Urbanities
It merely became possible for “cities” to grow and grow, along highways; not just the significant cities — Alexandria, Rome, Chang’an — but immense parking lots for mediocrity. In the last century, though once a city, New York became the first urban agglomeration to reach a population of ten million, and since, many have exceeded that mark. Impressive people can be found in them, for simple statistical reasons; you can’t have so many people without some being at least slightly interesting. But all are victims of misrule. Given democracy, and sometimes worse, all large cities fall quickly under radical Left dictatorships. Twenty out of the twenty largest American cities, for instance, belong to corrupt Democrat machines, for which no intelligent person ever voted, and inner conurbations like Toronto can actually be ruled by a person like Olivia Chow: too stupid to be seriously evil. Socialists and Muslims, and often both, become mayors in these circumstances, and there is nothing a person who is neither a moron nor depraved can do, except remove himself to the countryside, and hide. He can buy himself a large property, and fill it with lovely furniture and works of art, behind a carefully concealed entrance, until the revenue department arrives.
In other words, there are no cities, any more, and no “States,” in any sense that Aristotle could understand. There is no room for responsible civic action, even resistance to crime; and no one needs to waste his time professing pride in his citizenship. The only sort of pride we allow, that is not sexual perversity, is “nationalism,” because it is so easy to exploit. The mediaeval conception of a nation being a coterminous racial and linguistic group, there are no nations, either. For as a nationality grows in population, we get multicultural “nation builders.” Scoundrels, invariably!
All of this being the case, we should not underestimate what it will take to restore civilization. We might begin by requesting divine assistance.