As heads of state gather at the United Nations and issue calls for world peace and disarmament, it may be interesting to think back seventy years to another time when publics also thought that war could be abolished by diplomacy.
In retrospect, the collapse of Europe which led to the Second World War was probably due to factors far deeper than the mere fecklessness of Baldwin and Chamberlain; beyond the failure of the League of Nations. The West was in a deep crisis whose precise nature is still being debated, perhaps because the bacillus lingers with us still. It’s disturbing to consider the possibility that the terrible events which conventionally began with the Great War and which were confidently thought to have run their course in 1945 may be returning for a third and terrible act. But perhaps the crisis of present must be understood on its own terms; to see it as the renewal of a terrible curse is to condemn ourselves into accepting what can still be changed.
But can it be changed by words alone? Who knows. What is safe to say is that history hasn’t stopped; conflicts continue. The idea that they can be resolved through institutions which ultimately lack the power of enforcement — having given them up — is a dubious one. Once upon a time it was thought that a Security Council could oversee the world; it didn’t. And maybe it is already an anachronism. Still, lasting peace is so glittering a prize that it can be held out over and over again to justify the most far-fetched projects; and past failures will be discounted in our desire to grasp it. It’s the lottery ticket of international relations. Unlikely to pay off, but always in demand. Maybe history is a race between two adages: the idea that hope springs eternal and the sad knowledge that there’s a sucker born every minute.
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YouTube Direkt
As the comedian Larry Miller puts it:
“When I see a bumper sticker that says ‘No More Hiroshimas’ I wish I had one that said ‘You First, No More Pearl Harbors’”
As for myself, when I see a bumper sticker that says “Visualize World Peace” I wish I had one that says “Screw the World Peace, Visualize World Freedom”
World peace will be a side effect of world freedom.
Great videos. Thank you.
“Peace through reason!” That stands to reason. Give peace a chance. Always worked in the past.
Obama’s performance at the UN provides an illustration for the very handy definition of a liberal: someone who won’t take his own side in a fight.
If one nation and any idea is basically the equivalent to another nation or any other idea, a liberal is only being consistent in not taking the side of his own free country and its national idea of a person’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The post-American President.
Are we getting a little better idea who we elected??
Is it true that Bill Ayres wrote Obama’s book??
There are lunatics … No one doubts … It is accepted
The tropes used to control debate and deny those who want to consider facts access to a productive conversation have not changed although they have been refined. Socialists and utopians try to preempt any effort to disagree and to empty the intellectual market of competing content. They do not use political debate as part of a process of deductive inquiry to discover information and refine policy. Instead they advance their grip on power using an inductive method in which the conclusion is predetermined and then various components of the audience are tested to see if they conform.
Is there anything useful gained from organizations like the League of Nations or the United Nations? Yes but only if they are considered as tools to be used in the narrowest and most technical sense and without sentimentality. They could follow on to the pattern set by the Congress of Vienna. In that case the assembled leaders of the European powers responded promptly to the threat of Napoleon’s escape from Elba and dispatched their armies to intercept the French at Waterloo. As communications improve the need for formal assemblies of Ministers and Ambassadors with plenipotentiary power declines.
International technical bodies, the best of which preceded the League, have done good work. Examples of useful organizations include the International Meteorological Organization and the International Postal Union.
Disarmament does not work because it is based on the false logic of Collective Security. If everyone is equally in the community then who is the community defending against? In theory that would reduce the aggressor to the status of a criminal. As the woman said in the video, “call the police.” That does not work for several reasons. To do so means empowering the overall authority with significant power, including tax authority and the monopoly on violence that is the mark of a Sovereign. At the local level we can do so because the criminals are rare and the police represent a community the vast majority share common values that make us willing to submit to the judgement and wisdom of our peers and of the legitimate authority we mutually accede to. That willingness to share in a common good or commonwealth is an expression of a quality called “comity.” However in the international sphere the players do not share comity, and that can not be imposed from above. Also in the international sphere violent offenders are not limited in number or poorer in resources than are the authorities they challenge. The creation of hundreds of new governments in the name of self determination after WW-I and decolonization after WW-II, most of which are not democracies, makes it impossible to trust any global organization with such authority.
In addition even in smaller groupings where the actors do share common values the risk of Free Rider effects can cripple an organization. This has crippled Nato and while it has not proven fatal to the United States the question of fair distribution of burdens and benefits and voting rights remains.
The rise of asymmetric warfare and WMD in fact means that small states and non-state actors have the ability to challenge norms of international order. The corrosive effects of wealth transfers to forces hostile to western values have further impeded the ability of institutions to respond to threats.
LiefofMind #4:
I had a hearty laugh back in the mid-90′s when a UN official complained that the various member states had cut their militaries back so far that they could no longer contribute enough troops to carry out all of the peackeeping missions the UN wanted to do.
Aside from the asburdity of a UN official complaining about too much disarmament, I wonder if they ever gave any thought to the reason for the need for all those peacekeeping missions? Could it be that the forces of civilization retreated from the nether regions of the Earth when the superpower confrontation no longer made it in their intersts to be there? Could it be that the Losers in the Cold War had formented so much hatred, created so many lies, and spread around so many weapons that there was a huge mess to be cleaned up? But instead of cleaning up the mess the Winners in the Cold War went looking for a Peace Dividend to finance their holiday from history.
Bill Clinton complained that he faced no great global challenge in which he coiuld have showed his mettle, FDR-like or JFK-like. Well, it was right there before his eyes, with all the well-honed tools ready to do the job, and he handled it Jimmy Carter-like.
The essential difference between now and then is intentions. O is NOT a misguided idealist, he is a creature of the hard left. The Left’s goal is not peace but the destruction of the West. The Left considers the West in general, and America in particular, a monstrosity. The Left wants at the very minimum America disarmed, defeated, and made politically and economically irrelevant. They want America’s political institutions smashed, its culture discredited and its “racist, slave owning” heroes such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington replaced with VI Lenin, Mao Zedong, Che Guervera, and Fidel Castro.
Talk about stupid.
Disarm our most powerful weapons in the middle of a war for civilization.
A lot of stupid policies were set in motion back in the 1970′s–that are now coming undone. The biggest economic mistakes involved energy policy. The US let itself get into increasing dependence on foreign energy at a time when it was clear that doing so was not the best interests of the USA.
The Brazilian policy of energy independence has proven to be the correct policy.
How fast the US will get to energy independence is currently unknown. But that the USA will get there — is certain. Right now the O admins do not think that the speed at which the USA gets off oil dependence is as important as other factors. They are wrong for monetary and national security reasons. That may change in a year or so because daily the chances of a cap in trade climate bill passing declines.
