The Last Good Summer?

Daniel Johnson (who refuses to mince words in laying out what he sees as a very grim future) thinks it could well be:

Future generations may look back on the summer of 2010 as the high noon of the West. Just now, the omens are mostly propitious. We have apparently weathered a serious economic crisis without the social and political chaos that once caused much of the world to embrace totalitarianism. Since 9/11, our worst fears have not been realised: terrorists have yet to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The world is not coming to an end, as the prophets of environmental doom foretold. All that has come to a (provisional) end is the gullibility of governments in dealing with green issues. Nor is it capitalism that collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. No, that was socialism.


Yet this summer may also prove to be the last interlude of calm before a war of annihilation is being unleashed against the Jewish people and against the state of Israel in the first instance. Whether this is allowed to happen will be the decisive test of the West. All the cardinal virtues of the West will be tested — ideals that originate in the ancient world, were augmented by the medieval world and adapted to the modern world: prudence, fortitude, justice, temperance, faith, hope and charity. So far, none of these virtues has been much in evidence among the statesmen and women of the West...

And on that happy note, I think I'll go sailing.