Green Shoots Versus Oak Trees

People look at the few green shoots in the cornfields and think that a new civilization is arising, but a civilization is not created by the weak and ephemeral green shoots—it’s created by the giant battle-hardened oak trees which carry the scars of the centuries. The political movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (liberalism, communism, capitalism, neoliberalism, libertarianism, neoconservatism) are the green shoots, which are here today, gone tomorrow. The traditions and movements which have come down to us from the Ancient and Middle Ages are the giant oak trees which will keep supporting us for centuries in the future.