For most people, the story of the medieval world was one of cramped cities, constant violent crime, and episodic outbreaks of deadly plagues — the dividends of unclean urban conditions, rotting food, fouled water, open sewage, and unchecked rats, fleas, and lice. Most of each day was spent simply trying to survive until the next.

Castles and walls dotted the landscape to protect kingdoms from marauding tribes and foreign invaders. City gates were usually closed at dusk to keep out nocturnal marauders. Public executions drew massive crowds. And religious schisms and conflicts often turned deadly.

In other words, it was not altogether unfamiliar to the world we are becoming today.

Yet meanwhile, science advanced quietly among true elites at universities, courts, and monasteries, producing windmills, mechanical clocks, and eyeglasses. Sophisticated crossbows were manufactured in great numbers. Large, multi-sail warships were built that could cross narrow seas.

Some of history's greatest literature — Dante's Divine Comedy, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae — was the product of the medieval mind.

We still gaze dumbfounded at the architectural genius and beauty of the colossal cathedrals of Cologne, Florence, Milan, Paris, Rome, and Seville. The Byzantine cathedral Hagia Sophia may have risen near the beginning of the medieval period, and for a millennium, nothing rivaled its majesty. All these medieval architectural masterpieces were built without computers, porta-potties, overtime, or building permits.

Yet after the collapse of the classical world (circa A.D. 500), Western civilization still needed a millennium to recover even a modicum of its lost knowledge and technology. Centuries passed before the Renaissance saw hygienic principles of sewage systems, aqueducts, and waste disposal — not to mention the medical expertise of classically trained doctors and scientists.

Yet our progressive-regressive modern West is now suddenly beginning to resemble the medieval age — with one important caveat: after centuries of so-called "progress," we should know better.

Our mounting urban filth, dangerous streets, and resurgent diseases are juxtaposed with brilliant revolutions in artificial intelligence, bioengineering, robotics, satellite technology, spaceflight, and cancer research.

Unlike their counterparts in the medieval fiefdom, our officials know how to stop disease, crime, and filth but apparently choose not to. Their neglect grows out of a sick ideology that divides the world into the blameworthy "oppressors" and the blameless "oppressed." The victim is always right and must be championed — at least from a distance or as long as he does not show up smelly on your doorstep.

We have just experienced a tribal invasion of millions of impoverished foreigners swarming across our southern border — until the belated resumption of border-wall construction, medieval-style, and the deployment of detested patrols who try bravely to stop them.

Western urban street crime seems to require the army to restore calm yet often grows unchecked when troops are barred from helping police.

It is technically illegal for people to camp out on public sidewalks or someone else's property — unless they do so in such numbers that paralyzed city officials look the other way.

Defecation, urination, fornication, and drug injection are now routine spectacles for hurried sidewalk passersby. If Los Angeles or Berkeley allows its streets and........

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