Kerby Anderson

Eight months ago, I wrote about the book, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, written by Victor Davis Hanson. In his book, he provides four historical examples: the city-state of Thebes, ancient Carthage, Byzantine Constantinople, and Aztec Tenochtitlan. The leaders believed their illustrious pasts would be enough to prevent their destruction. Alexander the Great, Roman Scipio, Muslim Mehmet, and the Spanish conquistador Cortés proved them wrong.

The book is a warning to us today, but I also realize that few people will read his book. That is why I would encourage you to watch his five-minute video summary produced by Hillsdale College, just click “Watch More.”

He says his book “is about the existential destruction of the losing side in a war. This is very rare in history. It doesn’t happen very often. But when it does, it should enlighten us how it does, why it does, and can it happen again?”

He explains that he wrote his book “not just as a historical journey to document the rare cases of a targeted nation being completely destroyed, but as a warning that human nature doesn’t change.” We naively assumed that globalization would create a common humanity and bring an end to global conflict. Instead, he “noticed that there were more and more existential threats coming from autocratic regimes.”

He wants us to be aware that what happened in the past could happen in the future. We need to learn from the past and protect ourselves in the future. As I mentioned in a previous commentary, the world needs a strong America so that we can prevent “the end of everything.”