1914 -- The West Starts Dying

American Thinker ^ | 3/6/2014 | Mike Konrad

[Sioux-san]

Most competent historians can trace the decline of the West to World War I, which started 100 years ago. The slaughter on the fields of Flanders, the subsequent influenza epidemic, the dissolution of centuries-old European monarchies and empires, and a global depression, led to a sort of cultural post traumatic stress syndrome after the war.

All the more amazing is that the West had totally won the war. All the retrograde powers had been defeated. The victors were America, France, and Britain, the very core of the Western ideal. They were uncontested and unbeatable.

But the victory was Pyrrhic. It had come at such a fearsome price that victory had not proved a vindication of Western ideals, but had caused many to question their merit. The resulting lack of confidence caused the West to lack the resolve to put down extremism in Russia, though it could have done so easily in 1918. European forces would abandon a hard won Constantinople -- an historic Christian seat -- and let the Turkish Muslims retake it in 1923.

Islam, which had been brought to the edge of collapse, was given a breather to recover. Peoples of color would lose all respect for the white man when their volunteer soldiers came home from the bloodbath. White claims of superiority were shown to be a lie after Africans, Asians, and Arabs had seen whites slaughter each other by the millions.

Atheism came into vogue in Europe after World War I, and never left. The clergy of each particular nation had supported the war, and encouraged men off to their deaths. To the Europeans, God had died on Flanders' fields. Europe is now post-Christian....

[iowamark]

It is incorrect to think that WWI brought secularism to Europe. It was in full swing before that.

[Gen.Blather]

“That’s accurate. The French revolution is where it started... it’s all been downhill since.”

I would agree with you. The author asks why the west didn’t end communism in Russia or try to hold Constantinople. Well, even America had a dictator in Woodrow Wilson. Communism was already eating into western culture and it would have been politically impossible given the carnage for nations to continue a war of choice in Russia or Turkey or anywhere else. For one thing, how would they finance it? Anyone who had tried would have been stampeded from office. The politicians who came after were American fascists. FDR for example was lauded by Hitler and Mussolini.

No, the collapse started with communism, which started at the French Revolution.

[SkyDancer]

1912 - the sinking of the Titanic. Up until then people were so secure in the idea of safety in transportation. The amount of lives lost was a shock around the western nations. WWI was just an adjunct to it. It put finish to the previous world.

[dblshot]

When the survivors came home, they were shattered
My grandfather was mustard gassed in the trenches and came to under a bunch of bodies being carted away. He would have nightmares and get down by the side of the bed and act like he was shooting at the Jerry's. Grandma said he'd holler things at his imaginary foes that she wasn't about to repeat.

[boxlunch]

http://www.amazon.com/Crossed-Fingers-Liberals-Captured-Presbyterian/dp/0930464745

I agree.

Crossed Fingers, by Gary North, details how progressives infiltrated the Northern Prebyterian seminaries and “flipped” a whole denomination.

Progressives (Fabian Socialists) were doing it in almost every Christian denomination at that time. Many pastors began questioning Biblical truth,(so called German “higher critical thinking” which really wasn’t logical or critical at all.) The church was weakened, and progressives filled in the vacuum. Many of the “pillars” of society, including universities, government, public schools, and the media, and the wealthy and corporate leadership began turning progressive/socialist as more and more of their leadership was sitting in liberal churches under the teaching of false preachers, who stopped teaching the Bible and about sin and repentance to the social gospel. The stopped teaching the truth about obedience to God and the law in the Bible, belief in Christ, and the other virtues, that however imperfectly, had still had a great influence on keeping our country from going the path of every successful, corrupt society.

Many of the corporate and political leaders, since they would no longer admit personal sin, dealt with their underlying guilt by the social gospel and progressivism. Their thoughts might have been “I wont stop my sin or repent because ‘really it’s all okay’, but since I feel guilty I will support laws to take money from the middle class to “help” the poor, and that makes me feel all better and makes me a good person.”

As a woman, I am ashamed to admit, but I believe giving the vote to women just increased the pace, as even more liberal women hounded their husbands to take up liberal stances because of their emotional feelings of guilt. I think men who were not really one way or the other in moral character, maybe weren’t true socialists, might have been talked into or bullied by their wives to support certain causes in politics, the schools, etc so that the wives could attend the ‘cool’ social gatherings. Again, just such a lack of character. True Christian women would be less likely to try to bully, coerce , etc their husbands into coming down on one side or the other.

Progressives/Fabian socialists have been like a pack of termites and roaches, infiltrating, slowly chewing on and breaking down the good and refilling the holes with decay. So yes, it has been a long steady march and the walls are finally completely crumbling down.

Makes me so sad. This is the most depressing post I’ve written in a long time. : (

But we can have hope in God, we can pray for a cleansing and renewal in the true church (very little of it is left in America today), and pray for a new dawn in America, or maybe even just a little part of America.

God is all powerful and may yet have mercy on us.

[Nea Wood]

As a woman, I am ashamed to admit, but I believe giving the vote to women just increased the pace

As a woman, I agree with you.

[CodeToad]

“the West had totally won the war.... They were uncontested and unbeatable. “

Dumbest statement ever about WWI. “Uncontested”? Really? We were fighting no one? “Unbeatable”? Really? The war ended in an armistice, not victory.

[tanknetter]

The problems here in the US may have some origin point in the ACW, but can really be traced directly to the 16th and 17th Amendments, which really tore down the old Federal system by allowing the Federal Gvt to directly tax the incomes of citizens and removing the states from their formal role in the power equation.

Basically those two amendments allowed the Federal Gvt to expand massively, and vote itself the taxes necessary to do so. Obamacare, for instance, is an absolute product of those two amendments.

[blueunicorn6]

There were slaughters on the battlefield before WWI. Cannae comes to mind. Slaughter is slaughter. The difference was in the Soldiers and their families. The cannon-fodder have changed. And that was not a result of WWI.

[Defiant]

I think I would have mutinied, and probably been shot as a result. It would not be from fear of dying, but a refusal to die stupidly and certainly. Sending your people over the top into machine gun fire is morally wrong, and I don’t care who orders it. Taking risks and fighting is one thing; using your people as fodder in hopes the other side runs out of bullets is another. I would have braved the fire at D-Day and fought at Iwo Jima, but I would have done all I could to avoid being used as a human wave. Why it took so long to figure out the need for new tactics, I don’t know. Stubbornness? A military led by elites who could not learn new ways? What a tragedy. Europe has indeed never recovered.

[Free Vulcan]

Yep. WWI was just the powderkeg that swept away the old institutions that were in the way, to allow a clear path for the new progressive ones to take over. Secularism was no longer in academia and hip social circles but actually running nations after that.

[nathanbedford]

It was an extremely dangerous occupation to be a junior grade officer of any army in World War I. Uniformly, these officers were taken from the upper, educated classes. If the rich and well informed were waging wars for profit they were suicidal affairs.

It's easy today to armchair quarterback the generals of World War I and accuse them of attacking machine gun bullets with their soldiers breasts, but there were very few options open to these generals in front of them and, behind them, the politicians left them even fewer options. Technology more than generalship was the blame for the stalemate and the casualties. Artillery was the biggest killer with machine guns and Barbwire contributing. If one looks at the statistics it was better to be on defense than on offense but not by nearly the disproportionate percentages one would expect.

At the end of the war the Germans contrived something that hinted at the blitzkrieg of 1939 but they were unable at that point to fully punch through. They infiltrated rather than stormed and they timed their artillery much better. They granted the smaller units independent control and thoroughly trained their elite soldiers in penetration. When that was combined later with airpower and armor, you have the blitzkrieg.

My point is that the generals were not stupid, they were handicapped by the state of technology. By extension, I am not prepared to say that these wars are, as a Marxists claim, a war contrived by plutocrats to enrich plutocrats.

Folly knows no class.

[SMARTY]

“No, the collapse started with communism, which started at the French Revolution.”

Correct.

And don’t forget... the French in their revolution, initiated a program for the ‘de Christianization’ of the country, that did irreversible and pernicious, society-wide damage.

[Albion Wilde]

I would trace the beginning of the end of western society to the late 1800’s with the rise of the godless Fabian Society and the Progressive movement which continued to built up steam in the 1900’s as the whole world turned from God to their own devices.

Agreed. For any who are not so fortunate to have read The Fabian Freeway, now long out of print, FReeper ProgressingAmerica has links to it on his/her homepage.

It is a book-length work that traces absolutely the Socialist International takeover of Britain and the Democrat Party in America, naming names. It is a stunning piece of work, and I'm not surprised it has not been reprinted. The left is probably paying big money to keep it down. Old paper copies were recently going for $65 on book sites. However, Amazon are now offering it as a Nook or Kindle book. for three bucks or so.

Here's the description from Amazon:

Both prophetic and illuminating, Fabian Freeway documents the rise and progress of socialism in Britain and the United States and tells the story of the many early triumphs of the philosophy of socialist incrementalism known as Fabian Socialism.

Part political history, part intellectual history, Rose Martin’s Fabian Freeway traces the influence of the British Fabian Society in promoting socialism in Britain, beginning in the 1880s. The group favored gradual progress toward socialism rather than violent revolution; and it proved to be a major force in promoting British collectivism. Its influence extended to America as well, where like-minded organizations and persons enhanced its effects. Martin emphasizes Fabian influences on Wilson and FDR, and continues the discussion through the 1960’s, when the book originally appeared.

