Eight years ago I wrote “An Arab Muslim’s Prediction About the Fall of Western Civilization.” The gist of it was the following:

Western civilization has become spineless. This happens to all cultures, eventually—as described first, ironically, by the great 14th century North African Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun in his work The Muqaddimah. Ibn Khaldun, based on his study of ancient, Islamic and Christian history, ascertained a cyclical pattern of rise-and-fall among what he termed “dynasties” which, mutatis mutandis, is applicable to our culture as well. All of them go through three phases:

[1] The first is the one which establishes the society: “its members are used to privation and to sharing their glory with each other; they are brave….sharp and greatly feared. People submit to them.”

[2] Following that is the stage in which the society moves “from privation to luxury and plenty” and “the vigour of group feeling is broken…. People become used to lowliness and obedience. But many of the old virtues remain” and the people “live in hope that the conditions that existed in the first generation may come back, or they live under the illusion that those conditions still exist.”

[3] The final generation “has completely forgotten the period of…toughness, as if it had never existed…. because they are so much given to a life of prosperity and ease. They…are like women and children who need to be defended. Group feeling disappears completely….. When someone comes and demands something from them, they cannot repel him.”

The fourth phase, then, is the conquest of the civilization by another that is still in the robust, determined and, yes, dangerous phase.

Watching President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last night, and the Democrats’ reaction to it, reminded me of Ibn Khaldun’s typology. His first category describes traditional America, and what Trump+ MAGA hopes to resurrect; his second, establishment Republicans and “liberal” Democrats; the third, modern Leftists. The latter two now have far more in common with one another than either has with the “toxic masculinity” of the first–hence the hatred evinced by “Never Trump” Republicans and most Democrats towards those of us who hope and pray that Trump can indeed make America great again–which is the only way it will survive the Marxist and Muslim onslaught trying to destroy Western civilization in general, and this country in particular.