Western Civilization and its Discontents: Part 1 By Stephen W. Browne
The fact that a great many of the most privileged members of our country and our civilization hate and resent it is beyond dispute. Their words and, more importantly, their actions give them away no matter how much they protest. An observer from the hypothetical "man from Mars" point of view would have to consider this seriously weird, if not insane. Why on earth would people who are arguably the luckiest individuals in the history of the human race, hate and resent their good fortune?
High-minded explanations have been advanced, usually involving guilt for the quality and comfort of their lives in the face of the poverty and misery of so many others on earth, the crimes of America in particular and the West in general, etc. None of these explanations are satisfactory and I will deal with them in another place.
Two men, living centuries apart, may have foreseen the course of our civilization. Francis Bacon defined the scale of honors available to men as members of a society and Abraham Lincoln foresaw what the thirst for those honors would do to it.
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