From the third of five books that have had a major effect on me: America Alone by Mark Steyn (from page 207):

“Americans and other Westerners who want their families to enjoy the blessings of life in a free society should understand that the life we’ve led since 1945 in the Western world is very rare in human history. Our children are unlikely to enjoy anything so placid, and may well spend their adult years in an ugly and savage world unless we decide that who and what we are is worth defending. To a five-year-old boy watching Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee procession on the Mall in 1897, it would have been inconceivable that by the time of his eightieth birthday the greatest empire the world had ever known would have sunk to an economically moribund strike-bound slough of despond whose tax rates drove its best talents abroad, and whose most glittering colonial possessions now valued ties to Communist Russia over those to the mother country. It’s difficult to focus on long-term trends because human life is itself short-term. So think short-term: huge changes are under way right now.”