Logan, Memphis, TN - Being a European by birth and upbringing, I find you remark interesting. You talk about your rights but seem to dislike having obligations in exchange. And yet, you list a number of things - charities, perhaps - that you have obviously thought of, even though you feel no 'obligation' to give to them. When you "provide for myself and my family" - isn't that an obligation? I appreciate that it's your decision, out of a free choice, but why provide for your family unless you feel somehow 'obliged' to do so - by your conscience? - Maybe, if so many Americans think like you, your (and many of your compatriots') individualism is the reason that your infrastructure is such a poor shape - what Galbraith described as "private wealth and public squalor". Maybe this is the reason why so many people working for the service industries in Florida are paid so little, so late. No trade union - because that would be 'collectivism' and 'socialism'. It seems to me, again as a European, that American individualism serves oligarchs rather than poorly off people. Oligarchs don't have to become 'collectivised' because they have financial and political power; it is poor who may have to organise and cooperate in order to survive. No?

Without having a clue about the context of Toynbee's quote, he may simply means that the supply lines became too long and that, therefore, the borders could not be effectively defended militarily. - And this is an almost trivial observation, nothing deep and meaningful about 'civilisations' and their rise and fall.

Waffler, Smith asks, "Why is the herd crushing the single man worse than the single man crushing the herd?" - Well, it depends on context, of course, but my answer is exemplified by Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Ai Weiwei and other isolated dissidents that become the target of the spite of government and of the 'damned majority' (Henrik Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People"). - One could argue that the crowd has the potential to organise and effectively defend itself; this is much harder to do for an individual.

The hilarious thing about being blessed with a mainstream mass media that act as their own echo chamber is that, when confronted with an informal, off the cuff and friendly summit meeting between Trump and Putin, the members and behind the scenes staff at the G20 meeting are obviously brainwashed by their own neoliberal inter-textuality. To quote from today's Guardian newspaper: "Trump has consistently and MYSTERIOUSLY [my emphasis] refused to criticise the Russian leader. [Ian] Bremmer [the president of the international consulting firm Eurasia Group] said: "I have never in my life seen a relationship between two major countries where the interests are so MISALIGNED [my emphasis again] while the leaders are so buddy-buddy. It doesn't add up" - [From: "President met Putin for second time at G20, White House confirms", by David Smith, The Guardian 19 July 2017, p. 15]. - The reason I am juxtaposing the Guardian quote with Churchill's quote, is to highlight the gap that can exist between prescient political leaders and the resistance of domestic media outlets. Churchill and Trump can be seen as the 'mouse of thought' appearing in the 'room' of a media scrum that feed off each other in promoting a uniform and fallacious 'take' on the relations between 'us' and 'them'. In 1938, the media were too lenient towards and too trusting of Hitler; in 2017 the media are too hostile towards and distrusting of Putin in the field of international relations. - We need to remember the 'mouse' and what it symbolises: a different mind-set and a different approach to the 'frozen' attitudes of the past. A certain open-mindedness.

Apart from the potentates of his day (the speech was delivered in America in 1938), Churchill may also have had in mind the BBC's banning him for being a war monger. - However, I like this speech because - amazingly - it still applies in this year AD2017 - where we are blessed with a mainstream mass media that, with one voice, extols the virtues of economic austerity and blames all the world's ills on Putin - including the onset of the civil war in Ukraine in 2014. It's ironic that, these days we have to rely on Al Jazeera and Russia Today to fill in the picture of what is actually happening domestically and on the international scene. What would Churchill have said, I wonder?