William S. Lind on democracy:
Democracy used to work in the United States, in Great Britain, and in a few other places. But both Americans and their British cousins have become frivolous peoples and their governments are now centralized and remote. The result is what history has seen many times: democracy has made way for oligarchy and both countries are now ruled by a political elite that is both incompetent and corrupt. The false god has failed.
Steve Sailer on Notre-Dame:
Alternatively, the reigning dogma might assert that since the cathedral wasn’t built by diverse peoples, Notre-Dame therefore can’t be beautiful.
The problem with this approach, though, is: Just look at it.
Victor Davis Hanson on Notre-Dame:
Logically or not, many saw the fire as a curtain call for the West, or at least an eclipse of the ancient marriage of European Christian belief and scientific brilliance that together produced the most impressive and beautiful expressions of Western transcendence.
And now the second-most-revered church in the West smolders — something that neither French revolutionaries nor World War II bombers could accomplish.
In our smug era of high tech and conspicuous consumption, Western Europeans and Americans do not build Christian cathedrals anymore. Our challenge is simply to keep standing — at least sort of — what we inherited.
Audacious Epigone on what we are losing:
Don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. We’ll finally collectively realize what a precious thing we’ve lost when all we see in every direction is rubble.
http://www.unz.com/anepigone/signs-of-civilizational-collapse/
The Z Man on the decline of the west:
Another way of viewing this, however, is to be a bit less grandiose and see the West in a transition period. The period from the French Revolution through the Second World War was driven by the technological and economic changes that swept the West. The old political order, which was rooted in the feudal economics of the middle ages, slowly and often violently gave way to a new political order rooted in capital and industry. The feudal relationship does not make a lot of sense when capital is king.
The Decline and Fall of the United States of America 