I have the not altogether unsatisfying impression that civilisation is collapsing around me.

Is it my age, I wonder, or the age we live in? I am not sure. Civilisations do collapse, after all, but on the other hand people grow old with rather greater frequency.

Overall, it seems that we have to accept that Western civilization will decline. It is, essentially, inevitable.

Considering the importance of resentment in our lives, and the damage it does, it receives scant attention from psychiatrists and psychologists. Resentment is a great rationalizer: it presents us with selected versions of our own past, so that we do not recognize our own mistakes and avoid the necessity to make painful choices.

There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.

To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.

We all resort to the ad hominem from time to time: in human affairs, it is difficult to avoid it, and probably not desirable. After all, our opponents are human. The proper use of an ad hominem argument, however, still requires evidence to back it up.