From woke ideology to digital disincarnation, Western civilization has been collapsing into total chaos as purpose, tradition, and identity are melting away.

Jonathan Pageau, Symbolic World Press founder and master icon carver, and James Poulos of “Zero Hour” are well-aware — and they understand that the loss of traditional values is directly tied into why Americans are facing such an identity crisis.

Reactionary as I am, it gives me no pleasure to report that conservatism is finished. As Britain struggles with the exhausted death-spasms of liberal Toryism, the only subset of Right-wing thought in the West today that doesn’t feel moribund is actively anti-conservative. The liveliest corner of the Anglophone Right is scornful of cultural conservatism and nostalgia, instead combining an optimistic view of technology with a qualified embrace of global migration and an uncompromising approach to public order.

In January 1987, the battle cry of Jesse Jackson and student protesters at Stanford seemed outlandish to the point of absurdity: “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s got to go.”

But, lo and behold, the Jackson impulse ended up sweeping all before it.

At most colleges and universities, as documented by Stanley Kurtz in his excellent monograph, The Lost History of Western Civilization, Western Civ requirements are long gone, and the course may not even be offered anymore. (A free PDF of the monograph is here, by the way.)

When civilization collapses, J.C. Cole will be ready. 

He’s founded Safe Haven Farms, a maximum security compound to ride out the next pandemic or climate-change disaster. And those who can afford to join him will also have a shot at survival, he promises. But the price tag isn’t cheap.

In the months since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, nearly 1,000 Western companies have partially or fully curtailed their operations within the Russian Federation. On the surface, this is unsurprising: Russia has been the target of an unprecedented sanctions package by the West, and it is natural that corporate ties will be reduced during a period of economic warfare.

Countries that undergo a peaceful regime change from free and open to closed and less free, usually do so by accepting the gradual substitution of one set of values for another. They abandon what I call the Four Fs and begin accepting the Four Gs as their new belief system.

The Four Fs are: Freedom, Family, Free enterprise, and Faith, and these are the essential cornerstones of a free society.

In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks about the recent social protests and civil unrest, in light of what we know about racism and police violence in America.

You can tell Tom Klingenstein is a good leader by his focus on mission. He proposes “preserving the American way of life” as the new why of the Republican Party. Klingenstein’s essay sets a powerful frame for understanding America’s escalating ideological divide.

To succeed, we must combine his attention to mission with two other ingredients: urgency and vision.

In The Sociological Tradition, Robert Nisbet referred to the Industrial and French Revolutions as the two great ideas of the western world.[1] No two events so dramatically altered civilization as significantly, their temporal overlap only intensifying their effects.

If the two Revolutions are the two great ideas of the Western world, then the third great idea must be birth control. No innovation has fundamentally altered the premises of civilization quite like birth control.

Of all the issues that divide us, none seems as inimical to reasoned discussion as identity politics. Conservatives excoriate such politics as politically opportunistic theater, the acting out of coddled “snowflake” students. Liberals and progressives put forth an opposing grievance-first narrative, arguing that identity politics emanates from authentic wounds.