Declining Fortunes: Home Thoughts from Within
This is only one instance, among a staggering multiplicity of such instances, of the enormous failure of intelligence that has brought the contemporary university into disrepute; for a comprehensive account of its intellectual degradation, one need only consult Bruce Bawer’s recent The Victims’ Revolution. The Academy has plainly become a “home” for the useless and the dysfunctional — in effect, for those who would be unemployable in the real world. Academics in the literature, social science, and “culture studies” departments (aka the Humanities), facilitated by the current crop of administrators, have turned the liberal university into a shelter for flunkies, sycophants, political children, misnamed “progressivists,” and committed fantasists. But it is not just a question of a degenerate Academy.
Indeed, a culture that makes room, or a “home,” for such flaccid imbecilities as we have just noted is a culture unmistakably heading for the exit. Culture, of course, is the lived expression of a civilization, and a civilization has two related priorities: to survive and to prosper. But a civilization that is preoccupied with such luxurious inessentials as we find in the labyrinthine corridors of higher education — and just about everywhere else in its “social space” — while its internal foundations are wavering and it is surrounded by implacable enemies bent on its destruction is, to cite Spengler again, “wishing itself…into the darkness.”
It is time to face the truth. A civilization that has given up on genuine knowledge; whose intellectual class argues that there is no such thing as “truth,” only “interpretation”; whose populace is increasingly prey to the illusion of society as a fiscal womb and relies on a placental attachment to unsustainable entitlements; that has deconstructed the traditional definition of marriage; whose political echelon adamantly refuses to acknowledge the forces and gradients of the real world and settles instead for selective inaction, mollifying narratives, and elaborate evasions, especially in regard to the Iranian nuclear threat, Palestinian recidivism, and international terror networks; and that considers attitudes, temptations and desires as constituting a disease — for example, obesity and drug-addiction — for which the individual is not responsible and which must be treated by different forms of legislation or by politically correct repressions of obvious recognition: this is a civilization that does not inspire confidence in its future. Individual will and initiative are now at a discount. The source of our malaise, whatever form it might adopt, is regarded as emanating from without. We need no longer take personal responsibility for whatever may afflict us. We are all victims. And far too many of us are now takers.
Has Western Civ become Victor Davis Hanson’s California, with its pockets of insulated wealth and privilege amidst a vast terrain of deteriorating infrastructure, bankrupt administrations, gorging bureaucracies, ecofascists gone wild, official multiculturalism tearing away at the fabric of the heritage culture, rootless citizens, and welfare parasites? The signs and symptoms of civilizational decay proliferate in every sector of social, political, economic, and cultural life, from the most trivial to the undeniably catastrophic — from filing a successful suit against a restaurant chain for one’s having spilled hot coffee on one’s own lap to the welcomed infiltration of an anti-Western Islamic cohort into the highest offices of state.
There are a seemingly infinite number of such episodes, events, news items, improprieties, hot button issues — what journalists call “red meat” — which fill the media outlets and are endlessly debated by panels of “experts,” editors, columnists, pundits, and ordinary folk as well. But these are only manifestations and auspices of a far more significant concern. Life as we have known it is suffering its own version of a subprime mortgage crisis, the house about to be foreclosed as the value of its securities plummets.
Many non-leftist Americans seem to think that if 50.001% of the voting electorate chose to abandon our Constitution and to institute a communist dictatorship, they should accept the loss and fight harder to win next time. Our nominally non-leftist House sits by idly while Obama and his minions blatantly disregard the Constitution in order to further leftist causes. Many nominally non-leftist American electees and appointees in all three branches of our government are working to support leftist ends by eroding our freedoms and increasing the power of government. We have met all the conditions of tyranny spelled out in our Declaration of Independence, but we merely respond by bleating and babbling (as I am doing here).
The truth of the matter is that millions of Americans would have to be willing to disrupt their lives. Take to the streets, if necessary. When the scum in the WH started placating his inner fascist with his executive orders, we should have surrounded the White House or the Capitol building and demanded he cease and desist and insist the jerks under Boehner did something about it. The only reason there has been a disruption in the Obama steamroller is because millions of Americans under the rubric of Tea Party have done something. But do we have the ability to sustain it? Many are reaching retirement or are already retired. They are the ones with the collective memory of what the country once was (and why ObamaCare was devised to hasten them to an early grave). What we are talking about here is SACRIFICE. Time. Money. One or both. We are heading towards a civil war. We are in the middle of a cold war with almost half the country. The first order of business should be a complete halt to the importation of all third world populations. The fact that we have a sizable Muslim population, busy building military installations under the heading of “mosque” boggles the mind. And much of what we have had to suffer in the last forty years was made possible because the left Saul Alinskyfied anyone who objected to their agenda. Witness how the word “racist” is used to shut everyone up about the hideous Obama. Now think about how “Islamophobe” is thrown around. We are at the tipping point. And the only “rescuers” out here are ourselves. Who has the stamina for the fight, when there is so much of life to be lived before the end of our lives? Do we possess the character, like those who risked all to birth this nation? Well, do we?
