To add, given that the US has so many cleavages, I think one of the best Western policy examples can come from the Australian experience, from its achievements thus far, and need to respond soon given we are resting too much on misguided policy trends.

I include both industry and immigration as examples where we must modify our approach, but I will leave my thoughts for later pieces.

So please OLO readers, provide food for thought to consider on this issue.

I think the mentality of "The Country owes me" is clearly what's bringing countries to their knees. Ask anyone to put a little effort for the good of all such as a National Service & people, particularly on the Left scream & run as far & fast as they can.
Responsibility or rather the adapting of some responsibility is simply abhorrent to these people.
Western Society was built on being a little smarter & putting in more of an effort than the rest but then greed & corruption took over & here we are !
Now we have bleeding hearts & self-loathers but still, they're mere hangers-on.
Until people come to wake up & realise that the western lifestyle didn't eventuate from thin air the West will disintegrate more.

Dear Chris Lewis,

I'm not so sure about Western culture but the Aussie one has been taking a beating from the economic rationalists who have been keen to dismantle our society in some Thatcherite inspired frenzy cheered on by the right.

As I have said before the fact we now have over a third of our kids in private religious schools, that the numbers of private hospitals are now even with public ones, that the chances of home ownership for our young are being vacuumed up by those who already own their homes, these are all things that strip the once cherished notion of egalitarianism and community that was such a significant part of our culture.

The worst thing about the West is the idiotic respect that has allowed selective 'experts' to dictate policy's because gutless politicians won't do what they are paid to do. The filling of Sydney's dams yet again is another example of stupidity after the former Australian of the year said that it rains would not fill our dams again. So here we have a population of about 5 millions people and no new dams built due to the 'experts'. One of a thousand examples. Giving China masses of coal to create cheap energy while we sign deals with the UN to cut emissions is not only dumbing generations down but robbing our country. 'Experts' (deviants) teaching that humans with penis's are not male and vaginas not female is criminal. Our unis are full of professors who push marxism and division while collecting huge salaries thanks to capitalism. The list is endless. The handling of the virus is the latest nail in the coffin for the West. You can trace almost every bit of stupidity to the hatred of Christ and the bible which was the very thing that gave the West its success and prosperity.

Western civilisation will not be destroyed. It will continue on into the foreseeable future. Civilisations may go into decline but even the greatest upheavals don't destroy the essence of a civilisation. The Middle Eastern societies withstood conquest by Alexander, centuries of Hellenisation, conquests by Arabs, Mongols, Britain and France. Yet Xerxes would have understood Saddam and Sargon II, Erdogan, just as Themistocles would have understood Churchill and Cliesthenes, Jefferson.

But the anglo variant of Western Civilisation is under threat. This is the culture that ushered in the greatest advances in the history of mankind. Millennia old battles against hunger resolved. Human life expectancy doubled. Poverty, if not yet overcome, massively reduced. The secrets of science understood and harnessed. The moon visited. Women liberated. Slavery abolished.

All of that is in jeopardy as the Anglo era comes under threat both from within and without. I remain optimistic that the US will yet get its act together and therefore the anglo era will survive a lot longer still.

But were it to falter, then the advances of the past 300 years are in danger. We've already seen where the west has withdrawn, slavery reappear (ISIS, Lybia, Uyghuristan). We know that its possible to fritter away scientific advances (eg Russian agriculture following collectivisation). The notion of individual liberty means nothing in the world of the Chinese Social Credit Score.

I know that there'll be folk here who'll demur that all isn't perfect therefore its bad. The people I describe as seeing only the cracks in the Mona Lisa rather than the smile.

But the fact is the decline of the west will usher in a new dark ages.

Some people argue that the mask of Western civilization
finally fell August 6th 1945 when the United States
became the first country to use nuclear weapons on
Hiroshima and then Nagasaki - killing 130,000 people
instantly and tens of thousands more through radiation
exposure.

To many this was a descent into barbarism from which
the West has yet to recover.

"Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton bought a house
On a hill above the Bay of Nagasaki
For Madame Butterfly to die in
Before fifty years had gone
There were thousands of dead butterflies
All over a dead town
And the marriage brokers were out of a job
Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton still believes
That only American wives are real

Madame Butterfly stood at the window all night long
Waiting for Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton to climb the hill
Like any plumber or electrician since his day
He failed to come
Human beings, it is said
Spend a third of their lives in bed
Women must have spent another third
Waiting for men to turn up. If all those hours
Were laid end to end
We could have another life
Of our own

Even in 1900, Madame Butterfly was out of date
Fidelity, acceptance, death or dishonour -
What quaint anachronisms!
Lieutenant Pinkerton showed the way
The world willingly followed
Deaf to the final, questioning chord
No penalties - only consequences
Which Pinkerton cannot evade
Any more than butterflies".
(Dorothy Auchterlonie - Green).

The technology since 1945 has changed. Yet the moral
poistion is still the same as in this poem of Dorothy
Green's. One can only rid the world of atrocities only
by refusing to take part in them. Decades go by, and the
scars and sores of the past are healing over for good.
However, unless we learn from the mistakes of the
past, the tragedies, it is unlikely that we will have
a future to contemplate. The moral choice is ours to
make. Save our civilization - or destroy it.

cont'd ...