Here There Be Monsters: The Global War on Western Civilization

Will We Be Bathed in Eternal Darkness?

NOTE: This will be a somewhat different article than usual. Instead of doing a deep dive into a lesser-reported story, I’d like to give my take on the wrong turn our civilization has taken. Please let me know with a comment if you’d like to see more of these, and whether a podcast or article is more to your liking. Thanks!

One of the greatest problems at present is that all the little things that made Western civilization work are under attack. Economically, socially, religiously, and politically, the aspects of how the West once functioned and turned itself from a relatively small region full of backward states into a world-ruling behemoth have been subverted or destroyed. The cost, if that attack succeeds, will be the downfall of civilization itself.

There are various ways that destruction of our civilization has become apparent. People no longer read, and are encouraged not to read the great books of the Western canon because they were written by “dead white men.” Pornography is ominpresent and entering even mundane aspects of life. Abortion and drug use are encouraged by popular culture. On and on it goes.

But while the effects of the war on civilization are manifold, I think the avenues of attack and thus reasons for our degradation take four main avenues: the economic, social, religious and political ways in which the pre-August of 1914 world worked are under attack and the result is that we are now stuck in the abominable present. So, I’ll explore what I see as being under attack and how it’s shaping our present society much for the worse.

Check out the audio version of this article here:

[AUDIO] The Global War on Western Civilization

Economic Degredation

The Root of Western Economic Success

Take the economic aspect. The basis of the West’s global supremacy from the Napoleonic Wars to World War II was the Industrial Revolution. As the British noted at Omdurman, if a railroad or gunboat could make it to a spot, the Europeans could handily defeat the natives. Even when rail or gunboat presence was impossible, an infantry force armed with modern artillery, machine guns, and repeaters often could defeat the natives quite easily, as shown by Rorke’s Drift.

In short, Europe’s material might was unstoppable and gave it indisputable mastery over the world. That material might was rooted in the Industrial Revolution, and the only reason that the Industrial Revolution was able to occur is that the landed elite in England had the wealth, built up over centuries, to produce the food and contribute the capital necessary for industrialization.

First, the Agricultural Revolution had to occur. Via modernized techniques, vastly expensive enclosure, and improvements in road and canal infrastructure that made producing more food worthwhile, English farmers were able to produce more food per acre. That increased food both freed up laborers for factory work and fed them. It required vast amounts of capital, sometimes 10 to 20 pounds per acre in improvement and enclosure costs, or a present value of somewhere around $20,000).¹ Over even a relatively small estate of 10,000 acres, then, the present cost of such improvement would be $200,000,000 or more. But pay that huge cost the landed elites did, much to their and the country’s benefit.

Then came the transportation revolution. Improving the roads wasn’t enough, as only so much coal and ore can be transported by cart. So, the landed elites once again contributed a vast amount of capital, first to building canals and then to building the railroads. Untold billions were spent on digging canals, constructing railroads, and building ports, such as the port at Cardiff into which the Marquesses of Bute poured hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds of their money.² That would amount to billions of dollars today.

That new infrastructure could handle the vast loads of ore, coal, and goods the Industrial Revolution required the transportation of. Whether floating on the water or pulled by a steam engine, the coal mined in Wales and the North made it to the factories, where it fueled the fiery bellows of the steel plants or looms of the textile lords.

Those factories didn’t come cheap, however, nor did the shipping companies or trading companies that hawked their wares across the empire. So, once again, the landed elites, now assisted as with the railroads by an increasingly wealthy capitalist elite, poured money into the new businesses.

That’s how the Industrial Revolution was born: in Britain, step by expensive step, those with resources invested heavily in the future. Of course, they weren’t doing it for free; other than in the expensive and generally unremunerative railroads, they made a great deal off of their investments and that wealth carried them through the coming agricultural depression.³

But it was their willingness to invest in the future that powered the country and its success. Because they they could think ahead and appreciate the importance of handing a good future to their heirs, they sunk their resources into innovation and improvement rather than mindless consumption; they were, as I like to put it, Grosvenors rather than Vanderbilts.⁴ The country thrived as a result. Thus, their longterm view that estates are inherited and meant to be improved and passed on rather than mortgaged to go on a cruise, not only held on in the Industrial Era but created that era and originally thrived under it. Not only Britain, but the rest of the West, thrived as a result and used the innovations of the Industrial Revolution to conquer the world.