“Racist” and “Islamiphobe” have been used so much they no longer have power. I do not care what names are called-saving the country is too important. If a little name calling is all they got, bring it on, baby!
“Do we possess the character, like those who risked all to birth this nation? Well, do we?”
This isn’t going to be easy and nobody said it was. Several years ago I was doing extensive landscaping in the yard of a home I had recently purchased and remodeled. A neighbor of only casual acquaintance saw me working and suddenly appeared with power equipment and volunteered to pitch in with help. He and I became friends and thru the years we have worked on several community projects together. We have a shared interest in a hobby. He is a darned nice guy and a good friend. But here is where it gets difficult. Soon he will erect Obama signs in his yard and sport Obama buttons on his hat. I will counter with a Romney/Ryan sign or two in the yard. But should Obama win I will become much less passive in my outrage and resistance. I will lose an otherwise good friend. Many of us will face similar choices. As I say, it won’t be easy.
Deal breaker…
Once someone I’m “friendly” with demonstrates such a profound lack of intellectual honesty and downright Anti-Americanism as to be enthusiastic about Dear Leader, I know what side they are on…
And its not mine, or my childrens.
They are the enemy.
Period.
And as such they are no longer welcome as “friends”
“It certainly appears to be ‘thinking less and less.’”
If doubt lingers, wade into the swamp that is YouTube commentary.
I’ve concluded that one of this era’s most dangerous, and therefore most often avoided questions is “Why?” “What is the proof?” is so incendiary that minds on the Left literally explode in its presence.
And my niece’s generation gets this mess dumped in their laps.
Too many are becoming unglued by the realization, yes, there IS a clash of civilization. A clash so large it will bury the west, if left to stay on its current course.
Ringing this alarm bell, or that one, often paints a bulls eyes on ones back. Nevertheless, as is said, to be silent is to agree. Therefore, there is NO other option, but to raise the clarion call, regardless of the blow back.
For once ones freedoms are taken away, one will never get them back – at least in this lifetime.
So, learn the lessons well – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/09/23/when-is-it-honorable-to-lie-and-under-whose-cultural-system-further-exposing-the-clash-of-civilizations-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
In this sense we would be contemporary with late fourth century-early fifth century Rome, a civilization, as Spengler wrote, “los[ing] its desire to be, and… wish[ing] itself out of the overlong daylight and back into the darkness.…”
Nonsense.
The apt analogy is to Rome ca 120 BC.
A republic which has military triumphed over every enemy state, but has not consolidated those triumphs into a tyrannical super state. And which is being torn apart by class divisions, many of which are trumped up for short term individual political advantage.
Exactly! And, in fact, republics are torn apart from the inside when they lose strong and believable outside foes because then there is no reason for the losing faction or factions in the ongoing electoral struggle to accept their losses in the interest of avoiding disunity. As soon as the relevant question in a republic’s factional struggle becomes “What can we get away with?” instead of “What do the rules say should be done?”, it’s only a matter of time before things fall apart.
During the fall of the Soviet Union, I remember one of their spokesman saying that they would deal us a deadly blow by taking away our enemy (ie, by surrendering in the cold war). At the time he sounded like he was smoking something, but events since then have tended to bear out his insight.
With any luck China will become strong enough quickly enough for us to reunite in constructive fear while there are still meaningful elections that make a difference in how the US is governed.
Geez Mr. Solway, I think you are hanging around with the wrong crowd, maybe too much Academic reading. Things are tough alright. Socialism, for the umpteenth time has proven unworkable. Yeah, we have a nation with a lot of disfunctional folks. But there are also many many functional types about as well.
Richard Fernandez had a column today about education and other things and I was going to post there but as usual the THINKING commenters had already covered most of what I was going to say. There is more learning, more thinking, more ideas being thrashed out now than at any time in history. Forget Academia, the old model. It is dead, it just doesn’t know it yet. Right here and at other sites like this one the real learning and teaching is happening.
I do not doubt that your concern is justified. If Obama is reelected then hard(er) times are upon us. Even if he loses it will be a hard slog out of the mess. Reality is about to give everyone a teachable moment. The Sea of Anarchy Yeats wrote about will flush away alot of the dross that concerns you. For the disfunctional the learning curve will be steep and if they do not catch on quickly they will learn a Darwinian lesson. The functional ones, for the most part will do ok; at least that is my guess.
Lastly, I don’t know how any one could handle this world if they do not possess at least, the least little bit of faith.
Oy.
Indeed, a little optimism is called for. (Mmore than a little.)
A little dignity. (More than a little.)
A little pride. (More than a little.)
Keeping in mind that one should not go down without a fight. That every crisis provides its opportunities. That it is always darkest before dawn. Etc. Etc. Etc.
(And also, Mr. Solway, that pessimism—no matter how seemingly justified—is simply not a Jewish trait. In spite of all….)
File under: Ya think we’ve got problems? Well lemme tell ya something: they got even bigger ones…..
Your thoughts echo mine – so easy to assume that one’s personal perspective is universal. There is no doubt we have reached a turning point, even though there were harbingers earlier. James Piereson described, in a June 2012 essay titled, “Future Tense,X: the fourth revolution” the demise of what he called the regime party (Democrats) and the system it oversaw because the American economy can no longer underwrite the debt and public promises that have piled up over the decades.
As he sees it:
“Thus, what the United States is now facing is not a gradual decline but a political upheaval that will reshape its politics, policies, and institutions for a generation or two to come. There is no guarantee that the nation will emerge from this crisis with its superpower status intact, just as there were no guarantees that it would emerge from the Civil War or the Great Depression in a position to extend its wealth and power. The most that we can say is that, in the decade ahead, Americans will struggle to forge a governing coalition that can guide the nation toward a path of renewed growth and dynamism.”
The tactics of the regime party noted by other commenters are attempts to hang on desperately to what, in fact, is slipping away – the sense of legitimacy that every regime must have. That is why the rhetoric is heating up. There are some very interesting times ahead!
My comment at 6 was meant to be a reply to Black Bart @4.
What can’t go on, won’t. The United States can no longer sustain itself as it is currently configured. The liberal-left denizens of the cities are destroying the foundations upon which the Constitutional Republic rests. Those in the hinterlands will seek to secede from the death grip of the Leviathan state. The country will be fragmented as it was in 1861, but the government agents will not be able to stop it this time; their minions are the unreliable, cowardly, slovenly, dishonorable segments of today’s society, incapable of waging a second Civil War. The new imperative is to relocate to a section of the country (Idaho is my choice) where your neighbors have an ethic of self-sufficiency and be less likely to view you as a sheep to be sheared or a lamb to be slaughtered. Then the rebuilding can begin, with a new core of states that adhere to the Constitution as written, with the communist enclaves cast aside to devolve into third-world jungles, in accordance with their populations’ wishes. The Roman Empire itself did not last into perpetuity. Italy devolved into individual regional political entitites. Why should anyone think the United States will go on forever? Indeed, if Hussein is re-elected, then it can truly be said that it is already dead.
Your comment is right on. I am puzzled as to why the “relocate, then secede” message is not more popular. Keep it up.
If recognizing and carrying out an unpleasant but necessary action
were a common capability, the world would not be in its sad state.
The best case action for the solvent states is a ‘soft secession’
a (mostly) legal and non-violent refusal to be taxed and regulated
into bankruptcy.
Civil disobedience. Obama’s deconstructors still win by disordering the system, but the Constitution survives to fight another day, another way.
So, how many are willing to relocate as a prelude? We are. Any others?
I relocated my family from the East Coast to flyover country. I saw pain approaching every American.
Ah, some have suggested a spot: http://freestateproject.org/
Rather than point blindly on a map, there is a good guide to the intersection of geography and politics here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Partisan_Voting_Index
This article and the accompanying map rank the 435 Congressional districts by the percentage by which that district’s presidential vote differ from the national average. Take enough of the most Republican districts to get a contiguous landmass, continue adding districts until you get a landmass with a seaport and which is defensible, and you will have a viable country, because we automatically get many of the agricultural and mining districts. The rest of what used to be America can hold riots and protests, and teach diversity courses in their universities. Our country may be called – Libertas.
PS – It may make more sense to divide among the 3141 counties and county-equivalents than the 435 districts, but the general principle is the same.
Nice logic. Especially the seaports –as is, they’re all union-controlled and thus potentially open to foreign ‘peace-keepers’. Of course, push comes to shove, the rank-and-file may say different.
I do not disagree with the ill effects or that we are dealing with civilizational catastrophe if this official push to return to preliterate minds and reject the Axemaker Mind of the Enlightenment is not resisted. But this is not an accident even if many individual profs are not involved. You simply cannot read what the College Board was officially pushing in the 1990s during the last round of radical national ed reform and see this demise s an accident. Or what AACU has foisted on its member colleges and universities. Or read the standards for accreditation imposed on higher ed to destroy the transmission of knowledge itself.
The social scientists recognized that attacking the noetic system was a much stealthier means of changing a society than targeting the means of consumption and production. Of course now with the push of Sustainability and systems thinking in K-12 and higher ed we are getting one ideology that targets both. Plus it is grounded in emotion and an appeal to new collectivist values. Again no accident.
In other words this is not a suicide, it’s a homicide. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/constructing-an-alternative-vision-of-either-the-natural-or-human-world-as-the-basis-for-a-college-degree/ lays out this Administration’s vision for higher ed already announced and going into place.
It is part of a broader UN program for radically restructuring the nature of higher ed worldwide that started in the 1990s. It is well underway globally especially the UK, Scandinavian countries, and Australia. Did you know American English profs are being pressured to give credit for twittering as a valid form of communication? Or that many colleges have quit assigning email accounts because emailing involves a level of interaction with print that the students are no longer comfortable with?
Paul Ehrlich’s desired Newmindedness indeed.
Yep –the 1990s –when most all of these strange plans came roughly en masse off the drawing boards and into bricks and mortar.
“In other words this is not a suicide, it’s a homicide.”
I’ve thought this for a while – treason from within.
People, for the most part, hate what they see happening culturally here. And what’s happening with the kids is horrendous. It’s like they are being turned into an academic version of the small pox virus to be sent out by the millions to attack the healthy body that is America.
Only solution is to pray.
Can the American people start thinking again? Yes.
Will they do so before total economic collapse forces them to do so or starve? NO.
I prefer YES and MAYBE.
What he calls the ‘committed minority’, if ruthless enough, will win — and can also move the clock up. As always, the challenge is to save the village without destroying it.
Revelation 11:18
New International Version (NIV)
18 The nations were angry,
and your wrath has come.
The time has come for judging the dead,
and for rewarding your servants the prophets
and your people who revere your name,
both great and small—
and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”( kia diaphtheirai tous diaphtheirontas tEn gEn)
Those who want freedom in Babylon adore gaia I believe yet as we see in book of daniel the King of Babylon become wacko Mullah and want everyone to worship his god
Jesus defends gaia . In Lord of Rings we see gaia fleeing From the Great Mullah who does not share power
This narsisis club all children go through this door and Mullah like to heap great shame on them so they become suicide bomber to flee shame and feel holy again
Making Divine Love with gaia the scales fall off your eyes I believe and the shortcomings of gaia from her walking through certain doors do not hold this against her as the Roman Catholic Church learn and we must hold our nose at the past Protestant wackos and hold their hand to prevent them becoming mullahs which ahppens to them when push comes to shove in economic downturn
Civilization arose as like-minded people banded together to form cities as protection against the rampaging hordes of parasites that roamed the wilderness looking for easy loot. Today, the cities are the rampaging parasites looking for loot. And the cities have coalesced into the monster parasite called “Government” that devours everything in sight.
Most people would be uncomfortable kicking down their neighbor’s door and taking food off of the table but they don’t have a problem with their servant, Government, kicking down a door a thousand miles away and taking food off of a table for them. Personal theft is wrong, Government theft is virtuous. The neighborhood thief is a criminal, the Government thief is a Saint. And it’s all because I don’t have to look at the victim of the robbery as I enjoy the loot. Out of sight, out of mind. Besides, they stole it first anyway.
You mention cosmology but neglected to acknowledge the many voices in Christian circles who also see decline ahead. Some say that our loss of faith and morals is key to our decline. Others say that we have become too arrogant and have forgotten that we need God. Then there are others who say that God agreed to give the devil power over the earth for a period of time, after which He would vanquish the devil for good.
Take your pick, either from this list or the suggestions provided by Mr. Solway. It appears that there is a high probability of decline in our future.
If you’re looking for the root changes that might act as a crystal in a supersaturated solution, I suggest you approach Bernard Lonergan’s “Insight: A Study of Human Understanding” (originally published 1957).
“Can we begin to restore the home our ancestors built for us and which we have, for too many decades, failed to maintain, let alone to extend?.. Can we go home again, convinced to renew the fight for the culture we have mainly abandoned and the civilization we have largely betrayed?”
In other words, can we stop the process of American suicide? Yes we can, but it will require repentance before the God of truth, and a divorce from the father of lies. Reversing our accelerating national suicide will require us to rekindle reason and common sense, and flush out our psychotic irrationality.
“In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American People, find our account running, under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era.–We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them–they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their’s was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ’tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform. How then shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Abraham Lincoln – Lyceum Address
Thank you. That just got printed and hung up on my wall.
2 Chronicles 7:14
New International Version (NIV)
14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
…and from the Old Testament to the Protestant enlightenment, the idea of the Chronicle’s passage becomes Kierkegaard’s “Leap of Faith”:
“Thinking can turn toward itself in order to think about itself and skepticism can emerge. But this thinking about itself never accomplishes anything. Kierkegaard says thinking should serve by thinking something.” Kierkegaard wants to stop “thinking’s self-reflection” and that is the movement that constitutes a leap.”
That’d do fine as an important, nay critical, prescription for what ails us. But from wiki’s ‘leap of faith’ article i’ll add a little more of the quote:
[2] He’s against people thinking about religion all day without ever doing anything. But he’s also against external shows and opinions about religion and in favor of the internal movement of faith.[3] He says, “where Christianity wants to have inwardness, worldly Christendom wants outwardness, and where Christianity wants outwardness, worldly Christendom wants inwardness.”[4]
(tangential: the Coen brothers –the film genius brothers whose work is in so many opinions so far above and beyond the ordinary –studied Kierkegaard extensively, one reads here and there)
“Do we possess the character, like those who risked all to birth this nation? Well, do we? ”
The people who, ” risked all “, throughout American history, were people of faith.
Yes!
Once upon a time in our world the atheist sought neutral ground to be safe from all the mullahs and the demons seeking to destroy man. But now the atheist are on the way to become a mullah religion given the green light by agnostics with a life time of self serving pleasure with no time or desire to think about if there is a god and when push comes to shove in fear demons arrive before God and his angels
” — we can only, to adapt a heretofore insipid slogan, hope and try.”