When the British Fabian Society was first founded, its members, echoing Marx’s own views, believed that socialism could only be introduced to Britain and the United States through a strategy of very gradual change disguised as reform.

Some Fabians suspected that the United States might never adopt the tenets of true socialism.

Less than 150 years, later, however, the Fabian strategy has been enormously successful. Both Britain and the United States are heavily regulated and heavily taxed societies with highly socialized economies where government agents exercise vast control over the movement of capital and currency through an enormous bureaucratic apparatus.

In the original Foreword, Loyd Wright, writing in the midst of the Cold War, discusses Fabian Socialism as “Communism’s helpmate,” and he portrays the ideology as a sort of friendly-looking version of socialism that will nevertheless end up looking very much like Soviet-style communism.

Since the end of the Cold War, however, we find that Fabian Socialism is far more dangerous than revolutionary communism. Highly attractive to so-called “reasonable” and “moderate” people, and compatible with the ideologies of so many center-left and center-right political parties, Fabian Socialism, unlike soviet-style communism, has exhibited a staying-power already shown to be much stronger than anything revolutionary communism has yet produced.

Fabian Freeway provides a well-documented and rigorously compiled account of the first eighty years of Fabian Socialism. Anyone with an interest in the history of socialism and capitalism in the West should not be without a copy of this significant volume.

[Albion Wilde]

Barnes & Noble is offering Fabian Freeway as a Nook Book as well, for $3.25.

[Sherman Logan]

I agree with the author’s contention that WWI was the start of the decline and fall of Western Civilization.

I cannot buy into the notion that this is due to the horrific death rates of these societies as a percentage of the population. Or at least not by itself.

Previous wars in western societies had MUCH higher percentage deaths tolls, with little or no apparent loss of societal self-confidence.

For example, the 30 Years War killed somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of all Germans, with over 90% in some areas.

The French Wars of Religion killed about 20%.

The Civil Wars in the British Isles killed, it has been estimated, 10% in England, 20% in Scotland and 30% of the Irish.

[PapaNew]

Very insightful post. You have your finger on the pulse of what happened then and what happens now when Adam and Eve turn from God.

This might help you - I know it did me. First I had to become convinced that becasue of Jesus, God wasn't mad at me but instead was madly in love with me. After that, I began to ask him how he views what's going on in this day and age (after all, God isn't depressed, so maybe it would help me to see things his way).

I believe we're in the Laodicean age (Revelation 3:14-22), the last age before Jesus returns for his church and the seven-year tribulation of God's wrath begins. Your description perfectly fits the Laodicean church. But there's still remnants of the vibrant and faithful Philadelphia church who Jesus promised would be "kept from the hour of temptation which will come upon all the earth to try them that dwell on the earth" (Rev 2:10). None of this takes the Lord by surprise and he told us all about it ahead of time. So we can rest in his love and goodness, keep our joy, and be shining lights helping as many a possible find him before the Lord comes for us and that "hour of temptation upon all the world" begins.

[Bulwyf]

That’s my take too, it all started then in the west.

I do think it started earlier in Europe though.

[Sherman Logan]

the office of the presidency was greatly empowered empowered afterwards.

Except that it wasn't. The presidents from Johnson to McKinley were not enormously more powerful than pre-war presidents. Most Americans today couldn't name more than one or two of them.

The immense expansion of the federal government started in earnest with TR, and has been nearly continuous since.

Blaming this on Lincoln appears to be a function of the extremely odd notion that if Lincoln had not resisted the dissolution of the Union there would have been no Progressive movement starting up in the 1890s.

That movement was in response to very real societal changes and problems. AFAIK they did not make a fetish of using Lincoln as a precedent.

IOW, the expansion of presidency and federal power started 30-some years after Lincoln died, and for causes quite unrelated to the Civil War.

[ex-snook]

In a sense this is crying over spilling milk. We can look back and see the first half of the last century we were at work in Europe, the second half, we were at war in the Pacific. Now in this century, we have fought in the ME, in Africa, with looks at So America. We look at war at the solution for rivalries but we lose no matter what side we take.

So the milk is spilled. What do we do to learn for the future? The lesson is clear, constant war killed Europe. Another war would be existential to us. We have exported our production facilities and know-how, ran out of money, borrow from China to balance our books, fight with each other on how to reduce our life style or throw grandmothers off the cliff.

We should be rebuilding the country, restore MADE IN USA. We can’t keep getting involved and further descend. God bless us, everyone.