Exposure of an entire generation to wholesale destruction and mass
murder as a way of life had two quite divergent effects. It converted
sensitive introverts into pacifists. It produced millions of trained
destroyers and killers, experienced in the science and art of
mechanized warfare. Pacifists opposed, denounced and resisted the
warfare state and its progeny. Masses of trained destroyers and killers,
the "new barbarians," gained experience and improved their
qualifications by taking part in conventional warfare and in the
innumerable guerrilla adventures and operations that accompanied and
followed conventional wars.
Previous civilizations have been harried, hectored and undermined by
migrating "barbarians" who had heard of accumulated wealth and had come
to share or perhaps to take over the "honey-pot" and lick up the honey.
Western civilization has faced the problem of migration, intensified by
population explosion. But the "barbarians" who are tearing the social
body of western civilization limb from limb are not outsiders, invading
a civilization in order to plunder and sack it, but the offspring of
well-to-do civilized affluent communities who have repudiated the
acquisition and accumulation of material goods and services, turning,
instead to the satiation of body hungers and the freedom of social
irresponsibility.
Western man has spent ten centuries in building a civilization aimed at
economic stability and social security for the privileged.
Pages:
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87