Caroline Glick’s article on the foreign policy implications of Angelo Codevilla’s essay on America’s Ruling Class comes as Niall Ferguson is touring Australia warning that the end of American dominance may be imminent and sudden. Somehow the ideas in Codevilla’s essay are popping up everywhere, whether people have read it or not. Ferguson describes how rapidly empires can fall.
The Bourbon monarchy in France passed from triumph to terror with astonishing rapidity. The sun set on the British Empire almost as suddenly. The Suez crisis in 1956 proved that Britain could not act in defiance of the US in the Middle East, setting the seal on the end of empire.
But those things happen only to the denizens of history. People who live in the today usually think they are different. So despite evidence of dramatic change, people who have spent their whole lives among the policy certainties of the postwar period find it difficult to accept they may have to build a world of their own from first principles. Ferguson asks his audience: “what would you do in a world without America? Has the question even crossed your mind?”
Australia’s post-war foreign policy has been, in essence, to be a committed ally of the US. But what if the sudden waning of American power that I fear brings to an abrupt end the era of US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region? Are we ready for such a dramatic change in the global balance of power? Judging by what I have heard here since I arrived last Friday, the answer is no. Australians are simply not thinking about such things.
But if the Australians are not thinking about it, the Chinese are certainly preparing for it. The Wall Street Journal recently noted that Beijing objected to the right of US naval vessels to exercise in the Yellow Sea, despite the fact that they are international waters. At least they used to be. Waters are only international if kept so by a powerful navy committed to the freedom of the seas. People sometimes forget that treaties reflect realities rather than create them, no matter what the European Union may think. In another era the US would simply have bulled through. Not this time? According to Greg Palkot at Fox “so, at the last minute, word came from the exercises would happen east of South Korea (and well east of China) in the Sea of Japan. U.S. officials denied to us there was any cave-in to Beijing.”
Ironically, the exercises themselves were designed to send a signal of resolution to North Korea following the Obama administration’s decision not to respond to the sinking of a South Korean frigate by the North. Palkot, who was present for the exercises, said “the signal being sent during our U.S. TV exclusive embedment: Solidarity with South Korea, Deterrence to North Korea.” The plan was to show China who’s who. In that the Obama administration eminently succeeded.
But from the run-up, to the end, the maneuvers were also marked by some mixed messages. …First there was the timing. Following the suspected sinking of the South Korea warship, the Cheonan, by a North Korean submarine, South Korea announced the exercises. …
Which were then delayed by the U.S.
The main reason given was diplomacy needed to play out, including efforts in the UN Security Council to come up with a strong resolution against Pyongyang.
Council member and North Korea ally China blocked that and a much weaker “statement” came out. So it was back to military might.
Next … where to hold the drills? South Korea apparently pushed for them to be held in the Yellow Sea where the incident occurred. And the U.S. seemed good with that.
But China wasn’t, complaining loudly about the drill being at its maritime front door.
The actual message sent was that America was afraid to mess with fourth-rate North Korea and even more afraid to mess with China. But Glick is not surprised. “There is a clear foreign policy corollary to Codevilla’s discussion. Just as US bureaucrats, journalists, politicians and domestic policy wonks tend to combine forces to perpetuate and expand the sclerotic and increasingly bankrupt welfare state, so their foreign policy counterparts tend to collaborate to perpetuate failed foreign policy paradigms that have become writs of faith for American and Western elites.” In other words, when it comes down to funding politics or funding defense, fund politics. Ferguson made the same point more starkly: “it is quite likely that the US could be spending more on interest payments than on defense within the next decade.”
“He probably didn’t think he was doing anything wrong.”
Be interesting to see if USDA Sherrod’s threatened lawsuit against Breitbart plays out. She obviously is relying upon the racism card and the last 50 years of affirmative action to bully her way into a settlement. I think (I hope) the racism card is now DeadDeadDead thanks to That Person in the White House, I think Brietbart won’t back down, and I think Obama and the NAACP will *not* have her back if she wants to press forward.
Plus, if her lawsuit ever came to trial, I’m not sure she could get a jury as pig-stupid as the one that acquitted OJ Simpson.
I don’t know if affirmative action and the race card dying in America is as important as America dying on the international scene, but the times … they *are* a-changin’.
Nick Nyhart of the Huffington Post says that because the “whole system” is guilty, Charlie Rangel shouldn’t be singled out for punishment. He wants the Republicans on trial too and hopes Rangel doesn’t have to face ethics charges.
Oh, the irony. If you pointed out to Nick the Tea Party people agree with him, other than his sympathy for Rangel, he would simply not see it nor accept it if he could. Be careful indeed. The entire system needs an enema and Rangel is simply just another turd.
1. NahnCee : re: Sherrod Vs. Brietbart: I don’t see how she could get a settlement from him since he did not fire her. The entire speech was public domain so the people that did fire her had access to all aspects of the issue in which to decide if she deserved it. It was simply damage control gone awry IMO, and the tack I would take in court. If the WH did in fact request her firing, it would appear that Barack Obama “acted stupidly..” Time for a beer.
Apropos of the Sherrod brouhaha, one of the commenters on Professor Jacobson’s law blog said, “I suspect this is just a negotiating tactic by Sherrod trying to get a better deal form the Obama administration. Obama fired her in the first place because he wanted her out of the news ASAP. Now she threatens to be an interminably ongoing one-woman OJ circus.”
Apropos of the cheese-paring mindset of the Ruling Class when it comes to their own money, there’s also the recent incident over John Kerry’s yacht being docked in Rhode Island to save on taxes owed to the state he represents in the Senate:
“The 2008 Democratic presidential nominee has been dogged by charges of tax evasion since last week, when the Boston Herald first reported about his decision to dock the 76-foot sloop Isabel in Newport, R.I.
Doing so spared Kerry a $437,500 one-times sales tax charge in Massachusetts, as well as about $70,000 in annual excise taxes.
MyFoxBoston.com reported yesterday that Kerry still possibly owed the half million dollars in excise taxes because he docked his yacht in Massachusetts less than six months after buying it.”
Interesting that this time the public uproar seems to have gotten some traction: “John Kerry promises ‘prompt’ tax payment for yacht.”
http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/john-kerry-promises-prompt-tax-payment-for-yacht-25-apx-20100727
i will miss the pax americana. in time billions will too.reagan walked in after carter and restored things, but if(hopefully)O’s replacement lands in the midst of things he or she will be like the dog that caught the car.
The american political class is the same as others, the British had all kinds of plans and policies to deal with the lower classes weaknesses(they saw things from their own perspective) , but in the end it was the ordinary people who were prepared to lose all for King and country, and the upper class who were ready to cut a deal to preserve their position.
As far as the Korean thing – well money talks and the Chinese seem to have O by his very small balls.
The system is falling apart. The sad, ugly, and pathetic thing is how the political class still seems to think that when things tank they shall still be at the top of the ruins with their lifestyles and status intact. How very wrong they are.
They need to be swept away into the dustbin of history. Victory can only come when the most common thing that the likes of Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton can say is “would you like fries with that?”
4@PA Cat said, “Interesting that this time the public uproar seems to have gotten some traction: “John Kerry promises ‘prompt’ tax payment for yacht.”
JK has also promised multiple times since 2004 to release his military records Real Soon Now. I would not hold my breath here. He knows the press will move on fairly soon. After all, he has the magic D by his name!
2) Caroline Glick’s post is very depressing. I was awake when the earthquake hit the DC area recently just after 5 AM. I first heard a rumble, and thought to myself, “I wonder if DC is getting nuked?”. But there was no flash (which would have come first), the bed and the house moved for about 4 seconds, and then I went back to sleep.
“But those things happen only to the denizens of history. People who live in the today usually think they are different.”
Paranoia is irrational belief; believing something to be true when it is false. Most people think of the paranoia in terms of seeing something that isn’t really there – the man who irrationally thinks there’s someone out to get him when it really isn’t true; but there are two types of paranoia. The other type of paranoia (irrational belief) is intellectual blindness – the man who can’t see what really is there. The blind fool is as paranoid as the suspicious fool.
“But alarm bells aren’t ringing in Washington.”
A few weeks back I happened to switch on the radio in the car and hear a brief bit of a discussion on NPR. They were saying – on this public funded network – that big deficits were nothing to worry about because many countries have even larger ones than we do.
Japan was given as an exmple. That’s the same Japan that built part of the car I was driving and that responds to N. Korean missile overflights with stern glares and tersely worded diplomatic protests.
I am sure that there are plenty of people in DC standing in front of mirrors and practicing their best stern glares. While others, perhaps disadvantaged by weak chins, thumb through their government issue Roget’s Thesaruses (got one right here but don’t let them find out) in search of just the right terse words.
Fear not America, your diplomats are awake.
The Nyhart thing is Pythonesque: “Man: I did it but society is to blame. Church police: Fine, we’ll arrest him instead.”
9. RWE
Fear not America, your diplomats are awake.
RWE– I would have a lot more confidence in the future if I thought that each and every diplomat and bureaucrat in the State Department was in a coma that competent doctors believed they would never come out of.
Re Ferguson’s article and many others like it, I keep trying in vain to understand all this spending and the thinking–if that’s what it is–behind it. It’s just irrational, not following reason, when so clearly the numbers show disaster and the public’s wishes are so clearly opposed.
Why do they keep on and on? And statements like, “see what’s in it”, not having read the thing. Is this some kind of mass hysteria? Blind zealotry? Do they see themselves as in some sort of political Alamo, prepared to do what’s right unto death? Are they so cloistered and cut off that they honestly don’t know the effect of these huge spending bills?
If I had some understanding of the behavior here it would at least be easier to behold. I’m almost 70 now and can’t recall anything remotely like this in my lifetime.
I had dinner with my oldest son tonight, age 45, and he wonders how things will work out for him but we both worry about the grandchildren; me, with a little luck I’ll be OK.
how is this period different than the carter era? didn’t we come roaring back after that, didn’t the cccp fall after that? whose to say the prc won’t also take a tumble once governor christie is elected president in ’12…
anyone here who isn’t a chicken little raise their hand, the rest of you go over there and stand with the dems.
I’ll admit to having dreams/nightmares involving nitric acid, fuel tabs, boiling alcohol washes, clothes pins, mouse trap, solder, and fish hooks, but in the day I pray for the Constitutional checks and balances to work in the mid-terms and in 2011.
Diplomacy without strength is just pointless jabber.
I wonder if it has occurred to anyone in the Obama Administration that the failure to come to a diplomatic resolution that would have allowed our Navy to use the Yellow Sea is somehow indicative of something. Our diplomats, though awake, are ineffectual; that might be due to a lack of respect.
“allowed our Navy”
I just reread that and realized it for the absurdity it is.
Read Caroline Glick’s sidebar, as well as her main essay. It’s equally disturbing, if not more-so: http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2010/07/israels-ruling-class.php
America does not have to be dominant as far as I am concerned. We also don’t have to waste an expense amount of money on Foreign Aid. We can sop nation building in Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Japan and the Philippines. We have been wasting money in these countries for the last 20 years at least. No more AIDS treatment in Africa, it has been a waste of money anyway. We could limit immigration to the best and brightest just as New Zealand, Switzerland and Monaco restrict immigration. We can treat Mexicans as they treat Guatemalans. Works for me lets not be a dominant country. Let someone else waste money on the useless United Nations.
cjm@13,
The only thing about this era that is similar to the Carter era is the various qualities of the occupant of the White House. Everything else is drastically different.
To begin with, our enemies are not nearly so well-defined. Who can really say whether China is an ally or an enemy? Intelligent arguments can be made both ways…though if you listen to our diplomats they’re our tightest friend. Same thing with most of the middle east and South America, as well as elsewhere.
Our enemies are also much more numerous, if also much smaller and less powerful. Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and terrorist organizations whose number exceeds that of the stars in the Milky Way.
Combine that last with the idea that “suitcase nukes” could be passed to any one of them, and after the detonation inside our borders we might or might not be able to identify the provenance of the weapon, but would almost certainly never know who was really responsible.
So much for the geopolitical setup. Add to that the insane debt and yearly deficits we’re looking at. The banks seem to have decided that laws don’t apply to them. The SEC just was exempted from FOIA requests in the recent financial “reform” law. The derivative market is a powder keg waiting for a match. On and on and on. We’re sitting on a financial time bomb, and nobody knows what the clock on it reads.
Add to all that the fact that, as I see it, our society and culture are at an all-time low of readiness for real hard times. Only the older among us (significantly older than me, and I’m middle-aged) recall a time when things were really hard. Millions of us have no skills besides filing paperwork or diddling with Microsoft Word or juggling bank accounts or writing reports or other things that, when you get right down to it, don’t add a whole lot of value anywhere that’s crucial. During the last depression, nearly everybody knew how to farm and fix their own clothes and build things and so forth. How many do today? I know many who can that are in their 70s or older. I don’t think I know more than one or two that can do those kinds of things that are younger than 30.
And we live in a culture where people riot when their team hosts a championship game, WHETHER THEY WIN OR LOSE. They riot if they see one instance of cops beating up a black man. They are accustomed to being backstopped by social security, unemployment insurance, WIC, food stamps, heating assistance and a galaxy of other federal, state and local programs. How are these same welfare-state addicted people going to react when something happens (like huge cuts in social security or other programs, big hikes in their taxes, or whatever) that actually materially affects them in a negative way?
And the kicker: who is the next Ronald Reagan? I look at the Republicans today and I can’t find anybody that looks significantly different from the pack. Even if you include the Dems in “the pack”.
Yes, we’re seeing a situation that I don’t recall ever seeing before, either personally or in a history book. It feels to me like we’re currently in a holding pattern, while the geniuses behind the curtain are jockeying to see if they can find a solution. I think there are probably people in a position to know who are panicking right now and ticking through their last options before they throw in the towel and leave us to our own devices.
I hope I’m wrong, but fear I’m not. I think we have as little as a few months left before big changes come…but they’ve fooled me several times up to this point, so maybe they’ll keep all the balls in the air for another 3 or 5 years. I have a hard time seeing it go longer than that without going kablooey.
Call me chicken little all you want…I hope you’re right. I hope Ronny Reagan II rides to the rescue in the nick of time, and I volunteer to be the first to apologize for my lack of faith when that happens.
Another interesting development: the Congressional Budget Office released a report on debt this week. Here’s the first two paragraphs:
There’s a wonderful graph on the second page of the report. It has two projected scenarios: an “Extended Baseline Scenario” and an “Alternative Fiscal Scenario.” When you read the fine print, though, it really looks like the AFS is the more likely projection, and it has our debt flying past WWII levels around 2020-2025.
And what would happen if we encountered a fiscal crisis? The CBO’s view:
Restructuring debt basically means making bondholders take a haircut. This can be done by extending maturities, cutting interest payments, or postponing principal payments. All three of these have the effect of lowering cash flow to bondholders, and decreasing the value of the bonds. Given the prevalence of US Treasuries in private portfolios, pension funds, and other capital pools, a restructuring would wipe out enormous amounts of wealth overnight as markets reacted to the default of bond once believed to be risk-free. Moreover, the number of contracts tied, directly or indirectly, to bond rates would send a massive shockwave through the “real” economy.
Inflating the currency is an easier choice for the Ruling Class. The pain is spread across all consumers, as the purchasing power of their dollars falls. (Congress can carve out special benefits to help other RC members through this difficult time.) This approach also takes advantage of the natural desire of consumers to consume now; rather than save and wait to make a purchase, there is a strong incentive to borrow and spend now. Demand for credit increases, which drives interest rates higher, causing the value of bonds to fall rather quickly. So, bondholders are hurt in this situation, although not as bad as in the restructuring scenario.
The austerity program, however, is really the direction we need to go. The Federal Government needs simply to live within its means. This can only be done by having states take on their Constitutional authority and responsibility, and radically shrinking the size and scope of the Federal Government.
(In case you wonder, BTW, whether the CBO is part of the Ruling Class: CBO calls for tax increases, when what is needed is increasing tax revenues – this may require a cut in tax rates, or closing of loopholes and special deals, rather than raising rates. Deficits, by definition, are a function of tax revenues, not tax rates. But the Ruling Class must always call for taxes to go up. On everyone else, of course.)
But, it won’t really be an austerity program for anyone other than the Ruling Class.
For everyone else, it will be a liberation program.
L3
People sometimes forget that treaties reflect realities rather than creating them, no matter what the European Union may think.
I often dream of dropping a MOAB on the comic-opera eurocrats in Brussels, or any of the local european courts claiming global jurisdiction. need to show them what global positioning systems are all about.
But of course our problems are local, not global. And they are primarily the 51% of our population that would consider even for a nanosecond voting for some goober named Barack Hussein Obama just seven years into the 9/11 era.
Even though I declared the New Dark Ages started when the Democrats rallied behind Bill Clintoon rather than laughing and throwing him out on his ear, the Obama situation is a furlong and three bushels worse. I never would have dreamed of it in a million years, that’s reality for ya, always full of surprises.
sirius @ 17: yes israel has always had a significant suicidal element which I try my darnest never to really comprehend.
cjm, I’m with you. In 1979 things looked awful. In 1984 it was Morning in America again.
In 1990 the Japanese were going to be the new masters of the universe. Turned out buying prime NYC real estate at the top of the market was not a wise investment strategy.
A big part of our deficit is from hyperspending; but a turnaround in the economy, when/ if it comes, will do wonders for government reveneue. For what it’s worth, I still believe in the Laffer curve.
Yes the US has problems. But Europe, Russia and China have a lot more. God willing, we will pull through.
“But alarm bells aren’t ringing in Washington.”
Policy wise they sure aren’t but politically if the Tea Party movement grows and truly touches an anti-Ruling Elite nerve across the political spectrum, nervous alarm bells should be clanging loudly in Georgetown tonight in anticipation if they had any sense. If the divide ceases to be Democrat/Republican or Liberal/Conservative and becomes the self perceived middle class commoners versus the Elite Ruling Aristocracy, the Ruling Elite will be swept from power with shocking speed. The more self serving, corrupt and incompetent the Ruling Elite appears in this time of grave hardship for the average American family, the more that commoner/elite divide will come into focus. A critical mass will recognize the Ruling Elite con, where before they could not. And the anger will grow and begat more anger, and then it will happen.
Here’s to the speedy fall and demise of the American Ruling Elite Aristocracy, before they are allowed to steal, cheat and ruin this great nation beyond repair.
The US is a failed state. Even with the billions spent on the DOD and the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, we have been invaded. The unsecure boarder and the lax enforcement of immigration laws has allowed more than 12 million illegal aliens to illegally enter and stay in US territory. These illegals and criminals represent a foreign army who could care less about the constitution or federal and state laws. Their presance here undermines the basic tenants of the federal republic. The ruling class cares only to collect these illegals as political pawns in the continuance of their elitist status and the under mining of America. No border, no country!
I love Nick’s game… “Everyone is guilty, so that means no one should be punished! That means we can all feel bad for a while and have a good cry, then get back to the important business that the party I support has in mind” This overlooks the other possibility- “Everyone is guilty, so the most guilty will be punished the most, but EVERYONE is going to get punished”.
In Canada we have a great summer story- the Liberal (left) and NDP (loony left) parties are angry that the ruling Conservative (centre-right) party wants to eliminate the threat of jailtime if you don’t fill out your long-form census, if you happen to receive one. GASP! The HORROR! the Stats Canada director resigned and gave a tearful declaration about how important the long-form census was, and I was reminded of a bunch of monks arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, as the Turk was bashing down the monastery’s doors.
Didn’t Wretchard mention this earlier- the idea that today will be just like yesterday being pervasive amongst the ruling class? Apparently reality doesn’t have a “liberal bias” after all.
13. cjm,
I think that things are salvageable, but some alarm (not a nutty level, a reasonable one) needs to be raised in order for change to be made. Having said that, there is a definite “fin de siecle” feel to the events around the world with the rulers gradually decoupling from their democratic origins. This is much bigger than a Carterian malaise, and one that will require more correction and adjustment to solve.
In 1970, I was recently out of the Army and working in the Republic of Viet Nam (deceased). The education that I and my cohort had received then was dramatically different from what a young person of like age today would have received. There is much that is admirable in Gen x and Gen Y, but they are starting from a lot lower base of toughness and a much higher base of entitlement. I remember 1970 and yes, there are similarities, but we have used up a lot of our margin since then, economic, social and educational. We dodged the bullet then, with Mr. Reagan. God grant that we dodge it again.
as I see it, our society and culture are at an all-time low of readiness for real hard times. … Millions of us have no skills besides filing paperwork or diddling with Microsoft Word or juggling bank accounts or writing reports or other things that, when you get right down to it, don’t add a whole lot of value anywhere that’s crucial. …
And the kicker: who is the next Ronald Reagan? I look at the Republicans today and I can’t find anybody that looks significantly different from the pack. Even if you include the Dems in “the pack”.
Someone who had just finished describing the change of heart of a really major industry figure over the seriousness of the current crisis to me depicted it as an act of desperation. ‘We realized how serious it was but we did not see anybody willing to stand up’. So they decided to do what they could in their own ‘little way’. To most of us it would be gigantic, but such was the magnitude of what they perceived the problem to be that even a fairly major business solution to a real problem they saw as a Band-Aid. The center had just gotten too big. Nothing could stop it until it ran itself out of gas.
In that story there was both the ground for optimism and pessimism. My sense is that a lot of people are waking up. The Codevilla essay is a symptom of what people are murmuring around the watercoolers. And there’s all kinds of movement, but it’s all uncoordinated. Everybody’s looking for a center, and not finding it, proceed on a best course for the last known harbor. People and leadership material are in a holding pattern until something shows up.
Realize however, that the bigger you are the less willing you generally are to make a public fool of yourself. Maybe there are not one, but dozens of Reagans out there gauging things, weighing the risks of committing. So I made the argument that major players doing it the “little way” weren’t “admitting defeat” but actually behaving rational because some things need the fullness of time. Of course, that might just have been the eternally optimistic old me. And it was just a conversation over dinner to be forgotten the next moment.
My guess is that it may well be true that “we have as little as a few months left before big changes come”. But to me that’s an opportunity. No sense fearing what you can’t anticipate fully. The best preparation you can make is to think things through and reach out through your own network because when emergent events happen, luck favors the guy who is ready not to be surprised. There is some philosophical consolation in the idea that risk is often opportunity in another guise.
If the old system is cutting its own throat, fogging itself up in a kind of self-induced Alzheimer’s, then you can’t save it because it doesn’t want to do anything but keep gassing itself. You can only stand back in dismay and brace for impact. Little enough but it may make all the difference.
Charlie Rangel is currently using money from campaign fundraisers to pay his legal defense. As though he hasn’t siphoned away enough filthy lucre already to pay for it.
