Worth Fightin' For

Both these two pieces deserve reading, one and then the other.

Read first this review by Brian Stewart of Niall Ferguson's forthcoming, Civilization: The West and the Rest, a book about what is distinctive and, are you ready?, better about Western civilization than the rest of the world's.

Then read Jim Lacey's commentary on what the recent London riots demonstrate about Western resolve, or rather Western elite resolve.

While many factors can lead to the decline and fall of a civilization, no single factor, alone, is determinative.  Save one, that is.  A civilization will surely fall, no matter how superior it may be, and no matter how inferior its enemies, when it is no longer believed to be worth fighting, and dying, for.