Economics Now

Now, however, that low-time preference thinking is under attack. Our democratic, socialist elites care not for the fact that “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit,” as the proverb goes,⁵ and don’t want to encourage that thinking. Rather, they want to encourage both massive consumption that “stimulates the economy” in the short term (never ask such a person what happens the day after tomorrow, when investment runs out, for they haven’t an answer and get angry when you ask) and death tax policies that effectively prohibit the dynastic transfer of wealth unless one is careful to use exotic instruments like foreign shell companies and dynasty trusts.⁶

The consumption aspect of it is utterly insane. Singapore, for example, is a counter-example in that it effectively requires residents to contribute to a retirement fund and medical fund with each paycheck. As a result it doesn’t need to sink unending amounts of money into a public pension fund the young know won’t be around when they make it to retirement age.⁷ Here, by contrast, and in much of the wealth generally, saving is disincentivized. The government encourages materialism and consumption of consumer goods, pushes lower rates on bonds while pushing up inflation, thus penalizing saving, and allows savings-shredding things like internet sports betting to balloon in popularity, whatever the cost to those using them. So, saving for the future, much less investing for those who will follow you in three generations, is attacked rather than encouraged.

Similarly, the idea of a dynasty is attacked both morally and economically. Constantly, the idea is promoted that the government has some right to whatever savings one would pass on once dead, and that it’s “unfair,” and thus should be illegal, for someone to inherit a fortune or position in society.⁸ Similarly, insane death taxes, capital gains taxes, and unrealized capital gains taxes⁹ are pushed as a way of prying investments and savings out of the hands of those who earned the money and want to pass it on, and into the wasteful hands of government so that the proceeds of the family business can be used to create more Section 8 housing.

The impulse, then, is to destroy the very thing that led to the Industrial Revolution and made the West great: dynasties full of men who care deeply about the future generations and want to build in the present for those heirs six generations on. Instead, they want mindless slaves that consume endlessly, proving short-term profits for megacorporations and tax dollars for wasteful government programs.

That is a direct war on civilization, as it strikes at our civilization’s most important root: our dominance, our ability to triumph against great odds abroad while being highly prosperous and innovative at home, thus fueling future triumphs abroad.

Social Chaos

The Social Ladder of the Old World

Socially, the West was what it was because the social system created a constant quest for self-improvement so that one’s children could have privileges the parents did not, or at least advantages in wealth and status the parents did not.

Like the Industrial Revolution aspect of the roots of and war on Civilization, that is best seen in England, though present across the West generally.

There, as mentioned before, there was a social hierarchy into which the worst of the old sort generally fell out and the best of the new men entered over time.

At the base of the top of the pyramid were the gentlemen, or gentry. These were untitled men who could live off the income generated by capital, generally landed estates with some government bonds and dividend-paying equities. Over gentlemen but still on the gentry part the social ladder were baronets, who tended to have around the same amount of wealth as gentlemen, and were also not part of the peerage, but did have a hereditary title and so received more social distinction. Above them were the peers: barons, viscounts, earls, marquesses, and dukes. These aristocrats of the kingdom were hereditary members of the House of Lords and tended to have vast amounts of wealth, with some owning hundreds of thousands of acres of land. Below the gentlemen and peers was the rest of the nation, from the poorest laborer to the richest capitalist new man.¹⁰ These gentlemen were the ones who generally served the state and empire without much in the way of remuneration, and did so without the sort of tyranny modern bureaucrats have established. ¹¹

New men, or those who made a fortune in trade or business instead of inheriting it from a Norman ancestor or friend of Henry VIII in the distant past, wanted to enter the hierarchy so they’d have social distinction. Fortunately, the British system let them do so. The general avenue was buying an estate from one of the dissipated nobles or gentlemen, and handing it down for a few generations until neighbors forgot the family’s origins. “We know not whether Adam was the first man,” the saying goes, “but what we know for sure is that he was not the first gentleman, for that takes a few generations.”¹² Generally the worst, most dissipated members of the old order would fail to have offspring and the title would pass to someone better in line for it or die out, and the estate bought by a new man. Often, the politically involved, better of the new men would earn a title, whether a baronetcy or peerage title, adding to their ability to win social distinction and enter the upper rungs of the elite, with all the fun parties and invitations that entailed.