20. Leo Linbeck III
The cure to the problem may not be so hard after all. Pass into law that so long as we have Federal budget deficits the salaries of Federal workers will be reduced by 20% per year each and every year that there is a budget deficit. The problem will correct itself fairly quickly.
Have any of you read Andrew Roberts’ The History of the English Speaking Peoples since 1900?
It’s phenomenal. It argues quite persuasively that through the lens of history, we don’t see or speak of any real distinction between the Republic of Rome and the Roman Empire; likewise, historically, there is no real distiction between the British Empire and the American experiment–the torch passed from one to the next, but the same elements animated both, and the truth of the English speaking peoples in that they’ve been a superb empire for nearly 300 years.
I’ve often thought it was astonishing how aptly phrased Churchill was with his “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth[5] last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.”
Because it *was* Britain’s finest hour. There would be no rising again of that Empire, and he saw it already too keenly. British decline was okay, though, because everything great had been taken in by America.
So perhaps we’ll be lucky, and the move to Australia as the great power will be as seamless.
Roberts has a chapter explaining the 1970s in the USA. It’s titled “when the US attempted suicide.” I haven’t managed to finish the book and read that chapter yet, so I can’t comment more on it, but I think by November we’ll know if the patient’s dead or merely in the ER, trying to be revived. We’ll see.
I live in Minnesota. The Minnesotans have a brave history in defending the Union. Some 27,000 people from Minnesota volunteered at a time when Minnesota’s population was about 170,0000. 10 infantry regiments, half a dozen cavalry. Minnesota regiments were at Gettysburg.
I’ve often wondered how that came to pass. What led them to defend the Union, when they were far away from the conflict, and from the issue of slavery?
Because what I see now is different. I see that Minnesotans live for the lake. The economic woes are not so severe here, not because people aren’t out of work, but because it seems as an outsider, that everyone thinks that no matter how bad it gets, they will just to go off to the lake. Public sector unions robbing us blind? Eh, we’ll go to the lake. Education of our children so poor that none will be able to compete in college? eh, they’ll just work up at the lake. There is a sense that when the big world out there is too scary, family just retreats to the lake. It’s okay to come home and stay home.
There don’t appear to be alarm bells ringing because no one honestly believes they’ll starve or be homeless. What would animate them for something far away? Would these folks join up to defend our country from invasion along the southern border? I don’t know.
Well, the USA is not ruled by a meritocracy, that’s for sure. I would call it a Mediocracy, where the mediocre rise to the top. You see, they are not actually brilliant and capable people, they just play “brilliant” in DC.
You’ve heard of “The Big Lie?” Well, for thirty years these folks have promoted “The Big Idiocy.” The Big Idiocy is such a grand and wonderful idea that they just cannot bring themselves to question it or stand those who do. The Big Idiocy says that everything is better when it is run from DC by them, the mediocrats. And in so far as it ain’t better, it is your fault. Any one who questions this notion is guilty of moral turpitude or worse.
A Reagan isn’t required. A Hayek or Christie. Someone able and willing to stand up during a cabinet meeting and say ‘Bullshit’. Someone who stares at a bureaucrat and tells them that the cuts start at the top of the list, ie. their own salary. Someone to walk a contractor out the door saying ‘no, you are not getting that much money’.
In the Petersen lectures, the president of Latvia describes what they did to bring fiscal discipline. Quite remarkable.
Obama had the perfect opportunity to do this. His inability to grasp the seriousness of the situation and to see how the entrenched interests were the problem not the solution has branded him a failure.
The beginning of the last century was characterized by the failure of the elites to grasp their stupidity and hubris. This century has started the same way.
Derek
Greifer@32
“There don’t appear to be alarm bells ringing because no one honestly believes they’ll starve or be homeless. What would animate them for something far away? Would these folks join up to defend our country from invasion along the southern border? I don’t know.”
I’m a lifelong Minnesotan, and I’m very familiar with the Lake thing you’re talking about. I’ve participated for 40+ years now…when the going get’s tough, the tough go looking for walleye or water skis.
The Minnesota we live in is very different from the one I grew up in in the 70s. It wasn’t quite such a multicultural hellhole, for one. Back then, cabbies who didn’t want to carry someone because they were carrying alcohol would be fired and the next guy would be brought in. A guy who was training to fly and wasn’t interested in learning to land or take off would have been kicked out of the school immediately, no questions asked. Imams who talked of attacking America on a plane would have been yanked from the plane and no judge would have given them the chance to file suit.
We have been and still are a very insular community, outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul. We’re usually friendly to strangers…but we’re aware when they’re around. I am unique among my friends in that I pay attention to world and national events. If I ask someone’s opinion on what Russia is doing in Georgia, or what they think of the financial reform law or the Arizona immigration law, their eyes glaze over and they may change the subject.
In answer to your question, there are enough patriotic people here that if a war broke out that involved action on our own soil, I believe Minnesotans would turn out in force. Probably not from the Twin Cities area so much, but there would be a lot of angry country boys ready to go. But the Cities are anti-war enough and the countryside is old-style conservative enough that we’ll never exceed the national average in volunteers for a foreign war, and while I haven’t checked it I’m guessing we don’t have nearly the representation in Afghanistan or Iraq as, say, Texas or Kansas or other red states.
#32 Greifer
Minnesota regiments were at Gettysburg.
Yes, and I believe the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry still holds the record for the highest casualty rate suffered by a single unit (that was not completely annihilated) during a single engagement: 83% on the second day at Gettysburg.
National Guard Military Heritage Series painting of the 1st Minnesota at Gettysburg: http://www.ng.mil/resources/photo_gallery/heritage/hires/First_Minnesota.jpg
the revolution is not a tea party.
however, it may turn out that we don’t need a revolution quite yet I will maintain until November and see what happens in the elections, in Arizona and other states following their lead, in the US and world economies.
the conservatives need a leader, a person, not even a Reagan for history never repeats in every detail, but certainly McCain wasn’t it – nor I guess were any of the 2008 Republican candidates. And thence came Obambus.
Greifer@31
“…their finest hour.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-British_personnel_in_the_RAF_during_the_Battle_of_Britain
http://canada-at-war.suite101.com/article.cfm/canadians_in_the_battle_of_britain
#28 wretchard”There is some philosophical consolation in the idea that risk is often opportunity in another guise.”
freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”are we in such dire straights?
#34 derek oh yes we do need another Reagan-windows made Bill Gates ultra rich-it wasn’t some special brilliance of the software, it was the ability of the software to work with most hardware and appear usable to most people.we don’t need the most amazing blazing intellect politician(which O sure as hell isn’t-Adlai Stevenson is his twin), we need a front end(who understands reality) that can deal with people-Ronald Reagan.
I kinda hope we don’t have another Reagan.
Don’t get me wrong; I greatly admire Reagan, and am thankful for what he was able to accomplish. But his greatest feat will not be fully appreciated for another 100 years:
He bought us 25 years.
And that will make all the difference.
Had we re-elected Carter, or elected Mondale, we would now be in a world of hurt. There would be no way back, and we would be living in a very dangerous, very uncertain, very unproductive world. The average person would be much worse off.
But in the 25 years he won for us, the internet was born and expanded, newspapers have gone from all-powerful to all pitiful, and enough wealth has been generated to provide the resources necessary to overthrow the Ruling Class.
Still, we don’t need another Reagan. We can’t be “saved” by a President of the United States. Any POTUS, no matter how virtuous, no matter how smart, no matter how determined, cannot turn back the tide.
Let’s face the brutal facts:
The American people cannot outsource politics anymore. We cannot limit our political activities to voting in general elections and making campaign contributions.
