How Our Civilization Can Fall

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

Orson Scott Card summarizes Bryan Ward-Perkins’ The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, the opening chapter of Michael Grant’s The Rise of the Greeks, which describes the collapse of the eastern Mediterranean economy, and Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It before imagining How Our Civilization Can Fall:

Here’s how it happens: America stupidly and immorally withdraws from the War on Terror, withdrawing prematurely from Iraq and leaving it in chaos. Emboldened, either Muslims unite against the West (unlikely) or collapse in a huge war between Shiites and Sunnis (already beginning). It almost doesn’t matter, because in the process the oil will stop flowing.

And when the oil stops flowing, Europe and Japan and Taiwan and Singapore and South Korea all crash economically; Europe then has to face the demands of its West-hating Muslim “minority” without money and without the ruthlessness or will to survive that would allow them to counter the threat. The result is accommodation or surrender to Islam. The numbers don’t lie — it is not just possible, it is likely.

America doesn’t crash right away, mind you. But we still have a major depression, because we have nowhere to sell our goods. And depending on what our desperate enemies do, it’s a matter of time before we crash as well.
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It takes two generations for the dark ages to reach America. But they will come, if we allow this nightmare to begin. Because once you reach the tipping point, there’s no turning back, as the Emperor Justinian discovered.

Our global economic system is a brilliant creation, imperfect of course, but powerful and effective in creating more prosperity for more people than ever in the history of the world. It is a creation of America’s military and America’s benign government of the world — so benign they pretend we don’t govern it.

Our enemies and most of our “allies” and many of our own citizens are working as hard as possible to bring the whole thing crashing down, though that is not at all what they intend.

They just haven’t learned the lessons — the principles — of how great economic empires are maintained. They only look at the political dogmas du jour and spout their platitudes. People like me are ridiculed for seeing the big picture and learning the lessons of history.

I actually recommend reading the whole article rather than just his ending Jeremiad, which simply sounds alarmist.

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