Won’t work, David. Can you imagine firing 20 million unfireable Civil Servants? Or repealing 895,000 pages of statute law, millions of books of misguided case law? Depopulating academia and the fourth estate only to repopulate them with — who? The mumble-witted products of post-60s schools?
No. Hope and try just won’t cut it. But one can stop contributing to the malignancy’s momentum. One can — and should — go Galt.
‘Can you imagine ?’ — Yes, I can ! >:)
I can imagine a bankrupt, hence impotent, federal government
being ignored by the solvent States; The ones who have the gold
make the rules, and the good soldiers of the US military will not
get the federal government gold by looting the states.
General motors is turning into China motors! I also remember Obama wanting to spread the wealth. View and see what he meant!
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Lvl5Gan69Wo
We whine, we complain, we moan constantly about the totalitarian behavior of the Left. And it is all preaching to the choir. Even given our greatest, or largest in size, outreach, talk radio, we have reached a maximum of maybe 30 million Americans. We are effectively corralled and silenced. Our impact is negligible.
We must break out. This certainly will not be done with a president Romney and the DC pubbies. We are going to have to go big. We must follow the example of our Founders. They too were a small minority. But they won the day by putting it all on the line. So many of our spokesmen, still think the country can be moved back to the Right and to sanity. Not the way we are presently going.
I used to wonder about Germany in the thirties. How could a whole people go so stark raving mad? It seemed such a mystery. It was a mystery only because I had failed to fully comprehend the awful darkness human society was capable of. I had failed to grasp how tenuous is the human condition. I grew up when American history was still taught and so my wold view was American and based on reason given the assumptions of American Exceptionalism. (odd that spell check here doesn’t believe that word exists) Everything I assumed has now disintegrated.
The Left has gone completely mad. Sitting down with a real leftist and discussing politics is like banging your head against a stone wall. You don’t make the smallest dent in them and all you get is a headache. They are unreachable. They have completely abandoned reason and logic and have entered the world of religious fervor. They are identical in their mindset to a radical muslim.
In the short time since Ronald Reagan’s presidency we have journeyed as a nation the same distance into madness that the Germans transited in the thirties. The Left owns the media, the bureaucracy, academia and everybody on welfare. They have a near absolute lock on the culture. Even if by some odd chance that Romney wins the election all the above will still be true.
Every tenant of the Declaration of Independence applies to we the Red States and the majority population within same. Our only hope for survival as a free people, to save our Constitution and to avoid abject totalitarian slavery is to secede.
We Americans are largely a people focused on the immediate and without much historical perspective, but we must realize that nothing lasts forever—where are the Greece, and Egypt, Rome, Byzantium and China, the Carolingian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, French, Spanish, and British Empires that ruled large portions of the world? We must realize that we are not inevitable winners nor our civilization eternal, and that the United States is not immune to the forces of change, or to History.
Were we more our realistic, clear-sighted ancestors of centuries past, full of faith, grit, and determination, had we educated, talented, courageous, far-seeing and, above all, wise leaders, we might be able to navigate past the rocks and shoals and come home to our safe homeport again but, from what I see, we no longer have the faith, the values, and mind-set, we are not the people we used to be, and such extraordinary and wise leaders are in very short supply and, meanwhile, the sky darkens, the winds are picking up, and the waves grow higher and more violent by the hour.
We have been largely coasting these last few generations, a ticket for an easy journey purchased, most recently for us, by the enormous sacrifices and struggles of the much more realistic, much less “sophisticated” and “educated“ Greatest Generation” during the Great Depression and WWII, and all of us enmeshed in a dream of unending plenty and ever expanding opportunities that were devoid of risk or setback–freedom without responsibility, actions without consequences, morality and honor outdated, confining, and useless anachronisms–all in a multicultural “it’s a small world after all” fantasy world of nations whose only wish was for peace and understanding. All the while, eating up the surplus that was the product of the faith, clear vision, courage, grit, ingenuity, and back-breaking labor and struggles of past generations; we may still have plenty of checks left to write, but that bank account is about to run dry.
Unfortunately, and with great sadness and regret for my country, which is careening, ever faster, toward the dark, I agree with Mr. Solway’s survey of the patient’s condition and his grim diagnosis and, as things stand right now, I see the growing possibility of great violence and perhaps even some sort of civil war and a breakup up of the United States, but not much chance of really arresting or redirecting that trajectory, and no miracle cure in sight; the damage seems to be too deep and widespread, the character of our citizenry and government mostly changed for the worse, entropy that cannot easily be reversed.
As an aside, I have always though that the seemingly ever increasing proportion of our “entertainment” –books, movies, TV–devoted to violent and apocalyptic themes, actions, and scenarios is a reflection of our individual and collective intuition—mostly buried deep and mostly unconscious—about our progress toward the onrushing night.
As Franklin and others have said, “when the citizens realize that they can vote themselves money, that will be the end of the Republic,” and that day has come.
As Solway briefly alludes to in his essay, we may be in the situation in which things have progressed so far towards that darkness that the only way we have a chance of preserving anything of our traditional culture and its values is to found–right now–more and more Conservative institutions, universities, and the equivalent of monasteries, repositories hidden away and/or hidden in plain sight, of the best of our traditional civilization and its ideas—to teach things now, and there ready, when the tides of decline, violence, and anarchy subside, to start over and to rebuild—hopefully on a firmer and more lasting foundation (see, for instance, things like Clark’s “Foundation” novels, or the classic SF story, “A Canticle for Leibowitz.”
Good question. One could say that the U.S. is the direct descendent of the Roman Empire, which was the child of the Greek, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires (in that order). Each of these (save for us, and we’re on track) died in their turn, and for much the same reasons: their rulers became overly concerned with internal politics at the expense of their national survival, each let foreigners into their border areas to take over the “work that the locals wouldn’t do”, and each ignored the true state of their neighbors.
The parallels between ourselves and the Roman empire are especially notable. The Romans ultimately fell in large part because they brought the German tribes into the border regions to provide border security – and were then invaded by them. Rome couldn’t pay the legions because they were providing “bread and circuses” for the masses and even when the western Roman Empire was falling to invaders they never gave up this early “social security”.
It is also interesting to compare Western Civ with the Chinese. Bamber Gascoigne, in “The Dynasties of China: A History” states that China has not changed in essential character since its founding in 1600 BC (and even before that); it simply changes dynasties every two to three hundred years (the Communists are simply another dynasty in the succession; things haven’t changed much for the average citizen). They’re more stable, we reach higher peaks and lower troughs.
I don’t think people will agree but the University system is in itself a European anachronism. There is no reason why an engineering major needs to take an English course. It is because the system was meant to educate specific European classes that it was thought necessary to make sure they had enough education not to be “exposed”. Americans do not have an aristocratic class and do not need to pretend they are little aristocrats.
The university system itself shows the contradiction. Ideological professors obtain work through hiding behind the arbitrarily mandated need for core curriculum. The core curriculum is meant to give students enough knowledge to understand, appreciate and function within Western civ yet their professors disparage Western civilization. Why not just tell the professors you have done your work so well the job is no longer necessary. If you can get enough students to pay to hear you without coercion you can keep your job otherwise you have an opportunity to excel elsewhere.
If ideas undergo the rigors of competition they will be improved just as competition improves products within the greater economy. We should be finding mechanisms for improving ideas and their means of dissemination. We should not be tweaking a failed system destroying young people with debt.
At least your proposal is more honest than the lip service to education that one constantly hears from politicians and employers. These people will profess to value culture but secretly consider all non-technical intellectual pursuits a waste of time. Meanwhile the teachers of humanities have turned into fraudulent salesmen, insisting on all sorts of miraculous benefits from studying their subjects (see, e.g., Victor Davis Hanson; Greek), and becoming the more shrill when hardly anyone is left who takes them seriously.
“Can this be done? Can we jettison the dangerous assumption of liberal inviolability and repudiate the hedonistic dissipations that continue to devitalize us? Can we put paid to the nihilistic relativism that has clouded our thinking? Can “we dead awaken”? Can we go home again, convinced to renew the fight for the culture we have mainly abandoned and the civilization we have largely betrayed? Despite the auguries — and they are everywhere around us — we can only, to adapt a heretofore insipid slogan, hope and try.”
Pretty sure that horse already left the barn and if it hasn’t gotten completely away the liberal intelligentsia and their useful minions will be back soon enough to whip it into a gallop. Until we can change their thinking (not likely)they will inch and inch forward sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but never backward.
Somehow over the past 100 years and especially the past 40 we have managed to let the far left get the upper hand. Stopping that slow steady march is not likely in my view.
So what then?
Well once they consolidate their rule into the hands of a few, I would suggest we prepare for the fall and they will fall and fail as all attempts at socialist Utopia have failed. Only then can we move in to bring back a constitutional representative republic.
Personally I am of the opinion that it is a tad late for hoping and trying as we approach certain tipping points i.e. Milton Friedman’s 50% mark of those taking vs making; a national debt to GDP that is unsustainable and no practical end in sight; a legislature, administration and coming soon a judicial branch that is increasingly if not already all in for the socialists.
There is some inspiration with the 2010 elections, GOP governors, some public outrage, but on the ground around me I see the victim class growing stronger every day and there is no good way to stop that as the average American wants to help the clueless and the users. Helping the helpless is one thing, the others are just parasites, but many of the young people I talk to and the union folk and the lefties are all in to save the poor and the victims that we have created and nurtured. THAT’s not going to change as no one is willing on either side of the topic to take the heat that will come with reform.
Not too inspired here, but yes I will fight to the end. Never said I wouldn’t. Oh and Pelaut and Annonymous have good points. Where will the military stand? Where will the states stand? Where will the people stand? if it comes to a leftist takeover. That I don’t know, but it is doubtful we will be able to stop that attempt at takeover as we are already there.
