural institutions preach a false and destructive religion requiring Westerners to repent for their “climate change sins” and embrace the doctrines of “multiculturalism” and “diversity” as tenets of leftism’s “faith.”
Those are the various arrows being shot at us daily. The damage caused from such sustained onslaught is immense. Last week, conservative publications around the world carried the sad news of a twenty-five-year-old Barcelona woman named Noelia Castillo Ramos who chose to end her own life with the help of Spanish authorities. Ramos spent her childhood in Spain’s broken foster system, being moved from one facility to the next. Spain also uses these facilities to house unaccompanied foreign minors. A group of these foreign minors brutally gang raped Ramos when she was a teenager. Suffering physically and psychologically, Ramos attempted suicide by leaping from a fifth-floor window four years ago. She survived but was left paraplegic. Spanish authorities deemed her “severe mental suffering” sufficient grounds to grant her plea for State-assisted death.
Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek spoke for many Westerners who have mourned Ramos’s death when she wrote: “The system didn’t fail her, it actively betrayed her. This girl’s tragic story is a perfect illustration of how the establishment feels about European women. They first endanger you and then when you need help and cost them too much money, they push you to your grave.”
The life of Noelia Castillo Ramos is a terrible indictment of the malignant forces working to collapse Western civilization. State-run childcare facilities cannot replace the immeasurable value of a loving mother and father. Uncontrolled immigration invites predators to prey on our nations’ children. Western governments’ evil efforts to protect foreign rapists and murderers from public scrutiny have aided and abetted the exploitation and abuse of our most vulnerable citizens for decades. Because of the State’s complicity and the corporate news media’s silence, the butcher’s bill of victims has only grown. Ignored and kept hidden, victims are deprived of life-saving attention, counseling, rehabilitation, Christian nurturing, physical recovery, and the salubrious promise of spiritual salvation. In place of familial protection, social support, cultural camaraderie, and Christian fellowship, the forgotten members of our societies receive the cold indifference of government bureaucracy. When those most suffering cry out in pain, the same institutions that failed to secure the border or provide for citizens’ safety offer State-sponsored death.
Discarding the moral and intellectual enlightenment obtained over centuries of work and contemplation, today’s governments have abandoned the hallmarks of Western civilization and reanimated the rotting corpses of paganism, hedonism, idolatry, and child sacrifice. While Western citizens desperately seek civilizational renewal, Western governments do nothing but fan the flames of the growing inferno.
In the United States, Democrat Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal is demanding that law enforcement agents who arrest illegal aliens be prosecuted and that illegal aliens who have been detained receive monetary “reparations.” For decades, Democrats (and Establishment Republicans) have aided and abetted foreign nationals in illegally entering the United States. Many of these illegal aliens steal American citizens’ social security numbers and commit various forms of identity theft and fraud in order to collect welfare benefits or secure employment. Democrats wish to reward the criminals and punish their victims.
Criminals who have no legal right to be in the United States — including those who fled criminal prosecutions in their native homelands — go on to commit new crimes while here. Violent foreign nationals who should not be here have raped and murdered far too many Americans. Negligent foreign nationals who should not be here have killed far too many Americans while driving cars and commercial trucks across the country. Far too many schools have been forced to figure out how to teach illegal alien children who cannot speak English or easily assimilate. Far too many towns and cities have been forced into insolvency while providing ever-expanding social services for illegal aliens whom American taxpayers cannot afford. Far too many hospitals are overrun with illegal alien patients who delay treatment for and drive up the healthcare costs of Americans. And now the Democrat Party wants to pay the tens of millions of foreigners who illegally reside here “reparations” for feeling “unsafe.”
You know who doesn’t feel safe? American citizens. At some point, they will be forced to seek reparations from the same government officials who do everything to feed, shelter, and protect foreigners while leaving Americans poorer and less secure.
In responding to the pro-foreigner / anti-American policies of Representative Jayapal and her Democrat colleagues, one online commenter concluded, “Sometimes seems like only a civil war will save this country.” That’s a sentiment widely held throughout the West these days.
Last week, a European Parliament conference concluded that the whole continent is headed for civil war. One professor argued that “the foundations of Western self-belief, prosperity, and competency” are now broken and that Europe is “on a track for a peasant revolt.” In response to Western governments’ betrayal of Western civilization, there will be an “uprising in which the ruled seek to punish their rulers for violating their obligations under the social contract, and for changing the rules of the game against their wishes.” Most of the politicians and academics who participated in the conference do not believe that Europe will survive this century. Although they expressed various opinions about how the coming chaos will unfold, they reached a common conclusion: “It will be bloody.”
Those of us who wish to defend the West should not scurry and hide. We should recognize the moment and prepare ourselves accordingly. Our enemies are everywhere. That’s okay. We are everywhere, too.
American Thinker
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 