Left: “Death on a Pale Horse” – Benjamin West,1796.
– The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
There is a bull market on pale horses throughout the world today, and especially in the Middle East/North Africa region (MENA). Since the ill-fated invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the misnamed “Arab Spring” of 2011 well over one million civilian non-combatants have died in MENA, over three million have been injured, and about thirty million have been violently displaced. Figures are notoriously inexact, but the destruction of physical infrastructure has been massive, not to mention demolition of archaeological treasures that have survived thousands of years only to fall prey to contemporary barbarism.
Yet with all the attention paid to the region from the political, economic and military standpoints remarkably little attention has been paid to the horrendous human tragedy taking place before the eyes of the so-called “civilized” world. Particularly striking is the lack of attention paid to the destruction of Christian settlements in the region, some dating back almost two thousand years. Where is the Pope? Where is the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Archbishop of Canterbury? Where are the heads of the Protestant sects? Where are the leaders of the Western world, until now predominantly Christian?
What all of this and much else besides reflects is the deterioration of the moral and ethical standards forged over the millennia and which, along with judicial and political structures reflecting those standards, define what is meant by “Western civilization.” Though often honored in the breach that set of standards was upheld as the ideal and reached its culmination in the victory of the West over the last of the great twentieth-century secular totalitarian ideologies, communism, in the period between 1989 and 1991.
Ten years later the twin towers collapsed, and the Pentagon was seriously damaged, and the war between the West and religious Islamic totalitarianism began. And make no mistake, the latter is winning. And it is winning not because it is militarily or economically stronger, but because of the moral collapse of the West. A weak and pusillanimous leadership in both the political and religious realms, an academic elite actively supporting the enemies of Western civilization, a media glorifying the attackers and their agents of influence and a new generation solidly infected with anti-Western viruses of many varieties; all supplemented by a financial and economic elite which has no allegiance to any god but Mammon and with a death-grip on the wealth of society.
In the face of all this, it is hardly surprising that standards are abandoned or actively perverted and that victims are ignored while the Obamas, Merkels, and Hollandes sip their wine and hold their conferences and refuse to even name the enemy, much less confront him.
The result is university students turned into crybabies who will grow up in serfdom to the state or some giant corporation and its owners and who will be not just fodder for the enemies of liberty and justice but often willing and enthusiastic collaborators. These are the people who support BDS, who applaud anti-Semitic resolutions masked as criticisms of Israel in universities, parliaments, professional associations and international organizations, culminating in the odious and idiotic resolutions passed by UNESCO and the UN Security Council.
The enemies of liberty and justice will win unless the moral disintegration of Western society is reversed, and immediately. Among the remaining upholders of those standards and traditions stands the lonely figure of Israel, and precisely because of that it is under relentless and bitter attack. Under no circumstances must it be tempted to compromise with or accommodate its enemies. They cannot be appeased.
That Israel defies them infuriates them and inflames their hatred. Only its disappearance will appease them and should they succeed one of the last paladins of the highest ideals of humankind will have disappeared along with it. And since the enemies of liberty and justice do not know how to govern, the world will descend into primordial chaos. It must not be allowed to happen.
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