I’ve heard enough about the Crusades, that America was built on stolen land, or that Israel sits on occupied land. That’s life. Get over it. Might makes right was the way of the world. But now, we’re seeing conquest through a different strategy, and the West is complicit in its own execution.

The reality is that, for most of mankind’s and civilization’s history, the world has been ordered by the most physically powerful individuals and civilizations. I mention the Crusades first because, for the last quarter century, we’ve been told that Muslim terrorism is somehow understandable because of the Crusades. We’re led to believe that the evil European Christians were invading the lands of the innocent, peaceful Muslims and trying to steal the Holy Lands. Well, that is partially true. Beginning in 1095 and lasting until 1291, various Christian expeditions were indeed sent to the Holy Land to reconquer Jerusalem and its environs. The First Crusade succeeded in 1099 and established four Christian states in the area that would stand until the last was conquered in 1291.

It definitely sounds like the Christians were the aggressors…until one actually picks up a history book. In 600 AD, the Eastern Roman Empire, what we today call the Byzantine Empire, stretched from the Strait of Gibraltar to the easternmost part of modern-day Turkey and included half of Italy, all of Greece, all of Egypt, Israel, Syria, and Jordan. It was a Christian Empire, and it had been built by the military power of the Roman legions over the previous 1200 years. By 640, the Byzantine Empire was a shadow of itself, but would remain a regional power for the next 800 years.

Image by Vince Coyner.

By 640, the Islamic caliphate, which had its beginning in Medina in 622, would conquer all of the Arabian peninsula; by 661, it would take all of modern Iran, half of Turkey and much of Egypt and Libya; and by 750, the caliphate would include all of Spain, southern France in the west and much of the Caucasus’s in the east. Indeed, it was only the heroic stand in the Battle of Tours in 732 that kept the Muslims from taking all of France and potentially all of Europe.

This is the actual backdrop upon which the Crusades were launched. And just to be clear, that caliphate was not established, enlarged, or maintained by peaceful acquiescence. Muhammad alone fought 27 battles against “unbelievers,” and the bloody conquest continued for centuries after his death.

But here’s the thing… What the Muslims did is no different than what anyone else did. The Mongols built the world’s largest land empire by conquering 25% of the planet’s land mass and killing 10% of the world’s population while doing it.

The British killed millions while building an empire upon which the sun never set. The colonial powers that first landed in North and South America unwittingly killed millions of Native Americans by introducing diseases, but they also engaged in bloody wars (bloody on both sides), a tradition America followed in the 19th century. However, the Western powers were no different than the Aztecs, the Māori, the Comanche, and most civilizations around the world.

Indeed, right up until the middle of the 20th century, conquest was how much of the world ordered itself, and violence was how it was decided who would be the ruling power. In much of Africa, it has remained so. Violence, or the threat of it is how problems were solved in most interactions for most of human history around the world. The guy with the physical power to make others obey usually makes the rules.

While violence remains and sometimes breaks out in conflicts between or within nations, the truth is that the last 75 years have seen—admittedly largely midwifed by the United States’s power—a historic collapse in the number of deaths from war. Violence, at least in the West, has, for the most part, been abandoned in favor of other forms of decision-making. Whether it’s economic trade, international bodies like the UN, or diplomatic negotiations, when mortal conflict does break out, it’s typically the last of a long series of resolution attempts.

Why is this relevant in 2025? Because the civilization the West has developed has metastasized into idiocy on the part of much of the population, particularly among elites. Prosperity has, apparently, dulled their senses. They have zero understanding of actual history. They recline in their comfortable chairs, watch movies and TV shows, and read social media posts that tell them that the world is oppressed because of Western imperialism and that it was the violence of white Europeans that shattered humanity’s peaceful harmony.

The consequence of this historical ignorance and self-hatred is suicidal empathy. Across the West, leftist elites have indoctrinated much of the population to think that, somehow, the institutions and civilization that Europeans built will exist forever. That somehow—while simultaneously being evil—the essential building blocks of our relatively peaceful and prosperous civilization can and will survive regardless of who actually inhabits the West. They take Francis Fukuyama literally when he suggested history basically stopped because liberal democracies had won.

The logical result of this delusion is that, rather than strengthening the foundations of liberal democrat civilizations, elites instead import millions of mostly military-aged men who harken from a completely different worldview, Islam. Moreover, they do so with the expectation that these immigrants will assimilate and internalize those Western values.

Anyone paying attention recognizes that’s not happening. Jordan Peterson articulates the reality:

Forty out of fifty Muslim-majority countries in the world are authoritarian hell-holes. And only three are democracies: Morocco, Indonesia, and Turkey. And I wouldn’t put them in higher echelons of stellar states. Why is that? Is that a deviation from Islamic principles, or is it the consequence of Islamism? Now, nobody wants to have a discussion, and it’s no bloody wonder.

There are certainly doctrines in Islam that are very, very difficult to square with free, liberal, western Christian democracies. And those differences are not just apparent; they are deep!

Islam is a problem for the West, and it’s a growing problem. But the Western elites, with their bodyguards, Swiss bank accounts, and exclusive neighborhoods, have no clue about the chaos they are inflicting on their nations. This is an invasion just as much as the 4th and 5th century barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire were. The difference is that the Romans at least fought until they were defeated, whereas most Western leaders are embracing those who will eventually subjugate them.

To understand exactly how serious this ostrich-like behavior is, one needs only look at Britain’s latest attempt to address its violence problem. Deportation of criminal aliens? No. Severe enforcement of laws? Of course not. No, the Brits are now banning Samurai Swords and giving white men longer prison sentences for…checks notes…being white.

Whether it’s the establishment of a Sharia-compliant town in the heart of Texas, protests in Europe calling for a caliphate, or the 50% higher birthrate among European Muslims compared to the general population, this is war by other means: In this case, demographics.

Western civilization has created more prosperity, freedom, and technological advances than any civilization in human history. The result of those advances has been to make Westerners soft, fat, and willingly ignorant of the nature of mankind and the history of civilizations. That’s unfortunate because bondage has a way of clarifying reality, and that’s exactly where the West is headed if it doesn’t wake up soon. The world will once again become a violent place ruled by those with the most power and the least compunction about using it. That won’t work out well for anyone, but on the upside, at least the elites will finally have to face the consequences of their actions…

Follow Vince on X at @ImperfectUSA.