If this were any normal Monday, I’d just post up the usual collection of amazeballs awesomeness – sorry for the Shrillennialspeak, but you know how kids are these days – and leave it at that.

But this isn’t any ordinary Monday.

This is November 11th. And in the Western world, at least, that means that it is a day of mourning, remembrance, and respect.

In the USA, November 11th is Veterans’ Day. In Europe, it is known as Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day. The Russians don’t acknowledge it because for them, WWI ended in May 1917, and honestly, by the time November 1918 rolled around, they were embroiled in their own massive civil war. The rest of the world acknowledges it, if at all, with an indifferent shrug.

But for the Western world, November 11th is a critical day to remember, for it is a connection with the past history of the West that is rapidly being lost.

As I pointed out in my post exactly a year ago commemorating the centenary of the Armistice, WWI brought about the collapse of the most advanced civilisation that the world has ever seen, and replaced it with death, despair, misery, and horror. European civilisation had reached its apex in the years leading up to WWI, and those heights have never since been matched, never mind exceeded.

On top of that, the lessons of WWI concerning the dangers of globalism, entangling alliances, viciously repressive and confiscatory totalitarian socialist ideologies, and cultural decay, have long since been lost. We are in the middle of repeating exactly the same mistakes that led to the outbreak of the Great War, and we are quadrupling down on the mistakes made over a hundred years ago.

As with all fields of human endeavour, the only thing that prevents subsequent generations from repeating the mistakes of their forebears, is the existence of those same forebears.

And that is where we run into a very serious problem. You see, the veterans who survived the War to End All Wars are gone.

As far as I am aware, not a single veteran of the Great War survives, ANYWHERE. Those last vital links to our past have disappeared.

It had to happen. Time waits for no man, and death and the grave wait for every last one of us. All we can hope for is that future generations will remember how much we loved life, how well we lived our lives, and how well we passed on the lessons that we learned to our successors.

In the end, all that we can do is trust that our descendants will not make the same mistakes that we did.

I am very sorry to say to the shades of those who died in the Great War that, one hundred and one years after the guns fell silent across Europe, we have failed.

It is vitally important, therefore, that as Western civilisation crumbles around us and we who love what is good, beautiful, and true, struggle to preserve the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors, that we remember the lessons that they tried to teach us.

And it is even more important that we remember to show respect and gratitude to those who have fought in wars to preserve and defend the flame of the West.

In that spirit – I know full well that a good chunk of my readership is made up of veterans. Some of you even comment fairly regularly here. I would like to personally thank each and every one of you for your service.

It was because of men like you that the United States of America became the good and beautiful country that it was. I was given the chance to live and work there for many years, and I remember those years as the best of my life. I was given a literal winning lottery ticket in life, to live in peace and security and freedom in America – and the country remained that way because of the veterans who fought for it.

Thank you, and may God bless you.

As for me, well, I choose to remember the veterans in the way that ancient cultures always have – through song, poetry, and celebrations of glorious deeds. And what better way to achieve all of those ends than through some good old-fashioned raucous music?