Thus, there was a great incentive to build wealth and pass it down for generations, as mentioned above. If you did so, your children or grandchildren would likely enjoy the social advantages you lacked. So, the social system of the Old World stimulated economic growth and exploits abroad, the two ways to win enough wealth to become a gentleman, and encouraged responsibility, as an estate could be lost if not managed with prudence. Similarly, it discouraged dissipation and the degeneracy it generally entailed, as such was the route out of Society and into the debtor’s prison at best and a death of the title and sale of the estate at worst.

While the example is clearest in Britian, where the old landed world and new commerical world mixed better than in commercial America or land-focused Prussia, much the same was true. The best new men competed for social distinction, even if they couldn’t become a junker or win a title in a land without a peerage, and so things progressed becuase there was a cause for the talented new to try to build something. The Morgan dynasty in America is a great example: the patriarch’s humble origins and hard work led to JP Morgan’s eventually being one of the most important and renowned men in America.¹³

Modern Social Nonsense

If the effect of the Old World’s social system was to encourage prudence and discourage degneracy, the effect of ours is quite the opposite, and now prudence is discouraged and dissipation deemed the height of all that’s good.

For one, the egalitarian present despises the hereditarian principle. In the past, it was understood that, as Lord Birkenhead said of the immensely impressive Cecil family, political dynamos and leaders since Elizabeth I, "In human beings as in horses, there is something to be said for the hereditary principle." Now, merely saying that would probably be enough to disqualify one from elected office and the British are getting rid of the hereditary peers’ position in Parliament for good,¹⁴ with few on right or left other than the most committed Old Worldists offering a shred of justification for the Lords to continue existing as it was in 2023, much less 1909, before the Parliament Bill.

So, with egalitarianism ruling, those of note see little reason to try to create a dynasty. Buffett, Gates, and others have made the quite evil decision to donate their wealth to the vague idea of charity rather than use it to build a dynasty. That not only robs future generations of what could have been social prominence, but encourages others to do the same and strike at one of the very roots of Western civilization, the idea that one should do all possible to make the world better for the next generations and advance them socially. Yet worse, others have pledge to “Die with Zero,” which combines the refusal to think of the future with degenerate materialism.¹⁵

Then there’s the degeneracy and dissipation aspect. Whereas in the past prudence, manners, and being a good shot with a shotgun or hunter of the fox were the route into social distinction, now the only real way to be treated as different than one’s fellows in a good way by mainstream society is to be some form of degenerate, namely by becoming transgender. Now their are top-surgeries instead of peerages, with all the societal degeneration that entials.

The result, then, is to once again push people away from what made the West great. Gone are the days of building a great estate and planting trees on it in the shade of which you will never grow old but under which your grandson will be called “My Lord.” Gone is the impulse for building something great strengthened by the promise of indefinite social distinction that comes with it, and thus all the great progress and innovation that came as a result. Instead we have wasteful charities, dead dynasties, and varying forms of degeneracy.

Religious Decay

The religion aspect of this is quite simple, and so can be kept short. In the West’s glory days, the best men were Christian soldiers. Like Lord Kitchener at Omdurman, Chinese Gordon in Peking, or Dr. Livingstone in the Congo, they were brave men who used modern technology to open the pagan and Islamic swathes of land to Christian rule. With such rule came the pith-helmeted missionaries who followed them with aplomb and attempted to rescue sinners in the hands of an angry God, pagan and fallen Christian alike.

In doing so, both the soldiers and missionaries were filled with a sense of duty to their religion and profound belief in its tenants that led to them marching into quite hostile environments to pacify pagan natives and then teach them the good word, often with no small degree of success. They both believed deeply in the teachings of the Word, keeping them from straying too far into the dissipated life of a degenerate that would have meant social exile, and believed it must be spread. That meant the flag and cross triumphed where they went, whether pushed there by the Texas Rangers or Scots Highlanders, and the society from which it came was a Christian one rather than a degenerate one.

Not so much anymore. Now, most religious teachings are some form of heresy and those preaching them seemingly want plaudits from the unreligious much more than they want salvation for themselves, still less their flocks. Missionaries are, fortunately, still around and attempting to spread the word, but no longer do Christian soldiers like Chinese Gordon lead the way with repeaters at their side and lances in hand. Instead they’re left to the often quite lacking mercies of the natives, and the Word isn’t spread to those who need it, and meanwhile rots at home as leftism removes the parts of the Bible it won’t tolerate in the name of tolerance.

