Becoming The New Barbarians

The following was delivered as a speech at the second National Policy Institute’s conference, which was held at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC, on October 26th.

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There may be a collapse. It could happen. It could happen tomorrow. Vengeful gods could hurl boulders from the sky, cleansing the earth with fires and floods. There could be blood in the streets and gnashing of teeth. A plague of locusts or killer bees, some Chinese flu, or the Zombie Apocalypse. Your debit cards might run empty and your “smart”phones might get real dumb. We may be forced to band together in primal gangs and fight for survival. We may be forced by circumstances beyond our control to rediscover lifeways more familiar to our species—to our ancestral brains—than this endless, banal sprawl of corporate parks and shopping malls.

Or you may just get that one day as a lion, to die like you were born, kicking and screaming and covered in someone else’s blood.

It has a certain appeal.

But while any or all of that could happen (and it could all happen tomorrow), it is also possible that this broken, corrupt system could limp along for a very long time.

Yes, it should fail catastrophically. It deserves to fail. But no matter how much the world needs....read more...

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Becoming The New Barbarians