Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Were Spengler still around, I suspect he'd retrospectively deem what happened during the 1930s and 1940s as a warning wave and what appears to be unfolding now the real deal.

Not if he was up on the cosmic tides too, which were reflected in what he wrote back then. No, the old western civilization has already collapsed in the world wars. What we have now is a new world, but it is disrupted by a few demons who hog all the press. The demons just need to be contained and suppressed, and we'll be fine. We are on an upward projectory, if we just realize it.

Originally Posted by nihilist moron

So what? You think a realist prepares for world war anyway.
All we do by butting in is add fuel to the fire and make these idiots want to blow us up in our own country. We don't need that shit.

A realist prepares for war all the while trying to contain conflicts preventing them from being ignition zones for global total war. Also, selfishly, those containment actions are wonderful opportunities to test things that will be needed in the inevitable next total war. I know peace-niks and others state that you cannot simultaneously prepare for and prevent war, but actually, yes, you can (and, unless foolish, must).

"Happy is the city which, during a time of peace, prepares for war." - Motto found on the wall of a 15th Century Venetian armory

Originally Posted by Ksim

Still interesting point you make about the 'Blue Yankee Puritans'. I tend to find this is mainly the case when it comes to Americans on a more liberal spectrum. They believe in interfering in global affairs whenever possible in order to impose their own world view. Yet when it comes to the 'Red Conservatives', I tend to find this group not only the ones that are sympathetic to nationalist ideas when it comes to Europeans but also the only group that wants the U.S to pull out from its international duties on the world stage and adopt a more isolationist stance. Most in this group tend to follow the Ron Paul ideas of non-interventionism, which I can agree with.

According to elections and my observations, the biggest contingent of non-intervention is among liberals. The Paul devotees do not do very well in their party. Blue liberals tend toward peaceniks, while red conservatives are mostly militarists. The anti-interventionist Democrats elected a president; the anti-interventionist Republicans can't even win a primary in a single state.

It is unfortunately a very popular misconception that the liberal left have when it comes to nationalism. Yet they also forget that many of the heroic characters they do praise throughout history such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and even Ho Chi Minh were also nationalists. All three men wanted their own people to not only just have a homeland but the right to run their own affairs. Aside from Uncle Ho, both Nelson and Mahatma engaged in a more peaceful struggle against oppression. Yet their own values were just the same as mine.

What we have to remember is that Adolf Hitler was no nationalist but actually was a Germanic Imperialist. The two concepts of both nationalism and imperialism are two different ideologies. Nationalists believe in the right to run their own homelands and be left alone to their own traditions. Imperialists believe in expanding their own racial, cultural, economic and other values at whatever cost is necessary. Hitler was a racial imperialist but the liberals in America tend to be of the more cultural flavour. Imperialism is still imperialism and it is wrong.

You're right about imperialism, and I remind you again what I pointed out about nationalism. Yours is a 19th century view, and that can also be said for Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh, etc. Nations were considered vehicles of liberation, because they empowered the people of the nation rather than a dynasty and/or a colonial/imperial power. But nationalism led also to rivalries for power, and it could not be separated from imperialism in the period from 1850 to 1914. Nations can still empower the people against corporate and neo-colonial powers today. On the other hand, immigration is inevitable in a global society, and the desire for racial purity within nations has nothing to do with empowering the people against the powerful. It usually aligns with the latter, especially in the USA where race baiting serves to keep the militarist, economic-libertarian elite in power against the people.

Race purity is not a realistic nor desireable goal; set your sights rather on proper balance rather than purity or being over-run, and on democratic reform among the people in the "nations" from which people are escaping to the first world.

Actually I do agree with you. The fault of mass immigration is actually karma paying us back. Had we left them alone, they probably would have left us alone. Hence it is our own fault for getting it into our heads the idea of "the white man's burden" and having to bring "civilisation" to the world. Yet this is essentially what America is also doing with its promotion of what I term "American Globalisation". Posters on here advocate a similar mindset, particularly Odin. It is up to America to bring liberal and global ideas to the world less it not be enlightened. Very, very similar mindset and concepts to 19th century European colonialism.

That said, the sins of the fathers may haunt the children but the grandchildren have played no role in the past. It is time to move on. Yes, Europe must accept its past responsibilities but on the other hand, filling its own homelands up with various peoples throughout the world is also not a way to right a wrong. This itself will only bring on future genocide against the native Europeans and probably itself lead to a civil war. The Europeans themselves may have adopted an "end of history" mentality but people from elsewhere around the world have not.

When you have a population used to peace vs a population used to conflict, the population that has fought war will always devour the peaceful population as war and survival is all they know. It is not their fault of course but they know nothing else and having to try and re-educate a large mass migration of such people takes a long, long time. If such people keep on coming and coming in vast numbers on a yearly basis, then it becomes harder to help them change their ways and as a result, you will end up carrying on the conflict they were escaping from into the new homeland.

I do think Europe is paying for its past sins but on the other hand, Europeans too will eventually become more nationalistic and fight for their homelands at some point just like the Algerians, the Vietnamese, the Congolese and other oppressed groups did throughout history. A white man should not hold the whip over the black man and the black man should not hold the whip over the white man.

But it is not our right to interfere. That is their culture and their traditions. It is up to them to have their own reformation of ideas. Just because you find it immoral does not mean they do. We can offer them new suggestions but ultimately it is for them to decide what to do in the long run. Forcing them to take on our ideas is just another form of imperialism which I also find abhorrent. Of course, I don't like hunting whales and dolphins just like many others yet I'm not going to tell them what to do as it is not my place. Same with female genital mutilation. Let them sort it out, its not our place to dictate to them what is right and wrong about their culture.

Eventually the Islamic and even the oriental world will probably repent and have a revelation on how best to enlighten their own cultures and societies. Until then, we should just leave them be and focus on our own culture. Fair is fair.

It's good that you recognize that Europe as well as America have helped screw up the Middle East. But Europeans seeking to keep peoples fleeing oppression out, is not like the Algerians and Vietnamese who fought to keep colonial imperialists out. Immigration is not colonial imperialism. Mostly, the Middle East has screwed itself up, by allowing themselves to be ruled by fanatics and dictators. Posters like me and Odin do not advocate American globalization; that was George W Bush, and liberals like us were strenuously and most passionately opposed to Bush's "project" of a new American Century imposed by force.

If some of us (I'm not speaking for Odin) say that "western democratic ideals" will prevail in the world, it is because in this age of revolution the people themselves in these non-western areas want democracy. The Arab Spring, most especially in Syria, was the people rising up for freedom. They were met with destruction of their country by their dictator, and hence the immigration. Europe can offer (perhaps temporary) respite for some of them and give aid to other refugees over there, and to their army. Only when Assad is gone, and freedom comes to Syria, will the immigration stop. We DO need to help the free Syrians, but we don't need to interfere by sending troops or taking over the country like Bush did in Iraq-- thus causing the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State there and in Syria.

I don't get this. On the one hand you want a global world where everyone is pretty much the same yet on the other hand, you want multi-nations in America? This is pretty much the concept I have been arguing about. Let people have multi-nations if it makes them happy but one big global world of the same ideological mindset is not a good thing. We are not robots - we all have different needs and emotions and if it makes us better to be separated, then let it be.

That said though I will give you credit Eric because you are at least willing to let people live apart from you if they don't agree with your ideals. Some liberals would heavily disagree with this and take up a "we must stamp anything out" attitude they do not like.

We the people will decide how many nations we want in the current USA. I prefer that we make this decision without war.

Out of curiosity, how many of the people citing Spengler here have actually read The Decline of the West or the Hour of Decision?

One thing to point out, some US and European actions against the Islamic State has a lot of support on both the Left and the Right. There is consensus on that, and that could make this an issue on which the America unites in a partial "regeneracy." So, peace and war issues are not all alike. Because liberals favor US air support for people fighting the IS now, does not mean they favor such adventurism as the earlier wars in Iraq.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Out of curiosity, how many of the people citing Spengler here have actually read The Decline of the West or the Hour of Decision?

Don't hold your breath waiting for people to raise their hands.
It's probably the same number who cite Darwin and have actually read The Origin of Species or The Descent of Man.

Originally Posted by nihilist moron

Don't hold your breath waiting for people to raise their hands.
It's probably the same number who cite Darwin and have actually read The Origin of Species or The Descent of Man.

Yeah, thanks, but the question was rhetorical more than anything else. I can tell by their comments that they have no idea what they're talking about.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Yeah, thanks, but the question was rhetorical more than anything else. I can tell by their comments that they have no idea what they're talking about.

Thanks to wikipedia, nobody reads anything anymore.
It's like everyone is a high school student trying to get by on the Cliff Notes.
(For those too young to remember, google it!)

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Not if he was up on the cosmic tides too, which were reflected in what he wrote back then. No, the old western civilization has already collapsed in the world wars. What we have now is a new world, but it is disrupted by a few demons who hog all the press. The demons just need to be contained and suppressed, and we'll be fine. We are on an upward projectory, if we just realize it.

Realistically, in a new world that might emerge after the diminishing of The West, your form of belief would be hunted down. You would not even feel comfortable writing on an internet forum, even using a fake name. You state the West has already collapsed, replaced already by some sort of globalized Aquarian Civilization.

It has not. The fact you can study, embrace and try to adopt said Aquarian Civilization means the West is still very much alive.

The West led to you Eric.

The absence of the West would mean you'd be a marked man.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Realistically, in a new world that might emerge after the diminishing of The West, your form of belief would be hunted down. You would not even feel comfortable writing on an internet forum, even using a fake name. You state the West has already collapsed, replaced already by some sort of globalized Aquarian Civilization.

It has not. The fact you can study, embrace and try to adopt said Aquarian Civilization means the West is still very much alive.

The West led to you Eric.

The absence of the West would mean you'd be a marked man.

You will see, I think, that the demons that haunt us now (including Islamic militants, dictators like Assad, neo-confederates in the USA), who already shape the news in far disproportionate numbers, will decline and fade away, if not blown or bombed away.

The West as a civilization died in Hitler's bunker. But its legacy lives on, and democracy is the most valuable part of that legacy for people worldwide. The arts and science that The West created will live on too, although already Western classical art is far less dominant compared to pop and other usually-trashy commercial "art" forms, and today's materialist science paradigm will probably decline; partly from within.

The West led to me, but the East is also very much a part of my heritage. I would not think and feel in the ways that I do today without Oriental culture. And The South is influential culturally too-- especially in its influence on popular music and in "shamanic" culture.

The "Aquarian global Civilization" does not mean the "absence" of The West, any more than the absence of all the other cultures that have contributed to this current global culture we live in. It just means that to speak of "Western Civilization" today is out of date. We ARE a global civilization, and that fact is largely The West's own work. That work included Western colonial imperialist conquests, which influenced the rest of the world, but which (in the form of direct colonial rule) the rest of the world had mostly thrown off by 1960. But it is also the political and cultural revolutions of the last 230 years that have transformed the world. Both processes also transformed The West in turn.

And remember, it is to the Revolution, and not to nations and religions, that idealistic peoples adhere to and believe in today; that's where their loyalties lie. Those who are most loyal to nations and religions are the reactionaries; they will fall to the wheel of progress, which The West itself largely set in motion.

The West is "still alive," but it is everywhere, not in "The West."

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

You will see, I think, that the demons that haunt us now (including Islamic militants, dictators like Assad, neo-confederates in the USA), who already shape the news in far disproportionate numbers, will decline and fade away, if not blown or bombed away.

The West as a civilization died in Hitler's bunker. But its legacy lives on, and democracy is the most valuable part of that legacy for people worldwide. The arts and science that The West created will live on too, although already Western classical art is far less dominant compared to pop and other usually-trashy commercial "art" forms, and today's materialist science paradigm will probably decline; partly from within.

