03 February 2017

Let me be perfectly clear

I will oppose, with the last fibre of my being and with my dying breath, any attempt to declare war on the oldest continuous human civilisation on the planet. I will also oppose, with the last fibre of my being and with my dying breath, any attempt to declare war on the second-oldest continuous human civilisation on the planet.

What is at stake in any such potential conflict, is nothing more and nothing less than human civilisation itself. This is not hyperbole. I am being perfectly sober and serious. Any such potential conflict can and will be as disastrous to the cultural heritage of humanity, as the (first) burning of Persepolis, as the Mongol sack of Baghdad, or as the fall of Constantinople to the Turks.

If the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.

Alasdair MacIntyre was right, certainly about the last part.

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