Thanks
I wish i didn’t have to disagree, but
…once they consolidate their rule into the hands of a few, I would suggest we prepare for the fall and they will fall and fail as all attempts at socialist Utopia have failed
…refers to ‘the people’ and not the Party. Lenin and Stalin, Mao, lesser lights, lived long lives and died of natural cause, still in power –as is Castro. The Party didn’t really lose the cold war, either, as is becoming more clear by the day (Putin smilingly reminding that the SCO nations are in surplus, foreign exchange and trade accounts in the black, unlike the technically bankrupt USA and EU).
…and the German and Japanese national variations of the Party as they stood in 1940, say. To break them, the entire rest of the world spent the next five years and every bit of blood and treasure that could be brought to bear.
Nah, once these people take power and deploy their secret police, the only thing certain to fall is their people, the neighbors, and the world if possible.
AND they’ll have thousands of the highest of high tech drones operated my mercenaries at their disposal. Our only hope would be if the regular military mobilized to take them out.
if i were a high-up in the global shadow party (currently interfacing through the membrane with the visible world via the UN International Conference), i’d be augering toward a tripartite, alphabet-delineated, one-world. I’d see the Party as having control of two and a half parts of the three needed for completion. The 2.5 is Russia’s Party, China’s Party, and USA’s Party (virtually, the Democrats); the missing half-part is USA’s 1st and 2nd Amendment-armed Constitutionalists (the Bitter Clingers). The worst-case is USA’s Party provokes a hot fight with the Bitter Clingers, and the Party allies Russia and China challenge, spread, and isolate the USA military from taking a hand in the domestic strife. That’d be the logic, if Obama wins this election. In the scenario, expecting the triumphant and flush 2.5 parts to just shrug and accept the rights of that hold-out Bitter Clinger half-part strikes me as unlikely.
But nah they didn’t get us over this barrel with their superior ideas, they did it with financial politics exploded by that September 2008 surprise attack of the derivatives in AIG/London’s book –the derivatives that Bill Clinton’s big-bank financial braintrust lobbied so hard to keep unreported and unregistered. Bill Quisling, beloved statesman and former president, running loose in the sunshine of the Fall of the Wall and the USSR.
The formation of three totalitarian Superstates was foreseen by George Orwell. I think China will play the role of East Asia, and since Islam is in the process of conquering conquer Europe, the Muslim Ummah will likely play the role of Eurasia. That leaves Oceania. Will Oceania (United States, Canada & South America), East Asia (China, Southeast Asia, Mongolia, Eastern Russia) and Ummah (Europe/Middle East/Africa) prop each other up like three sheaves of corn – into an unending future of tripartite mega-totalitarianism? Will the United States become leader of a totalitarian Western Hemisphere, or will we remain the last best hope of mankind – in defense of each individual’s equal God-given unalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? Will be become a part of the greatest evil in the history of mankind, or will be become a fly in their evil ointment. Will the United States become an Orwellian Superstate, or will we become the worst nightmare of the remaining two?
“The consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing over of all power to a small cast seem the natural unavoidable condition of survival. War it will be seen not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way… All that is needed is that a state of war exists… Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure; the same worship of a semi-Divine leader; the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare. It follows that the three super-states not only cannot conquer one another, but would gain no advantage by doing so. On the contrary, so long as they remain in conflict they prop one another up like three sheaves of corn… The war therefore… is merely an imposture… For though it is unreal it is not meaningless; it eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War it will be seen is now a purely internal affair… In our own day we are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects; and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.” George Orwell – 1984
–to Stonewall’s Orwell comment, yes and if the three powers have not just different languages but different alphabets (“alpha” bets), there’s little chance the masses (marxist term -ugh) will ever communicate, compare notes, and form any new bottom-up structure across the lines. The danger for the masters would be in the ‘enemy’ images, the wordless information –and you’ll note just in the past week Iran, China, and Russia –well, the governments, topography can’t talk –have all threatened to, or announced plans to, ‘restrict’ youtube. Of course, because of the death of an ambassador.
The military will do as they are ordered. They WILL fire upon Americans – as will the police (our very own occupation army). They will be just as nazi as the nazi were.
“The military will do as they are ordered. They WILL fire upon Americans – as will the police (our very own occupation army). They will be just as nazi as the nazi were.”
You just compared US military and police officers to nazis? Disgusting.
Anonymous = BA
You’re deluded if you don’t think that both the military and the police will follow orders, at least in the short run and maybe the longrun as well. It ain’t like police forces do much that leans towards the public interest when there is a direct conflict between the cops’ interests and the public interest, see. e.g., most unionized police forces.
If there is time to think about it, some, emphasis SOME, military officers will resign rather than command troops against American citizens, most will just follow orders as will their men. The military comes in large measure from traditional homes and Red states, so over time, the entreaties of their families may temper the military, but if the order came tomorrow to “suppress the rebellion” someplace in the US, the uniformed military would saddle up and go, and the cops would be there with them.
