Barbarians inside the gate

When the unwashed Germanic hordes of Vandals, Alans, and Suebi crossed the frozen Rhine River in A.D. 406 and changed Europe forever, beleaguered Rome didn’t have a frozen water problem. It had a barbarian problem. It had an internal cultural corruption problem.

Similarly, the recent anarchy that broke out in France at the hand of French cabbies is not a taxi service problem. It is the handwriting on the wall for civilization. The media would have us believe the root of the French taxi drivers’ recent penchant for blocking roads, burning tires, and smashing cars is the despicable UberPOP, a mobile car-hailing service that began in California. But the sight of stranded families hauling their belongings along the roads to Orly Airport is eerily reminiscent of photos we have seen of the Yazidis of Iraq on the road to Mount Sinjar, one step ahead of the ISIS hordes.

“As our story opens at the beginning of the fifth century, no one could foresee the coming collapse. But to reasonable men in the second half of the century, the end was no longer in doubt: their world was finished.”

This is a quote from Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization, and his description of the slow-motion fall of ancient Rome could be taken from a modern magazine analyzing American or European culture:

“… the changing character of the native population, brought about through unremarked pressures on porous borders; the creation of an increasingly unwieldy and rigid bureaucracy, whose own survival becomes its overriding goal; the despising of the military and the avoidance of its service by established families, while its offices present unprecedented opportunity for marginal men to whom its ranks had once been closed; the lip service paid to values long dead; the pretense that we still are what we once were; the increasing concentrations of the populace into richer and poorer by way of a corrupt tax system, and the desperation that inevitably follows; the aggrandizement of executive power at the expense of the legislature; ineffectual legislation promulgated with great show. …”

Another taxicab caper, this one across the English Channel, illustrates the decay of culture caused by political correctness and obsequiousness:

“Loyalty to the followers of Islam takes precedence over standing up for what is right. An example of this in Rotherham occurred when a Muslim councilor blocked a move to inspect and regulate more closely the behavior of the local taxi drivers, most of whom were Muslims. The taxi drivers tended to work with and knew most about the sex gangs in that town, yet they were men who had been issued taxi licenses without a proper criminal background check. It was not that the councilor was in league with the gangs, but rather that he did not want the scandalous behavior of his fellow Muslims to be revealed. He was willing for girls to go on being assaulted in order to protect the public image of Muslims.”

From the French airport debacle, a series of tweets (some with profanity) from singer Courtney Love Cobain last week detailed an attack by a mob of taxi drivers, including this one:

they've ambushed our car and are holding our driver hostage. they're beating the cars with metal bats. this is France?? I'm safer in Baghdad

— Courtney Love Cobain (@Courtney) June 25, 2015

Are we seeing the lights go out in the civilized world?