Droopy wrote:Muslim culture did contribute to the advancement of humanity - in medieval times - (as did the Celtic) but Islamic society has been on the skids for about 500 years, and in deep decline for the entire 20th century. The Muslim world, broadly speaking, was closely allied with the Nazis, and Nazi anti-Semitism, throughout WWII, and were then allied with the Soviets for the entirety of the Cold War.
This is a failed civilization. The West, however, under the crushing, decadent weight of "progressivism," is on its own trajectory of decline and fall.
I always get a kick out of stuff like this.
What Droopy is doing here is articulating a philosophy of history. Well, he isn’t
really doing it, he is just parroting the same tropes that have been in circulation since the mid 18th century. People love to bemoan the coming doom of “Western culture” and pin its demise on their favorite pet topics.
In a sense, people become what Karl Popper called “historical prophets” and it is a great metaphor. Israel’s own prophetic tradition has a strong history of calling the nation to pay attention to the woes of the orphans and widows and get back into the spirit of true religion, the proper worship and behavior towards God. Droopy is doing the same, predicting the demise of our society and placing the blame on our collective inability to call evil what it really is, evil.
Of course, Popper’s targets were doing much more than predicting doom, they were attempting to explain history itself, and how civilizations rise and fall. Augustine innovated this for the “West” with his city of God, but a long line of brilliant thinkers have tried their hand, Vico, Comte, Hegel, Marx, Soloviev, Walter Benjamin even gave it a go in 1940...
In my opinion, no one has given even a moderately successful attempt, all have fallen short of being able to predict the ebb and flow of humanity with any given regularity that wasn’t some self fulfilling prophecy.
And yet low n behold, an angry bumpkin has unlocked the secret all these great thinkers had failed to grasp. It makes me sigh really, since technically Droops and I are birds of a feather. There is an art form to being a proper reactionary, but I think it has been lost to Americans since the rise of mass media where it is too easy to self select what tidbits are easily digestible to your political gut.