Give Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” a read; it might dispel some illusions about the “good German,” and the good German isn’t so very different from the good American except the German was probably better educated and more cultured.
P.S.—Do I think Romney is the kind of leader we need right now? WelI, am certainly going to vote for Romney—come Hell or high water, as opposed to Marxist, crypto-Muslim Barrack Hussain Obama, who is leading the charge toward the dark.
From the range of policy prescriptions he has laid out so far—very few in number, and focused on the economy–Romney will likely have some success in somewhat slowing the decline, but, our problems are so, so much more deep and widespread than just economics.
Thus, I would have preferred Newt Gingrich to have been our candidate, because I believe that only his analysis and realization of the depth and grave nature of our problems comprehends sufficiently and is sufficiently sized to these manifold problems, and that only the range of his proposed, necessarily radical, deep, far-reaching and fundamental changes, and the pace and urgency of his proposed actions were sized to the problem, and were much more likely to have a chance of more aggressively arresting our decline.
If enacted in large part, would these radical measures laid out by Gringrich have stopped the decline we are talking about? Perhaps not, but in my view they would have likely sharply arrested many of these pernicious trends, set us on the right path in many areas, and more likely have given us sufficient time to perhaps correct, ameliorate, or work around many of them.
I’m hoping that, once elected, Romney will look at Gingrich’s ideas and adopt many of them.
Well, I told ya the tools you built to wage War on Sin would be turned against you.
Happy now that you’re the next target?
Fiscal Cliff: Will A 1937 Repeat = 2013 Dead Meat? September 24, 2012
http://seekingalpha.com/article/883141-fiscal-cliff-will-a-1937-repeat-2013-dead-meat
Paul Ryan: A Big-Government Conservative by Tad DeHaven This article appeared in the Daily Caller on August 16, 2012.
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/paul-ryan-biggovernment-conservative
“Obviously, we need to do some serious home repair. What in practice does this mean? It means that we need to reanimate the saving tradition of disciplined scholarship and intellectual merit, gradually purging our universities of political indoctrinators, indolent professors, supine administrators, and “Identity Studies” mavens. We absolutely must shrink the size of runaway government, turn back the dependency mindset that has infected the public arena, and revive the ethos of self-reliance and social responsibility.”
Can we do this, you ask? Come off it. The question answers itself. It would take, literally, a miracle for these things to happen, and there won’t be a miracle. The US, the most prosperous, successful, civilized, freest and hitherto happiest nation in the world is on the road to hell in a handbasket, with the rest of the successful, prosperous, civilized nations of the west trailing in its wake.
My suggestion is that we should comport ourselves cheerfully, with dignity and with courage as we travel that road, a bit like the first-class passengers on the Titanic, who got dressed up in their evening wear, sat in the lounge drinking brandy as the ship yawed, and made light, amusing conversation. Anyone got a better idea?
… i dunno … early on the morn of December 7, 1941 (not long ago in the scheme of things) the country went, from one hour to the next, from doggin’ it and letting the war slip by, to Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
(thanx,Bard)
Of course, I hope you’re right.
–no need to say –i caught your tone, full on. As bitterly cold as that water.
–i just re-read my last comment, and saw it wasn’t clear that i was trying to say, i sympathize with your sentiment –bitterly cold tone not an excess but a righteous response to these revoltin’ developments –
Hey Buddy, no misunderstanding. Good comment.
If President Obama is reelected he will move his ideological objectives relentlessly toward realization with the assistance of the media and intellectuals. Should he be reelected we should trigger the crisis during the period between the election and the inauguration.
Allow sequestration to occur. Allow all of the Bush tax cuts to expire, including the middle class tax cuts. The country will go into recession and will ruin his second term.
Assuming the House of Representatives is held by the right, conservatives must paralyze the leftist agenda proposed by Obama. Trigger the crisis now before we are inexorably swept away by leftist incrementalism.
My mom said that there has never been a time when right-thinking, good men and women have not thought that all was going to hell. My grandfather’s diaries from 1925-1975 reflect on political and economic events that were supremely dispiriting, personally traumatic, and goosebump-raising. After Truman dropped The Bomb, I remember him saying, esp. during the Carter and Clinton years, “it’s time for The Bomb.”
We can turn the tide in our affairs by taking back our children into our homes and educating them with the truth about everything. We can cut the State out of its meddling interference with our future in this way. This will require sacrifice of someone’s time and money in the family balance sheet, but home education is the right thing to do in the battle for civilization.
Kenneth Clark’s TV series “Civilisation: A Personal View,” makes the point that civilizations fail because they lose self-confidence. The monks of Ireland, he notes, held on to it “by the skin of their teeth.” If millions of children in millions of homes are educated with true wisdom and knowledge, the free spirit of America can endure what may be a dark age.
All is not lost, and we must carry on!
Maker of Smart-Grid Control Software Hacked BY KIM ZETTER 09.26.12
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/scada-vendor-telvent-hacked/