The Decline of the West

Edward N Luttwak

@ELuttwak

·

May 31

11 Chinese universities teach Greek and Latin. Another 20 seek staff to so as well. Back in the US, the Princeton CLASSICS department has just eliminated the Latin or Greek requirement "to address systemic racism". Truly racist say I. Why not just end it ? Jobs await in 中国

"The past two decades of globalisation are only comprehensible if you understand the role China has played in the process and the deflationary shock that its entry into the world economy has created.

"China’s admission into the World Trade Organisation in 2001 can best be understood in the context of the West’s confidence that history was coming to an end after the fall of the Berlin Wall."
James Forsyth

"It is a minefield on virtually everything. If you are of a certain generation you are not sure what you can or what you can't say. Or whether you can make a joke about something you cannot make a joke, so I will leave it at that."
Tony Blair, interviewed on ITV's Good Morning Britain, May 11 2021

"John Profumo spent four decades living a life of shame-induced public service not because it “cut through” with voters but because he’d disgraced himself in the eyes of his peers.

"The norms of British public life stated that you didn’t lie and cheat, but once that norm was broken, it was impossible to put back together. Norms are far easier to destroy than to build."

Ed West

"It will not be possible to halt the spread of a new pandemic influenza virus, and it would be a waste of public health resources and capacity to attempt to do so.” 

This was the UK Government's policy in March 2020 for two or three days. I suspect it was the right one. Dominic Cummings was one of the first to embrace a lockdown, which shows he is a quick thinker and good at seeing what would happen.

Boris Johnson thought closing British borders, according to Mr Cummings, was 'racist', as did Politico, the WHO and others back in March 2000. Some still do.

"I feel uncomfortable with the widespread unpleasant language used to call for tighter borders. 'Leaky borders' not protecting 'our shores' from 'a flood' of 'foreign variants' brought by 'human bodies' and whatnot ... This all sounds ideologically dark to me."

That was tweeted by Francois Balloux, Professor of Computational Biology at University College London, on May 20 2021.

"...Vietnam is now among a few countries upending the global health community’s “almost religious belief that travel restrictions are bad,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University global health law professor who helped write the international law governing how countries should deal with outbreaks."

Julia Belluz in Vox.

"We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn't much Native American culture in American culture."

This is the 'racist' remark by Rick Santorum, at a speech to conservative students in April, for which he lost his contract with CNN.

"Zemmour’s criminal convictions for racial and religious hate speech include a 2010 ruling after he said “most drug dealers are black and Arab” and in 2019 when he likened Muslims in France to “colonisers”. But that has not dented his prominent TV career on several channels and his books that top nonfiction bestsellers lists."
Guardian article

Spain's ruling Socialist party PSOE is submitting a draft law to Parliament, whereby if volunteers offer women information outside abortion centres, they could be jailed for up to one year.Spanish news item.

"It should be plain that we are, in both England and America, living through a revolution. This is not a normal revolution as these things are considered. Unlike in France or Russia, there has been no overthrow of an established order, no burst of state violence, no establishment after that of an overtly new order. There are no secret police. There are no labour camps. No one is beaten to death in a police cell. All the same, we are living through a revolution. It is a revolution that has involved the gradual capture of education, the media, the administration, the charities and the more permeable religious institutions, and the recent aligning of the larger or more glamorous business concerns. I see no point in discussing its ultimate objects. I am not sure if these are wholly agreed. But its provisional object is the destruction of our traditional identity, and of our liberty so far as this stands in the way of that provisional object."
Dr Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance