The Luckiest Generation - With apologies to my children
This has to be the most pessimistic essay I've read to date. I'm not sure whether this is the end of European civilization, but it is definitely the end of an era. And yes, we will face some very troubling times for several decades until a new era can begin:The Luckiest Generation - With apologies to my children
Born between VE Day and VJ Day, I missed all the greatest horrors of the 20th century. If granted a normal lifespan**, I shall miss the horrors of the 21st, too. If my parents' generation was the greatest, mine has been the luckiest. For that, in this Thanksgiving season, I give sincere and heartfelt thanks. Government is hopelessly broken. Though far larger now than in 1957, it does less, and it does that less very badly. Its most elementary functions — defending our borders, keeping a thrifty eye on the national wealth, apprising us of what our enemies are up to — are no longer performed to any effect. These failures themselves are only symptoms of some more profound civilizational sickness. Western — let us be blunt about it: white-European — civilization is on its way out. If you make a study of any aspect of cultural history — I have just finished a book on one such topic — you are struck by the towering achievements of Europeans and their offspring cultures during the 19th century (which lasted from 1815 to 1914). What went before was mere prologue; what came after were futile, frustrated attempts to re-heat the soufflé. There is of course a sense in which the horrors of 1914-1945 were themselves a product of19th-century overconfidence. Once we had got all that out of our system, though, and found the point of balance, the later 20th century was set to be a garden of delights for those of us in free nations. So much was this so, we did not notice that we were romping through that garden in a deepening twilight.
If I compare my own life to the lives of my parents, and to the prospects for my children, I am struck by my immense good fortune in having been born when and where I was. I was actually born early on a Sunday morning, in a nursing home behind St. Matthew's church in Northampton, England, three weeks after VE Day. I was fit and ready. Lucky! Lucky! Lucky! I can't believe my kids will have that kind of luck. The welfare state, which provided my education, no longer works — not for them, not for anybody. (I sometimes marvel at how well it did work to lift up the deserving poor in the years after WWII. Don't laugh; it really did.) I shall have to beggar myself to put the little Derbs through college, and they will likely still end up with huge debts. There will be no 9-to-5 jobs for them to go to after graduation, quite possibly no jobs at all other than in government work. To my kids I should like to say: I am sorry to have brought you into this mess. There were no bells ringing, no bands playing, at either of your births, and it would have been a travesty if there had been. Even the wisest of us — people like your Dad, I mean — live in part by instinct, and there is no instinct stronger than the one that prompts us to continue the species; so here you are. I am sorry, sorry. There was the Greatest Generation. Then there was ours, the Luckiest. Yours will be the Saddest. Quite possibly — so far as this civilization is concerned, at any rate — it will be the Last. I shall continue to do my best for you as long as I can, but... après moi le Deluge.
posted by Unknown @ 12:38 AM
5 Comments:
It is revolting to look at the leaders we have today, lying to us, lying to themselves. Certainly makes you pessimistic as they busily dig a hole we cannot escape.
Oh for crying out loud. Of course the future will be crappy if you roll over and play dead!!!
Where is your spirit, your courage?
Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers!
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart from me.
A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day!
An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day!
This day we fight!
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!
A man with children should be a LOT less self pitying and a LOT more proactive.
The enemy in this case will win ONLY IF YOU LET THEM.
I guess like the author I'm a member of the 'luckiest' generation and my parents were from the 'greatest’ generation, but I am thankful every day that my son and some members of his generation are at this moment fighting Islamic fascism. I just wish more members of all generations would realize the threat it imposes on western civilization.
Daffersd:
I don't know how old your children are, but I made sure my children were exposed to history and geography way beyond what they were taught in school and saw in the MSM. After 9/11 it was no surprise to me that my son said that he was going to postpone college and enlist, because he understood what the stakes were and are.
Daffersd-
Of course parents worry about their children and their future! I have three children of my own.
But anyone who looks at this as the worst of times has no historical perspective.
We are also not walking into this conflict blind, without friends, and without resources. There are many in the world with fewer assets who are suffering much more under the whip of Islamism. What about Darfur?
Even my peaceful childhood was overshadowed by bomb shelters and the threat of global thermonuclear war with Russia. My parents had to contend with the Great Depression, WWII, as well as the communist threat.
The best thing you can do is speak out honestly about the problems we face, and raise your children to be strong.
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