[Annatar]

I was browsing around when I came across this article:

World Gone Mad

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')ountries such as our own are more than ever home to people who say they don't belong and don't really want to.
...
And on one scary page after another I discovered a lot of influential people really had given up on defending us and this rotten society.

Sure, you wouldn't have had to borrow my paper to have guessed already that the West was in strife.

Countries such as our own are more than ever home to people who say they don't belong, and don't really want to, either. Brrrr, no.

...
These are not healthy trends. After all, people won't look after things that they don't feel are theirs -- whether it's a Housing Commission flat or a country. And even a country can fall apart with neglect.
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As I flicked with mounting alarm through that Saturday paper -- The Age, incidentally -- it seemed clear to me that we're in trouble, too.

Sure, I still trust in the good sense of most Australians, but it's clear we can no longer count on our cultural elite to defend our civilisation, if I may put it that grandly. Just flick with me through this one paper, and you'll see how hard it is for many of them to make their country seem worth joining, loving and defending.

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Annatar', '
')Is your society worth defending?

[jdumars]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Annatar', 'I')s your society worth defending?

[malcomatic_51]

There is a school of thought that the Roman Empire disappeared in the West because it failed from within rather than being swept away from without. That is, folk no longer cared much to remain Roman, so they welcomed other "barbarian" cultures that were around. The empire in the East was much robuster in its soul and lasted another thousand years, until Suliemann the Great overran Constantinople in the 1450s.

Although I don't respect the "industrialised culture", and I suspect very few do, it's better than any of the alternatives. I do not want to be part of a Moslem theocracy, nor do I want to return to the decadence of Edwardian aristocracy. I think that is all it still has going for it, but it is a (negative) strength not to be underestimated.