I was having a conversation with a liberal friend the other day about the future. It was one of those free-ranging conversations which jump from topic to topic. At some point we drifted to the matter of social conservatism, and she asked me why I thought that people were social liberals and I responded, “They’re under the sway of the illusion of the permanence of all things.”

At its core, I think, that describes the fundamental problem of all modern liberalism: it assumes that we can sit here and now and build this utopian sort of society because we have nothing but time and we have no competitors. Despite the pretensions of the left to some sort of cosmopolitan internationalism, at their core most modern liberals are inward-looking and reactionary. They believe that we can go on living as we do now forever, regardless of information to the contrary.

I’m constantly amazed by the lack of concern displayed by people who will howl for hours about the Hubbert Peak over declining fertility rates in the West. Those who accept unquestionably crackpot theories about energy which deny the ability of humanity to innovate and explore seemingly refuse to consider the consequences of a case where we will actually bump up against the tyranny of fixed numbers.

The fact that X amount of oil is pumped today is almost entirely irrelevant to what our energy needs and sources will be in two decades. The same flexibility does not extend to matters of demographics. If there are one hundred babies born into a closed community, it is mathematically impossible for there to be more than one hundred twenty year olds in that community two decades later.

Modern liberalism’s fundamental delusion is that we have no need to worry about the internal strength of our society (as in its ability to produce future armies and its ability to withstand future challenges) because there are no real threats to our future.

I view moral issues as national security issues. I’m not simply opposed to gay marriage because I believe that it’s an abomination against God, I’m against it because I believe that it’s a threat to our future security. The advance of homosexuality and other ideologies of personal indulgence threaten our security because they will surely weaken our resolve to resist future threats.

Similarly, I’m against abortion for national security reasons. More abortions means fewer people, which means a smaller economy and fewer potential soldiers (or, alternately, more immigrants, which is also not a sustainable solution).

Our old morality was not crafted because our ancestors were prudes or bigots. It was created by people more acquainted with the dangers of the world. There’s a reason why every successful civilization developed moral codes that are broadly similar.

Think about it. From Europe to the Middle East to China to Japan, what do successful societies have in common? In general, they were are patriarchal and centered upon some form of traditional family. I can’t name a single one which commonly accepted practices resembling modern homosexuality. All of them tended to be religious (in some form or another) and to emphasize duty and responsibility over personal pleasure. All of them recognized and defended the concept of private property.

Were there societies that thought otherwise? Of course there were. And what became of them?

They died. They disappeared. They’re gone. They were conquered by better civilizations.

The evolution of man is a process of creative destruction. Civilizations, peoples, ideas, and religions are eradicated as better ones take their place. That is how man got to where he is today, and that is how we will move forward.

This is what truly scares me about the direction in which our society is headed. This is why I have nightmares about the era of China’s ascendancy. The Chinese are better at classical capitalism than we are. They’re work twelve hours a day for slave wages without unions and without real regulations to hold them back. They can throw up entire cities where there were none because they’re not encumbered by municipal regulations and a thousand pathetic special interest groups.

The Chinese don’t have (and aren’t likely to have) any ACLU to bother them, nor any effective court for them to sue in. The Chinese are free to pursue the accumulation of their own wealth and power practically free of our self-imposed restraints.

Why do we restrain ourselves so? It’s simple: we’re deluded. We don’t understand the challenge. We don’t understand the threat. We believe that our world can continue forever.

But how can our world continue in the face of a billion and a half people in China and another billion in India who will demand the same access to resources as us, the same standard of living as us: the same rights over the planet as us? How can our world endure in the face of people who can make everything that we can for a tenth of the cost and who could, if allowed to do so, consume every resource on the planet and still have excess capacity?

Our world is not permanent. Our world is dying. Our past is dissolving before our very eyes. Because of our laziness, our stupidity, and our ignorance the world of the old West is becoming a faded memory. It’s becoming a nostalgic memory of by-gone days of glory.

And so what is to be done?

I don’t believe we can save most of Europe. They’re a dead civilization. To our descendents, a hundred or so years from now, the idea of Europe as we have known it will be as foreign as the idea of the Aztecs is to us. Europe will be something entirely different. If things continue the odds seem high that Europe will probably be divided between Moslem states and occasional enclaves of surviving European strength. Or perhaps Europe will be entirely Moslem and the surviving Europeans resettled somewhere in the United States, welcomed and loved by the people they once hated so. I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball.

But I do know Europe is dead. The very feel of the continent is one of death. Their civilization will die but probably not before we, “like the Roman, see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

The question now is if we can, at least, save the best part of the West: the Anglosphere. For the moment, it’s an open question. We’re not as far gone as Europe, but we’re all headed down the road to danger at various speeds.

Only radical action can now save us from Chinese domination.

Do you think that a world dominated by China would be a place any true Westerner would want to live in? If allowed to reach their full strength, the Chinese would be much more powerful than the United States. Not only because China has a much larger population and apparently a better ability to manage them, but also because China’s policies will not be restrained by the same forces as those of the United States are. China won’t have any problem with simply taking the resources that they need or want. China won’t be restrained from simply ordering the murder of any foreign leader that gets in their way. China won’t be above simply bribing and buying foreign governments to get the sort of trade concessions that they want. The Chinese won’t have any lobby groups to stop them from conducting horrible genetic experiments to remake men as they desire them to be.

There’s only one way to beat China: to fight back now, and to fight like hell. That means a lot of things. It means making our society harder and tougher. For example, I think that we’d be well-served by the institution of some form of universal military service. That, I believe, would be of help to virtually everyone (myself included). But, more than that, we need to leverage our advantages.

More than anything else, that means exploiting:

1) Our cultural influence.
2) Our technological power.
3) Our economic power.
4) Our military power.

We need to work to prepare people for a long struggle against China: one at least as long as the Cold War.

We need to work to secure military domination of space and to develop other advanced technologies which might be used to great effect against the Chinese, especially unmanned planes, ballistic missile defenses, ground-penetrating nukes, and combat robots. Once we secure space, we need to develop offensive weapons which can be dropped from orbit to destroy targets on the ground in seconds. Ideally we might even place kinetic energy weapons in geosynchronous orbit over China.

We cannot simply go on believing that peace and prosperity will continue forever. To get the future we want, we’re going to have to fight for it.