We cannot free ride anymore. We have to invest our time, our talent, and our treasure. And we have to convince our fellow Americans to do the same.
The only way to break the Ruling Class is to break the cycle of incumbency, and the only way to break the cycle of incumbency is to beat incumbents in primary elections, and the only way to beat incumbents in primary elections is to mobilize large groups of otherwise unengaged voters to unite behind and vote for challengers.
Why break the cycle of incumbency? Because the Ruling Class protects its position by inducting the most powerful politicians into the Ruling Class (if they’re not there already; see Dynasty, Kennedy). And the most powerful politicians are long-term incumbents. They get all the best committees, and have the most stroke. They also know how to manipulate the bureaucracy (see Frank, Barney). Incumbency is the cornerstone of the Ruling Class.
Why by winning elections? Because the Ruling Class has blocked all other ways. Term limits were passed in 21 states before the SCOTUS (the pinnacle of the Ruling Class, BTW) killed them on a 5-4 vote. So the only way to break the cycle of incumbency is to win elections. Which means the voters must do it the old-fashioned way: with more votes.
Why primary elections? Because it’s the only way to put all of the incumbents in play. 80-90% of races are in one-party districts; the winner of the primary determines the winner of the general election. For instance, in Texas there are 150 State Representatives and 31 State Senators. This election cycle, there are at most only 20 competitive House races, and NO competitive Senate races. Plus, so few people vote in primaries relative to generals, it takes fewer voters and less money to influence the outcome. A State Rep primary is decided by a few thousand votes. And since 40-50% of voters don’t vote in either primary, there is a huge pool of voters who could be educated to make their vote really count (which it doesn’t if all they do is vote in primaries).
Why unite behind a single candidate? Because if you don’t, the incumbent will win. The Ruling Class will stay united. We must unite behind one candidate in each primary to get rid of incumbents – both Republican and Democratic. Unifying also enhances accountability, because if the newly elected official strays off the reservation, he or she knows that the people will unify next time behind their challenger.
And, remember, you don’t have to beat every incumbent to win. If you can show that you can beat any incumbent at will, they will do what you ask. Their desire for self-preservation is their motive force.
So, while 2010 is an important election for stopping the progress of the Ruling Class, the MOAB will be truly fought in 2012. By then, the Tea Party movement will have matured, and they will understand (because we’re going to help them see it) that the path to victory goes through primaries – both Republican and Democrat. And the beauty of this strategy, and the reason that I can just lay it out in public, is that victory is entirely up to us. If we execute this strategy, there is nothing the Ruling Class can do about it.
Why? Because we’re a 30D/40I/30R nation. There are more non-primary-voting general election voters than there are Republicans or Democrats. All we need to do is educate voters on how to make a change, and turn out our supporters, and we will win. As Codevilla points out, there are more of us than there are of them.
In short, money bombs can be neutralized; voter bombs cannot.
No, the key to reform is not to be ruled by another Reagan. The key is to bring back self-governance so that we can begin to once again rule ourselves.
What can you do? Organize your neighborhood. Spread the word, where you live and on the web. Go to an American Majority activist training session. Join a Tea Party. Start a Tea Party. Learn how the system works, and get involved. The Ruling Class rules only because we allow them to.
Can we do this?
YES WE C….
Oh, I can’t bring myself to write it. You know the answer.
L3
Oh, I certainly mean no disrespect to everyone else in the Battle of Britain, or in the Allied fight. I just meant that Churchill understood that the sun had set on Britain’s Empire, and yet they were still needed to keep the world from losing freedom entirely. The American experiment slumbers deeply before being roused, but it is fair to call us the continuation of the empire.
If the english speaking peoples don’t hold on this time, the next empire or five on this planet will have precious little to do with freedom. The English speaking peoples have been remarkable in what they have exported.
35 Agoraphobic Plumber,
Nice to meet you! We’re new here, been in MN for only 6 years (St. Paul for all of those), and we understand we’ll never be from here. Our children, maybe. But it’s been quite an education. It is a wonderful place for our children in so many ways, yet I wouldn’t want our kids to think this is all there is in the world, either.
Yes, the attitude here is as if there aren’t these big world problems, as if the Somalia problems here aren’t really here, as if that whole 20th hijacker/Rochester-Saudi connection weren’t real, etc. Because in the end, sharia law isn’t really coming to the cabin, is it? The Russians aren’t going to invade 10,000 lakes, and MN will still be MN, right?
I think they are mistaken. For one, I think the economic crisis will hurt badly. So many of the people I meet here in St. Paul really believe that their kids can grow up to own a home in the same neighborhood their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents did; they can own the family barber shop and do fine; they can always work at the Ford plant. I think this time, they may be surprised at how much that goes away.
A friend of mine suggests that in a real disaster, mners will just wall off the cities, and shoot those trying to leave who they don’t already vouch for by sight, but that sounds awfully aggressive to me, and I’ve seen no sign of it. But what do I know. It took me 5 years to understand “a guy could do that” meant he didn’t intend to.
Shhhhhhh! C’mon, man. These good folks are busy picking pepper, they do not want to hear the bad news! In fact, the US has been a failed state since 11/5/2008. Some of us woke up that morning knowing the Republic was lost. Gone. Sold for a few pieces of silver and a guarantee of eased guilt for crimes not committed.
Why, yes he did. The are just praying, and quite fervently so, that THEY are eaten last. They do really think they will miss the verdict of the Death Panels in the Utopia to come. IOW, they are useless eaters and useless idiots who will be some of the first to die.
L3 @ 20, recommending that government live within its means: “But, it won’t really be an austerity program for anyone other than the Ruling Class.”
Tainter’s book “Collapse of Complex Societies” provides interesting support. Tainter’s view, as an archaologist, is that complex societies have collapsed when the overhead of the Ruling Class became too much for the peons to support. His corollary is that collapse was actually a net benefit for many of the ordinary people in those societies — they may have lost some advantages that their complex societies had provided, but they also gained from no longer having to support an overly-burdensome Ruling Class. Maybe we should welcome collapse?
Of course, that was then and this is now. Even farmers don’t grow their own food today, let alone Equal Opportunity Outreach Coordinators. But in other ways modern society has more resilience (witness the incredible response to US Gulf Coast hurricanes — never followed by the mass starvation or epidemics common in earlier societies in analogous circumstances). Whether collapse is good or bad will all depend on the mechanism.
The meme I am waiting to see appear in this age of Peak Government is the realization among the Political Class that there is in fact a Third Way, when they are faced with the choice between political suicide by imposing economy-crippling tax increases or political suicide by cutting government subsidies (directly or through inflation). The Third Way is to promote a booming economy which generates higher tax revenues.
How would a member of the Political Class promote economic growth? By rolling back excessive regulation!
Paris was worth a Mass. Will survival for our Ruling Class be worth cancelling their memberships in the Sierra Club and making Al Gore a non-person?
Greifer@42:
“I think they are mistaken. For one, I think the economic crisis will hurt badly. So many of the people I meet here in St. Paul really believe that their kids can grow up to own a home in the same neighborhood their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents did; they can own the family barber shop and do fine; they can always work at the Ford plant. I think this time, they may be surprised at how much that goes away.”
Well, yes and no. Don’t know how much you’ve gotten out of the cities (and Brainerd in the summer doesn’t count because it’s all the same people) but it’s a whole different world outside the 7-county metro…and yet still uniquely Minnesotan. Out here, things will likely go on as they have. The Great Depression wasn’t noticed nearly as much out here as it was in the Twin Cities. Outstate is known for not participating in either the highs or the lows that the Cities are subject to. I saw the writing on the wall by 2004, and in 2005 I took my family outstate. Timing couldn’t have been better…I sold my house at the top of the market and bought one out here, where prices never really rose that much during the boom. I got 3 times the square footage, 3 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms with a 3-car garage for about $35,000 less than I sold my 2-bed, 2-bath, 2-car garage house in Mound for.
“A friend of mine suggests that in a real disaster, mners will just wall off the cities, and shoot those trying to leave who they don’t already vouch for by sight, but that sounds awfully aggressive to me, and I’ve seen no sign of it.”
I doubt it will be practical to wall off the cities, but don’t doubt that people will start shooting each other in a true disaster scenario. People do funny things once they start to get hungry enough. Or even if they just sense that they’ll be able to get away with it. No doubt by now you’ve noticed that while real enough, “Minnesota Nice” doesn’t run very deep. It wouldn’t surprise me for rape and murder to become a way of life in the cities if enough people got the idea that they could get away with it easily. As K said in Men In Black: “People are stupid, dangerous animals and you know it.” We may be Minnesotans, but we’re still people. At least I think we are.
“But what do I know. It took me 5 years to understand “a guy could do that” meant he didn’t intend to.”
Heh. I would say it’s a little more nuanced than that. When I hear someone say “a guy could do that”, it’s usually just after they’ve heard someone say something that they find incredibly stupid or unworkable, and just before they offer their own idea of what would be smarter or work better. “A guy COULD do that, but maybe you should try doing X instead.”
What we are discussing is a feature, not a bug. Cjm @ 13 correctly points out that things are far different now from the Carter years. Back then we were only at day 24 of the 30 day lily pad paradigm discussed in an earlier thread. Reagan could win us 25 more years because we were farther away from day 29.
I don’t know whether we are in day 27, or 28, or 29 but the clock is ticking and our resources, of all sorts, are either in a state of decline or decay. There I agree with Agoraphobic Plumber @ 19. Even back in the Carter years the father of a good friend pointed out that in the crisis of his era – the Great Depression – people were not only more self-sufficient, they were more patient and self-disciplined than they were in the 1970’s. And today, in agreement with erc rodson @ 27, things are even worse in that respect. LL-3 makes that point with reference to our financial weakness, but the character weakness and decades of educational relativism and deconstruction together with cultural entitlement make it even worse.
For griefer @ 31 – yes, the Andrew Roberts book is outstanding. So too is Paul Johnson’s Modern Times. Perhaps Niall Ferguson is channeling Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone. Ferguson is becoming too popular these days to be entirely trustworthy, I’m sorry to say.
Back to my opening sentence: Taken as a whole, the alarming debt/GDP ratio, the kowtowing to our adversaries (enemies?) and disrespect to our friends, the transformation of our economy with health care “reform” and other measures, the breaching of procedural precedents and Constitutional restraints, and the steady weakening of our military presence are not mistakes made by this administration. Nor are they the product of naïve theories they genuinely thought would make things better. They are not bugs. They are features. And sadly, most of my otherwise reasonable friends and colleagues, intelligent and skillful in their careers and in their personal lives, don’t see it.
If we are still at day 25 or 26 of our 30 day lily pad, then LL-3’s prescription @ 40 can work. But if we are in day 28 or 29, heaven help us.
I’m wondering – Leo mentioned that term limits were struck down – could you end run the ruling by allowing candidates who had served two or three terms to run, but only as write-in candidates?
The problem with Peak Government finding the Third Way is that it requires them to believe in the future. If they really think it is all going to collapse for them anyway, whether because Al Qaeda gets a nuke or some other thing, then they are just going to loot as much and as fast as possible now.
The problem with the idea that Ruling class collapse doesn’t harm those underneath so much is that in most of those other cases, there was no liberty for anyone underneath in the first place. There haven’t been a lot of political systems on the planet that resulted in pluralism, property rights, subsidiarity, etc. so if your lot was as a serf, what does it matter?
batman, #46: I don’t know whether we are in day 27, or 28, or 29 but the clock is ticking and our resources, of all sorts, are either in a state of decline or decay. There I agree with Agoraphobic Plumber @ 19.
As do I. I would add that even when they lose power, the Left has mastered the art of the scorched-earth policy, aka “rule or ruin”. Also keep in mind that the way they see things, all they have to do is wait another generation for demographics to shift more or less permanently in their favor, and then it’s Game Over. So it’s already a given what their M.O. will be: Delay, stall, resist to the bitter end, throw up obstacle after obstacle in our path, run out the clock and try to pin all the resulting hardships and failures on conservatives.
We’re not quite at the edge of the abyss just yet, but we’re definitely close enough to see it. The only question now is whether we’re still far enough away to avoid it.
Locarno @47,
I think the SCOTUS ruled that states could not limit Congressional terms because they lacked the authority. I think this is incorrect, but I’m no Anthony Kennedy. What this means, however, is that any kind of end-run probably won’t work.
But more fundamentally, we can’t create a system that will work over the long haul that does not require the active, ongoing involvement of the American people.
If you need proof of the inadequacy of term limits on their own, look no further than the State of California. Their state legislature has had term limits since 1990. Over those 20 years, the politicians have still driven the ship of state into the shoals of insolvency.
No, what we need are mediating institutions that are active and vibrant, and hold elected officials accountable by enforcing term limits at the ballot box.
I’m still a supporter of term limits, and would like to see them pass – at this point that would require a constitutional amendment. Term limits would undo some of the skewing of elections toward incumbents. But the real need here is accountability to the voters, and that ultimately requires an engaged citizenry. If you have that, you don’t need term limits – although they’d be a good insurance policy for future generations.
Cheers,
L3
The LA Times reports that “With most of Arizona’s new immigration law blocked by a judge, controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio launched his 17th ‘crime suppression’ sweep in Maricopa County, pledging late Thursday afternoon to have his deputies and volunteers check the immigration status of those arrested.” The LAT says, “Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he timed it for the day SB 1070 takes effect to send a message: that nothing is changing despite a court ruling on the law.”
The last illusion of a ruling class in decline is the belief that they are only being selectively inefficient. That having conceded so much to predators on the frontiers to increase their power in Rome they can still march out again at will to beat down opposition. That fails to account for the corrosive effect of the inefficiency and demoralization that is necessary to their own ascendancy. When the elite itself is premised on mediocrity, excellence “on the day” is a fantasy. Stupidum in unum, stupidum in omnis. One of the unintended consequences of hiring hacks is that they are hacks in all things.
Once a kind of chaos ensues from Wikileaks disregarding the White House and Arpaio pretending not to hear Washington and Beijing and Pyongyang simply doing what they want the disrespect tends to become general. By showing itself to be a Paper Tiger and simply buying people off with money it doesn’t have a political class can “jump the shark” and discredit itself. This is the danger inherent in giving out ridiculous orders. Eventually the imbecility of it becomes an invitation to mockery.
Machiavelli observed that a Prince could survive being unloved but he could not survive being ridiculous.
And this is exactly what the administration’s crazy policy on immigration will eventually come to. An invitation to ridicule.
#51 Wretchard: The sooner the better. Ridicule is the sharpest weapon. South Park does more to counter political correctness than serious articles. We need more of that; waiting for the ridiculousness of the status quo to fall of its own weight tempts fate. Faster please.
I said this on a previous post but it will bear repeating: The only real weapon in our enemies arsenal is their ability to cause us to despair. To think that there is nothing more we can do.
As Harold G. Moore noted and demonstrated: “There is ALWAYS one more thing you can do.”
All my life I have been hearing how one group of bad guys or the other was sure to win. We are still here, they are not. The ones we face today, both here and abroad are not dealing from a position of strength. Their power is dependent on
logistical precepts that are crumbling beneath their feet. That is why they are attempting to bamboozle us into quitting. They are the ones who are bankrupt. And they lack the capabilities for physical repression.
Our victory—-survivial no less—– hinges upon whther or not we submit. Dunno about you, but I do not know how.
All together now:
“Gloom, despair and agony on me.
Deep dark depression,
Excessive misery.
If it wasn’t for bad luck,
I’d have no luck at all.
Gloom despair and agony on me.”
Feel better now?
It’s a sad commentary on our government that the immigration issue has gone fundamentally unaddressed for decades. Both sides agree on substantially all the isssues – we like having lots of cheap Mexican labor here, we just want them to carry a few more papers. The “hard” question regards the handling of those already here – those here for ten, twenty or more years, with kids born and raised here, citizens, serving in the military, etc. Once the border is sealed, odds are both sides would go for some amnesty (fee plus procedures yada yada but call it what it is).
The minority opinion (!), that we do NOT like having twelve to twenty million cheap “guest workers”, is just a political non-starter.
Fully regulated, we might have a few less guest workers, but then they might get a few bucks more pay. With half-decent politicians on either side, this could get done quickly.
Dang. I was going to write some dreary exhortation to people to speak plainer, resist political correctness, and work harder for the things you believe in.
I went and lay down for a while ’till the feeling went away. I also had some gin.
Seriously, I don’t believe there’s any way the patient can be returned to robust health without major surgery and long-term rehabilitation.
To step away from the metaphor…back to reality, a LOT of people are going to have to be disabused of their delusions and expectations of a free lunch, and get used to the idea that they will have to work like everybody else to earn a living.
A LIVING. NOT a life of luxury.
We’ve been allowing the Marxists dictate the terms of conversation for four decades. Look at the insane myths that millions of people unquestioningly accept as Gospel truth.(Here I cut a long list of liberal myths. Where’s my medal?) I can’t write’em crazier than the statements I’ve heard direct from the mouths of Liberals, Leftists, and just pathetic ignoramuses. Five generations of welfare dependency, and unions that are perfectly happy to destroy their employers.
The horrible thing is that these people are mostly healthy folks, who could do amazing things if they hadn’t been utterly brainwashed to pewling invalids by the stinking lying Marxists.
In the devastation of several Depressions, people had to re-learn self-sufficiency. We have been insulated from general hard times – I mean REAL hard times — by our amazing good fortune to have been removed from the chaos of Europe and Asia during a century of upheaval. We allowed ourselves to think of this as something we DESERVED; that we had EARNED; that would last forever.
Working at Atari Games in the 1990’s I began to realize after the initial glee of HAVING A JOB faded, that the company was in serious decline.
Circling the Drain, actually.
In the 1970’s, Nolan Bushnell’s little company was the first to have a hugely successful interactive electronic game. By the summer of 1973, PONG was a moneymaker for bar owners, convenience stores, Laundromats, Pizza parlours, and suchlike. By 1985 – or so I was told by Ed Logg, a 20-year guy – ATARI had such a lead in the industry that they employed some 25,000 people, and when a game launched to hefty sales, the production teams frequently were treated to a chartered flight to a weekend party in Las Vegas.
By the time I started, the company employed only 250 people. This was still enough to have ten game production teams working on simultaneous developments for arcade games, plus about half that many in the Tengen wing, porting games for other manufacturer’s game players.
That’s a pretty drastic change.
I won’t get into a bunch of tedious detail. What struck me most forcefully over the few years I worked there was that the people in the highest administrative positions had all gotten those jobs simply by seniority. Well, they were probably the best-qualified among the very small pool of 20-25-year survivors, but they had NEVER WORKED ANYWHERE BUT ATARI. They had no experience of how things were done at other companies, or in other industries.
For two decades before starting there, I’d been producing animation for TV spots, broadcast entertainment, educational and information films, and had a fair amount of traffic with advertising agencies. I was profoundly shocked to learn in a conversation with the VP in charge of advertising that the ONLY advertising the company paid for regularly was a few ads in very low-circulation industry magazines, and a booth at the annual games industry conference. At a time when I’d been seeing big-budget TV spots for Sega driving games, Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Prince of Persia, DragonSlayer, Sonic the HedgeHog, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, etc., I was told very firmly that Atari only needed to advertise to the owners of arcade games, NOT to the kids who’d be stealing the quarters from their parents’ dressers to feed their addictions.
I mention this because I’ve seen this sort of blinkered vision over and over among people who don’t necessarily think they know everything. They just are convinced they know everything they NEED to know, and don’t want to be confused with contrariwise views.
And that, my friends, is what we’re up against, on an unthinkably grand scale. Trying to awaken people who’ve been living in an artificially supported delusion for all their lives — actually for all their parent’s and grandparents’ lives — is a task that will take miracles and great upheaval to demonstrate the fallacies they firmly believe.
Pray often, and prepare for the coming challenges.
The only real weapon in our enemies arsenal is their ability to cause us to despair. To think that there is nothing more we can do.
One World War 2 formation with just the motto for the occasion was “the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion(Special) was constituted in Hollandia, New Guinea.”
Actually the translation is in error. Not “come what may”. The real sense of “bahala na” is a desire to get it over with as in “I don’t give a s**t what happens next” doubled with “it’s all in the hands of God”, which makes sense since the etymological derivation is from the archaic “bathala na” meaning “God already”. In many ways this term best translates to Dan Daly’s words at Belleau Wood: “come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”
Faced with an shot glass of mystery alcohol, cold feet at getting married in the morning, or seeing your chance to escape the Death March by making a break for the cane fields past the bayonets of the IJA the phrase that nerves you is “bahala na”.
#51 Wretchard says: And this is exactly what the administration’s crazy policy on immigration will eventually come to. An invitation to ridicule.
Interesting that Arizona has a new concealed-carry law. Found the following on Exurban League’s gun blog: “Lost in the all the hubbub yesterday over Arizona’s new immigration law was a seismic shift in the firearms laws of Arizona. As of today [Thursday], citizens and legal residents of Arizona do not need the government’s permission to carry a concealed defensive firearm, and with this new law, Arizona joins Vermont and Alaska as the three states in the Union to return this right to their residents. . . .
Whenever the restrictions are eased in this state, the cry goes out that we’ll return to the ‘Wild West,’ with gunfights on every street corner. When Arizona passed ‘shall-issue’ concealed carry, nothing happened. When Arizona allowed concealed carry in bars, nothing happened. And now that we can carry concealed without a permission slip, I’m looking forward to nothing happening once again.”
http://www.exurbanleague.com/misfires/Home/tabid/59/EntryId/494/Arizonas-new-concealed-carry-law-takes-effect-today.aspx
A new “Dark Ages” may be cresting the hill an rolling down upon us. If Islam becomes
the norm for society we may never see a new Rennaisance, EVER.
The complexities of modern society may have progressed beyond what most people can handle.
Just look at our forms of entertainment today. The masses seem mezmerized by thoughtless
mind numbinglty inane tripe. The average voter pays no attention to the issues of the day.
Plato had it right when he said, “Those unwilling to engage in political discusion, are
doomed to be ruled by their inferiors”. If we do not take the time to learn, inform ourselves,
and stand up for what we believe in, then start caching books like in “Lucifer’s Hammer”,
because the sum total of our wisdom and intelligence would be lost.
Wretchard said: The road is like a river. Once you step on to it, there’s no telling where it takes you.
The source of the following is Reuters, which may need to be taken into consideration: “Schwarzenegger declares California fiscal emergency”:
“In the declaration, Schwarzenegger ordered three days off without pay per month beginning in August for tens of thousands of state employees to preserve the state’s cash to pay its debt, and for essential services.
California’s budget is five weeks overdue, joining New York among big states with spending plans yet to be approved, and Schwarzenegger and top lawmakers are at an impasse over how to balance the state’s books. . . .
