Penna Dexter
I recently returned from a trip to Greece. One cannot go far in that country without being confronted with evidence of the rise and fall of great civilizations.
We spent a day in and around Corinth, a wealthy ancient Greek city, destroyed by the Romans in 156 BC.
The Romans killed all the men in Corinth and enslaved the women — and the children. The victorious Roman army sacked the city, utterly destroying it.
In 146-144 BC, Julius Caesar settled Corinth as a Roman colony. The Romans rebuilt it.
The Corinth the apostle Paul visited was Roman — again a great city which, because of its location, was the crossroads of civilization. Paul started from Athens and went to Corinth to end his second missionary journey.
At that time, Corinth was the commercial center of the world. Our tour leader compared Athens to Boston. But Corinth, he told us, was like New York City. He likened the ceramic earthen vessel, the main receptacle for storage and transport in this prosperous society, to the ubiquitous cardboard box which characterizes commerce today.
Corinth was filled with carnality and corruption. Ancient Gods, both Greek and then Roman, were corrupt. Greece’s most beautiful women worshipped Aphrodite through their bodies in temples dedicated to her. People indulged their vices.
Paul was an urban evangelist. When Paul got to Corinth, he had to teach people what sin is.
Rod Dreher’s newsletter recently referred to William Ophuls’ book, Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail. There comes a time for them when, “The majority lives for bread and circuses; worships celebrities instead of divinities; takes its bearings from below rather than above; throws off social and moral restraints, especially on sexuality; shirks duties but insists on entitlements; and so forth.”
William Ophuls continues: “The society’s original vigor, virtue, and morale have been entirely effaced. Rotten to the core, the society awaits collapse, with only the date remaining to be determined.”
We must ask: How near are we to this?

Kerby Anderson
Nuclear war may be unthinkable, but we need to think about it, so it doesn’t occur. Recently at a China-Russia summit, General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed, “There can be no winners in a nuclear war, and it should never be fought.” While we can take comfort in their statement, we also need to realize these two leaders have threatened the use of nuclear arms in the past.
In his latest book, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, Victor Davis Hanson explains that war can settle disputes, topple dictators, and bend the trajectory of civilizations. But he also warns there have been times when war ended in utter annihilation.
He provides four historical examples: the city-state of Thebes, ancient Carthage, Byzantine Constantinople, and Aztec Tenochtitlan (tuh/noch/te/lan). The leaders believed their illustrious pasts would be enough to prevent their destruction. Alexander the Great, Roman Scipio, Muslim Mehmet, and the Spanish conquistador Cortés proved them wrong. Each of them didn’t just attempt to defeat their enemy but were successful in destroying them and their culture.
There are many ways that nations and people can vanish from history. Sometimes natural causes like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or plagues wipe out a population. His book provides four examples of how wartime destruction of a culture and civilization have taken place in the past. His book is an important warning that it could happen again.
What is striking is how quickly the transition from normality to the end of days can take place. This rendezvous with finality was unexpected. Their leaders failed to assess their military and cultural weaknesses. This needs to be a warning for us today.

Kerby Anderson
The world keeps getting increasingly more dangerous. Robert Clark provides several examples. There is the “war in Ukraine; China’s increasingly bellicose actions in the South China Sea and its little-talked-about nuclear proliferation; and Iranian aggression that threatens the existence of Israel, the lives of U.S. forces and their allies in the Middle East, and the security of global shipping lanes.”
All of that is enough for any of us to avert our eyes and focus on something else. But his argument is “The World Needs the West.” We may not want to think about foreign policy, but the future of a stable world depends on us electing the right politicians and appointing the right cabinet officers.
After the Cold War, we enjoyed a “peace dividend.” That allowed many European countries, along with this country, to reduce defense spending. This loss of military capability led to a loss of a credible deterrent. Many Americans don’t want to go to war. Perhaps the best way to avoid war is to have enough military might that will deter aggression.
The editors of the Wall Street Journal put it this way: “Mr. Biden talks about a world at risk from autocracies, but he acts like this is 1992 and the Soviet Union just collapsed. The world today is more like the late 1930s, as dictators build their militaries and form a new axis of animosity, while the American political class sleeps.”
The editors are also aware of our national debt and argue that what is currently spent “for defense in 2025 is a fraction of what Congress has blown on social programs over the past three years.” They argue we need an informed debate about priorities.
During this election year, we need to remember what is at stake not only in this country but around the world.