Trying to Lead a Whore to Culture
26th April 2012
Taki pulls no punches.
Listening to some European protesters nowadays, one would think that nothing has changed since Pliny’s time. A leftist Oxford professor told me it was the blithe impenitence of the upper class that drives him up the wall. He said they display a demented disregard for common decency’s humblest demands. When I suggested he get real, he called me a fascist, then asked me to buy him a drink.
It began with a healthy challenge to deference from below and became a crisis of nerves from above. The people who belonged to the Establishment, the old authority figures—and by that I don’t mean only lords of the manor and millionaires, but also teachers, religious leaders, and politicians—no longer believe in the ethos that made them what they were. They no longer feel able to uphold traditional values. Parents, bombarded by generations of lifestyle gurus on bringing up their children, simply lost the plot. Respect for one’s elders is now an alien concept.
April 26th, 2012 at 13:39
Oh, those deplorable plebians! What shall we do?
Maybe bread and circuses are the answer: feed and entertain the masses for free (Gasp! Socialism!). But it keeps the hoi poloi tranquilized and out of the hair of the Powers, and that’s all that matters.
After all, it worked for the Romans for over 1,000 years…until those pesky Islamists showed up.
April 26th, 2012 at 22:27
We’ve already got bread and circuses — only we call them food stamps and the NFL.