The Feral Historian: Conquer or Be Conquered

 Several months ago I started watching videos produced by the YouTube channel The Feral Historian. He creates videos that generally address issues of political philosophy, but does so by drawing on works of fiction--whether novels, films, or television series--to illustrate his points. In the video below, he draws on the Star Trek franchise, and particularly the Enterprise series, to illustrate the concept that a nation or country must expand (and therefore grow stronger) or it will contract and diminish (and therefore open itself to conquest by another culture that is itself expanding). He implication is that there is no middle ground whereby one maintains the status quo. I suppose that one could argue that Switzerland is an exception, but I would say that a peek beneath the surface would show that Switzerland is also in decline as well; it's just better hidden because Switzerland never had overseas colonies to lose.

    This is actually fairly easy to see in practice by examining Europe. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, Europe was viral and expansionist. While England, at that time, boasted that the sun never set on the British Empire, the fact of the matter is that many other European powers could make similar boasts even if they did not control as much territory. But after committing suicide in World War I and doubling down in World War II, all the European powers rapidly shed colonies and European influence rapidly declined. A few hold-outs such as Rhodesia and South Africa held on for longer than the colonies directly controlled by the European powers, but by the 1990s, Europeans had lost control of all overseas colonies of any note (there was the odd island here or there) where they did not numerically outnumber the prior inhabitants. 

    But it doesn't end there because Europe, and West more generally, are being invaded and overrun by foreigners. Europe and the West chose decline. And by virtue of the principles outlined in the video, by selecting decline, they also selected to be conquered by more viral cultures and peoples. The only hope for the West is reconquista and expansion.

VIDEO: "Enterprise : How Not To Be a Khest in the Post-Post-Apocalypse"
Feral Historian (14 min.)