Patient vultures

Melanie Phillips excoriates the 'Honours roll' list in  England where knighthoods and other 'awards' are given to the 'worthy'. This small extract speaks about the prize awarded producer Peter Bazalgette (producer of Big Brother) for ‘services to broadcasting’.

His knighthood is a symptom of a culture in which excess has been normalised, brutalisation lionised and coarseness idolised. 

Such an honour also perfectly mirrors the political scene, in which principle is nowhere to be found and all that matters is winning power by pandering to the whims of fashion.

And so our Western culture circles the drain while those of a more, shall we say, 'rigorous' nature wait expectantly in the wings to pick over the remains at some future moment.
In 1999 Thomas Sowell said:

The late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put his finger on the problem when he said: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles."