In the West, we are on vacation from story.
That’s because we are living on the interest earned by our parents and grandparents. The Western continent, until the war in Ukraine, had not experienced a more quiet respite from past than since the end of the Cold War; America has enjoyed its personal peace dividend, with saving rising to unprecedented amounts and our war fought in far lands.
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When you are on holiday from record, you tend to engage in dumb mistakes. Fallacies like the idea that evil does n’t exist; that dialogue overcomes all discord and that failure brings with it peace instead of battle; that apologizing for Western culture is a preventative to previous injustice rather than an incentive for potential murder.
On Oct. 7, 2023, past returned with a revenge.
On that day, Hamas– an bad criminal group– invaded Israel and engaged in a joyous orgy of rape and murder, the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Some 1,200 Israelis were murdered; 250 were dragged up into the shithole of Gaza.
Hamas proved that wicked does occur. The extremists and their human counterparts celebrated their terrible. They livestreamed it. They cheered as the broken and mutilated body of the defeated were paraded through Gaza. They handed out chocolates as young performers were raped and shot at a music event.
Indeed, bad exists. It turns out that people people are not all seeking the exact points– that we do not all have the same interests or the same principles.
Hamas proved that arbitration with evil and frailty toward it take on just suffering. Israel has surrendered country to a variety of criminal groups over the past few years: areas of the West Bank– Biblical Judea and Samaria– to the criminal Palestinian Authority; the Gaza Strip to Hamas; southwestern Lebanon to Hezbollah. All have become terror have ns. The only way to fight evil is through reliable threat of crushing force. The American falsehood that bargaining is a technique rather than a tactic– that we can speak our enemies into peace– is really a lie. Victory brings about harmony; power brings about harmony.
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And the year since Oct. 7 proved that the West has lost her manner.
We have lost our way.
For a minute after Oct. 7, the West sympathized with the Israelis. And then the West decided to go back to rest– to see its children move with Hamas and Hezbollah colors alongside terror supporters imported from abroad. The West decided that Israel had committed a grave crime in defending herself, no matter how careful or needed the activities.
The West, still enjoying its trip from story, decided it was easier to go back to rest than to join with truth.
And yet record does not halt.
History does not prevent because there is, in truth, no end of history, no mediation between all nations. The claims of Isaiah that weapons may be beaten into plowshares remain unmet– and until the coming of a savior, will continue to remain thus. The United Nations ‘ memorial depicting a weapon with its barrel-end tied into a tie remains more a ridicule than a gift, given the UN’s personal involvement in violence and crime across the globe– including on Oct. 7 and in southeastern Lebanon.
History will remain, because people evil is very real.
The only hope for a truly peaceful world is n’t a somnambulant West, too busy apologizing for its own existence to defend itself. It is a powerful and vibrant West, willing to stand for itself and to fight those who would challenge it.
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After Oct. 7, Israel learned that lesson. And Israelis paid the price.
And therefore Israel will not go again to sleep. Hamas has been decimated; Hezbollah is being carefully destroyed; Iran life in fear of Jewish retribution. All of which is great.
But the West must understand a simple truth: Just because Israel is located on the bleeding edge of history does n’t mean that the vacation for the rest of the West can last. In reality, it’s now ending. And the more the West insists on turning over and hitting the slumber box, the worse humankind’s wake-up phone will be.