“Our difficulties come from a mood of unwarrantable self abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. The come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians. We are told to believe that patriotism is worn out, except where paying income tax is concerned. But what have they found to put in its place? Nothing but a vague internationalism; a squalid materialism and the promise of a Utopia….Nothing can save England if England will not save herself. If we have lost our place and our capacity to guide, if we have lost our faith in ourselves, then indeed our story is told. If, while foreign nations are everyday asserting a more aggressive, a more militant nationalism, either by trade or by arms, while we remain paralysed by our own theories. If that be so, then deprived of the sovereignty of the seas, loaded with debt and taxation, our commerce shut out by foreign tariffs and quotas, England would sink to the level of a fifth rate power. Never should we accept such a fate for our country.”–Winston Churchill, 1933

Nor should we for ours.

Charles Krauthammer:

Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline–or continued ascendancy–is in our hands.

I think we’re at a turning point, a spiritual Valley Forge. We could go one way or another. Not, as Reagan said, “left or right”, but “up or down–up to man’s age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

One last bullet:

[W]hat for Europe is decadence–decline, in both comfort and relative safety–is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink, and be merry for America protects her. But for America it’s different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?

There is no other home for patriots. As an American, I’m not going to hide out in the jungles of Costa Rica just because we were stupid enough to elect a bunch of socialists who despise this country and want to flush it down the toilet.

The Tea Parties are a good sign. The Town Hall meetings are a good sign. It is a very good sign that liberals feel they must hide their true beliefs and mimic conservatives; yes, it fools some, but it shows who the true majority is. Perversely, it is also a good sign that leftist “educators” feel they must bully Other People’s Children and lie to them in order to win.

Up or down, it’s going to be a long haul and success is not certain. The only certain thing is we must try without despairing.

Mark “Athwart the Decline” Steyn:

No one butched up for the Khyber Pass more enthusiastically than Barack Obama: (July 15, 2008) “As president, I will make the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban the top priority.”

Lemme fix that for you:

“As president, I will make the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban the top priority.”

Wait–still not right:

“As president, I will make the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban Rush Limbaugh the top priority.”

Obama’s priorities lie not in the Hindu Kush but in America: Why squander your presidency on trying to turn an economically moribund feudal backwater into a functioning nation state when you can turn a functioning nation state into an economically moribund feudal backwater?

… eight years after being toppled, the Taliban will see their return to power as a great victory over the Great Satan, and so will the angry young men from Toronto to Yorkshire to Chechnya to Indonesia who graduated from Afghanistan’s Camp Jihad during the 1990s.

And so will the rest of the world: They will understand that the modern era’s ordnungsmacht (the “order maker”) has chosen decline.

The hour is getting late, but it’s still our choice.