We should take heed from the last generations of the Byzantines.
Nowhere is it foreordained that America has a birthright to remain the world's preeminent civilization.
An ascendant China seems eerily similar to the Ottomans. Beijing believes that the United States is decadent, undeserving of its affluence, living beyond its means on the fumes of the past -- and very soon vulnerable enough to challenge openly.
Left and Right seem to hate each other more than they do their common enemies.
Like the Byzantines, Americans gave up defending their own borders, and simply shrugged as millions overran them as they pleased.
Our once iconic downtowns, like end-stage Constantinople before the fall, are now dirty, half-deserted, dangerous, and dysfunctional.
America prints rather than makes money, as its banks totter near bankruptcy.
Americans similarly believe they are invincible without ensuring in reality that they are. Our military is more worried about being "woke" than deadly.
Like Byzantines, Americans have become snarky iconoclasts, more eager to tear down art and sculpture that they no longer have the talent to create.
Current woke dogma, obscure word fights, and sanctimonious cancel culture are as antithetical to the past generations of World War II as the last generation of Constantinople was to the former great eras of the emperors Constantine, Justinian, Heraclius, and Leo.
The Byzantines never woke up in time to understand what they had become.
So far neither have Americans.
Nowhere is it foreordained that America has a birthright to remain the world's preeminent civilization.
An ascendant China seems eerily similar to the Ottomans. Beijing believes that the United States is decadent, undeserving of its affluence, living beyond its means on the fumes of the past -- and very soon vulnerable enough to challenge openly.
Left and Right seem to hate each other more than they do their common enemies.
Like the Byzantines, Americans gave up defending their own borders, and simply shrugged as millions overran them as they pleased.
Our once iconic downtowns, like end-stage Constantinople before the fall, are now dirty, half-deserted, dangerous, and dysfunctional.
America prints rather than makes money, as its banks totter near bankruptcy.
Americans similarly believe they are invincible without ensuring in reality that they are. Our military is more worried about being "woke" than deadly.
Like Byzantines, Americans have become snarky iconoclasts, more eager to tear down art and sculpture that they no longer have the talent to create.
Current woke dogma, obscure word fights, and sanctimonious cancel culture are as antithetical to the past generations of World War II as the last generation of Constantinople was to the former great eras of the emperors Constantine, Justinian, Heraclius, and Leo.
The Byzantines never woke up in time to understand what they had become.
So far neither have Americans.
