Death Of The West

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According to Buchanan, while revolutionary Marxism died throughout the world, cultural marxism was inseminated in the American academy by these scholar-revolutionaries, and from the sixties to the present American leftists conducted a successful "long march through the institutions", seizing the cultural high ground from which to shape, change, alter, de-christianize and destroy traditional American culture. He said that the intellectual creativity of a Culture's Late period begins after the reformation, usually ushering in new freedoms in science. The battle was different from the conflict between Rome and Greece, which had been fought out at Cannae and Zama, with Hannibal being the representative of Hellenism.

He also said there is no longer a need for leaders to impose military service, because the press will stir the public into a frenzy and force their leaders into a conflict. I do not want to delve into the race issue, which seems to be the most consistent criticism of this book. The good news- 98 percent knew rapper Snoop Doggy Dog, and 99 percent identified Beavis and Butthead. Many of the problems which Buchanan was sounding the alarm over may have seemed trivial at the turn of the century but now they are magnified and unmistakable and urgent.

He describes Caesarism as the rise of an authoritarian ruler, a new 'emperor' akin to Caesar or Augustus, taking the reins in reaction to a decline in creativity, ideology and energy after a Culture has reached its high point and become a Civilization.

I particularly enjoyed the chapter on early Marxist leaders, the Frankfurt school, and the long march through the institutions. He believed that the principles of equality, natural rights, universal suffrage, and freedom of the press are all disguises for class war of the bourgeois against the aristocracy. Death of the West is not just a dire Malthusian screed; Buchanan spices up his jeremiad by moving from the West's demographics of death to the skirmishes and routs of the American Culture War. Similarly, he combined various Mediterranean cultures of antiquity including both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome as " Apollonian", and modern Westerners as " Faustian".According to Spengler, the Western world was ending and the final season, the "winter" of Faustian Civilization, was being witnessed. Camille Paglia has listed The Decline of the West as one of the influences on her 1990 work of literary criticism Sexual Personae.

Buchanan laments the federal imposition of progressive values on the entire country, but then turns around and seems to want federally funded public schools to impose his set of values instead. Further, Spengler saw urban wage disputes and large entertainment expenditures as the final aspects that signal the closing of Culture and the rise of the Civilization. In Spengler's view, "Peoples are neither linguistic nor political nor zoological, but spiritual units.

Spengler divided the concepts of Culture and Civilization, the former focused inward and growing, the latter outward and merely expanding. In 1921, Spengler wrote that he might have used in his title the word Vollendung (which means 'fulfillment' or 'consummation') and saved a great deal of misunderstanding. He said that the Second Religiousness and Caesarism demonstrate a lack of youthful strength or creativity, and the Second Religiousness is simply a rehashing of the original religious trend of the Culture.

In 1960, people of European ancestry were one-fourth of the world's population; in 2000, they were one-sixth; in 2050, they will be one-tenth.For him, Civilization is what a Culture becomes once its creative impulses wane and become overwhelmed by critical impulses. Spengler saw its world view as being characterized by appreciation for the beauty of the human body, and a preference for the local and the present moment.