day no. 16,234: when money is in better supply than courage

"Money being in better supply than courage, subsidies instead of weapons are employed to buy off enemies. To justify this departure from ancient tradition, the human mind easily devises its own justification. Military readiness, or aggressiveness, is denounced as primitive and immoral. Civilised peoples are too proud to fight. The conquest of one nation by another is declared to be immoral. Empires are wicked. This intellectual device enables us to suppress our feeling of inferiority, when we read of the heroism of our ancestors, and then ruefully contemplate our position today. ‘It is not that we are afraid to fight,’ we say, ‘but we should consider it immoral.’ This even enables us to assume an attitude of moral superiority." -- Sir John Glubb, The Fates of Empires

When a people pass from pioneering to prosperity they get soft as a society. They get used to conveniences and are less likely to willfully suffer the shenanigans associated with trailblazing and conquest. They also shift from production to service. In so doing, their tenacity atrophies as their bank accounts burst.

However, the world around you does not settle in just because you have. A country giving itself over to effeminacy is ripe to be plucked by one flexing its masculinity. Effeminacy can never rule the roost. It can nag and coddle, but only its own. Those outside the flock do not fall for any of their fakakta claptrap. Foreigners care nothing for their temper tantrums and sweep them off the floor where they're still red in the face from kicking and flailing.

At first, the affluence of the effeminate can buy off the aggression of the masculine. It can hire other warriors to defend them. It can bribe the barbarous with delicacies. But eventually the barns go bare or the men at the borders get restless and there is nothing the effeminate can do to resist the initiative of stronger, better men. Dainties cannot keep back the devourers indefinitely. Sweets cannot stall the salty forever.

While the effeminate are busy congratulating themselves for their refinement, they are, all of a sudden, swept up and made to serve in another man's kingdom.

Imposition is inescapable and where gold is more abundant than grit both are taken away by the gumption of another group.

For example:

Daniel 5:1, 4-6, 8-9, 13, 17-18, 22-23, 26-28, 30-31

King Belshaz′zar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and drank wine in front of the thousand...They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone. Immediately the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, opposite the lampstand; and the king saw the hand as it wrote. Then the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together... Then all the king’s wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or make known to the king the interpretation. Then King Belshaz′zar was greatly alarmed, and his color changed; and his lords were perplexed... Then Daniel was brought in before the king...Then Daniel answered before the king, “O king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnez′zar your father kingship and greatness and glory and majesty; and because of the greatness that he gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him; and you his son, Belshaz′zar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven; and the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them; and you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored...This is the interpretation of the matter: mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." ... That very night Belshaz′zar the Chalde′an king was slain. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom.