The Slow Suicide of the West
Some six centuries ago, Western civilization began to claw its way out of the great wilderness of the Dark and Middle Ages.
In an astonishingly short time, the cultural, technological, and military pre-eminence it once held at the height of the Roman Empire was reclaimed, then surpassed. The Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolutions saw Western peoples conquer the far flung corners of the globe, penetrate previously opaque mysteries of nature, and set foot on an alien celestial body — less than 500 years separated Columbus’ first footsteps in North America from Neil Armstrong’s small step on the Moon.
At the dawn of the second decade of the 21st century, however, the edifice of Western civilization teeters precariously on shaken foundations. The symptoms of cultural decay — plunging birth rates, empty churches, economic instability — rage like an untreated fever. Once-conquered peoples of the Far East are now our creditors. The colonization of space has been abandoned. The global financial system created and underwritten by the West now appears a fragile ecosystem that few can understand and fewer can predict; the prosperity it once seemed to guarantee now appears frighteningly evanescent.
In retrospect, historians will recognize the 20th century as the era in which the West began to consume itself from within. The process was twofold:
1) A nearly century-long intra-civilizational civil war, encompassing both World Wars and the Cold War, which pitted the totalitarian and democratic strains of the West against one another in mortal combat. (Karl Marx, a German who wrote in England, is as much a Westerner as Thomas Jefferson.)
This conflict destroyed the losers and exhausted the victors, exacting a horrific cost in blood and treasure on the entire civilization. How many potential geniuses fell on the battlefields of Europe in the Bloody Century? What great innovations and advancements lay stillborn in the countless military cemeteries of the Continent? The intra-civilizational war was the greatest catastrophe in history — tens of millions of lives and trillions of dollars sacrificed — which left deep and lasting tears on the moral fabric of every Western nation, victor and vanquished alike.
2) Governments of the West began in the 20th century to gather more and more power over their citizens and their economic activities, establishing powerful redistributionist agencies to transfer wealth from producers to non-producers. “Welfare” was born. As the century progressed, even nominally free Western nations began to guarantee ever-greater measures of material comfort to citizens in the form of subsidized retirement and medical care programs.
These programs, however, were based on flawed demographic and economic assumptions — people live longer now than they did in the 1930s, when many such programs were instituted, for example. As a result, the expense of such well-meaning largess has now far exceeded the capacity of governments to pay. Entitlements have become a giant boulder that Western nations are obliged to push, Sisyphus-like, up the hill of economic productivity. And our entitlement boulder becomes larger and heavier with each step.
The institutions that once sustained us through difficult times in the past are no longer significant in the daily lives of people in the West,ie the church and family. We will have to go into a period of purgation before things turn around.
In one of his rare essays, the introduction to his selected poems, American poet Robinson Jeffers outlined how western civilization had peaked and was now in decline. This statement came around the time of WWII. He was prescient, of course, a poet of great austerity and raging beauty, unpopular for “inhumanity”, he saw very clearly and without sentimentality.
In the 1950s, men like poet Alan Ginsburg and photographers like Swiss transplant Robert Frank, began to portray an America that was deluded, conformist, racist and empty.
Such a theme continued unabated in the 60s and grew into a cultural revolution. America was further portrayed as decadent, Imperialist, colonialist and needing wholesale change. For sure America did have its problems but throwing out the past proved to be a gulf too vast to recross once we had run so far and so fast.
In the last 2 decades, the theme of a consumerist family has continued to be shown as a form of laughable decadence while Ru Paul was on children’s oriented MTV, a viable and wanted alternative. In this same culture, police were not looked up to but continued the 60s legacy of being ‘pigs’ and worthy only of being shot as profilers by innocent criminals who portrayed themselves as urban boy scouts, needlessly oppressed.
The new census is revealing that 85% of America’s population growth has been minorities, fueled mostly by immigration. People from countries and cultures that have never shown the least skills at furthering democracy but in fact self-segregating politically are expected to be the new generation of Jeffersonians while continuing to pillory the very culture that produced Jefferson and Lincoln and Roosevelt.
The least wanted man is the one who is needed the most and is being gradually written down to more manageable numbers in an unknown religion called multiculturalism, a dangerous experiment since it requires faith in order to ignore the realities of history and where innovation in fact comes from. European Americans are committing cultural suicide in slow decades long gasps that will see the great American experiment perhaps become nothing more than a bickering and only slightly better version of the Third World.
7 billion people on this planet is too many. America is being overwhelmed by numbers from an overflow of the Third World and helping it along by having lost faith in itself, believing itself too racist to continue to exist as a European hegemony.
America is destroying itself – all the things people love about it didn’t come from nowhere and certainly didn’t come from a random and innate genius that all people have. Were this true, the whole world would be full of Lincolns and Americas and European culture would not be the benchmark against which an incredible number of innovations are measured.
The faith of the author in classical civilization is laudable but largely misplaced. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans were eventually able to hold their civilizations together. The Greeks had their own intercene wars that eventually gutted their civilizations. The Romans pursued a vicious policy of conquest to fund their imperial coffers. For every Cicero there were countless Neros and for every Cincannatus a legion of Sullas.
The strength of western civilization is built upon Biblical Christianity and its revelation to the world of universe of ordered liberty. The Nazis and Marxists did not just happen on the scene in the 20th century. They were the product of the philosophical quest for answers in the rejection of God that ended in the bloodbath of Nietzschean nihilism. Nietzche and nihilism marked the death of philosophy as he concluded that we are simply bubbles of emptiness on a sea of nothingness. With truth out the windows, the disciples of Nietzche embraced the will to power and spread darkness across the land. No philosophy has risen to take its place and we live in a post-modern world where the individual determines truth.
Western civilization can only restore itself when it reforms upon the foundations that made it great. These foundations include our classical ancestors but they also include the giants of Christiandom who developed the concepts of ordered societies that influenced our founders. Christianity gave us the dignity of man, the value of work and honest labor, and the drive to suffer and yearn as a means of spiritual growth. It gave us a belief in something larger than ourselves that was worth sacrificing and building for on a daily basis. It gave us strong homes, strong churches, and informed citizens. It gave us a sense of community and purpose that far surpassed the ancient world. It can do so again but we must go back to the ancient paths.
The cultural critics of the 50′s and early 60′s that lead us to the hippies and self-absorption of the late 60′s through today may have been on to something, but their prescriptions turned out to be worse that the diseases they were trying to fix.
Sexual repression (or may be sexual restraint or responsibility) may have been a problem in the 50′s. But in the 60′s, gonorrhea went from 10,000 cases in 1960 to the most common bacterial disease in adults by 1970. Free love gave us empty sex and fatherless children living in broken homes with so many step parents, its as if some of these kids have a patchwork quilt instead of a family.
Welfare may have kept people from starving, but it has destroyed black families trapped in it’s web. It discourages work, and takes away the reward from the sacrifice of delayed gratification. After all, if a person can get welfare, why work hard in school?
A friend of mine described the 1960s radical as people who could destroy but could never rebuild. They attacked the weaknesses in the existing structures but the nothingness they put in place was worse than the flaws in the traditional edifice. The Scripture reference is that they gave up springs of living water to build cisterns that could not hold water.
Jeremiah 2:13 “My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
This is an excellent and thoughtful post, thank you for your insight.
One point: Europe’s internecine war(s) have arguably (despite the “EU,” weakened the continent as a whole. It certainly drained vast quantities of blood and efforts in the first half of the last century which are not being replaced internally, but rather through immigration of almost entirely Muslims.
The USA had it’s singular internecine war (the Civil War) which unlike Europe actually “solved many problems” despite the horrendous cost on the battlefield. It arguably made the country stronger, not weaker. And while our “internal” birthrate is only marginally above the “replacement rate” we continue to attract not just poor Hispanics, but as always, the best and the brightest from around the world. This last, and in my opinion, important point, cannot be said for any country of Europe. If anything, their best minds continue to leave — although clearly at nowhere near the rate of the 1930′s.
Just a point of distinction between two continents that make up the “West.” South America is at the least not economically sinking in an uncontrollable fashion anymore, although there clearly is much work to be done there. And Canada continue to be a steady and important addition to the stable West as does Australia.
I will never forgive German philosophers.
Do you know all of them?
“A nearly century-long intra-civilizational civil war, encompassing both World Wars and the Cold War, which pitted the totalitarian and democratic strains of the West against one another in mortal combat. This conflict destroyed the losers and exhausted the victors, exacting a horrific cost in blood and treasure on the entire civilization.”
The people before us fought yesterday so that we could have a better tomorrow. Now we have squandered that sacrifice through greed, sloth, selfishness, and sheer stupidity. Had we learned from our failures during the 20th century, that would have made us brilliant. Instead, we’ve decided to not only ignore all of the sacrifices made by our predicessors, but worse, forget them. And for that alone we deserve what we get. Unless Americans start taking an interest in our history, in world events, and unless we start taking the world seriously again instead of being obsessed with Dancing with the Stars or American Idol, we get what we deserve, and that will probably be a world run by dictators, thugs, and religious fanatics, just like it was over 100 years ago. What a shame.
We didn’t “decide” to ignore the sacrifice or forget the lessons, but many Americans have fallen for the con that our civilization isn’t worth preserving.
The salivating new aristocrats were shrewd to capture the media and academia before the full-fledged assault, but the battle is still in progress.
Don’t give up.
Thanks for this essay.
What will our future hold? To understand the situation, assuming the standard clear reasoning of classical science, we’d have to answer a lot of questions and make no presumptions.
What is the ‘West’? Do you include Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America? If so, what about Chile and Colombia’s emergence as free-market democracies after centuries of dictatorship and poverty? How do you factor in the Eastern European bloc having emerged from the totalitarian rule of the USSR 20 years ago? Have we Americans ever really shared the European structured society?
Who are ‘we’? The internet and global communications are products of American creative genius, and the less-than-20-year-old internet is transforming every institution, world-wide. Will Americans continue to innovate, based on the new age? Already online education is common; hard times will increase its use as the high cost of brick and mortar schools become increasingly impractical. Will Americans realize the old city-based culture is no longer required due to modern transportation and communication? Are we declining or just coming to grips with the new technologies and innovations of the past half-century?
What is moral decline? How does one judge the common beliefs of so many millions of individuals? Does one assume the media represent the people’s values? Does one look to independent polls such as Rasmussen to judge percentages of Americans with certain values? If Rasmussen’s stats are in the ballpark, the majority want less government and believe the movies are a bad influence. The far-left, anti-free-market adherents are a small percentage of the people, despite their loud media voices.
Media beat the drum of Chinese power, but what does anyone know about the real state of the average Chinese? Why did the post-Mao Chinese rulers emulate the market-based and private ownership model of the West?
As a student of English history and literature, I’ve often wondered at the immorality of the Elizabethan age which then eventually swung to the Victorian age of high morals. Perhaps what we are seeing is an end to the long-term swing toward licentious living and irresponsible spending? Perhaps in any age of plenty, moral corruption follows? Since the economic indications strongly point to hard times ahead for Americans, might that be a net positive as everyone is forced to work harder to survive and to value having a family?
“What is moral decline?” The way, you(the US) are about to destroy our economic system (the German social market), for example.
We (the U.S.) are about to destroy the German economy, the German social market??????? I’m a little slow today. What the devil are you talking about?
Our economic system is/was built on values(goods, buildings and so on), yours on speculation and hostile take-overs of companies. I guess that you take the billions of profit of Goldman Sachs and others for granted? Nobody had to suffer for it? In case you support your current system, why not accept that everybody is responsible for his/her actions? An ideology (or perhaps already a religion?) that privatises profits and sees losses as a public affair is very sick, at least for me and most Germans.
What utter nonsense. So Microsoft, IBM, Google, Ford and thousands of other U.S. companies make all their profits from speculations and hostile takeovers? And these companies somehow control the hard-working and successful German companies? You’ve been listening to too many Obama speeches and reading too many Krugman pieces.
Sorry to be so blunt, but maybe it will wake you up.
I’m glad to see that you speak for most Germans and with such a clear voice. I love being lectured by the people who allow the Seimens corp sell everything necessary for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Is that so they can finish the job the Nazis started during WWII. And, this isn’t the first instance of such a thing. They were first in line to sell Sadam Hussein the equipment and materials to make poison gas, a field in which you have lots of expertise. They also reinforced Sadams bunkers so that they could survive American bombs.
Gutten nacht meine lebchen.
Implied but not explicitly stated in your article is the third reason the West is dying – demographics.
With Europeans (and Canadians and Japanese for that matter), having 1.3-1.5 children per woman, they are losing 1/3 of their indigenous people every 25 years, while importing Muslims with higher birth rates who plan to replace these cultures, not assimilate into them. (Except Japan and Korea, of course, which have simply decided to grow old and die as unicultural societies).
This is due to a combination of hostility toward religion, feminism and socialism, and is too late to reverse.
So the answer is no, the West cannot pull itself together. I admit I won’t cry over Europe, but the March of Islamization is going to force a nuclear war that will likely end ALL civilization.
The demographic numbers are a symptom , not a cause.
yes a good point …it is the education of victimhood etc that makes the demographic seem to be the issue. it is more the society has changed into liberal and PC speak that the problems metastasis into the evil we see today.
The liberal social-justice advocates and Marxist-globalist aggressors achieve their one-world, “non-discriminatory” government via the dilution (through immigration of third-world, non-Christian peoples) of what remains of Western civilization. Western culture becomes in the process so marginalized and disdained by the majority minority peoples that it fades away like a dying ember. And with it goes much of Christendom.
This is the future the left embraces, that it actively, relentlessly pursues. It seems to me that the West is a host to parasitic ideologies; and after eating away and consuming their “nurturing Western mother” the left will be horrified as they begin to eat each other. They will cry to the rocks to fall upon them and hide them from the judgment of God for the wickedness they’ve embraced.
All they will ever know of heaven is its reflection as seen in the world around them, the smiling faces of children, the crisp mountain air, the beauty of a butterfly; but after death they will receive their just reward: eternal separation from God and weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The West matters only as a purveyor of Christ and His Gospel. Christ is the only reality in the entire world — move away from Christ and you move toward nihilism, and your culture with it.
At a final analysis, symptom and cause can’t be fully distinguished. In the field of demography, income levels have been shown to be inversely linked to population growth rates (high per capita income causing low population growth rates, and low per capita income causing high rates) more so than the reverse causality hypothesis (pop growth rates affecting per capita income levels); but as all social science propositions go, these aren’t “laws” as in the natural sciences, just “strong indications” given the nature of social data and their statistics.
Not sure I agree. I think birth rates declining among the native population will be seen as quite tragic for western civilization in the long run. Very much the cause of its decline. If you really want your culture to continue, it would be far wiser to encourage replacement level fertility rates then leave it up to others. How far can you take a hyphenated name before you get into the issue of a hyphenated loyalty? We may soon find out. But who better to pass on the values of western civilization to their offspring then one who believes in those values already? The idea of letting others make the babies oddly becomes socialism or outsourcing, however you want to look at it.
And, as one author has pointed out, if America’s founders had been Spanish Catholics instead of British protestants, would you have gotten America? No….you would have gotten Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador, etc.
Now imagine if America’s founding fathers had all been Muslim….
I remember many years ago when the movie “Dr. Strangelove” came out that the definition of the neutron bomb became public. As described it was designed as a weapon to kill the population of an area and to leave infrastructure intact. The example given was the oil producing middle East. It appears that from the earliest days, 1960′s, that the smart planners knew that the middle East would most likely become hostile to the West and their resources would still be required for the survival of the West. If the Islamists continue to push for world domination and Sharia law for all, then the weapons locker might have to be unlocked.
I enjoyed the optimism, but the author failed to identify the primary reason for the Renaissance (which gave rise to the Age of Discovery, the Enlightenment, and, in turn, the Industrial Revolution.) The Renaissance was fueled by the sudden availability of land and wealth resultant from the death of approximately 50% of the population of Europe. Bubonic plague made the Renaissance possible, because it made previously hoarded wealth and land available to the now-smaller population.
Let’s hope we can find a better way to institute a “New Renaissance”.
Umm….the bubonic plague began in China (Gobi desert) and devastated everything in its path as it spread. Question: If Asia’s population was devastated, then why no Renaissance in Asia/Mid East???????????????
Excellent articulation of the worry many of us feel over the direction we have been headed for the past century and the where we are now headed faster than ever. Those of us who read history recognize the same symptoms that plagued the Roman Empire during its waning days.
It’s certainly not too late to fix western civilization. But I’m losing hope that it can be done voluntarily or peacefully.
Right on, sir.
With the release of the information that the U.S. has on Britain’s nuclear arsenal, Obama’s creating an American leper colony.
Not only will Obama go down as the worst president the United States ever had, he’ll be the most disastrous leader in modern history.
Keep your powder dry.
While the process of consuming ourself from within may be in 2 parts as you state, I believe that the root of it starts in forgetting the Lord.
Consider parts of Deuteronomy 8(Moses to Israel):
When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.
Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery…
You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.
If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God.
At the bottom, education and prosperity are great levelers. The more affluent the world becomes, the less of a threat the poor warlike countries become. Once the standard of living in China rises, their goods will become more expensive and threaten our economy less. The middle eastern terrorist whose family has access to education for their children and a solid steady job will think twice before supporting a return to a feudal existence.
At the top however, we have a much bigger issue. Humankind seems to be motivated by nothing but power for the most part. The biggest challenge will be our ability (or lack thereof) to ascend to be the equals, in compassion and wisdom, with the concept that most of us have of “god”. Only then will be able to abandon dreams of having more than our neighbour in order to affirm our existence.
Power and its attendant corruption is our nemesis.
islamic terrorism is not caused by lack of jobs or education. This is easily tossed off as a reason, but has no backing in reality.
“How many potential geniuses fell on the battlefields of Europe in the Bloody Century? What great innovations and advancements lay stillborn in the countless military cemeteries of the Continent? The intra-civilizational war was the greatest catastrophe in history — tens of millions of lives and trillions of dollars sacrificed — which left deep and lasting tears on the moral fabric of every Western nation, victor and vanquished alike.”
Beyond war being the cause of the Bloody Century, what about the embraced practice of abortion in this land and others? What potential geniuses (or simple folk) were ripped from the womb because the baby was unwanted by someone?
While I agree that intra-civilizational war was a great catastrophe and left deep and lasting tears / scars on the moral fabric of every Western Nation, I don’t think you can discount abortion in doing the same thing just because we embraced it as the law of the land.
No evidence that it will be slow, nor that it shall soon return.
You forgot to mention a very important reason for the slow suicide of the west: cultural marxism, aka political correctness. Generations of our schoolchildren have been brainwashed by PC and this virus infects the highest echelons of the government, elite institutions and military of western nations. PC defames Western civilization and white, European culture as inherently and irredeemably racist and oppressive, and even the most backward, barbaric third world cultures are morally superior to the West.
To be called “racist” nowadays is the equivalent of being called a “witch” or “heretic” in the middle ages. In every western nation, third world immigrants are using the disgust of the West for itself to extract ever more political concessions and largesse from the public treasury. At least in the last dark ages, Europeans believed in themselves and their religion, and would fight for nation and G-d. In the new dark age, there is only disdain for country and religion. The drones coming out of our colleges would rather fight for “social justice for the oppressed” than for preserving the heritage of their forefathers. This is why in the US, we are not allowed to control our borders, and in Europe, Muslims are mollycoddled and any slights to their fragile egos will land one in court for hate speech.
