In the dying years of the Roman Republic, after Julius Caesar had taken his army into Italy and sent his enemies, the Optimate Senators, fleeing to Greece, one figure of note emerged among the Optimates. His name was Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, a Senator, a Stoic scholar, and an avowed opponent of Caesar. Cato isn’t as well-known in history as certain of his colleagues, like the prolific speechifier Marcus Tullius Cicero. But Cato was a man of principle, who fought what he (correctly) foresaw as forces that would end the Roman Republic until his last breath. That last breath came in the North African town of Utica, when, after the remaining Optimate forces lost their last battle against Caesar, Cato cut out his own stomach and died.

Cato has long been one of my personal heroes. He was a man of conviction and courage, and he stood for the Republic. If you’re interested in reading more about him, one of the best works I can recommend is Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni’s book “Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar.” 

Now, I told you that so I could tell you this.

The fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Empire were largely internal affairs; when the Western Empire fell, it was due largely to forces and events outside Rome. Now, today, Western civilization is at a similar crossroads, and the nations of Europe (and Canada) seem to be laying down the welcome mat for those who would supplant them; and as a Friday editorial at Issues & Insights points out, there is no Cato arisen to hold up his hand and shout “Siste!”

“Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine,” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social. “That will make it very hard for us to make a trade deal with them.”

Canada is not the only Western nation that feels the need to recognize the terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip, which, with the Israel-occupied West Bank, is considered by some to be Palestine, a country that has never existed. Both France and the United Kingdom have said they will recognize Palestinian statehood next month. As loony as that sounds, there might be a practical reason for it. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron “are likely terrified of their local Muslim populations — and probably not without reason,” says Stephen Green.

This is a move of monumental stupidity for Canada, France, and the UK. They are planning to recognize Palestinian statehood, which can only mean Hamas-controlled Gaza and the currently Israeli-occupied West Bank. This move gives Hamas a legitimacy they never deserved and never will, and the I&I editorial board is almost certainly right: They are doing this out of fear of their increasingly restive Muslim minorities.

These are minorities, of course, that are on their way to becoming majorities, and when that happens, Europe as we know it is dead.

Much of the West seems no longer interested in maintaining even a veneer of civilization. In the name of diversity, inclusion, and tolerance, and for the purposes of virtue signaling and assuaging their guilt for enjoying the benefits of civilization, Western “leaders” have actively imported migrants who have not just disrupted society but have taken it backward. They are ceding ground to those who actively despise everything about the West other than its wealth. The results have been appalling.

Until January of this year, we should note, the United States was doing much the same thing. The Biden administration let in millions, unchecked, unvetted, unscreened, from all over, and now we still have little or no idea where many of them are, what they are doing, or what they might have planned. ICE is doing great work identifying these people and getting them out, but there are still millions to go; this is a task worthy of Hercules.

Here’s just one example of the many “results” that Issues & Insights presents:

. In working-class Rotherham, “more than 1,400 girls,” some of them as young as 12, have been “systematically ‘groomed’ and gang-raped by Muslim immigrants, mostly of Pakistani origin,” says the New Criterion. The Economist calls “the grooming-gangs scandal” a “stain on the British state” fueled by “a toxic combination of victim-blaming and misguided political correctness.” Tablet magazine explains that “few issues expose the self-blinding of the Western progressive left more than the sexual violence waged against working-class girls” in the United Kingdom “by predominantly Pakistani grooming gangs.”

The British government allowed this. They let those people in. They allowed them to stay. This is cultural suicide. There are a few protesters; Nigel Farage, Douglas Murray – but they are few, the suicidal, many.