Can the Dark Ages Return? | RealClearPolitics

Western civilization arose in the 8th century B.C. Greece. Some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age...  -  Victor Davis Hanson 

• What followed was a second European Dark Age, roughly from 500 to 1000 AD...

Contemporary Americans do not believe that our current civilization could self-destruct a third time in the West, followed by an impoverished and brutal Dark Age.
But what caused these prior returns to tribalism and loss of science, technology, and the rule of law?...

• Expenditures and consumption outpace income, production, and investment.
• Child-rearing, traditional values, strong defense, love of country, religiosity, meritocracy, and empirical education fade away...
• Tribalism -- the pre-civilizational bonds based on race, religion, or shared appearance -- re-emerge...
• Borders disappear. Mass migrations are unchecked. The age-old bane of antisemitism reappears...