The West led to me, but the East is also very much a part of my heritage. I would not think and feel in the ways that I do today without Oriental culture. And The South is influential culturally too-- especially in its influence on popular music and in "shamanic" culture.

The "Aquarian global Civilization" does not mean the "absence" of The West, any more than the absence of all the other cultures that have contributed to this current global culture we live in. It just means that to speak of "Western Civilization" today is out of date. We ARE a global civilization, and that fact is largely The West's own work. That work included Western colonial imperialist conquests, which influenced the rest of the world, but which (in the form of direct colonial rule) the rest of the world had mostly thrown off by 1960. But it is also the political and cultural revolutions of the last 230 years that have transformed the world. Both processes also transformed The West in turn.

And remember, it is to the Revolution, and not to nations and religions, that idealistic peoples adhere to and believe in today; that's where their loyalties lie. Those who are most loyal to nations and religions are the reactionaries; they will fall to the wheel of progress, which The West itself largely set in motion.

The West is "still alive," but it is everywhere, not in "The West."

All "organisms" go through a life cycle. Eventually, they die. The real debate here is whether or not a Civilization behaves like an organism. I can see the merits of this model. The West may well die (but I don't believe it is dead yet). If / when it does, something else (or a series of things) will rise and undertake their own life cycles.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Out of curiosity, how many of the people citing Spengler here have actually read The Decline of the West or the Hour of Decision?

I've read the former but not the later.

Apologies for not being on over the last week. Have been rather busy with affairs on the home front. Plan to do a nice, good post to keep the spirit of this thread trundling along. I have a lot to discuss and point out so be prepared.

Originally Posted by Odin

I've read the former but not the later.

That I would believe. Sorry, that wasn't really directed at you.

Nope, me neither. I think our resident evil timelord got me pegged on the Wikipedia addiction. So I don't want to comment on that piece too directly - but not everyone can read everything, and maybe the rest of us might learn something from those who have! Some of the themes of cultural criticism seem to echo Ortega Gasset's laments of the fall of civilization, but I really shy away from those arguments that try to lump everything post-Mesopotamian in to one distinct "western" entity. It sort of requires people to start picking at Egypt or Greece or Rome for a start, and go off assuming these civilizations sprang up from nothing. Often, it comes with suggestions that western-lineage Hispanics or Muslims are somehow a threat to this western civilization.

I think nations and cultures are more useful units to study lifespans, and Woodard is definitely on the right path. Then again, I haven't read his book, either. And of course, I'd want to quibble about the details I'm most familiar with, particularly how the Spanish-Carribean part of south Florida is merging with the liberal Yankee retirees and tourist-economy libertarians who are chasing economic opportunities.

This natural alliance pushes the Deep South's cultural influence WAY back and outside of the increasingly-suburbanized corridors of the major highways. Tens years ago, I would have called Jacksonville a solid-red hub of that Deep South, but these days the younger half of the population seems to identify more with the immigrants than the old money. Twenty years ago it was the center of the "Southern Rock Revival," and now we've got a black mayor, Russian school superintendent who started his career turning around schools in a poor, Hispanic town, and the most important business leader in our city was born in Pakistan. I must say the change has been quite refreshing, because the old ideas were just too old and stale and insulated to work in a modern world. It's a long, long way from the invasion panic & attacks on Mosques, Indians, and Sikhs we had on 9-12-01... but actually, all forms of crime are way down. Minorities don't feel so hopeless about their fate - there might actually be a society here that they can be an equal part of, too.

Anyway, to pick another random tangent, I just have zero faith in isolation or ethno-nationalism as any sort of viable strategy to building a modern society. Where do you even start? What's the favorite takeout of a nationalistic England? Fish & Chips? Well, how British is that anyway? The recipe seems to have come to London and Dublin from Portuguese immigrants (damn immigrants comin' here, puttin' my liver pudding stand out of business). Turns out the Portuguese even taught the Japanese how to do it, and the Japanese called it tempura.

But guess what? The Portuguese didn't invent it either. They discovered it in India. They sailed their ships all over the world and they looked at everything the world had to offer and they said "HOLY SHIT! It tastes REALLY GOOD when you fry up fish in a layer of breading! I gotta tell EVERYBODY!" And it was good. And everyone claimed it as their own.

You just don't get progress if you assume everything's been figured out already. You gotta keep your ears and eyes open, or else you're just stumbling in to the rest of us and holding up the line.

When I comment about a life cycle of a civilization, I mostly approach it from a literary perspective as outlined by the critic Northrop Frye, who inadvertantly created sign posts for such a cycle by examining phases of literature and postulating the next turn. Thus far he has been right in his postulations as we've simply gone further and further into the realm of irony--true comedy, true tragedy, and true romance are nearly almost dead or simply consigned to the literary history graveyard that is children's literature.

The last time we were in such a period of literature which focused so intensely on irony, Rome was about to nail a Jewish holy man to a cross between two beggars, and continued until the conversion and then fall of that Empire--after which new mythos took hold and we began the literary cycle once again. So expect a new values system to be discovered soon that'll create new life for our culture.

Only problem with this model is that it is a really really really big model that goes extremely slowly.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

When I comment about a life cycle of a civilization, I mostly approach it from a literary perspective as outlined by the critic Northrop Frye, who inadvertantly created sign posts for such a cycle by examining phases of literature and postulating the next turn. Thus far he has been right in his postulations as we've simply gone further and further into the realm of irony--true comedy, true tragedy, and true romance are nearly almost dead or simply consigned to the literary history graveyard that is children's literature.

The last time we were in such a period of literature which focused so intensely on irony, Rome was about to nail a Jewish holy man to a cross between two beggars, and continued until the conversion and then fall of that Empire--after which new mythos took hold and we began the literary cycle once again. So expect a new values system to be discovered soon that'll create new life for our culture.

Only problem with this model is that it is a really really really big model that goes extremely slowly.

~Chas'88

Soon? The two events referenced (in bold) are more than 400 years apart.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Mikebert,
All of which goes back to my point from the other thread that it is wrong to speak of truly competing belief systems in this country, except on the fringes. There are only minor doctrinal squabbles within the ruling ideology of Liberalism, which at present is dissolving the last vestiges of communitarianism in American political life (succeeding economically on the "right" and socially on the "left"). There seems to be little real and effective effort on either side to change trajectory domestically, but even it gets locked-in this turning it will eventually be toppled. The actual content of Spengler's book, as opposed to just riffing on the title, is actually instructive in this regard.

Was there ever actually communitarianism in American political life? I used to think so, but no longer am so sure. I am poking about with the previous transition from high to low inequality, that did NOT begins with the New Deal/4T era, but before.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Soon? The two events referenced (in bold) are more than 400 years apart.

In the "relative" terms of the scale of the cycle he's looking at, that's "soon". We only really began the descent into Irony about 1920 (give or take)... so about 400 or so years from then.

And as I said in that post: "Only problem with this model is that it is a really really really big model that goes extremely slowly."

We're not going to see its fruition in our lifetimes, but we're getting closer to the end of it.

In the meanwhile I hope you enjoy Irony because that's what our society will really hone and craft according to that cycle.

~Chas'88

JohnMc82,

Are you still living in Jacksonville? I seem to remember thinking you lived in NC.

I dunno, doesn't matter. If you are interested in civilizational analyses, Spengler and Toynbee are definitely worth a read. The Decline of The West, like most German philosophy, can be a little turgid and dense, but the dude had a ridiculously vast base of knowledge and his ruminations on the subject of Cultures, Race (in a cultural rather than biological sense of the word), and the degenerate phase of Civilization that follow are really interesting. It's definitely pretty mystical, and he is writing from well outside of the Liberal intellectual tradition, but he had a huge impact on philosophy in the early to mid 20th century and i don't think you should pass him up. Toynbee writes along a similar vein, though he is much more readable and he is much better about providing documentation and discussing exceptions to his rules and why he thought they happened, so much so that to be honest you get basically the same effect from reading the (author reviewed and authorized) abridgements by DC Somervell. That way you only have to read about 2000 pages versus 7000.

