Steyn to Europe: You're DOOMED.

The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens--from terrorism to tsunamis--can be understood only as deriving from the perniciousness of Western civilization. As Jean-Francois Revel wrote, "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

Like anything else, survival is ultimately a choice. The body may will it, short-term, but it is the mind that must plan for it, long-term. Civilizations often die because they've succeeded for so long that they no longer think it requires work to do so.

Read the whole thing, as they say, but I'm suddenly applying this line of thinking to the much ballyhooed dearth of men in higher education. The so-called "War Against Boys" may be a factor, and the feminization of university culture as well, but ultimately, isn't it because boys are choosing not to succeed? And that we're letting them?

I'm a high school teacher: the curriculum is not that difficult. So what is it that's convinced large numbers of young men that education isn't worth it? Call me a crank, but I think it's the way that men have managed to convince themselves that ignorance is spiritual purity and decadence is manliness. I'm open to other suggestions as well.


UPDATE: Belmont Club has more, here and here, both of which aim towards the idea that the West has become a house divided against itself. It's citizenry still cling, if half-heartedly, to the old values, it's military, for the most part, stands firm, but its intellectual and political elite want nothing to do with mere survival. What Belmont Club doesn't say is what the Left wants: transcendence, of the idea of nation, of market, even of self, to attain a higher and better world. Yes, even at their most cynical and bigoted, that is what they want. They also are aware that violence oftimes begets violence. In fact, they are aware of it to such an acute degree that often that is all about violence that they know.

It should make anyone stand up and pay attention that the Military devotes such resources to "Information Operations." As Wretchard writes, we want the guys with guns to do their work and go. But if the elite fears the military, and the populace cherishes it, and this trend continues...well, I hear the Romans loved their freedom, too.