The Decivilizing of America

Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness

We are decivilizing in part because, our mediocre schools have not produced competent

stewards to maintain and expand the sophisticated infrastructure and ethos of a prior, far more capable generation. In part, the sheer richness of our inheritance lulled our Lotus-Eater generations to consume what they inherited rather than reinvest it, given that since birth they had been insulated from the elemental and unchanging human and natural challenges to civilization. And in part, a nihilism arose that despised the hard work of civilization.