Both of them agree with you that Classical (Greek and Roman) civilization is separate from Western, and provide extensive reasoning for why they draw the distinction the way they do. You should check them out at some point.

If you're a bit short of time/attention, Woodard is a much easier read, and honestly the half-ass reference to his stuff you can see here is not an adequate replacement for the book itself. He's not the only person to see the same thing (see Albion's Seed et al), but I really like where he draws the line, and especially appreciate the point around the 1960s where he suddenly loses his historical perspective and turns into a polemicist. It really proved the cultural connection he was drawing between the modern "Left" and their Christian antecedents, even if inadvertently. If you want something you can read on the internet, you can go to this site and check out the Dawkins bit, which details the same process from another angle (note: The blogger in question is a little loopy/insincere, but you can still roll your eyes through the San-Francisco-Programmer-as-Jacobite-Monarchist shtick and find some great reviews of original sources).

Originally Posted by Chas'88

When I comment about a life cycle of a civilization, I mostly approach it from a literary perspective as outlined by the critic Northrop Frye, who inadvertantly created sign posts for such a cycle by examining phases of literature and postulating the next turn. Thus far he has been right in his postulations as we've simply gone further and further into the realm of irony--true comedy, true tragedy, and true romance are nearly almost dead or simply consigned to the literary history graveyard that is children's literature.

The last time we were in such a period of literature which focused so intensely on irony, Rome was about to nail a Jewish holy man to a cross between two beggars, and continued until the conversion and then fall of that Empire--after which new mythos took hold and we began the literary cycle once again. So expect a new values system to be discovered soon that'll create new life for our culture.

Only problem with this model is that it is a really really really big model that goes extremely slowly.

~Chas'88

Yeah, Toynbee (minus is happy "we may be at the end of history after all" bit at the end), Spengler, and Frye's works from the period all show us right about the point where the culture has exhausted itself and calcified into an empire/Universal State/Civilization what-have-you. The Second Religiousity/Universal Church of the internal proletariat/etc. is pretty much the next stop, culturally speaking, minus the presumable formalization of the (decadent) status quo, should such a thing occur. I sometimes think that the end of WWII was it, and the US is the Universal State of the West in all but name (which, you know, was a state of affairs mentioned in the literature).

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Was there ever actually communitarianism in American political life? I used to think so, but no longer am so sure. I am poking about with the previous transition from high to low inequality, that did NOT begins with the New Deal/4T era, but before.

The dominant ideology of the US has always been Liberalism, however it has been contemporarily understood. That being said, families, churches, fraternal organizations and the like have long played a role in American society, and it has only been recently that Liberalism has almost entirely eroded its competitors. Secularization, urbanization, bureaucratization, and late capitalism have really done a number on what was left of civil society. The Progressive Era/New Deal didn't actually help as much as you might have grown up believing, because while it lent the power of the state to those institutions it empowered, it also transformed them from something the people used to do themselves into something they expect to receive from on high, which I think does a lot to explain the lack of true activism (as opposed to lobbying, handwringing, and arm-flapping) in recent decades you've been complaining of.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

All "organisms" go through a life cycle. Eventually, they die. The real debate here is whether or not a Civilization behaves like an organism. I can see the merits of this model. The West may well die (but I don't believe it is dead yet). If / when it does, something else (or a series of things) will rise and undertake their own life cycles.

Exactly, although according to my cosmic calendar, we need to be about helping to unfold that "something else" right now, since it has been unfolding for a hundred years, and especially since the sixties.

The new global culture is the offspring of the previous two Awakenings.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

When I comment about a life cycle of a civilization, I mostly approach it from a literary perspective as outlined by the critic Northrop Frye, who inadvertantly created sign posts for such a cycle by examining phases of literature and postulating the next turn. Thus far he has been right in his postulations as we've simply gone further and further into the realm of irony--true comedy, true tragedy, and true romance are nearly almost dead or simply consigned to the literary history graveyard that is children's literature.