O’s climate change speech at the UN is being undone by current scientific opinion as reported now in the NY Times. When the undead speaks the liberals listen.
Was it not Trotsky who said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you”?
It’s always hard to step back and look at the so-called “big picture”, but your post about similar times 70 years ago knocked me into that frame of mind.
The 90′s seemed to truly be, like Seinfeld, “the decade about nothing.” Then our roller coaster went over the top and we all got knocked out of our reverie by 9/11. Since then, the drumbeat of events has never slowed, although it’s taken many twists and turns. In fact, about 9 months ago the speed of events (and the level of uncertainty) picked up dramatically.
And now, it’s hard to put a finger on, but over the last 6 weeks the wheels seem to be coming off completely, and not just off of this administration. Oh, everyone in official positions is putting on a brave front – but even they know that events have now taken on a life of their own and no longer controlled by anyone. Copenhagen failing? Efforts to corral Iran failing? I cannot name a single international agreement or assembly today that looks likely to result in anything but abject failure from any rational perspective. Honduras, anyone?
From everyone I correspond with and read, there seems to be a sense of terrible anticipation – “what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
I honestly don’t want to know – and yet I, like all of you, will have no choice.
And somewhere we all seem to know that it’s hour indeed is come round at last.
“Was it not Trotsky who said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you”?”
Does that mean Trotsky is the source of the “In Soviet Russia . . . you!” joke?
Once upon a time it was thought that a Security Council could oversee the world; it didn’t.
I’m not sure the security council was to oversee the world, it was more of a privileged veto group, I always thought.
But the UN and the General Assembly *were* supposed to rule the world, read the UN charter, what a fantastic (literally) document. Surely the US, USSR, British Empire did not really *mean* it when they signed that silly thing.
LOTM mentions the acceptance by the civilized in a society of the necessity for police occasioned by the existence of the outlaw. Disarmament is predicated on the idea that the outlaw will leave his neighbors alone or that his neighbors dont matter nor do the people under his regime. And besides all people are good inside, we just dont understand their legitimate claims.(All probably because they’re Not Like Us)
All of this is of a piece with the concept that paradise can exist on earth and that it is achievable by the hand of man. Baraq says so. Just listen to him. He says it will require sacrifice (yours). He says it will take hard work (by the Govt). He says it wont be easy (some will resist). But under his leadership we’ll get there.
Dr. King never promised any salvation on earth. He challenged us to live to our individual potential and to challenge those parts of ourselves that had not reached what we knew to be our moral potential. He also recognized that there were those whose potential for evil made them dangerous. He achieved the impossible.
I dont think Baraq can create a heaven on earth any more than the League of Nations or the UN. But I think he can kill a lot of people trying. The LoN and the UN sure have.
I’m the webmaster for “EDSITEment,” a humanities resource site for teachers. We have a curriculum unit on America between the world wars, and this lesson plan addresses that period:
http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=754
Sen. William E. Borah was one of those who was certain we could outlaw war, and then Sec. of State Lansing tried to set him straight. Years later, when Hitler invaded Poland, Borah said, “if only I could have sat down and talked with this Hitler fellow, maybe this could have been avoided,” or words to that effect.
The links to original sources, including speeches by people like Borah, Lansing, and Woodrow Wilson, are revealing in both their naivete, but — more importantly — in how they mirror modern arguments about conflict resolution. Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and Harry Reid are ignorant men for having learned nothing from the past, for which documentation is quite extensive.
I was busy yesterday and missed the speeches. Does anyone know if Ahmadinejad called for or otherwise supported nuke disarmament?
ThePowerline fellows are taking exception with these Team 44 quotes:
and
The lesson plan listed above is linked to this interactive for students:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/neh/interactives/neutrality/
The interactive compells the user to go through the steps that led to WWII, and shows quite effectively the process of erosion that diplomacy and appeasement alone cannot stop.
I have said to my colleagues that our American history lesson plans should be required reading for members of Congress. But the, those clowns won’t even read the bills they vote on.
The pacifists were right and did win in Europe… eventually. If everyone is on board disarmament works.
But we all know the problem with this. When someone doesn’t cooperate…and you can’t make them… then the disarmed utopia you built is doomed.
From everyone I correspond with and read, there seems to be a sense of terrible anticipation – “what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”–wws
In keeping with the apocalyptic vision, The Great War of the past seventy years(Acts I and II) was only a dress rehearsal for the final act–a last desperate attempt to establish the Universal Kingdom of Darkness.
Considering that US troops ultimately brought down the curtain on those first two presentations, it is essential to cripple America’s military might so as to forestall any prospect of our canceling the next show.
Diplomatic betrayal will prefigure Act III of The Great War, just as the conqueror on his white horse precedes the sword-wielder on the red mount.
Jimmy Carter’s words were appealing to many people (including me) at the time. The hostage crisis in Iran, however, demonstrated what happens when, as John Lynch writes above, “someone doesn’t cooperate.” Carter eventually said American’s were suffering from a malaise. He was right. He caused it.
At this point, if the U.S. suffers a catastrophe (and a hostage situation, judging from the Carter experience, qualifies as a political catastrophe of a particularly malignant kind), and if Obama is not able to respond in any meaningful way, then the current plummeting of Obama in the polls will metastasize into a national loathing of Democrats and all fellow-travellers.
A catastrophe of some kind seems likely, and probably inevitable. Let’s hope it is “only” a political catastrophe, such as a hostage crisis, and not one that affects large numbers of people.
The best-case scenario would be the current administration stumbling along until Congress changes hands in 2010 and a new president is elected in 2012.
Charles said:
> The US let itself get into increasing dependence on foreign energy at a time when it was clear that doing so was
> not the best interests of the USA.
This is true.
> The Brazilian policy of energy independence has proven to be the correct policy.
Brazil’s energy policy was logical given they are on the equator and have lots of farm land.
> O’s climate change speech at the UN is being undone by current scientific opinion as reported now in the NY Times.
> When the undead speaks the liberals listen.
I’m convinced that Green Politics is a consequence of Cold War Gramscian agit-prop. It is obvious that the Left Wing is using Green Politics to advance their agenda. However I’m more agnostic about the science behind Global Warming. We appear to be entering into a cooling trend and this maybe due to the Sun going into a Maunder Minimum (google it). Obviously, solar phenomena dominates the Earth’s climate. (Almost) everything we human beings do with our pitiful technology is merely a pimple on an elephant’s behind when compared to the power of nature. However **if** the Sun was not going into a Maunder Minimum, we might have been facing a major climate change towards higher temperature. We know so little about how climate works that it’s stupid to try and form a political policy around it.
Moonbats shrieking about global warming should be ignored.
#5 RWE
I had a hearty laugh back in the mid-90’s when a UN official complained that the various member states had cut their militaries back so far that they could no longer contribute enough troops to carry out all of the peackeeping missions the UN wanted to do.
I am reminded of two things. One of the officers in my crew, back when I worked for the state, was reserve Special Forces after having done his 20. He was called up for one of the UN missions to Haiti. They were in the back country, doing their jobs, when along comes a vehicle with a UN flag and some Euro-weenie on board. Said Euro-weenie had brought a case of UN powder blue berets, and tried to insist that our people take off the Green Berets they had earned and wear powder blue. It did not go well for the Euro-weenie. The blue berets ended up in the dirt and somewhat worse for wear. The Euro-weenie left hastily, clutching his wounded dignity to himself, and probably feeling grateful that his dignity was all that was wounded. Our military people do not subscribe to the view of the UN and our current regime; that any other nation or international organization is superior to the US.
The second point involved the nature of the approach of the forces involved. In the US sectors, the food and other aid was handed out to the people, and as long as no one was attacking anyone, our troops got along well with the locals. We were there to do a job, get done, and get the hell out.
The Euros and others under their command used the distribution of aid to coerce favors from the locals, including apparently the standard child brothels set up by UN Peacekeepers whenever they are in an area with Third World conditions. There is something endemic in the Leftist vision that views the sexual exploitation of children as the norm; be it the UN or ACORN.
Subotai Bahadur
Obviously, this is solely about only the USA and Israel disarming.
The fact that there are not mobs in the street demanding his ouster is a testament to how supine decades of left wing propaganda have rendered the American people. It is cause for the gravest alarm that Obama is making these sorts of pronouncements and that his amen choir has the composition that it does. We now in a time of the greatest peril. I never thought I would live to see this. We are undoing decades of advance, and doing it in a matter of months. It is as though we have lost a war and are now under an occupying force.
One is tempted to think that the American Left are here caught up in some sort of neurotic nostalgia for the 1960′s. I am being to doubt that this is really the case. I fear that something much more sinister is afoot. No one but the young ever took Carter seriously. Obama and Co. are dead serious about this, and I wonder if it as something to do with something other than fond memories of the anti-nuke movement.
But it begs the question: Why is this such a pressing issue? Why is not concentrating on Iran the most important matter so far as nuclear weapons go. It is fundamentally irrational on Obama’s part to persue this if we are to accept the matter on the basis of known facts and assume that he will honorably fulfill his duties.
Truly he is not really an American POTUS. He does not represent us. He is somehow the overseer of a nation that only exists the his himself and and those of his supporters. The shame they have in being American, the hatred they have for us, it is all beyond parallel that the leaders and leading citizens of a nation such as ours should hold such beliefs and emotions. It is as insane as it is evil. We have gone frpm the very real Axis of Evil to “America is the Source of Evil” at breakneck speed. It is chilling just who’s approval Obama seeks and who’s reprobation he is willing to endure.
Soon we must begin the outcry. Soon we must call things by their real names.
Soon we must “question their patriotism”, and loudly, constantly and publicly.
Obama may well be the end of us.
Robinsolana @ 3:
It appears so.
“Andersen Book Blows Ayers’ Cover on ‘Dreams’”
As then, when the LoN was dissolved, so to will now the UN fall by the wayside in the fires of another world conflagration, I think. As I have said before, the grand idea that peace is a state of natural man is so wrong and misguided as to be laughable. Nice little ideal to be sure, but ideals mostly get the boots on the ground killed and the politicians in the history books. It is long past time for another view of the world and man to become ascendant. One grounded in the practical – objectivism, if you will.
Robohobo said:
“As I have said before, the grand idea that peace is a state of natural man is so wrong and misguided as to be laughable. Nice little ideal to be sure, but ideals mostly get the boots on the ground killed and the politicians in the history books. It is long past time for another view of the world and man to become ascendant. One grounded in the practical – objectivism, if you will.”
The destruction of one or more American/European cities followed by the mass extermination of the proliferating states will force this new objectivism. Mega-deaths are on the near term horizon. It would be so easy to prevent this and save millions of innocent lives. Instead we’ll walk lock step off of the cliff, with smiles on our faces from the certain faith that Obama is our saviour.
Sorry if this is a bit off topic but it goes to motive.
For the past nine months this regime has made a concerted effort to dilute and devalue the dollar. I caught an extraordinary discussion on CNBC this morning entitled “Regulation vs. Competitiveness”, extraordinary in its matter-of-fact sense of fait accompli.
The description was: Discussing one of the major dilemmas facing world leaders at the G20, with David Malpass, Encima Global; Hal Scott, Harvard Law School and CNBC’s Melissa Francis.
There is a “global rebalancing” by “lowering the living standards for the U.S.” because “the world is mad at us for having a higher living standard”. “hurt most will be small businesses and young and minority workers”
Go to: http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1274886570&play=1to catch the statements in context.
If the rest of the world can’t live by the American living standards then this regime will unapologetically bring us down to theirs. Oh, and don’t worry, they will find the displaced jobs in AmeriCorps.
Good old Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the “noble savage” concept.
When I was a child I lived in a small town in Oklahoma. The library was full of books on American Indians (A term preferred by most of them instead of “Native Americans” as it avoids confusion). Anyway the PC crowd hadn’t got to those those books to “edit” some of the unfortunate details. Depending on the tribe and the tribes relations both war and internal relations could be just as nasty and brutal as anything seen in the Thirty Years war. I’ll hear from some barf from a faux anthropologist, “Oh how noble, in war they seldom killed each other, they’d count coup instead.” Yeah that would happen among related tribes during casual horse and women stealing. But you’d also see baby killing when it came down to war over hunting territory. To this day you should hear what some of the tribes call each other….they’d make Barney Frank blush.
The whole idea of the United Nations was in direct conflict with basic Hobbsean theory from the very beginning and was therefore always meant to fail. Hobbes’ theory was that the only way to secure civil society is for all actors to submit to a sovereign, an absolute authority. This is the theory behind nations states although obviously one can debate the meaning of absolute authority. But on the international level it was clear from the very inception of the UN that there would be only be a temporary sovereign in the very rare case where all five permanent members of the security council were both in agreement and then willing to commit to enforce that agreement. That has not often happened in the past seventy years nor will it occur very often in the next seventy.
But how else could the WW2 endgame have played out. Was either the United States or the Soviet Union, both victorious after WW2, really about to submit to an absolute international authority. Never. The United Nations was a feel-good gimmick that assured continued super power domination over a Hobbsean international state of nature.
There are only two realistic ways to end international state of nature and bring about Hobbsean international civil society. One is for almost every nation to submit to the most powerful — and also for this most powerful nation to accept the very difficult and expensive role of sovereign. In some ways the United States has inched towards this position although nowhere near enough nations have voluntarily submitted to US international sovereignty and the US has not actually accepted the difficult role of sovereign, despite the fact that in some areas, certainly in naval control of international waters, it more or less has.
The other way is for the major international actors to build an institution powerful enough to act as sovereign, and to then submit to it. The only way this scenario will ever happen is a global war far worse than WW2 where no victorious nations emerge.
“The World” is not mad at us, the international Left is mad at us.
It remains to be seen if this has been in fact accomplished. Sound like a sure way to keep the democrats out of power for a generation to me.
Toad #26–Agree with this. When Lewis and Clark came back from the Pacific, here where the Clearwater meets the Snake, they saw one Tototsillips (sp?), I think it was, with a necklace of human scalps around his neck. Just back from a trip to the Shoshone country in the south. This fight with the Shoshone seemed to be unending, with a little break each year for some trading. Part of the rhythms of their seasonal way of life.
“The destruction of one or more American/European cities followed by the mass extermination of the proliferating states will force this new objectivism. Mega-deaths are on the near term horizon.”
Those who suspect that ‘something nasty this way comes’ are prescient but premature.
Russia and China’s semi-covert policy of blocking any cohesive, effective group action against rogue nations, along with Russia’s policy of purposely facilitating the spread of nuclear proliferation is designed to create its natural consequence; a 3rd world black market in nukes.
Russia and China’s leaders see the west’s pacifistic liberals as useful idiots that enable their strategy.
When a nuclear 3rd world black market emerges, terrorist groups will acquire them and then the destruction of one or more Israeli/American/European cities shall happen. We are just too vulnerable to a variety of methods of attack.
In such a scenario, the nukes ‘country of origin’ will be immaterial. Nuclear retaliatory action will be inappropriate’ for who shall we fight when a nuclear terrorist attack comes from an “International’ terrorist group?
Iran, et al will have ‘credible deniability’, as the terrorists bought or stole the nukes on the black market…
Liberals, libertarians and many Independents will DEMAND isolationism.
National security in the face of nuclear terrorism will demand near-permanent Martial Law.
Our economy will enter an extended depression.
America’s regional and International influence will markedly decrease and, we will no longer be the ‘world’s policeman.
Russia and China will then be happy to step into the breach and assume the role of world’s policeman…and it’s they… who shall turn Mecca into a glass parking lot.
And then, they shall turn their eyes toward us…a massive EMP pulse will do nicely and then the threat of a WITHHELD ‘follow-up’ with actual nukes, will stay the hand of our nuclear subs.
That EMP pulse along with an effectively hamstrung US military will ensure the end of the American economy and its military effectiveness.
A scenario right out of a novel? Unfortunately, it’s actually begun to happen, the handwriting is on the wall, it’s the developing, not-so-distant future reality we face.
It’s all quite predictable, a geopolitical ‘chess game’ and the various ‘actors’ will have the ’story’ play out, no other way.
I pray that I am wrong and, greatly fear that I am not.
herb: All of this is of a piece with the concept that paradise can exist on earth and that it is achievable by the hand of man. Baraq says so. Just listen to him. He says it will require sacrifice (yours). He says it will take hard work (by the Govt). He says it wont be easy (some will resist). But under his leadership we’ll get there
If you believe mankind can be perfected through human laws rather than divine sanctifying grace, you might be a liberal. This tendency is not found within secularism alone. Even among many religious groups, there remains a belief that man can be perfected through adherence to God’s laws.
Eggplant writes:
“I’m convinced that Green Politics is a consequence of Cold War Gramscian agit-prop. It is obvious that the Left Wing is using Green Politics to advance their agenda.”
That’s an understatement, at least at the international green-red planning level.
Gerhard Schroeder was the grandfather of the red-green alliance: (via Wiki) “Among his more controversial cases, Schröder helped founding member of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group Horst Mahler secure an early release from prison and the permission to practice law again in Germany. Schröder joined the Social Democratic Party in 1963. In 1978 he became the federal chairman of the Young Socialists, the youth organisation of the SPD. He spoke for the dissident Bahro, as did President Jimmy Carter, Herbert Marcuse and Wolf Biermann. In 1982 he wrote an article on the idea of a red/green coalition . . . which later appeared in “Die Zeit”.
“In his memoirs ‘Decisions: My Life in Politics’ Schröder still defends his friend and political ally, and states that “it would be wrong to place excessive demands on Russia when it comes to the rate of domestic political reform and democratic development, or to judge it solely on the basis of the Chechnya conflict.’”
“Soon after stepping down as chancellor, Schröder accepted Gazprom’s nomination for the post of the head of the shareholders’ committee of Nord Stream AG, raising questions about a potential conflict of interest. . . . In January 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that Schröder would join the board of the oil company TNK-BP, a joint venture between oil major BP and Russian partners.”
In supporting international limits on carbon emissions, Obama willy-nilly imposes an enormous tax on the U.S. and cedes power and wealth to producers of petroleum and gas. Does he do this willy (willingly) or nilly (not knowingly)?
Most of Europe is in for a cold winter whenever Russia decides, and Europe knows it.
Geoffrey Britain said:
“In such a scenario, the nukes ‘country of origin’ will be immaterial. Nuclear retaliatory action will be inappropriate’ for who shall we fight when a nuclear terrorist attack comes from an “International’ terrorist group?
Iran, et al will have ‘credible deniability’, as the terrorists bought or stole the nukes on the black market…
Liberals, libertarians and many Independents will DEMAND isolationism.
National security in the face of nuclear terrorism will demand near-permanent Martial Law.
Our economy will enter an extended depression.”
You forgot the next step:
The political system will go into gridlock and a handsome young man with a distinguished military record will suddenly appear and eloquently assert that he has all the answers to America’s problems.
As bad as Obama is, it’s going to be that handsome young man who brings about most of the slaughter.
Wow, this is confusing! Oneeye. #28 is not me Oneeye.
My point was not that “the world is mad at us”. My point was that these two “world renound” economists were so casual about the devaluation of the dollar and its effect on us.
My comment was more to the point that Mongoose was making in #22.
Geoffrey: Russia and China will then be happy to step into the breach and assume the role of world’s policeman…and it’s they… who shall turn Mecca into a glass parking lot.
The problem with this scenario is that Russia’s entire economy is based on selling energy to the West, and China’s entire economy is based on selling cheap plastic crap to the West. If the West enters an extended depression, Russia and China won’t have the money to step into the role of world’s policeman, which currently costs a half-trillion dollars a year to perform.
“You forgot the next step:
The political system will go into gridlock and a handsome young man with a distinguished military record will suddenly appear and eloquently assert that he has all the answers to America’s problems.”
Yes, I did leave out that near certainty/possibility.
That is because I was laying out the strategic steps, as Putin and the Chinese see them.
From their point of view, a charismatic/savior/dictator of a greatly weakened, isolationist minded US will not pose an insurmountable threat.
Mark said:
“Gerhard Schroeder was the grandfather of the red-green alliance”
Schroeder merely continued an existing process. Die Grünen Partei (German Green Party) came into existence in the 1970s during the height of the Cold War. I’m convinced that they were orchestrated by some black-propaganda genius within the KGB and/or the East German Stazi. Die Grünen Partei pushed all the correct buttons, i.e.
anti-nuclear
pacifist / anti-NATO
anti-American
pro-socialist without actually being obvious Marxist or part of the SPD (German socialist party).
I’m sure who ever dreamed up Die Grünen Partei won an Order of Lenin along with who ever dreamed up Liberation Theology. Unfortunately for the Soviets, the concept appeared too late to enable their victory over NATO.
Ahmedinejad dreams about a world without Israel and America like Nietzsche dreamed that God is dead. But he’s not the only dreamer. Dismantling nukes to create a world without nukes is like banning miniskirts to create a world without rape.
“The problem with this scenario is that Russia’s entire economy is based on selling energy to the West, and China’s entire economy is based on selling cheap plastic crap to the West. If the West enters an extended depression, Russia and China won’t have the money to step into the role of world’s policeman, which currently costs a half-trillion dollars a year to perform.”
Perhaps, but that presupposes that Europe, Russia’s biggest client, can go elsewhere for it’s oil. With present trends in growth of both China & India and supplies that presently exist, I don’t see that as an option for the Euro’s.
You also presuppose that the Chinese and Russian leadership’s primary motivation is economic. That is in my view a grave mistake. Ideology remains their foremost motivation, economic growth and prowess is a tool to enable them to achieve their ideological goals. In my view, nothing else explains their decades long geopolitical behavior.
Finally, it’s an assumption to presuppose that Russia & China acting as the ‘world’s policeman’ would emulate our methods at all. They are an entirely ‘different kettle of fish’ than the US.
As an example, they won’t conduct an expensive WOT with nation building, they’ll simply nuke Mecca or Tehran and the Mullah’s KNOW it.
Putin and the Chinese leadership are not interested in the ‘rule of law’ only in the raw power that the mailed, clenched fist, provides.
Gerhard Schroeder of course became the CEO of Gazprom upon leaving the chancellorship of Germany. Gazprom’s last private company former CEO languishes in prison on the tax evasion charges by which Putin nationalized Gazprom –far & away the world’s largest and most powerful energy company, kingmaker of the central Asian ‘stans.
Germany and progressivism it needs to be remembered form the segue from Act I to Act II in the post’s three act play conceit. The November 11 1918 armistice had contained a key feature emanating from the father of progressivism Woodrow Wilson –Germany would need cede no territory. By June 1919 –with the German armed forces now withdrawn & scattered –Wilson was in a pout with the rest of the Allies and withdrawn from active creation of the notorious, WW2-germinating, Versailles Treaty. Like his idea of the League of nations, he sort of folded and tossed in his hand, which one could say was then picked up and played by one Adolph Hitler.
Historical determinism 9the premise of the three act play) or accident (the premise of the ‘give us another chance’ progressivism now in control of America)?
I just finished reading “War Plan Orange,” about US naval plans for a war with Japan, from the 1890s to 1941. In the 1930s and up to Pearl Harbor Day, they were very torn about unrestricted submarine warfare, that having been the proximate cause for the US to declare war on Germany in 1917.
We directed unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan within 6 hours of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Can you imagine the dithering that the current crew of bumblef*cks would go through in that situation?
While in the dentist’s chair today, CNN was on the television (redundant torture, I know). I watched the coverage of Obama’s UN speech & his plan for nuclear disarmament. For 15 minutes, the anchors and analysts babbled on; no one could demonstrate anything beyond a juvenile understanding of the world we live in. The graphic overlay on the screen read, “A Nuclear Free World and how the US & Isreal [sic] are key.” (Yes, that’s how CNN spells ‘Israel’).
My worst fears about the president are being realized. The man is a fool… and he only surrounds himself with likeminded fools. The media operate the same way; any dissent is cast out. There is no sanity in sight. It reminds me of Michael Jackson’s cabal; his agents and employees acquiesce to the boss that it is perfectly OK to invite kids into your bed.
Marty @ 41:
Yes. See the recent dithering on AfPak.
We are so scr-wed.
It seems that many leftists claim that they don’t know anyone who believes in the “blank slate”, yet I see them with bumper stickers saying “visualize world peace”, “beat swords into plowshares” and other blank slatist rubbish.
Fools. Listening to Lord Cecil, I was struck by the unconscious arrogance of it all. He saw himself and his country as members of an exclusive club. The Great Nations (and, I suppose, the Great Men of the Great Nations, Lords of Humanity as it were). If only the members of the club could, in earnest, come together and renouce warfare, peace could be achieved forever more. And why shouldn’t they? The Lords could certainly share more than enough of humanity’s wealth among themselves without any need to grasp for more. Oh sure there were lower classes scrabbling in the streets, but of what account were they? Without a nobility to lead them, they were no threat. So co-opt the nobility, such as it were, of each nation into making a mutual pledge of peace to one another, and then they could share the spoils without all that messy blood and death and breaking the china.
It didn’t seem to occur to him that if all his fellow Nobles shook hands and aggreed to no more fighting in the Clubhouse, some rougher folks from outside might still decide to kick the door in and loot the place. He really dismissed everyone not already in the club as of no consequence. Who’d've though a corporal of no particular breeding or a bunch of Oriental fellows from the other side of the globe (quite shocking, what they did those poor Russians, but really old chap, they were Russians and it’s plain what a mess the Rus have made of things, eh?) could upset the apple cart.
And yes, LOTM, I noticed the blantant attempt by Cecil to define his opponents as beyond the pale too. Same as it ever was. Only a lunatic would oppose disarmament in 1931. Only a racist would oppose Barack Obama in 2009. And only a fool would believe it all. I do think the ranks of fools are thining in the US though just now. I just hope it happens fast enough.
robo/43; We are so scr-wed
especially when you realize that international politics are dangerous enough even when your leaders want your country to succeed.
robert/44; re ‘blank slate’ –that’s no really true, they DO have a context –not the slavering bears and fire-breathing dragons coming alive in war parties beginning to see gain, but in the personal person with the overwhelming feelings that they see in their mirrors.
“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way.
People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”
Orwell
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.“
Well China and Russia have problems that are quite structural and go beyond mere politics. America, on the other hand, has mostly political problems, difficult ones, but not intractable ones.
That is not to say that Russia and China’s problems so not contain elements that are purely self inflicted on the political level, of course they are, and they loom large. But these are not their only problems. Besides issues of resources, the structure of economies, industrial bases, the character of their leaders, etc., there are broader issues in their societies, cultures and traditions–faults that are more expressed by politics than the cause of politics. Should they throw of political yokes, they should still face them, This is what bedeviled Russia after the USSR crashed down, and it bedevils China now, and yes, if one cared to look under the hood and soberly look at what china is really about, it is in the midst of a deeper crisis than we are.
America on the other hand would find, I believe, that if we rolled back all this monstrous nonsense that the Democrats have heaped on us these 60 years or so, we would bounce right back, at least economically, and though many of the rent seekers and dependents of the Democrat State would for a time loudly complain, in the end the nation would be glad of it.
Of course, we only have so much time to face this. The longer we wait the more we will develop maladies similar to China and Russia.
The real question with these two nations in the near and mid term are 1) What sort of regional tactics will they use? and 2) What sort of direct danger do they pose to us?
If things get rough for the USA, they will get rough all over. It is not true that the world system can shrug America off and keep its growing prosperity. The stability of the world depends on the rise of middle classes, particularly in the BRIC nations. Warlords and Oligarchies will inevitably face their own peoples. This is not the 19th century, there is a different set of expectation. Yes they can maintain their ascendancy, but they will not maintain international power this way.
So, as pressure come on these elites in a struggling world order, what threat do they pose.
The only other questions are, how quickly and how effectively can we stall Obama and Co.’s agenda, how quickly can we get them out of power, and how do we undo the damage?
The real wild car is the character of our people. Will they want to return to being a world power? It will be tough and hard work to get back the wealth that the Left has destroyed. We most likely will not see the dollar as a reserve currency in a few few years. It is a question I have no answer for and in some darker moments I am rather pessimistic about our national will in this regard. However, things looked bleak under Carter too. The nation can surpise.
One was surprised at how quickly WB bush turned it around. It was only three years ago that we stood triumphant. Of course, it is equally true that the left managed to turn it around rather quickly too.
While we should not take the council of our worse fears, we should certainly not that the council of the Leftists and the Globalists fondest hopes.
One hopes that the leadership that drives them from power will not be so shy, the next time around, about calling things by their real names.
What does China want? They are nationalistic, no? They are feeling their oats, yes? If they fought a war, they would want us weakened first. Do they want land? Not to be bothered in their sphere of infuence? Would we know if we were at war with them?
America on the other hand would find, I believe, that if we rolled back all this monstrous nonsense that the Democrats have heaped on us these 60 years or so, we would bounce right back, at least economically…
Mongoose, agree completely. Even now, after all the economic fallout, with shackles on our collective hands, America continues to throw off money at amazing rates. We generate way, way more cash than a Constitutionally valid Federal Government could possibly need, even if F-22s were rolling off the assembly lines and military manpower doubled. If we cut the government as it should be, opened up our energy resources, cut regulation and law suits, etc. etc. — we all know what needs to be done — we could balance the budget in a year and then begin steady paying off of the national debt, all while unemployment would be closing in on zero.
It’s all so simple, really. It amazes me that no Republican seems able to make this argument.
# 19 Mark:
“A catastrophe of some kind seems likely, and probably inevitable. Let’s hope it is “only” a political catastrophe, such as a hostage crisis, and not one that affects large numbers of people.”
…-
““The Catastrophe” – Part 1: What the End of Bronze-Age Civilization Means for Modern Times
From the desk of Thomas F. Bertonneau on Tue, 2009-09-15 09:20
Introduction to Part I: Modern people assume the immunity of their situation to major disturbance or – even more unthinkable – to terminal wreckage. The continuance of a society or culture depends, in part, on that very assumption because without it no one would complete his daily round. A man cannot enthusiastically arise from bed as the sun comes up and set about the day’s errands believing that all undertakings will issue vainly because the established order threatens to go up in smoke before twilight. Just as it serves this necessity, however, the assumption of social permanence, that tomorrow will necessarily be just like today, can, when it becomes too habitual through lack of reflection, lead to dangerous complacency.
It is healthy, therefore, to think in an informed way about the possibility that our society might break down completely and become unrecognizable. Such things are more than mere possibility – they have happened. Societies – and, it is fair to say, whole standing civilizations – have disintegrated swiftly, leaving behind them depopulation and material poverty. In the two parts of the present essay, I wish to look into one of the best documented of these epochal events, one that brought abrupt death and destruction to a host of thriving societies, none of which survived the scourge. I have divided my essay into two parts, each part further divided into four subsections.”
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4095
maz2/53; here’s another, along that line: Stone Age Genocide. These two pieces take the longest possible view on the closest possible subject.
mel/51; Would we know if we were at war with them? –that’s a damn good question.
Time to call the UN a Failed Experiment.
I think this might be an appropriate place to link this encouraging little chapter…
http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov6/15.html
The world thinks America is the land of the free…because they never pay for the security they get from our forward-deployed forces.
My quick fix formula is to build 50 nuclear plants and 5 new nuclear storage facilities. Let the states bid on it.
Drill
Promote Clean Coal technologies
Solar (stay the course with this)
Geothermal
Sell the car companies.
Promote tech jobs
Fund energy research
Cut capital gains and personal income tax.
Perfect missile defense
Build some more F22’s
De-politicize our schools
Control our borders
Hunker down for the next decade
All this trouble started with the farmers, and the growing too much food.
I like Annoy Mouse’s prescription. Same as mine.
Maybe someone has already recalled this – I have to run and I didn’t take time to read through all the usual acute comments…
Let’s remember that the United Nations bureaucracies brought you (1) retreat from Rwanda to allow 850,000 people to be slaughtered with garden implements, when a few regiments of Blue Berets with side arms could have made a difference; (2) children and women being forced to provide sexual favors for U.N. petty bureaucrats who took advantage of their position of power over them; (3) Oil-for-Food fiasco, which was supposed to carefully monitor the sale of Iraqi Oil to purchase food and medicines for the Iraqi people, and instead, provided vast opportunities for Koffi Annan’s son and cronies to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes and kick-backs, while Saddam Hussein Barama… I mean Saddam Hussein the Dictator of Iraq (to distinguish from other dictators) built more palaces, imported more truckloads of pornographic tapes, liquor and drugs, paid prostitutes, and chocolate bon-bons as the children of Iraq withered and died from starvation, bad water, lack of medical care and heavy metal poisoning, when they weren’t being murdered anyway by the Iraqi Secret Police.
Screw the U.N. They are a bunch of Thugs that make ACORN and SEIU seem almost like desireable employees and someone you’d happily invite to dinner.
just finished reading “War Plan Orange,”
Marty, I’ve read that book too. Very good (a bit dry at times, but good). That and Hector Bywater’s “The Great Pacific War” demonstrate that there were serious men in those days as well, who were not blinded by the utopian fantasies of the elites. They recognized not just the possibility, but the near inevitability of conflict between nations. Bywater in particular understood the best way to avoid a shooting war was for the US to be strong enough that potiential enemies would realize war with the US would be a losing proposition for them. I hope such men are around today and that they can change the dangerous course we’re on before the real fireworks start. Unfortunately, it always seems like we have to wait for the worst to happen before we’re willing to believe it’s possible.
MF/60; anyone can search [ un claudia rosett ] and read this wonderful, courageous writer’s UN corpus. It’s unique and beyond devastating. She should have a garage full of Pulitzers. and would if the damn thing hadn’t been so steenkin politicized. heck let me getcha started:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=claudia+rosett&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
y’know, it’s easy to see what has happened to the right –it’s all about losing the info wars. for example, i just scrolled the Rosett link above, and it dawned that with a resume, with a list of accomplishments and breaking news and news making, and on-the-scenes reportage (such as Tienanmen Square first hand) such as that, if she were a lefty journalist she would be bigger than any newspaper reporter working today –she’d be a print Cronkite.
But on the right, well, (sigh) it’s just a different game altogether. Oh well –more power to her.
the United States of America will never waver in our efforts to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny.
What a nothingburger of a line. It doesn’t even rise to the level of a thought-through thought. He spends the entire preceding passage dissing promotion of democracy only to end on the elevation of the weasel word “destiny” as that which the U.S. supposedly advocates and defends.
If that’s the case, then the U.S. now backs every nation that “self-determines” its way to condoning or practicing, ohhhh, honor killing, cannibalism, suttee, institutional rape and torture, child prostitution, etc. “Destiny.” A word to cover all sorts of diabolical behavior.
If TOTUS didn’t like the word “democracy,” he could have at least gone with “liberty” instead of “destiny.” But no, he couldn’t even follow the lead of JFK, whom he is supposed to admire, on this one.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
That the obvious opportunity to reference such a famous line from a famous president gets missed entirely by TOTUS’s speechwriters does not speak well of said speechwriters’ grasp of history or the American soul. Ditto the guy who mouthed the junk that was written for him.
JMH @ 61
Thanks for tip re Bywater, I will check it out.
Reading Roberts’s ‘Masters & Commanders’ now, quite good. Then, “Bankrupting the Enemy” by Miller, his companion to ‘War Plan Orange’, about US sanctions on Japan… seems a timely read with all the talk about sanctions on Iran, NoKo, etc. Of course, we know how those 1930s sanctions on Italy and Japan turned out…
JMH @ 61
Lemay also understood about military preparedness, as did Reagan.
It’s often the believers in peace thru reason who cost all the blood and treasure— at least, that’s the lesson of the 20th century. Unfortunately, it’s almost always the blood of other, better people.
…and the Lemays and Reagans who by spending a little, save so much.
Long ago when the world was new, and we had just chased the mastodons from the front range of Colorado, I was a high school student. I was, to put it bluntly, a geek. Social ineptitude was my forte. As such, I had more than a few ego-crushing encounters with the more popular female students.
Such is life.
However, I am amazed to a certain extent, by the way that the dynamics of high school are replicated on the international scene.
When I found myself standing flat-footed and twitter-pated after such an unpleasant encounter; well I may have been a nerd, but I was not stupid. I figured quite quickly that there was no profit in pursuing further, and that even if I managed to have a relationship with the young lady, it was not likely to end well.
Let us move to the larger scene. Since before January 20, 2009; Buraq Hussein Obama has been throwing himself at Iran and Ahmadinejad, attempting to woo him with all the grace and subtlety of a high school freshman trying to lure the head cheerleader away from captain of the football team. Every time, he ends up with the equivalent of being stuffed into his own locker and left there for the janitor to get him out. [note to the Gentle Readers: such was never my fate, if only because I was a bloody-minded nerd.]
Obama tried his “Ricco Suave” impression at the UN, trying to woo Iran. He has ended up with the equivalent of being ‘pantsed’ and tied to the football goalposts.
It seems that Iran has admitted to the existence of yet another uranium enrichment plant that we did not know about; placing their goal of nuclear weapons to use against us even closer. This, of course, becomes public immediately after Buraq Hussein’s UN-based sad imitation of Casanova. It looks bad enough that it became public after the speech. It looks worse, since the IAEA was told about it on Monday before the speech, if he grovelled in the name of our country knowing that the plant existed and that the news would surely come out.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/25/AR2009092500289_pf.html
It is truly an indication of how bad off we are when the oft-proclaimed Leader of our country, The Lightbringer, and the idol of our State Controlled Media makes Steve Urkel look like Sean Connery.
Subotai Bahadur
president Obama will always refer to people as in people everywhere, but never to individuals. It is a subtle twist on the notion of self determination which ignores the role of you an me and celebrates the leadership of people by persons who grabbed power either assumptively with little rational basis or commonly aggreed upon basis for the grab of power, presumptively which is better than assumptive only by dint of a majority either ignoring the grab or not deploring it or by compunction which holds the first two in little regard except in that they allow for the grab and solidification (thinking a load of dung here) of power.
the first two adjectives imply the administration gives a hoot about people and their feelings or at least that they like the admin. The last, alas, does not. In veiwing the care and feeding of popular opinion as a necessary evil, and an exercise after which to bathe, the administration is demonstrating its contempt for the republic for which it supposedly stands.
I had an argument with a related gent about Acorn, and was not surprised that he felt Glenn Beck was taking things out of context. That not all Acorn offices were run that way, and that the film makers had somehow cherry picked their stuff. The very goal of the organization opens it wide to the sort of corruption and felonious mismanagement that is on display in those tapes.
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities.
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
Acorn and the UN are both opperating without an ethical foundation of Morality. There is not even a code of conduct. They are breeding grounds for vice and what most decent folks consider to be criminal behaviors.
Acorn lost its version of diplomatic immunity. The UN?
Teresita @ 31. Agreed.
But where does that put Baraq?
Teresita @31 “If you believe mankind can be perfected through human laws rather than divine sanctifying grace, you might be a liberal. This tendency is not found within secularism alone. Even among many religious groups, there remains a belief that man can be perfected through adherence to God’s laws. Generally among non liberals such perfection occures after a life striving for perfection. Only secularists believe perfection is achievable during our life time
A wise patient told me long ago, “The world is divided into two kinds of people — slow learners and non-learners.”
If we have too many non-learners there will not be enough time for the slow learners to undo the damage.
I don’t watch TV but doubtless Netanyahu’s speech at the UN isn’t getting much coverage. But God bless him – he proves there are still a few good men out there -
http://tinyurl.com/yenenwl
An excerpt that addresses the subject of this thread -
“Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the ‘confirmed unteachability of mankind,’ the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.
“Churchill bemoaned what he called the ‘want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.’
“I speak here today in the hope that Churchill’s assessment of the ‘unteachibility of mankind’ is for once proven wrong.
“I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history — that we can prevent danger in time. ”
The JPost link has video only –
The full text and video are here
http://tinyurl.com/ydf3nx9
It’s an extraordinary speech, one for the ages – need I say, everything Obama’s was not – and it’s symptomatic of our feeble body politic that the empty platitudes of the latter are getting all the attention. But compare the two and it’s obvious who is the statesman and who is the hack. I realize I’m preaching to the choir here but he gives me hope for the West.
There are some extraordinary leaders –Netanyahu is certainly such (he’s coming off a great run as a minor-miracle making finance minister), the Czech President Vaclav Klaus, the Polish President Lech Kaczynsky, any of whom I’d give an arm and a leg to have as our American president right now. These three particular gentlemen are giving off a most serious, honest, and human vibe in this current atmosphere. No calculated layers of artifice nor code signals to factions which cannot admit their true goals –just straight talk. All three have been dumped on by Obama America and their nations are in existential trouble.
It ain’t right.
So much of the free world in disarray and danger, over this administration’s –this leftist cabal’s –need for a massive economic and monetary crisis in order to put the end to the American experiment.
George Bush and Dick Cheney among so many others (including present company) must be deeply chagrined along about now, to see finally the grand motive behind the 2005-2008 unprecedentedly irresponsible flooding of hectoring entanglements of the presidency, by the far left in congress, the press, and wall street. We all thought the Dems were just unbelievably shameless and spoiled –but now it seems (to me, anyway) they had their orders, there was method to the madness, all the way back at least to the brain-numbing decency-insulting Plame Affair. they were Cloward-Pivening the White House –doing Rule 13 on it. Reds. No joking around kids, real Reds.
Now 300 million Americans (and another few billion who need her) have to try to proceed with responsible individual lives knowing that there’s every reason to believe that a few hundred Red captains legally in the driver’s seat lawfully stripping Capitalism’s gears are extremely unlikely to have the slightest intention of leaving office with a recognizable America in any condition to ever recover from them.
We are reduced to hoping and praying for some sort of Constantinian Vision to flame up before them, before it’s too late, and show them the evil of their ways.
There’s a new Nyquist column just out, and following recent happenstance dovetails with a BC post (this one):
Nuclear Disarmament: A Modern Fairy Tale
(excerpt)
The men who rule Russia and China are bad. The men who rule the United States, Great Britain and France are also bad. The difference between the two types of men have nothing to do with inherent goodness in one or badness in the other. The difference is found in traditions that either concentrate power in the hands of a few individuals, or distribute power under a system of checks and balances. The latter mitigates human evil; the former intensifies human evil. The one system presents the political criminal with an opportunity; the other system limits the harm that he can do.
In terms of nuclear weapons, it is childish to suppose that leaders of systems based on the concentration of power will agree to an honest reduction of their nuclear forces. Without any system of checks and balances to regulate them, they will follow their nature – which is to accumulate and concentrate more power in their own hands. Internationally this means that they will cheat on any arms control agreement involving nuclear weapons; or they will rely on lethal biological weapons which have been outlawed in those countries where power is checked and balanced.
It is childish for Americans and the U.S. president to strive for universal nuclear disarmament. Once the Americans tie their hands with a treaty, the United States will be disarmed. On the other side, where laws do not constrain the ruling elite, a treaty is merely a piece of paper. As the Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin once said: “Treaties are like pie crusts, meant to be broken.” Because of the speed with which rockets travel, and the destructive force of a nuclear warhead, countries without such weapons can be stripped of sovereignty and plundered.
Children will deny the danger is real. They believe in the power of positive, utopian ideals. They denounce common sense as reactionary, as an obstacle to world peace. “If we do nothing, then nuclear war is inevitable,” they cry. But in reality, nuclear war is inevitable because fools are inevitable; and we are very great fools indeed.
(end excerpt –please read the whole thing –it’s short, the above excerpt is more than half of it)
(P.S. –note that as coldly rational as the author seems to be in warning against believing in fairy tales, he may be believing in one himself, in ascribing this administration’s desire for disarmament as ‘a childish error’ –rather than the something far more sinister that i continue to search fruitlessly for evidence against.)
“What does China want? They are nationalistic, no? They are feeling their oats, yes? If they fought a war, they would want us weakened first. Do they want land? Not to be bothered in their sphere of infuence? Would we know if we were at war with them?”
@Geoffrey Britain
Mel@51,
Why does China want to wage a war in the first place? To take numero uno position in the world? At what cost to their economy and their vast hordes of citizens staring in envy at the comforts of modern living and frustrated they’re not getting there fast enough?
What ideology does China ascribe to nowadays that would make them want to destroy the West? Is it communism or capitalism? Or is it something more mundane – a pragmatic drive to become a developed nation with living standards to match?
Lee Kuan Yew said something very interesting a few weeks ago – the current generation of chinese leaders are focused on dragging their population to a better standard of living; they’d been through the absolutely shitty years and have utterly no desire to repeat those times of woe, ideology or not. If they can tweak noses of the West, sure, why not? But come to a serious conflict? No way. Too much is at stake.
But the nationalistic, pampered young chinese of today, the leaders of future China… sure, they pay lip service to communism and socialism, enjoy and appreciate western goodies and technology but insult their nation even the slightest and they go into a rage. Do you really want to antagonize them and force them into the exact ideological stance that you fear, that the West is ‘out to get them’?
Note that many of them, for whatever reason (brainwashing during their education, exposure to the West, comments like Geofrey’s), already feel this way.
China wants economic progress. However, it’ll likely take the route of the West in the pre-20th century period – colonization and exploitation of Africa and Asia, in essence expanding their area of influence globally.
Power plays and deals to secure resources specifically for themselves, and perhaps cutting out the West. This is the most probable spark for an eventual conflict, not ideology or mere ‘I want to rule the world’ posturing. A war for resources.
You’d know a war is on the horizon by watching the commodities market very carefully. Or you just could look at Singapore and see if we are panicking. If we are, the war is inevitable.