Can Generation X Save the West?

The barbarian hordes can be repulsed. And we're just the people to do it.

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by Richard Shinder
January 7, 2026

The 1990s bestseller How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill asserted that Irish monks, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, preserved essential religious and secular tracts from antiquity through the Dark Ages ensuing from Rome’s collapse. The subsequent reintroduction of these classical texts arguably “recivilized” Europe after centuries of barbarism.

The “Great Awokening” ascendant in the West (particular the United States) over the past 15 or so years can hardly be compared to Visigothic bedlam. Nevertheless, Irish monks are an instructive analogue for whether the emerging backlash against progressive cultural dominance will prove sustainable. Who today will assume the mantle from those ancient Irish clerics?

The societal madness of the last seve…