Game over. The West is decaying and there is no stopping it. It has hit the iceberg and it is only a matter of time before it sinks into a new barbarism.
“Game over. The West is decaying and there is no stopping it. It has hit the iceberg and it is only a matter of time before it sinks into a new barbarism.”
Trainwreck, I fear you are right and that the only chance we have is a very slight and daunting one: separation into 2 countries. The split in current American idealogy is too disparate, emotional, and irreconcilable. The question is, has the decades-long, systematic castration of all conservatives and particularly white males been successful? Are there any young conservatives left with the balls to fight for their futures? White-haired Tea Partyers alone can’t do that.
The latest just happened in Michigan, where a Sikh school boy is allowed to wear a ceremonial dagger to class but Johnny will be arrested for bringing a butter knife.
Toronto Girl, see #22 below. In-school indoctrination is beyond asinine. White American school boys are being neutered.
Matt:
Fantastic content and creatively written.
Thank you!
/M
These programs, however, were based on flawed demographic and economic assumptions — people live longer now than they did in the 1930s, when many such programs were instituted, for example. As a result, the expense of such well-meaning largess has now far exceeded the capacity of governments to pay.
Excellent point!
As I understand it, Bismarck was the first to institute the systematic awarding of pensions to German civil servants when they reaced 65. However, the expected lifespan of Germans was only a year or two beyond 65. Now, life expectancy is much higher and a person who takes retirement at 65 – or early retirmement at 60 or even earlier – frequently lives into their 80s or 90s. Instead of paying a pension for a year or two as in Bismarck’s day, taxpayers are paying that pension for 20 or 30 years. No wonder there are growing gaps between the money that is accumulated to pay those pensions and the amount needed to pay those pensions….
If we are to retain pensions at all, we need to start thinking very seriously about raising pension eligibility ages so that they come much closer to the end of the individual’s life. Or forget about awarding pensions altogether. France did that a couple of months ago and, despite a couple of weeks of well-publicized protests, it is my impression that the French have now accepted that this is the way things have to be.
The only way for us to avoid civiizational death is to destroy liberalism. It is an existential threat that is rotting us from within. It is outwardly manifested through political correctness wherein everything white and Western is wrong and everything else is right. Until we defeat the sickness of liberalism we’re not going to get off this path.
interesting essay.
…I think you left out the main ingredient. human nature.
1) people like water take they path of least resistance.
2) you didn’t mention that for several generations the western education system was teaching victimhood.
when you talk about the the period of enlightenment …should you not mention that religions (especially islam) are pushed aside and people allowed at least the freedom to think?
IMHO you are writting as though you do not want to offend anyone …the reason we are in this mess is to a large part because of this PC attitude.
Democracy, capitalism and Christianity were the three pillars of Western Civilization. Athenian democracy, where majority rule, voting, and the rule of Law were first used in affairs of State; together with the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of Capitalism (see Max Weber); these elements set the stage for the greatest advancements and achievements in the history of humanity.
Then came darwinism and marxism, in the mid 19th century; they lead to the most appalling century humanity has ever known: the 20th century, where, as the author suggests, the turning point of Western Civilization was encountered. Wars, revolutions, massacres, genocides, intentionally inflicted mass starvations, and large scale crimes against humanity that were committed during that fateful century (all of them being the direct products of a perverted darwinian and marxist ideology) marked the decline of the West. Suicidal liberalism proved to be the enemy within, the cause of the West’s self-destruction.
I’m not as optimistic as the author is regarding a new renaissance for the West. Besides, Classical Greece was not “re-surrected” and neither was Rome in the era of Enlightentment. What is the West facing today, through rampant combined advances of such contradictory socio-economic forces as atheism, homosexuality and islam, a duality in demographics (whereby Western population growth rates are low and declining and non-Western rates are high) failed monopoly capitalism and statism (all global forces at work), is virtually insurmountable and largely irreversible.
When future historians will try to explain this decline, the vile role that Darwin and Marx played in that demise will be highlighted, just as the role of Aristotle and Newton is highlighted in contemporary histories of Western Civilization.
You neglect to mention that the root of this enlightenment came from the mother religion…Judaism. The givers of the Ten Commandments to the world… from which the basis of Christianity, and thus the Western civilization, was born.
Thanks for the comment, Toronto Girl.
There was no influence of Judaism on Classical Greece; there was obviously influence of Judaism on Christianity; and the influence of Judaism on Capitalism was very limited, prior to the Age of Enlightenment.
The “West,” at that stage, was the confluence of revisiting Classical Greece and implementing Christian-based Capitalism.
Actually, I have read that there was some Jewish influence on classical Greece. The Jews were conquered and many brought to Greece where, I recall, they were brought into and made a part of the society (they assimilated to a degree but kept their religion) and not kept so much as a subjugated people to be used by their rulers. In turn, the Jews were very intrigued by Greek custom, philosophy and thought and incorporated some of these into their own ways.
Actually, the only trace of Judaism in POST-classical Greece (ie, after 400 BCE) is some type of a synagogue in the commercial (back then) section of the Aegean island of Delos; hardly is this any “influence on” Classical Greece.
Toronto Girl,
You’ve nailed it!
“Democracy” in its modern form is a large part of the problem. A return to the founding principle of a democratic republic where suffrage is limited is essential.
I’m with you there, Rick U. If you are not productive enough to pay taxes, you don’t get to vote. If you want a say in the way our country is governed, get off your arse, support yourself and pay taxes — and then you can have the PRIVILEGE of voting. If you’re TRULY on the edge, we’ll help you get afloat, but it will come with the same strings as attached to ones 22-year-old son living at home with mom and dad: “Our house, our rules.”
But we all know that the left, with its motor-voter laws will have a cow. Well, I say: let them eat dirt (but only because I’m being a lady today).
Great!!! Love to see it happen!!!
Only problem is liberalism would die and they are fully aware of this. They need to keep people “obliged”…hanging on..
/ Dependent people are weak.
Good article. The question is: do the electorates of western countries any longer have the requisite knowledge and wisdom to control the excesses of their governments? Before Obama my personal answer for the US would have been yes. But the good news is that an electorally significant mass of voters fully recognize now, as they demonstrated in 2010, Obama’s inadequacies as president. Can the Europeans similarly change their governments and make them more responsible? Yes, they probably can, but not as quickly as the US.
The people that produced the “shellacking” of 2010 see that the most important lesson to be learned from that year is that every election counts and they cannot afford to sit one out just because a president they supported and had faith in turned out to be a dud. This realization alone will make Obama a one term president. His serial frauds, abuses, and missteps have served to put a lid on it.
The root cause of America’s decline is very simple: for 50 years, traditional white Americans have been fed a steady diet of self-hatred and shame for their race, their religion, their culture, their history,
and their traditions. A culture which is self-hating will self-destruct.
Those who did the “feeding” were white “westerners.”
As someone already pointed out here, it’s the “suicidal liberalism” part of the West that doomed the West, the seed of its own destruction.
If, as a result of this contradiction, another idea will ever emerge to salvage the “West” from its sudden (by historical standards) death, an idea that will draw from its original roots in Classical Greece and the Age of Enlightenment, remains to be seen. Whether that entity will be even called “West” is doubtful. Certainly, it won’t come in my lifetime, or my grandchildren’s lifetime.
I even doubt if “whites” will be around by then.
Not suicide. Murder.
And the contest isn’t over.
“And the contest isn’t over.”
Not by a long shot. And not while fiery, furious, patriots still have breath. The walls of Jericho fell not by attack but by an army marching around and around and around the walls and creating such ferocious vibrations that the wall finally crumbled.
Just a couple days ago I was villified for saying that either we need to split the nation or there should be another civil war. I see now that more posters are coming to that realization.
As long as I breathe, I will not let the left in any of its cancerous forms, destroy my country. I and I think many others are waiting for the right moment to take back our nation. And yes it may/will be bloody but as has been said by a previous poster, the gap between us and the left is too much to cross.
With 28 states suing the federal government and Obama acting like a king (ignoring contempt of court and other rulings, not to mention the people), I start to wonder as I never have in my lifetime if secession is in our future.
There was a time when I couldn’t imagine the USSR ever breaking up, either.
As an educator, I could tell horror stories of the constant subtle and not-so-subtle victimization of several generations of white male children in the school system. I have seen a white student who used the “N” word be given out-of-school suspension and treated as if he were a murderer. Two days ago I saw/heard a tall black male 8th grader tell a small white male 6th grader, “I’m going to beat the white out of you, boy.” I sent him to the principal’s office and later learned he was given a lecture and no detention. ‘Nuff said. Whites have been
I have watched white boys–including my 3 sons–be systematically castrated by minorities–including females–my entire adulthood and motherhood. Commercials ALWAYS depict the white male as the pasty, paunchy, butt-of-every joke fool. A few years ago, Washington Mutual’s spate of commercials depicted greedy, ugly bald white male bankers in suits trying to gleefully screw everyone while a handsome Obama-esque cool black male with sleeves rolled up was “the man of the people.” I could barely stop myself punching my own TV. White males are in the ONLY unprotected group in our country. With the rise in popularity of white female politicians such as Palin and Bachman, the cloak of feminism will not protect white females for much longer.
I truly believe we of any race and religion need to “fundamenally transform this country” by seceeding from it. Leeches to the left, workers to the right, no more stuck in the middle again.
Not just the commercials, but sitcoms and movies as well…always the “minority” character is better in all respects to any white.
I have never stood behind a minority individual in a grocery line who paid with anything other than food stamps, in paper or card form. Certainly minorities don’t have a corner on that, but non-whites seem to have an attitude of birthright to stick a straw into your milkshake, rather than discipline themselves to hold a job.
We’re not California yet, but we’re working on it…taxpayers can’t run away, we’d only be followed by the tin cup crowd shrieking how selfish and bigoted we are…
yes
The movie Atvar said it all. Aborigines good, white man bad (except for a few enlightened ones).
Whenever I see one of these insipid commercials where men are being humiliated by their wives and children; when white men are portrayed as inferior and stupid (contrasted to the wise and self-righteous black man or equally annoying sarcastic urban black woman) I want to vomit. Put a non-white or female in an inferior position and the networks would have to pull the ad. I almost don’t watch t.v. anymore. I have had enough.
true …it is pathetic.
Can anyone say Charlie Sheen. Pumped up to be the white hero male by falling apart Sit-Coms. There is somthing wrong with a country that slams all the fathers, sons, uncles and nephews that make up white society’s men. Hello NOW gang, Hello Code Pink, Hello Pro Abotionist and the Hello Democratic party that destroyed American families for votes over the past fifty years. Shame on you America. Too late to whine.
The decline of the West is far from hopeless because the problems of the West are not organic. In other words few of the problems have arisen from natural causes.
Virtually every problem the West is experiencing is a function of people who have dedicated their lives to destroying western civilization. The dangerous ones aren’t Muslims, or Chinese, or Russians. The dangerous ones are the internal, power-mad subversives using marxism as their primary tool to bring down and loot the western world. They want to return Western civilization to feudalism with them at the top of the pyramid, and the other 99.9% as powerless as serfs.
Get rid of them and there will be a new Renaissance that will dwarf the first one.
“Get rid of them (internal, power-mad subversives) and there will be a new Renaissance that will dwarf the first one.”
Proreason, I wish I could share your optimism. I cannot think of a single instance in history when a power-mad subversive group that had gained control of a country had peacefully relinquished it. If I am uninformed, I would love for someone to write in an example to give me a little hope that total defeat or Civil War are not the only 2 options.
You can’t have a “civil war” between liberals and conservatives, and retain your principles (be them either “liberal” or “consaervative”) ie, without becoming a mass murderer.
Yes, ultimately there will be a defeat of either liberalism or conservativism (since they can’t co-exist in the realm of ideology). But in the defeat will be a defeat of ideas not of armies or people. What will eventually emerge, no one now has the foggiest idea.
the “civil war” may just be a secession of states to form a new sovereign.
How can you split families?
How can you split residence (say, a possible conservative environment) from workplace (say, a potentially liberal environment)?
These “splits” are either utopian, ill-conceived, or half-baked ideas.
As suggested by a number of contributors, the clash between liberal and conservative ideologies will be in the domain of ideas, and through peaceful political processes.
Sual Alinsky is that you ???
nice try it is the liberals.marxist/progressives that have been splitting families for decades.
trust me there are a lot of people who will not support the parasites indefinitely. and when that time comes there will be a parting of the ways. either civil war or cessation from the republic.
only two kinds of people ..producers and parasites.
I thought Saul Alinsky was dead?
Is Bill Gates or Warren Buffett a parasite to you, or just a liberal?
So, you would go around murdering people like them, because you don’t agree with their views?
You know what? I’ll give you a break and won’t say you’re crazy, but I think you give a very bad name to conservatives and to the pages of PJM, if that’s what you advocate.
Wait. Is this KTW or KateB again. Get over yourself with the family split argument against a civil war. Hell we did it once. What makes you think we cannot or should not do it again. What state’s rights and slavery were good enough to fight a civil war over, but not the future of our country?? How do you square that round hole in your argument?
YOU have a choice. Obviously you want to live on your knees-white boy. I do not. And how do you think you will be treated in the new Islamic america?
@Blotto
…What??? KateB???
I’m white, I’m not a “boy,” and you’re a punk.
Who said anything about moooslims/islam? My post was on a “liberal vs conservative civil war,” and its folly.
Learn how to read, and cool down before your head explodes (lefty troll).
“The “civil war” may just be a secession of states to form a new sovereign.”
General Malaise, this is exactly what I meant. But the left leeches will not let their host/workers/taxpayers/slaves go without a fight because they know their Marxist Utopia would collapse within a week. They will start the Civil War and declare racism the cause. Sound familiar?
“But in the defeat will be a defeat of ideas not of armies or people.”
Gtg, there is NO way you can know that–and the facts speak to the contrary–but I guess you thought it sounded lofty. There have been rather a lot of clashes of ideas resolved by armies in the history of mankind. I can cite a hundred instances of the left inciting violence against conservatives, from Obama’s telling a Hispanic audience that we are the enemy, to SEIU’s battering white-haired Tea Partyers, to all of Rev. Wright’s sermons, to Black Panthers brandishing night sticks at white voters in Philly, to the DOJ declaring it won’t prosecute such cases (translation, green light on election days to target white voters the law won’t protect), the list goes on.
If and when there is a civil war, conservatives will secede and those loving liberals will start the war while their PR machine/ass media will declare it’s a war against racism.
“lofty” ??? !!! Not really; sane? Yes.
What are you going to do? Go around your neighborhood gunning down all they don’t agree with your political views? Think before your write/do something, it might help you sound/be more reasonable.
sooner or later something will give. there are too many people who have a real knowledge of freedom and the difference between the parasites and those who produce
I have no idea of how it will play out but I doubt that there is stomach for a second term of obama
All this secession talk gives me a headache. How are you going to take a ideological split and draw borders? In nearly every state, the countryside (rural and some suburban) is majority conservative/independant and the big cities liberal- blue or red state depends on the size of the cities vs. the rest of the state. Your secession would very quickly look like the Muslim/Hindu split-up of the Indian sub-continent, complete with mass migrations, ethnic/ideological cleansing, and oceans of blood.
If we can’t save the country by confining our revolutions to the ballot box, we have already lost. Civil wars are no longer fought on a battlefield here or there, they’re fought everywhere. If our current economic mess looks like hard times, don’t even think about civil war. Better yet, do think about it. Look at the results where one has been fought to the bitter end. There is no victory, just a wasteland.
The French Revolution comes to mind. Roll out the guillotines.
I fear that this isn’t going to end well, and to come out the current mess we’ve created, a lot of pain and misery will be endured by the survivors.
I weep for my grandchildren.
Their control isn’t complete and they know it.
The majority opposes them, the military is not under their firm control, nor the police forces, nor much of the court system.
They are close to the tipping point, but if they had complete control, their attitude would be much different, and posting on PJM would be verboten.
God bless the second amendment and the founding fathers.
This is true.
We believe the next election is of paramount importance. So far the choices are weak..to be kind..
However, somehow the head of the snake must be cut off, or there will be sorrow hereIt will not be like the great depression..worse, and we’ll be wearing burkas.
It might help if we used the language as the left does, to leave the impresssion we desire in the mind of the listener. Instead of talking about elites, perhaps we should refer often to the New Feudalism (which goes nicely with the New Atheism), to remind people of the so-far successful takeover by self-appointed experts.
I’ve recently started to use the Feudalism word. I read an article somewhere that used it and it rang true with all of the things I have been thinking about self-styled elite / ruling class / marxist left.
It crystalizes a lot of that and avoids the terms marxist and socialist, which many people have been brainwashed to think are slurs rather than actual descriptions of loathesome ideaologies.
Frankly, marxism is a direct descendant of feudalism. Marxism was invented in the 19th century as an overcome the power of freedom and restore “aristocrats” (whether the old aristocray or the eager new commissars) to their rightful place at the pinacle of the social pyramid. And when I say social pyramid, I really mean an upside down T…a tiny group of rulers at the top, and a 99% serf base, where the serfs are deprived of everything that would give them the least chance of rising up against the commissars.
One of the main problems we face is that the majority of our Republican Congressional representatives are bringing a napkin to a knife fight.
The rules have changed, the gloves are off. Republicans are going to have to be smart and quick to out-wit, out-fight, out-last a group which will sink to any low to win their way. I’m not saying Repubs need to fight dirty, they just need to anticipate a dirty-fighting foe and pre-empt them. It would help if the media covered events truthfully.
We are not going ‘Back to the Future’ but forward,
into the undiscovered country, a strange land where
old rules are irrelevant, and new realities rule,
with ruthless efficiency.
The majority of mankind, which cannot contribute
to a Hi-Tech 21st century society, will not like it,
but the ruling minority will not care, because the
masses will no longer be necessary as laborers, or
dangerous as revolutionaries.
Marx was not a Westerner. If defined scientifically, Westerners are a mixture of original Celtic peoples and the Germanic tribes who subordinated them. Semitic peoples (Jews, Arabs, Beduins)are different, as history shows. If defined geographically, I believe Israel is in SW Asia, not Europe. If defined culturally, Westerners are members of the former ‘Christendom’, which combined Greek/Roman learning with the Christian religion.
Aryans (?) only need apply, you S.O.B. Jews are the most important and influential demographic in the history of Western civ. Without Jews you “aryan” pigs would be living in caves and eating your meat raw.
Sir, brilliantly put! But was Prometheus a Jew?
Self destructing through the abandonment of the family, a weak and pathetic judicial system, and a pulpit/church that won’t step up to the plate on these and other issues that are needed to bind the very foundation of our Freedom
With no mention of the advance of Islam or the western retreat into PC Multiculturism this article doesn’t begin to describe our problems.
The answer is simple. Many Eastern Europeans see what is happening in the US as what once existed in the Soviet Empire. We can contact some of the recently immigrated Russians and see if a network can be started. Start mass immigration into the sanctuary cities of these conservative leaning people (through churches) until democrats stop all the illegal immigration and close the sanctuary cities.
Democracy will not survive without them. Many of the people coming into the US are coming for a free handout, could care less about democracy and some will not only never assimilate, but plan to take over and force their way of life on us. Liberals/communists know that they could never take over unless they get enough people in the country who hate us. That’s what needs to be countered.
There’s no reason to be passive or do anything that is illegal. Time to organize.
I would take issue with some of this essay’s points.
First, Europe began to recover around the 800-900′s, with the advent of the Moldboard plow, which allowed far greater agriculture (in Northern Europe’s thick soil).
Second, Europe has had many episodes of bloody civil wars, that killed proportionally more people: the late Roman Republic civil wars, the Thirty Years War, which killed a third or more of German speakers, come to mind.
Third, modern society exercises arguably LESS control over citizens, than during the Early Modern Era and Enlightenment. Calvinist societies from the Puritans to the Swiss, had a rigid system of social control enforced by government and the courts and extending down to neighborly control: over marriage, worship, sex, child-bearing, CLOTHING (see the Puritans anti-sumptuary laws) and more. Heck the Virginia “Cavalier” colonists like the aristocrats of South-West England forbad “lower class” people to wear fine clothing. Meanwhile taxes lay heavy upon Cathlolics in Europe, and various English colonists in the New World.
I would argue that the West’s competitive advantage, which existed only around 1000 AD or so (consider the remarkable crusades of the late 1000′s which mounted an expedition over considerable distance to recover Jerusalem) consists of open-ness to change.
And this open-ness to Change is based on:
1. A relatively SMALL population, which means fewer entrenched populations and institutions threatened by technological change.
2. A fractured polity — if one ruler did not adapt to change giving competitive advantage, in war or economy or production, his rivals WOULD.
3. The nuclear family, monogamy, and “small-holding” creating a middling class requiring change and pushing it forward to vault upwards in wealth, power, and security.
4. A social system (again based on scarcity not surplus of people) that not only allowed but encouraged a middling class to vault upwards through embracing and extending technological change.
When “Swiss Mountain Louts” destroyed the flower of mounted Knightly chivalry with the pike square, European rulers rapidly abandoned the costly knight system in favor of first archers and pikemen, and then musketeers and pikemen, and finally musketeers with bayonets. Meanwhile the Tokogawa Shogunate, after consolidating control, outlawed firearms to preserve samurai society.
It is my view that the decline of the West is based on a false assumption of endless security, over-feminization of society based on mass-consumer marketing (catering to the female consumer purchase decision maker) and rejection of all risk based on a feminine oriented society. Various shocks and the decline of populations are likely to be corrective here, not relying on heroes but the very different ordering of Western society: few people, churning, through technological advances.
Modern Economic Growth theories (produced mainly by secular/atheist scholars) assert that the three key compoents in regional growth are: endogenous population (demand based) growth, inter-regional trade growth (based on locational and other comparative advantages), and technological innovation.
Now, one might argue that either any single one or all three of these factors were present in any spatial setting, which experienced economic growth during any time period throughout history.
But this isn’t obviously enough, because the economic growth of the West past the Age of Enlightenment was far superior to that of any other setting at any other period in history (as argued by the author of the article to which we are all responding). Thus, one or all of these three factors were necessary but not sufficient. What was sufficient was the comination of all three conditions, as I outlined in # 19.
Let me add that demography is not always destiny, nor has it always been so. Western Europe from 800-1830 or so, was far inferior demographically to the various Caliphates, yet it pushed back on them, from Spain to finally, the Balkans.
Big populations have a weakness. They are constantly on edge of riots and revolt. China has been plagued with that, throughout its history, and so was the Roman Empire and many of the Caliphates. And because they are so big, they generate massive resistance to change. As Bernard Lewis has written, Muslim societies in Turkey, in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Morocco, and Persia, all tried to adopt and adapt Western technology, from the Printing Press to firearms, yet failed completely to produce any real competitiveness with Western technology. Science works the same for Muslims as Christians, the laws of physics don’t change for religion.
It was the population size that hampered them. Yes, human wave attacks can succeed if populations are too small, or disunited, or lose technological competitiveness. But the Crusader advantage in the Holy Land was technological. Far more heavily armored and armed knights would annihilate far less well armored and armed (but more mobile) Arab opponents. Yet the same basic technology of steel and iron was available to both cultures.
You can see this in business. Big corporations have so much entrenched interests that they routinely reject game-changing technology that threatens core businesses. Xerox with PARC and the fore-runner of the GUI computer system, KODAK with digital imaging, and so on.
all the islamic states can never become productive or inventive because they are strictly controlled by their religious leaders.
even their religious tenets hold them back as it tells them to rape and pillage …hardly a starting point for innovations.
they fail to produce new goods and even the captured goods reduce to trash in short order. (turkey used to be an exception when it was truly secular)
very little is produced in these countries and their labor isn’t highly sought as it is in other poor countries.
until they shun their religion they will remain backward and will only succeed at rape and pillage such as we now see in europe.
Many fellow commenters seem to believe the bleakest speculations on the chances of our survival. Surely a mass suicide a la Jim Jones is in order. A convenient date should be set. Unfortunately, being elsewhere on that day, I won’t be able to make it. Please do, however, accept my best wishes for the success of your event.
It already happened on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008.
Fred, I get a different read of off these comments. I think most of us here are slowly, reluctantly approaching a hard realization about what will be involved to ensure our survival. We are shaking off the anesthesia with which the ass media has drugged us while performing lobotamies on us for decades. We are waking, questioning, sleuthing out facts, sharing ideas with others, and forming opinions based on reality–not liberal drivel. I think we are gaining the courage of our convictions and preparing for it to get messy.
Except for the brain-dead gtg and his like-minded sheeple.
STR, I do believe your assessment is more accurate than my snarky one. I sure hope it is. It’s just that defeatism is not very inspirational and it always rubs me the wrong way. There are no 100% victories in politics. We have to accept that and keep on fighting.
STR–Start the Revolution
Political correctness and the ‘worship’ of unproductive celebrities are two factors, And I think the money grubbing attitude of many enters into the equation. I wonder how much progress is stifled by the lack of money or connections to get something done or those who think the payback would not be sufficient to warrant investment. Add to that the attitude of many people toward education and\/or various drugs. There also seems to be persistent disbelief that failure of our civilization is possible.
SCARY……
Is this REALLY our AMERICA??????
Know the TRUTH about the Government Health Care Bill H.R.3200 – Key Points
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcBaSP31Be8
The highly destructive Cap and Trade. An inferior health care plan that no one wants and CANNOT afford to pay. The threat to jail and/or fine those who don’t purchase the government enforced plan.
Massive spending as if there is no tomorrow. Fighting wars we have no money for. Massive borrowing. The Massive giving away of Billions of dollars every year to other countries, including the oil-wealthy Middle East, Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Palestinian Authority organization who fill their war chests, build mansions and laugh all the way to the bank with free infidel money. Whilst in America, homeless shelters are filled to capacity; tent cities have sprung up all over the U.S. filled with desperate, jobless, homeless, NEGLECTED Americans.
Massive debt. The massive printing of paper money. There is no question that the total DESTRUCTION of America’s economy is planned. The results will be horrifying. In the once wealthy and great nation of America, millions of Americans will become destitute, hungry and homeless with no money or resources to help them.
the obama regime requires that the economy collapses so they can cement their policies.
if these bills get roots they will not be any opportunity to go back to where we were just 2 years ago.
this destruction is on purpose.
And “DAMN!” Soros, Obama et al ad nauseum must be thinking. “We pronounced America brain dead just a little too soon.”
Hopefully, more than enough too soon.
well if it isn’t on purpose then the obama and company are really stupid. your pick.
there are 2 kind of people ..parasites and producers
those who produce and those that live off the work of other ..parasites
OBAMA: DEBT UNSUSTAINABLE
Obama Says U.S. Long-Term Debt Load ‘Unsustainable’
By Roger Runningen and Hans Nichols
May 14 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.
“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”
Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”…
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJsSb4qtILhg&refer=worldwide
Obama admits the terrible financial destruction wrought against Americans. WHY then DOES OBAMA NOT IMMEDIATELY REVERSE THIS TRAGEDY?
No Linda; the question isn’t why doesn’t BHO reverse course, but rather why don’t WE throw him out of the Oval Office before it’s too late. We know he isn’t an American, and he doesn’t love America, he wants to “fundamentally transform America.” So, why are WE allowing him to do it?
A major investor states America is going to reach Zimbabwe hyperinflation.
http://economyincrisis.org/articles/show/2942
Organic, non-gmo fruit and nut trees and berries must be planted in all of our nation’s cities’ and towns’ parks and wherever there is space to help the many millions of Americans who will soon be in a desperate struggle to survive.
Watch it. And weep for our great nation and people:
FALL Of The Republic – The Presidency Of Barack H Obama – The Full Movie HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8LPNRI_6T8&feature=player_embedded
# 37 Linda Rivera
Re: Planting of edibles in urban areas. Can you imagine the utter chaos when the large grocers across the US no longer receive massive deliveries of food products and urbanites can not go around the block to purchase food or any prepared food. Thus we are to have Farmers Markets and Organic gardens in the midst of these huge urban areas. Food stamps are already used at Farmers Markets and Take Outs. So who are the worker bees going to be that farm this food. Not denizens of urban America.
BTW Farmers Markets and Organic Food if not already are soon to be Federal Law. The people need better food.!? You can’t have oil from your own country, you can only use green products and energy, but you can by Organic Food dictated by your government. Go Democrats Go.
that is just a socialist joke …remember that is what hugo chavez did in venezuela ..what castro did in cuba.
it is just to have something to talk about …only their gullible followers actually think these things make sense.
it is just the drip …drip …drip of maxist take-over
Of course, big and small supermarkets will continue! I don’t understand your comment! Unfortunately for America’s health, the government is one hundred percent AGAINST small, organic farmers.
http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/s510-fake-food-safety-bill-passed-by-senate-in-late-night-sneak-attack-on-small-farmers-and-food-freedom/
The Farm-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund also posted an urgent action alert (http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/aa/aa…) urging people to call their representatives in Washington and oppose HR 2751.
…..
The betrayal
It’s important to understand the depth of betrayal that has just been committed by the GOP members of the US Senate. Democratic members of the Senate, of course, have always voted for S.510 because it’s a bill that expands the power of government and will unleash an army of FDA inspectors who roam the countryside harassing farmers and small growers. The expansion of government power over the People has almost always been unanimously supported by Democratic Senators.
S.510 is the Patriot Act of farming. And the reason it got so much support from the large corporations is because it will effectively destroy many small, local organic farms by suffocating them under a new regulatory burden — even when they’re not the problem to begin with! Food safety is only a problem because of the factory animal operations that comingle with large, corporate food operations, thereby contaminating fresh produce with animal-grown bacteria. E.coli, for example, cannot multiply in plants! It can only grow in the intestines of animals.
http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/s510-fake-food-safety-bill-passed-by-senate-in-late-night-sneak-attack-on-small-farmers-and-food-freedom/
Many organizations and individuals have been fighting for our wonderful, small, organic farmers and the RIGHT for Americans to eat, healthy, organic food. Many people are in a desperate fight to regain their health and need food that is not pesticide/chemically laden.
Correct. The Republican Senators enabled passage of this bill in the last days of the last Congress. This was after Senator Colburn promised it would never become law and he would filibuster it. I do not trust any member of that Senate. Maybe some of the new members are not corrupt.
The lesson here is do not listen to what the politicians say they are going to do. Observe and note what they actually do. If their actions do not suit you do not vote for them.
That is why all establishment figures are so afraid of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin.
Hey Matt,
It could just as easily be said, in fact has been said, that the wars of the 20th century were the root of not only astounding technological advancement, but cultural clarification. The post WWII period was the hay-day of US exceptionalism, and Germany and Japan didn’t do so poorly either. England didn’t fare as well. But it could be argued that the war, thanks to Churchill, was merely a break from a progressive decline.
Contemporary liberal guilt over winning those wars is another matter.
Secondly, as per your second point; governments do not have money. Taxpayers have money and governments control it, but the notion that ‘governments have money’ is the reason we are in this mess to begin with. The sooner we disavow ourselves of that idiocy, the sooner we can right the ship.
Finally, to examine clear eyed the ongoing struggle between the entitlement left and the classic liberal right, a conflagration that encompasses the entire world but is daily fought in the American democratic battlefield, one is hard pressed to see a positive outcome that could come from anything other than a re-clarifying war.
But I, along with you, will try to think positive thoughts.
Can a civilization that tore itself apart put itself back together?
Only if reason, rationality and reality are restored to their rightful place, and such virtues as courage, manliness, and a tolerance of those with religious convictions become commonplace again.
Oh, and also: if someone would shove Ezra Klein’s head into a toilet and flush repeatedly.
“Can a civilization that tore itself apart put itself back together?”
Well, it hasn’t happened before for well over 10,000 years of recorded history. Wouldn’t bet on it.
You mean sticking Ezra Klein’s head in a toilet? That must be what you’re talking about, but you’re comment still doesn’t make sense.
My comment was a response to your first sentence following the quoted question (which I also quoted) – it had nothing to do with your attempt at humor with a joke (?) about Klein’s head; can’t you read carefully?
On second thought, never mind.
Umm, our Civil War comes to mind.
Open up a book and learn the difference between ‘civilization’ and ‘nation’ it might help you avoid bs-ing around.
The America I wondered about showed itself this past election. That America will show itself again in 2012. I do not count on Europe ever making it back from the road it is on.
The New Agers, and BLT Marxists have shown their hand. See Lucis Trust, and CFR global government. Their illegal alien invasion, with help by the religion of peace to destroy American culture must be stopped.
As always, great civilizations destroy themselves. They are not overrun by invading barbarians. We had our moments, indeed our centuries. But it is over… and the decline accelerates. Consider that the Welfare State did in a half century what slavery could not do in more than two centuries –destroy the black family.
The only question is what is the end state. Something stable or an explosive singularity.
About the “end state” – obviously no one knows, and it will depend on the time frame, 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years?
But here’re some guesses: in 10 years, more of the same; in 100 years, the islamists and Chinese/Indians fighting it out; Europe and North America will be gone as curently “identifiable population entities” having become some sort of an average Asiatic/African/Latin American population mix and average income level; most likely, there won’t be any identifiable “nations” or “national boundaries.”
In effect, we’ll become an integral part of the current Third World.
Based on what all that speculation, you might ask?
See who occupied the Oval Office, I’ll say.
“Will we have the sense to again turn to the minds that birthed our civilization when again we are tasked with the rebuilding of their magnificent creation?”
The spirit of the past, the examples of our parents and grandparents and the minds of our citizens are what will create the next great western epoch.
How delicious to lay out everything that is wrong! How dramatic to gnash our teeth at the folly and the laxity of our neighbours! How tough to figure out what to do today, tomorrow and next week to turn things around.
Time to get tough folks. This is not a movie where everyone is dodging bullets while talking a blue streak. The decisions that the posters on these boards and those who read them make in the next few months are critical. Make the right ones.
“What are you going to do? Go around your neighborhood gunning down all they don’t agree with your political views?”
WTF????
Gtg, what part of the word “secede” do you not understand? “Gunning people down?” That’s pretty histrionic. I never even considered that–but you did. Hmmmm….I myself will continue to poll watch, be an active member of conservative Political Action Committees, stay the most informed possible, exchange ideas with the intelligent people who comment on PJM, try to be convincing with those who are still drinking the Kool-aid, and–the ugliest thing of all–make sure I am not here to be sucked dry should things go a certain way.
Let’s drop it; some people talk about “civil war” among people who hold different party affiliation, or about exercising their “second amendment rights” and they don’t really know what they’re talking about.
“Some people talk about “civil war” among people who hold different party affiliation, or about exercising their “second amendment rights” and they don’t really know what they’re talking about.”
Gtg, “some people” do a lot of things. “Some people” like to spread feces on walls too, but there are not too many of that type posting on PJM (just the rare liberal who wanders in without facts or clues but plenty of anti-conservative prejudice and venom).
Similarly, there are not too many conservatives who want to gun down their neighbors in the streets for having different opinions. That would be the New Black Panthers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright zombies, etc–radical leftists that LIBERALS welcome into their political bed. There is NO radical right group welcome at any of the PACs I attend. The most violent thing we do is insist on praying.
Secession is a States’ rights issue, lawful and peaceful. It’s kind of like a divorce. When one spouse decides living together has become unbearable, he/she applies for a legal divorce. If the other spouse remains ratonal and peaceful, so does the divorce. However, if the “spurned” party becomes enraged, “war” ensues, and it is not the fault of the original petitioner for the divorce.
If the practically inevitable “splitting of the sheets” of the 2 halves of America comes to bloodshed, it will be the “divorced Left” that will fire the first shots, refusing to let its abused mate go peacefully.
P.S. to Gtg, I actually think you show potential for waking up from the anesthesia, smelling the coffee, and changing political perceptions. I sense you are listening, which is in many ways what this website is all about. It’s very hard to change opinions you’ve held dearly for your entire life, but there are some formerly Liberal Americans who still have the integrity to question their beliefs, check facts for themselves, and become more realistic. I am related to a few of them. By the way of human nature, some of them will become the most outraged of all at the abortion of something they sincerely wanted to be good for Mankind, and those are the Americans who will even become some of our most passionate leaders.
And the ones who don’t, as a proud Texas saying goes, “Come and take it.”
The United States is infected with a terminal disease called the Democrat Party, with a lesion as it’s leader.
The current crisis is, finding an antidote for this disease. And convincing everyone that they have this disease even they show no symptoms.
Yes, nationalism and ideology out of Europe are the source of this self-inflicted wound. Socialist economics, the Left’s aggressive cultural suicide, and “declinism” are the opiates that resulted. There is no energy in Europe to deal with this, despite a few good leaders. Russian dominance and ambition, cultural intolerance, and ruthless leadership are their best hope. We should cut Europe loose, come home, throw out illegals, encourage desirable immigrants from many differing cultures–except Muslim, treat Islam exactly as Christianity is treated in the Arab world, then focus on cleaning up our own Left ideological infection here–which came from Europe. Yes, I know: VERY un-PC. There is still hope for this country if we set to it with a will immediately, though we are not hurt or scared enough yet to unite and impose it. The politicians continue to divide and defy us to their advantage. Look for business as usual out of Washington at least until after 2012.
The two greatest ball and chains on progress in both Western and Eastern civilizations have been slavery and misogyny.
Mankind has a forlorn disposition to enslave the other, and then require them to be progenitors or to rape the female other as this identifies females as property to be absorbed into the greater other.
Civilizations that possess greater degrees of the efficient use of slave labor seem to have greater sociological success. They create classes of citizens that can possess leisure (better practical) time for creative expression and innovative people to go off and be thoughtful and innovative and creative.
Both Eastern and Western civilization had it’s moments. But America in the 19th and 20th century was “the one”. To go from Columbus to Neal Armstrong on the Moon. Don’t tell me about no stinking Greek poets, or star gazing Astronomers on camelbacks. Thats another subject worthy of our attention. America “whew”. To quote Carly Simon “Nobody does it better”.
America put its’ slave population to work and too work it went to build the foundations of the greatest city in the history of the world (New York before it sucked). Lower Manhattan is filled with the graves of Africans and African Americans who built with their hands and broken backs New York. This was an amazing contribution to America’s beginning. The Panama Canal was the greatest contribution to America’s end. The greatest civil engineering feat till the Three Gorges Dam was the Panama Canal.
David McCullough authored “Path Between the Seas” it is a great read to understand 19th and 20th century America and the extraordinary tale of how the black ancestors of African slaves and the blood, death, and labor intensive work ethic that went into building the canal. And their contribution to the American century.
The canal made the world a smaller place. This was the door that opened us up to being a “multi-cultural” society.
Innovations in engineering are often the impetus that proceed and accelerate where a society ends up.
The television and the internet our the two innovations that we will look back on in the the not too distant future that accelerated mankind’s demise.
Television due to its’ creepy hypnotic effect on human behavior and the way the elites and gatekeepers of our society mis- shaped and distorted truths and facts too create an undistinguished ill educated mass of robotic people. The internet, well regrettably it came along to late too save us from ourselves.
Women our the last best hope to reel mankind onto some righteous path. They have been trucking along on this strange sad trip with the male of the species. Maybe they can tell us boys “now put that down” or something along the lines of “now hear this”. Let’s stop making excuses for for being early 21st century slobs. If we’re headed on the way out at least let’s go out in style. Damn we’re Americans.
You have obviously taken one-too many gender/womyn’s or African studies classes. Or was this part of a written assingment?
hallmonitor – Thanks for the incoherent babble. You’re all over the map babe. Your post reads like a mish-mash of copy and paste from ivy league “studies” textbooks, notes you took in class but forgot to process with the noggin then edit for readability and grammar and a heaping spoonful of “say-what?”. I’m normally not overtly critical of troll posts (life’s too short) but this one merited a few pixels of comment.
Well, now we have an essay that demonstrates with brutal clarity why the drooling feudal lords have been able to con their way to the verge of subjugating a great culture.
It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.
But somehow, I suspect that the author is quite proud of the effort.
It is all very dispiriting. “I wish the answer were as simple as Dick The Butcher’s …The first thing we do, is we kill all the lawyers,” from Shakespeare’s Henry VI. But tempting as that may be, I doubt it’s the solution. Have you looked at the lawyers sitting in congress these days? We have one congressman who questioned the wisdom of landing some military people on Guam because it could cause Guam to tip over into the sea. He even used hand gestures to aid us in visualizing the possibility. We have a high-ranking congresswoman from New York who at a meeting with the President on health care spoke about two elderly sisters (her constituents) who shared one pair of false teeth…and when one of the sisters died while wearing the teeth the other sister had to take the teeth out of her dead sister…(surely this could have waited for some more opportune time…like a restroom break?)
We have talented people in our nation, I cite Victor Davis Hanson for one. But can you imagine Dr. Hanson or any intelligent person having to discuss matters of state with these morons? I’m sure the talented among us would refuse to run for office on grounds of maintaining their sanity. Then there are senators like Kerry and Schumer. I wouldn’t go into the men’s room if I saw one of these oddjobs heading in that direction: Kerry because he’d likely hog the mirror disdainfully, possibly causing it to shatter; and Schumer because he probably talks while he pees, in that annoying nasal tone of his. I’m sorry, but there seems to be no way out of this mess. Unless maybe Dick The Butcher was right.
We have met the enemy and he is us. -Pogo. We are our own worst enemies and unfortunately we get the leaders we deserve. Unless we clean up our own personal acts, the country and the world will not last to see the next century.
No religious Armagheddon, no eco-disaster, simply the destruction and disappearance of civil society. Once that’s gone humans won’t be far behind. It starts with the individual. All politics are local.
The term “Westerner” is full of contradictions. For me, it is a remnant of the cold war and may be defined as “followers of the West” in contrast to “followers of the East” (Soviet Union). However, Mark Patterson’s approach to Europe is a very British one. Why, for example, does he mention the colonies of the British Empire (yes, you have been one)and Churchill, but not Gutenberg and Luther? Luther indicates that sometimes a religion needs corrections.On the other side, the religious war lasted 30 years and was a disaster,especially for Germany. However, there was a free city in our region, whose citizens (Catholics and Protestants)decided to share the local church after the war and they do it till now. Bad.-Württ., the state I live in, is very successful,though the South is Catholic and the North Protestant. Religions do not matter in economic issues but the values a person is exposed to in childhood are of some importance. Churchill, on the other hand, I see not as a positive figure. I see him as a man of destruction, nothing less. He did not only destroy Europe, but in the end he had to face the fall down of the British Empire. That is why I do not understand the US. And do not argue that Churchill saved mankind. One should not forget that many German Jews fought in World war I and shared the bitterness of all Germans. And in World war II? A member of the family Einstein was deported to Theresienstadt on April 1, 1945(all Germany was in ruins but the railway stations functioned).How this can be explained?By the way, Herr Einstein returned and lived all his life in Germany. O.K., let the past be the past. However, I simply do not understand why the United States of America are so afraid of the future. Personally, I would not have stressed the notion of globalization in case you want to be in control of the world.
“Churchill, on the other hand, I see not as a positive figure. I see him as a man of destruction, nothing less. He did not only destroy Europe”
I can’t believe I’m actually reading this. So Churchill, not Adolf, is the one who “destroyed Europe”. What’s next? Britain starting WW2?
Germany is a great country that produced a lot of great things, but there’s no denying it bore responsability for both World Wars and thus the destruction of Europe.
A member of the family Einstein was deported to Theresienstadt on April 1, 1945(all Germany was in ruins but the railway stations functioned).How this can be explained?By the way, Herr Einstein returned and lived all his life in Germany. O.K., let the past be the past.
Maybe the explanation for this is simply that they still wanted to murder every Jew they could get their hands on. I wasn’t aware that Einstein returned to Germany. I would like you to cite your sources on the subject. The past can not be the past and left alone. I will quit blaming Germany for its many sins the day that Germans don’t join the Moslems in anti-Israel demonstrations. I see no outcry by the Germans for the new anti-Semitism, just silence. The question is , is the silence of an indication of approval of the Moslems. If so, you deserve the treat they have in store for you.
I wrote “a member of the family Einstein”. Sorry, you should know that the grandparents of Albert Einstein owned a house in Buchau(now Bad Buchau).
His father, Hermann Einstein was born in Buchau. I remember the house where these facts are noted. Baden-Württemberg was the home of many Einsteins, some related to Albert, some not. The man who was deported was Siegbert Einstein who was born in Buchau in 1889.He fought in World war I and he was awarded EK I and EK II (Eiserne Kreuz/Iron Cross). You see, the Eiserne Kreuz was not a Nazi but simply a military award. Herr Einstein was married to a Protestant woman and therefore a “privileged ” person. However, on February 21, 1945 he was deported to the KZ Theresienstadt.( Note: I wrote April 1, 1945. This seems to be wrong though I was so sure that I had read this fact because I was somehow very irritated. In the information I have lost it was written that he was deported together with two women who died after some days because of illness. Further I cannot confirm whether Herr Einstein was deported by train or by car. These information I have lost too). In short: Herr Einstein was deported on February 21, 1945 and returned to Buchau in June 1945(in some articles the date is May 45). He died in December 1968 and he is buried in Buchau(Jewish graveyard). Siegbert Einstein was a Großneffe(great nephew??) of Albert Einstein. More later on(I just returned home). Key words. Bad Buchau or Swabia usw.
I was not aware that Thereseisenstadt was open at that late date. I thought that the “showplace” of Nazi kindness to the Jews had been evacuated much earlier for such places as Dachau or Austschwitz. Just the names of such places leaves a chill in my spine as I mourn family I will never know.
To Fred Beloit: Sorry, above is no space left to answer. Perhaps I was not accurate. I have no problems at all with IBM, Microsoft, Ford and all the others you mentioned. These are companies I respect and not investors. They produce goods and/or offer services. I even drive an Opel myself. However, what do your investors do in Germany? They produce nothing, they even do not intend to invest in any companies for some time. All they do is to speculate and to offer our companies to others (Spanish, French who do not allow take-overs by German companies themselves). In the end we are left with nothing.Luckily, middle sized and small companies (most companies in Baden-Württemberg belong in this category) prefer to stay family-owned companies because owners do want to give their company to other generations. I am a small share-holder myself. I bought my first shares when I was 15 and had a holiday job. However, I do not speculate. I know Mr. Krugman and sometimes I agree with him. However, when he suggested that Germany should make more debts I was glad that Merkel rejected the idea. Even she knows that we are not buyers or consumers by definition. We only buy when we need a product.
Marianne,
I have read all your posts to this article (as I have read all the other posts, too). Sorry to say, but you’re a very confused and misinformed lady. Hope and pray that not many Germans bear those attributes these days.
Almost every single sentence you wrote is either patently false or doesn’t make sense. For example, in a prior post, you state:
“Herr Einstein returned and lived all his life in Germany.”
I assume you’re referring to Albert Einstein? Well, if so, he left Germany in 1033 for the US and went to Princeton, The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, where he died in 1955.
You’re a “crackpot,” a good American word for you to learn.
1933 not 1033 – sorry for the typo.
Almost every sentence you wrote is either patently false or does not make sense”. Thank you. I never was more insulted. Before you call me a liar you should simply ask. I am known to everybody and all my friends in Germany and elsewhere as very honest and truthfully. However, my views are based on personal experience or talks of persons I trust. I do not cite everything that is written in the internet. My parents told me that I should think myself about everything. When they have been young, printed news that expressed views have been simply wrong. About Albert Einstein,please see above. I cannot remember to have written Albert. Yes, the Einstein family includes Albert Einstein and he is the most prominent Einstein. That is all. Next “lie”: Churchill was not a good man. These are soft news. If you think that every single Germans deserves to be killed, he is a good man and I am wrong(only one example).My view about all human beings is a very different one. That is why he is wrong(my view.)Learn about soft news and facts. I have a specific view about the Euro. Most persons share it.Our economic and political “elite” did not. Why I have to pay when they have been wrong?Your view seems to be very simple. Everybody who does not agree with you is simply wrong.
You ended your post with:
“Your view seems to be very simple. Everybody who does not agree with you is simply wrong.”
Wrong again, missy. As for what you implied by “Herr Einstein” – it’s very clear, too, except to your confused and ill-informed mind: it was Mr. Einstein (Albert Einstein that is); Whom else were you referring to as “Herr Einstein” for you to make the whatever point you wanted to make?
I sincerely feel sorry for you.
Last try. Please see my answer to Andy Gump above. There I tried to clarify what Einstein I referred to. I took Einstein, because he was the last person to be deported at a time people working on farms, mostly women, have been short at. My point is: Why the fuss about women working when the Gestapo still was able to use the railways and the streets?(ordinary people had no cars). By the way, when I think of Einstein I do not think of Albert but of some German citizens living in Germany. Was the term “missy” really necessary? Long ago, Americans had more style somehow(my view, can be disputed. And no need to feel sorry for me.
@ Marianne:
“…last person to be deported…” ?
There you go again; he wasn’t “the last person to be deported” he left on his own will, no matter how reluctantly.
You have problems, and you need to work on them.
Well, Marianne, I have at least some good news for you. Speculators lose, more often than make, money. Speculators are gamblers, a very different group from investors. Ask your friend Krugmann.
The suicide of the West began when savage, global Muslim terrorist killer Arafat, was made a peace partner for Israel! Arafat was provided with weapons and Israeli land. Arafat did EXACTLY as was expected of him. Arafat waged continual jihad against Israel and severely persecuted Arab Christians in Palestinian Authority areas.
In America, the U.S. government will not work with moderates. They work only with Muslim Brotherhood front groups whose goal is global Islamic conquest, such as CAIR. These Muslim groups are welcomed into the halls of power.
Civilization Jihad: The Muslim Brotherhood in America document describes the “settlement process” as a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated.”
Muslim Brotherhood front group, Council on American-Islamic Relations: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” – Omar Ahmad (CAIR co-founder).
Addressing a youth session at the 1999 Islamic Association for Palestine’s annual convention in Chicago, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) founder Omar Ahmad praised suicide bombers who “kill themselves for Islam,”
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52184
The hour is very late for the Free World. Global jihad is advancing rapidly because of pro-radical Islam Western leaders. It is the greatest betrayal in all of history.
“Some six centuries ago, Western civilization began to claw its way out of the great wilderness of the Dark and Middle Ages.”
For a conservative, you exhibit a pretty liberal view of history. May I suggest you do some serious reading about the Middle Ages and their relationship to the ensuing periods?
The suicide of the West began when savage global Muslim terrorist killer Arafat, was made a peace partner for Israel. Arafat was provided with weapons and Israeli land. Arafat did EXACTLY as was expected of him. Arafat waged continual jihad against Israel and severely persecuted Arab Christians in Palestinian Authority areas.
In America, the U.S. government will not work with moderates. They work only with Muslim Brotherhood front groups whose goal is global Islamic conquest, such as CAIR. These Muslim groups are welcomed into the halls of power.
Civilization Jihad: The Muslim Brotherhood in America document describes the “settlement process” as a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated.”
Muslim Brotherhood front group, Council on American-Islamic Relations: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” – Omar Ahmad (CAIR co-founder).
Addressing a youth session at the 1999 Islamic Association for Palestine’s annual convention in Chicago, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) founder Omar Ahmad praised suicide bombers who “kill themselves for Islam,”
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52184
The hour is very late for the Free World. Because of pro-radical Islam Western leaders, global jihad is advancing rapidly. In all of history, there has never been such a betrayal.
This is my first time here. What a delight to read not only a great article but all the well thought out posts that followed. I am old enough to have lived through a lot of those times and have also watched the decline of our great country.Everyone talks of their worry for their children but fails to own up to the fact that they kept those same children sheltered from the action going on around them. It is partly our fault for not paying closer attention to what held our kid’s attention but it also falls on them for being so self absorbed. Will there be a comeback?? I don’t know about you folks but I’m waiting for that trumpet to sound the end and eternity begins!!!
You are absolutely correct, Truthkeeper. The comments here – whose ideas often eclipse those advanced in the articles themselves – are the finest you’ll find anywhere on the net.
And please, stick around for a while, in the worldly and the Pajamas Media sense. We need your historical perspective and your seeming wisdom.
Domestic and European Morons, Idiots, and Imbeciles
. . . See the video of Elliot strutting his intellectualism here: http://tiny.cc/q5zlv
That exchange, which wasn’t really an exchange since Letterman wisely only laughed and didn’t exchange anything with Elliot. That rare reticence on Dave’s part may have been attributable to the fact Elliot had been shown to be moronic on Leno by being unaware that wheat was the principal ingredient of bread and was now appearing on the elitist Letterman show in a vain attempt to demonstrate that he wasn’t the moron that he is.
As schoolkids were wont to say in the old days, It takes one to know one. Perhaps Elliot thought bread was made from snips and snails and puppy dog tails.
There are morons, and idiots, and imbeciles and then there are morons, idiots, and imbeciles and whatever term best befits Chris Elliot is as irrelevant as he. Far more relevant are the morons, idiots, and imbeciles who run governments and who pretend, like Elliot, that it is not they that aren’t moronic, idiotic, and imbecilic but someone else.
Unfortunately for them, and for us, they’re the nutcases.
Unfortunately, too, there’s so much competition from the likes of Joe Biden, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, et al. that it’s difficult to choose which individual best epitomizes the categories: In the midst of the Egyptian upheaval, Clown Prince Biden weighs in and says the dictator Mubarak isn’t a dictator at all. In the midst of the coldest winter on record, charlatan Gore keeps blogging his nonsense that we’re cold because we’re warming. In the midst of failure in establishing a legacy, failed president Carter absurdly contends the nation is more polarized now than during the Civil War.
So many certifiable nitwits, so little time.
Perhaps it’s best to use the terms idiots and imbeciles more generically. As for imbecilic in the sense of being so far removed from sanity that they are positively scary, the best choice at the moment would have to be Western Europeans.
Just consider what England, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Sweden and others to a greater or lesser extent have done to themselves with regard to Islamic influences.
Whether inspired by misguided humanitarianism or in quest of cheap labor, Western Europe opened the floodgates to an influx of massive numbers of people who are noted for their propensity to reproduce. Worse, either they could not or would not assimilate into their new cultures and instead are in the process of subverting and dominating those cultures.
If deliberate national suicide isn’t a sign of imbecility, what is? . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3565
A critical point intellectual historians always omit when discussing this topic…..America has the mother of all weapons for which to reconstitute ourselves and claim victory. THE TRADITIONAL REPUBLIC OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION!
RESTORE the original underlying intent of the Articles and Sections of the Constitution along with a couple of specific amendments and the U.S. can regain victory from itself and over enemies within. A bloated, corrupted and overreaching unconstitutional federal government…not the States…have facilitated ALL the victories of the enemy from within and outside.
The U.S. can be rather easily saved BUT…. the American people must come to understand how and have the will to force such resolves….and be willing to suffer the short term pain.
The future of Traditional America (reincarnate or die) is simply a CHOICE of the people!
The United States will continue in a slow downward spiral to economic collapse because ;
A) The central Bank shifted shifted the foundation of its national banking system to European banking families in 1913 and gave up sovereign control of its banking system
B) the US dollar was placed on a Petro dollar system, effectively tying the hands of US foreign policy and placing it squarely on the shoulders of Saudi Arabia in 1971
These two actions allowed the programs and welfare state discussed on these posts to evolve, as there is no mechanism to force disciplined budgets.
Until the US takes back control of its Banking system and the US Dollar, there is absolutely nothing that will prevent the coming collapse, regardless who occupies the White House. This thread is debating whether the Captain of the Titanic is liberal or conservative instead of turning the ship away from looming iceberg.
Turn the ship, then figure out the politics.
The West started to decline when it embraced leftist ideology. And forever sealed its fate when that leftist ideology spread like a wildfire throughout the entire Western world. Leftist ideology is inherently self-loathing and thus self-destructive.
Revolution is the only hope for reversing the trend we see in western societies. Americans are addicted to largess and soft living as were Europeans in the 80′s.
The only answer is to bring about the collapse of the world economies to add sufficient hardships to the millions of Americans who understand self reliance and responsibility.
It is time for a new beginning.
The question is how to start the building of the network for the revolution?
Matt, very much like the world’s racists, you assume our boys battle to beat back the beasts for a decent world was a Civil War. It was nothing of the kind. America’s boys are the heroes of the world. And by the way we didn’t conquer those people that are now our creditors; we made trade deals with them. I suggest you drop the loaded language of the left and rethink your thesis. Fighting for civilization never ceases. There is only one Civilization and it is a work in progress.
Judge Robert Bork knew all this mess was ahead when he wrote his insightful book,”Slouching Towards Gomorrah” some years ago. What better metaphoric title than ‘Gomorrah’ for the fix we’re inexorably slouching toward?
A Bork comment in this ‘thread’ would be a show stopper.
Pogo said it best. “We’s seen the enemy, and they is us.”
Duplicate comment not intended. Coming back to this reply box, I saw my comment still there as tho’ not accepted. Good site.