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A civilization is not destroyed by wicked men. It is destroyed by weak men who cannot defend what is good.Read that twice.Rome did not fall because the barbarians were strong. Rome fell because the men inside the walls had forgotten what was worth defending, and had grown too comfortable to pick up a shield.That is the story of every civilization that ever collapsed. Conquest from the outside comes second. Rot on the inside comes first.Look at what is happening right now. A generation is being taught that it is entitled to housing it did not build, an education it did not pay for, and wealth it did not earn. It is sold as compassion. It is arithmetic dressed up as virtue, and the arithmetic never works.The Democratic Socialists of America figured out something the rest of us have been slow to admit. You do not have to beat the Democrat Party. You just walk in and take it, because nobody inside is willing to say no.So ask the question honestly. Who in that party is standing up to the DSA? Name one. The silence is the whole story.And here is the part that never makes the campaign poster. The money runs out. It always runs out. Tax the productive hard enough and they leave, or they stop producing, and then you are holding a stack of promises with nothing behind them.Madison saw this coming in Federalist No. 55. He wrote that republican government depends on virtue in the people to a greater degree than any other form of government. Self government is not a machine that runs itself. It runs on citizens who know what is good and are willing to defend it.The good news is that weakness is a choice, and courage is a choice too. Every generation gets to pick. Ours has not finished picking yet.That is what the men in this cartoon forgot. Let us not.