A Decline of More Than Numbers

On this day:
1305
William Wallace, who led the Scottish resistance against England, is captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London where he is put on trial and executed.
1583
Sir Humphrey Gilbert establishes the first English colony in North America, at what is now St John’s, Newfoundland.
1620
The Mayflower departs from Southampton, England on its first attempt to reach North America.
1689
1,500 Iroquois attack the village of Lachine in New France.
1735
Freedom of the press: New York Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger is acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, on the basis that what he had published was true.
1763
Pontiac’s War: Battle of Bushy Run – British forces led by Henry Bouquet defeat Chief Pontiac’s Indians at Bushy Run.
1862
American Civil War: Battle of Baton Rouge – along the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Confederate troops drive Union forces back into the city.
1864
American Civil War: the Battle of Mobile Bay begins – at Mobile Bay near Mobile, Alabama, Admiral David Farragut leads a Union flotilla through Confederate defenses and seals one of the last major Southern ports.
1884
The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty is laid on Bedloe’s Island (now Liberty Island) in New York Harbor.
1916
World War I: Battle of Romani – Allied forces, under the command of Archibald Murray, defeat an attacking Ottoman army under the command of Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, securing the Suez Canal and beginning the Ottoman retreat from the Sinai Peninsula.
1944
World War II: The Nazis begin a three-day massacre of anywhere between 40,000 and 100,000 civilians and prisoners of war in Wola, Poland.
1979
In Afghanistan, Maoists undertake an attempted military uprising.
1981
Ronald Reagan fires 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers who ignored his order for them to return to work.

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A rumor: OpenAI is preparing to launch GPT-5 as early as mid-August 2025.
Altman compared GPT‑5’s development pace to the Manhattan Project and admitted feeling unnerved by the model’s power.

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A recent headline on France "officially recognizing an imaginary Palestinian State" was worthy of The Onion.

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Genius of American leadership, a la 'Russian incursion': "Thanks to the leadership of the Shah, Iran is an island of stability in a troubled region."—Jimmy Carter, December 1977

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It isn’t Israel’s most virulent enemies who feel betrayed by its incoherence, by its inability to articulate the endgame of this war. It’s Israel’s friends. I’ve heard from journalists, pundits, even members of Congress—who all support Israel and believe in its fundamental decency—that they have been unable to get any meaningful answers from Israeli officials.
This absence of Israel from the information space has been Hamas’s most important advantage in this war.--Free Press

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A Decline of More Than Numbers

Humanity has never lived in a time of long-term secular population decline. There have been sudden demographic shocks, like the Black Death, but those were short-lived and came at times when the human population as a whole was much younger on average. To a degree we probably cannot even fathom, human civilization and human psychology are built upon notions of growth, youth, renewal, and hope. What would it mean to live in a shrinking world, where most people will have no direct connection to future generations? Where innovation and creativity, disproportionately supplied by younger people, are not only increasingly scarce but perhaps even seen as increasingly undesirable? Where the very notion of sacrificing for the future becomes obsolete? Unlike the economic consequences of demographic decline, these are some of the harder-to-quantify aspects of the problem that society, by and large, has not even begun to reckon with. But they might prove far more important, especially if it turns out that the techno-optimists are right about the role technology can play in the economy of the future. In short, we are on the precipice of arguably the most fundamental shift humanity has ever experienced. And right now, for the most part, we are going into that shift blind.--Jeremy Friedman

This might be the largest of the Left's many blind spots. Struggle is a condition of man. It has always been with us. But achievement has not. What Friedman is writing about here is not production or the financial balance of entitlement demands. It is even possible that AI will be able to meet those demands. What this population trend heralds is the gradual loss of struggle and the human fight to achieve and provide. The threat of scarcity and its liberating, human efforts to overcome and succeed. Achievement. 

Shrinking effort and success. Narrowing dreams. And a disconnection of us from the future. It sounds like we'll be better fed and less sick, but it also sounds like a return to the emotional Dark Ages.