Life in the Ruins

From The Brussels Journal, January 2, 2009

. . . Do we not live under daily threat of wanton violence perpetrated against the civilized by the savage, who wish to reduce everything to savagery because civilization measures for them their own productive sterility and so inspires them with bloodthirsty invidia against real achievement?

Is travel not now arduous, humiliating, and risky compared to forty years ago? Are public servants not surly and useless? Is art not debased? Are not criminal gangs effectively in control of huge swaths of the urban environment and police forces unable ensure public safety? Is our politics not corrupt and soulless, a kind of large-scale bribery and Caesarism under the mendacious rubric of democracy? Are we not haunted by the depletion of fuel and with it energy and prosperity? Is wealth not disappearing as we live and breathe? Are we not therefore less free and is our situation not much less civilized than in previous generations? . . . Read the whole article