The last time we were in such a period of literature which focused so intensely on irony, Rome was about to nail a Jewish holy man to a cross between two beggars, and continued until the conversion and then fall of that Empire--after which new mythos took hold and we began the literary cycle once again. So expect a new values system to be discovered soon that'll create new life for our culture.

Only problem with this model is that it is a really really really big model that goes extremely slowly.

~Chas'88

I concur, assuming you mean that we are at a similar point that Rome was in the time of the Jewish holy man. That means "the empire" of today is not about to fall for another 400 years or so. Slow indeed. But this is a time when new life in our culture is being created.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Are you still living in Jacksonville? I seem to remember thinking you lived in NC.

Three years in east NC was.. rough. It was almost like going back in time - in the bad ways. But my wife got her MFA, at a ranked school, for a good price, and we're back where we started with a few extra opportunities. Except it isn't fully the Jacksonville we left, either. (It's better!)

I dunno, doesn't matter. If you are interested in civilizational analyses, Spengler and Toynbee are definitely worth a read. The Decline of The West, like most German philosophy, can be a little turgid and dense, but the dude had a ridiculously vast base of knowledge and his ruminations on the subject of Cultures, Race (in a cultural rather than biological sense of the word), and the degenerate phase of Civilization that follow are really interesting. It's definitely pretty mystical, and he is writing from well outside of the Liberal intellectual tradition, but he had a huge impact on philosophy in the early to mid 20th century and i don't think you should pass him up. Toynbee writes along a similar vein, though he is much more readable and he is much better about providing documentation and discussing exceptions to his rules and why he thought they happened, so much so that to be honest you get basically the same effect from reading the (author reviewed and authorized) abridgements by DC Somervell. That way you only have to read about 2000 pages versus 7000.

Both of them agree with you that Classical (Greek and Roman) civilization is separate from Western, and provide extensive reasoning for why they draw the distinction the way they do. You should check them out at some point.

If you're a bit short of time/attention

Bzzzzt. I have to cut you off because thinking about this discussion has made me realize that post-modernism isn't so bad. The issue is with modernism, and a lot of modernist philosophers who were just... intentionally dense. They felt they had to protect intellectualism from the masses, so they hid their intellect in piles of allegory and allusion and multiple volumes.

We might as well have written conversations in Latin. Via carrier pigeon. While wearing only the finest Persian silks. Anything less would just be vulgar!

Well, they lost, and we got the Flynn effect instead.

Woodard is a much easier read, and honestly the half-ass reference to his stuff you can see here is not an adequate replacement for the book itself. He's not the only person to see the same thing (see Albion's Seed et al), but I really like where he draws the line, and especially appreciate the point around the 1960s where he suddenly loses his historical perspective and turns into a polemicist.

Woodard also pushed the blog circuit pretty hard, and his thesis is so intuitive that I was definitely a little surprised it's even considered novel. But yeah, any suggestion of a modern left in America deserves the scare quotes. Mostly because the political left is nowhere near the cultural left, and the machine shows no signs of catching up any time soon.

It really proved the cultural connection he was drawing between the modern "Left" and their Christian antecedents, even if inadvertently. If you want something you can read on the internet, you can go to this site and check out the Dawkins bit, which details the same process from another angle (note: The blogger in question is a little loopy/insincere, but you can still roll your eyes through the San-Francisco-Programmer-as-Jacobite-Monarchist shtick and find some great reviews of original sources).

Now that is actually kind of interesting and discomforting to this avowed antitheist. The San-Francisco-Programmer-as-Jacobite-Monarchist doesn't even sound too far off. Part of that is because actual liberalism and anti-authoritarianism has been cut in half, largely thanks to Rand's ability to conflate market fundamentalism with freedom. Then on the left, the "Jacobite-Monarchists" conflate this market fundamentalism with "realism," and sacrifice many of their good intentions to appease it.

The political triangulation leaves two dominant idea viruses to infect our saeculum: social liberalism and economic royalism marching under the banner of "free" markets.