Language advisory as to the above video. Like most simple takes it really doesn’t work when applied to history. For example, in Western Europe aristocrats usually had the best of everything, but that did not stop them from being the caste that led, and until recently, fought in wars. Throughout most of history what we know as economic good times really did not exist for eighty percent of the population that had a hard scrabble time for a minimal existence almost all the time. This meme reflects a popular view that the Roman Empire fell as a result of decadent aristocrats. That is not what happened. Rome actually taught the surrounding barbarians much, especially about military matters, and as so often happens, eventually the pupils taught the teacher, at least in the West. Rome in the West actually came close to falling shortly after the birth of Julius Caesar with Rome being saved be the military genius of Marius and Sulla from massive German migrations, so the Republic and the Empire always feared the barbarians and their potential military power.
I think the meme is popular now because we see in the West populations unable and unwilling to fight, with confused sexuality too often popular among the young. Has prosperity caused this? In part. I think the bigger culprits are a breakdown of the family and a turning away from traditional religion. The culprit, as often when Man goes off the rails, is a worship of self uber alles. The restraints put on this ever present temptation to just look out for number one have been weakened through legislation and general increasing prosperity, so increasing prosperity is part of the problem, but only part.
In WWI, around two dozen British peers were killed in action. Just by the end of 1915 nine peers and 95 sons of peers had been killed in action. By the end of that war, over two dozen peerages were destined to go extinct because all of the male heirs had been killed off.
The butcher’s bill for WWII was similarly high with regards to British peerages. In that war, 16 peers were killed in action, including both the 6th Duke of Wellington and the 9th Duke of Northumberland.
Victor Davis Hanson has some videos out on the threats to the concept of citizenship in the modern world. IIRC he said that a problem with wealth is that it gives a person leisure time. Leisure time that can allow the person to indulge in socially deleterious viewpoints, and it gives this person the wealth to insulate themselves from the negative consequences of these ideas.
Though the great houses love us not, we own, to do them right,
That the great houses, all save one, have borne them well in fight.
Still Caius of Corioli, his triumphs and his wrongs,
His vengeance and his mercy, live in our camp-fire songs.
Beneath the yoke of Furius oft have Gaul and Tuscan bowed:
And Rome may bear the pride of him of whom herself is proud.
But evermore a Claudius shrinks from a stricken field,
And changes color like a maid at sight of sword and shield.
The Claudian triumphs all were won within the city towers;
The Claudian yoke was never pressed on any necks but ours.
A Cossus, like a wild cat, springs ever at the face;
A Fabius rushes like a boar against the shouting chase;
Virginia, Lays of the Ancient Romans
While we’re at it, another argument for eliminating government grants to NGOs.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/28/alfred-lord-tennyson-classed-queer-lgbtq-tour-isle-wight/
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