Political Chaos, As Should Have Been Expected

Wolves Used to Not Be Allowed to Eat Sheep

When the West became great, it wasn’t a mass democracy.¹⁶ As might be expected given the social ladder, things were much more in the hands of a landed elite. Only those with a certain amount of landed property could vote, with the idea that one who could steward wealth well or manage a farm successful couldn’t be that irresponsible as to vote for the irresponsible candidates promising the world at someone else’s expense.

That system held on in Rhodesia into the 1960s, but fell apart in America when Jackson ran on universal white male suffrage as a way of winning popular support, and fell apart in Britain as continental unrest led to internal riots and demands for a vote, culminating in the First Reform Bill.¹⁷ Still, though, the Lords had their veto until the 1911 Parliament Bill pushed by Winston Churchill and Lloyd George, so there were some limitations on the system.

The limitations, particularly before the 1830s, meant that responsible policies were pushed for the good of the nation rather than to loot the treasury in exchange for temporary public support. Later on, the landed republics turned into mass democracies, with the last line being women’s suffrage.

Now the Wolves Vote for Dinner

Those old limitations on voting are long gone. Now, everyone from Elon Musk to the local crack dealer can vote, and their votes count the exact same, without regard to thoughtfulness, prudence, or societal contribution.

The result is exactly what might be expected: democracy choosing Barabbas and the looting of the treasury phase of decline.¹⁸ The national debt is well over $34 trillion and growing by trillions of dollars, an unfathomable amount of money, a year, and few care even as unfunded liabilities for programs like Social Security grow well past what might ever be even remotely payable.¹⁹ Meanwhile, issues like trans bathrooms are matters of national concern and inprudent voters vote themselves ever more welfare programs and handouts as the last few coins rattle in the treasury. For this reason, the gold standard is gone, most former prohibitions on immoral and harmful conduct, from online betting to drug use, are decriminalized or legalized, and America’s future generations face repaying a mountain of debt. Similarly, now only the top few percent of the income scale pay the majority of taxes, inflation runs rampant, and all the things that used to work are falling apart for lack of focus on them instead of DEI and ESG.

All of that would have been avoided by a landed voting system. No landowner whose family has owned and/or farmed the same land for centuries would vote for a 40% death tax, 40% income tax, and unpayable pension program, still less the 90% taxes of the 20th Century.²⁰ But the general public that won’t pay the taxes will. The same could be said of inflation, soft-on-crime policies, anti-paternalistic laws that allow all the worst forms of exploitation, and the rest of our modern disaster. These are things a responsible government, as Rhodesia called its propertied voting system, would screen out well before they were even voted on. But a mass democracy does whatever it wants, often with disastrous results.

The World We Love Is Under Attack

The Western world was built largely on the ideas of prudence in the present, investing in the future, watching out for the lower orders, and creating empires in the name of God and glory. Whether that meant preserving an estate that existed for centuries, building a business so that your children might pass down it or an estate in such a manner, or conquering new territory so that your beloved nation’s flag would flutter over it as missionaries preached to the people, it was a world that worked well and in which the right behavior was incentivized. It was, in other words, a land in which one not only could do what one ought, but was incentivized to do so and praised for it.

Not now. What one ought do hasn’t changed much, if at all. Prudence, caring about the future and one’s descendants, investing for them, building greatness, spreading the Gospel, etc., all of it is still there even if the way to accomplish it has changed somewhat. However, now all that is disincentivized by a government and culture that will mock and despise you for doing what you ought, for living how your ancestors did, for building a world in which your great-grandchildren will love living. That is not only a war on the present and those living in it, it is a war on Western civilization itself.

Featured image credit: By Steve Swayne - File:O Partenon de Atenas.jpg, originally posted to Flickr as The Parthenon Athens, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17065839

1. Bovill, in English Country Life 1780-1830 describes the massive costs of enclosure

2. See, Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute by Davies

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6. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/inheritance/inheritance-tax-and-how-the-dukes-of-westminster-avoid-it-on-the/

7. See Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew

8. Raising children worthy of empires

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10. I wrote about the old-style social system here:

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12. The English Country Gentleman by Lytton

13. See The House of Morgan by Chernow

14. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgl2j90ydzgo

15. An attack on nihilist 'Die With Zero' philosophy

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