Decadence Quotes
Islam is a religion, like many Christian sects, where conversion of non-believers is a religious duty. When many of the European day-to-day customs, conflict with Islamic custom or prescription, decadence and the desire to change it becomes a very predictable result.
This is another of De Tocqueville’s prescient statements that in retrospect seem so amazing given the time. This quotation could serve as an op ed in a newspaper of any of the industrial democracies of the early 21st century. However, he did not have the information of the details we have today that showed Islam as the pinnacle of scientific, philosophical, literary and medical achievement at the beginning of the second millennium, while the Christian nations of Europe were mired in the Dark Ages. It was the same Koran but a very different interpretation and framework that led to the decadence while it was the Protestant Reformation that triggered a Christianity that was hospitable to modernity and enlightenment.
In George Washington’s administration, Jefferson was Secretary of State and the Capitol of the country was New York. Jefferson, never a lover of cities, found himself having to work every day in New York.
… everyone is convinced that all sexual wrongs represent a symptom of decadence peculiar to our age.
His observation at that time has been typical of almost all eras which tend to be seen as unique in this respect by those who live during them.
Coolidge's rhetoric did not reflect the fact that his administration was totally indifferent to the serious plight of the American farmer in the 1920's.
