We live in the opening days of a revolution in human affairs. New technology – particularly advances in medicine and the field of biotechnology – are set to revolutionize society altogether. Advances in space travel and other areas are likely to see a significant number of humans living off-world for the first time in our history. The lines between human and machine – as machines gain greater than human intelligence and are even merged with our biological selves – appears likely to blur and even, in some cases, disappear outright.

These advances are the greatest in the history of humanity. The movement of humans off the Earth and to other words – something that is likely to begin within the lifetime of most of the people reading this – is an event as epochal and monumental as the discovery of the New World and, perhaps, the movement of the first humans out of Africa. No greater event has occurred in the whole history of the existence of our race.

That is what makes success for the West, and for the best of the West, so terribly vital at this moment in time.

In many ways, the first people to gain access to advanced biological technologies and to deploy them on a massive scale and the first people to settle a biologically sustainable human population off the planet Earth will have more influence on the future of our civilization, the kind of lives that our children will lead, and the destiny of all humanity.

Consider this for a moment: assuming only that our lifespans will increase at roughly the same rate as in the 20th Century, then people my age (twenty-something) should anticipate living until around 2080 or so. Our children should plan on living to 2120 or so. And our Grandchildren should expect to live until at least around 2160. Or perhaps it may be given to us that advances in technology will all-but abolish natural death and some people who read my words today will live practically forever. They may live until they, to paraphrase Babylon 5 get sick and die or are injured and die – but otherwise practically forever.

All of our finely-tuned plans for Social Security and Medicare go out the window if people start living for more than a century on average. Our entire society will have to be transformed. The world will be.

And there is the question in the young years of the 21st Century: who will decide the destiny of humanity? Some nation, some civilization, will do just that. Fifty years or a hundred years or two hundred years from now some men and women will sit in an office somewhere (or perhaps in many offices, linked by a common server) and decide where the first large human settlement on Mars, or some far-distant world, will be placed, who should live in hit, and how it will be governed. This moment will set the course for centuries to follow and, indeed, likely be controlling in determining the future composition of the human race itself.

Where would you rather it be taken? In Washington? Or in Beijing?

Some people will try and take a casual attitude with such questions. “It doesn’t matter,” they will say and to think differently, they will argue, is a product of outmoded and racist ideas.

Nonsense. Pure, utter, unadulterated and stupid nonsense.

It’s not a matter of race. It’s a matter of culture. And it’s a matter of history. I don’t give a damn if the people who make those decisions are named “Wong” or “Mohammed” or “Smith” but I do give a damn what they think and why. At the world is born anew we must think anew and act anew. We must consider the long-run because, given the startling advance of technology, most of us will probably live to see it.

I’m berated for thinking about far-off issues and being focused on such things at the expense of the present. There’s probably a valid point there. But here’s another, equally-valid point: would you think what you think, make the plans that you have, and act as you act if you expected to live not for seventy or eighty years, but for two hundred or more? Because I think that to be the far more likely scenario.

And if you and I are going to live forever – or practically forever – then we need to start asking some hard question about the future with practical relevance today.

Can we afford to squander billions of dollars –and far more in lost opportunities – fighting the phantom of ‘Global Warming’?

Can we allow outdated promises made based on faulty assumptions to bankrupt our government in our middle age (our old middle age, I suppose) and to deprive us of our prosperity?

Can we tolerate or allow an Islamic conquest of Europe?

Can we stand by idly as Chinese power grows to equal and exceed that of the West?

Do we want to wake up a century from now and live in a world –indeed, a Solar System – which is dominated politically, economically, and culturally by China or some other alien force?

As well, if we are truly in this for the long haul, then we need to ask ourselves some hard questions about ourselves.

Are our governments and institutions strong enough, as they exist today, to meet and defeat the challenges that face them in the years ahead? Or will they have to be transformed in some fundamental way?

Are our people prepared for the task that awaits them? And, if they are not, how can we best prepare them?

There is a defeatist tide that runs through public life today. The West, people seem to believe, is doomed to second-rate status – perhaps as a deserving punishment for our so-called “sins.”

There is much talk, even in Washington, of decline and defeat. Of an “end of the American Empire.”

However, I put it to you that the “American Empire” has yet to even begin. Like Rome, in the final days of the Republic, the United States finds itself in possession of great power and wealth but without the political system or will to control and utilize them. The people are confused and rudderless. Petty politicians, willing to commit treason to advance their careers, hold great power and are willing – indeed, working – to see the nation defeated in a war in order to increase that power.

If we are to win the future, we must have leaders and institutions prepared to do so – and prepared to overcome all challenges and obstructions to that noble end.