"Civilization in reverse."

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Civilization is fragile. Its continuance requires respect for the law, tough-minded education, collective thrift, private investment, individual self-reliance, and common codes of behavior and civility -- and exempts no one from those rules. Such knowledge and patterns of civilized behavior, slowly accrued over centuries, can be lost in a single generation.

OZYMANDIAS by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I MET a Traveler from an antique land,

Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings.

Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!"

No thing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

And, on a related note, "Why U.S. Gun Sales Are Shooting For The Moon."

Got militia?