Schwarzenegger’s new furlough order was instantly condemned by labor officials as a political ploy.
‘To once again force state employees to take unpaid furloughs is just another punitive measure by Governor Schwarzenegger because he couldn’t impose minimum wage,’ said Patty Velez, president of the California Association of Professional Scientists. . . .
Schwarzenegger has said he will only sign a budget agreement if it includes an overhaul of the state’s public pension system, which includes the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the biggest U.S. public pension fund, which he says poses one of California’s greatest financial challenges going forward.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66R5FE20100728
#4-while I might have said that crabgrass spreads by runners and the whole yard needs to be killed off, your analogy makes it a lot clearer:)
Wow. The Codevilla essay seems to be making quite a splash. I haven’t waded through the whole thing, but most of what I’ve read I agree with, and don’t find particularly controversial.
I think the Ferguson piece is more relevant than Glicks. We are rapidly approaching a time when US power will be greatly diminished, for the exact reason F cites. You can’t maintain a Military to police the world if you’re using 20% of your funds to pay interest on your debt. So this is going to go away. Very few, even here at Belmont, will admit that now, so this’ll have to be one of those things that looks obvious in hindsight.
Ferguson says that people don’t see this because they think of history as a cyclical thing. I agree, and it’s easy to do if it has been for your entire life, especially with an historically ignorant population like we have in the US. We’ve lived the good life, it’s about to come to a screeching halt, and we don’t know if our population will be able to handle it. We don’t know how the world will react when the US is unable to hold things together. Will they be tough enough? will I be tough enough? I think so, because there will be little alternative.
Domestically we have a boatload of problems, but I have to agree with L3 when he says that these are actually opportunities. The problem is that there is no unifying theme now. Once the SHTF, the first instinct for most people will be to expect the Federal Government to come to the rescue, because that’s the default answer for every problem at the moment. When it becomes obvious that the Feds are helpless people will look to other entities, whether it’s their State Governments, Charity, Churches, or whatever. At that time we will have an opportunity to give the Feds a real haircut and put them back in their rightful place. I hope when that time comes that we don’t blow it.
This statement also provides a whiff of what google and the cia are up to: Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring
The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.
“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.
We are one step closer to the matrix when google and the cia can predict the future and proactively change it.
Anybody who works in federal or state government knows that pretentious, opinionated idiots like Sherrod are plentiful.
@28. Wretchard
I agree that the Codevilla piece is an important milestone on the zeitgeist hiway. You said:
I found this other comment from another blog to be quite interesting precisely for its “watercooler murmer” effect, it syncs very will with Codevilla’s piece:
The de Codaville essay is important, but it leaves out something very important.
The Ruling Class will not be changed or moved by words. Nor are they more than a tiny fraction of a percent of the total population.
The area which is susceptible to change isn’t the elite themselves, it is their foot soldiers. It is their toadies (welfare recipients, public sector unions and other government employees, and their families) and their wannabes (NPR listening educators and entertainers, and their families) that exist in large enough numbers to affect the voting in this country.
If we are to correct problems via the ballot and not the bullet, THEY, and not the actual elite, are the ones who must be affected and won over.
The Decline and fall of the USA is complete nonsense, of course. Whenever some moron spouts off on how the American age is over, just ask yourself; “Self, who replaces America?”
Start thinking about that answer and it quickly becomes obvious that those seeing the collapse of the USA as imminent are actually doing a bit of wishful thinking.
Any other nation put forth as replacing the USA is even more flawed then America.
Yes, the USA is going thru hard times. So what? We have been thru hard times before. Times have been harder for the USA then they are now. No Redcoats burning the Capital down that I have seen. No Battleships turned turtle in Pearl Harbor. No U-boats sinking tankers off shore of Miami.
No, the only real problem the USA has today is a lack of leadership. That problem will be fixed long before the barbarians find the gate, must less lay siege to it.
Geopolitics is relative. The US economy sucks. It is still number One. This administration, like the one before it, refuse to use American power in a rational way. So What? Eventually, we will elect a POTUS with testicles and that will change overnight. After all, America suffers from a lack of will, not a lack of capability. Will can develop overnight, capability takes time. Just ask the Mad Dog Mullahs.
If the MDM had as many nukes as the USA, does anyone doubt they would have used them by now?
“Somehow the ideas in Codevilla’s essay are popping up everywhere, whether people have read it or not.”
It is immanently obvious we must replace our existing “ruling class” with a functional one.
99% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans now in office must go, as a minimum.
Everywhere a cheat?
Science: No-thing? 10 years of a life for “genome” no-thing?
20+ years for AGW-nothing?
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing*.”
“Venter: At the end of the day, it is an argument over nothing. But this battle between common good and commerce — that is the kind of story that sells newspapers.”
…-
“‘We Have Learned Nothing from the Genome’”
“Science / AAAS
The world’s first bacteria with a synthetic genome was even coded with an e-mail address.”
In a SPIEGEL interview, genetic scientist Craig Venter discusses the 10 years he spent sequencing the human genome, why we have learned so little from it a decade on and the potential for mass production of artificial life forms that could be used to produce fuels and other resources.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Venter, when the elite among gene researchers undertook the decoding of the human genome, you were their greatest enemy. They called you “Frankenstein,” “blood sucker,” “Darth Venter” and even “asshole.” Why do you attract so much hostility?
Venter: Well, nobody likes to be beaten — by superior intelligence, planning and technology. That gets people upset.
SPIEGEL: Every area of science is competitive. But it doesn’t lead to that kind of hostility in all areas.
Venter: The human genome project was completely different, it was supposed to be the biggest thing in the history of biological sciences. Billions in government funding for a single project — we had never seen anything like that before in biology. And then a single person comes along and beats scientists who have been working on it for years. It is no wonder they didn’t like that.
SPIEGEL: Wasn’t it more the case that your opponents were afraid that you, as a profit-oriented entrepreneur, would make the human genome your own private property?
Venter: That is totally absurd; and you know it. Initially, Francis Collins and the other people on the Human Genome Project claimed that my methods would never work. When they started to realize that they were wrong, they began personal attacks against me and made up these things about the ownership of the genome. It was all absurd.
SPIEGEL: So it was all just propaganda?
Venter: At the end of the day, it is an argument over nothing. But this battle between common good and commerce — that is the kind of story that sells newspapers.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,709174,00.html
(*H/T Macbeth)
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/014530.html#comments
@20 – Leo Linbeck III quotes the CBO, “…an imbalance between federal revenues and spending…”
Don’t you just hate it when your household has a similar experience….because in the real world, normal people immediately cut spending when they notice this kind of problem.
Saw a commenter’s suggestion that we try the following:
Go to your employer today and say, “I have expenses greater than my income, therefore I am increasing my salary.” Let us know how it goes.
40. Leo Linbeck III
“The only way to break the Ruling Class is to break the cycle of incumbency, and the only way to break the cycle of incumbency is to beat incumbents in primary elections, and the only way to beat incumbents in primary elections is to mobilize large groups of otherwise unengaged voters to unite behind and vote for challengers.”
What would you think of a ban on consecutive tems, but not limiting the number of them?
“Our collective fate was sealed when the states ratified the Constitution. The Constitution is a beautiful instrument – for providing a legal framework for oppression & theft. ”
You have quoted the comment of a moron. In the first place because the state’s constitutions are no less flawed than federal one, and generally far more so. The Constitution has few flaws as written or ammended, it is the ridiculous gloss given to it by the Slaughterhouse cases and the tortured meaning assigned to the interstate commerce clause that birth essentially all of the problems we see. The idiots who have a problem with the constitutional founding generically don’t know the States inherited the plenipotentiary power of the Monarch after the revolution–utter totalitarianism–it is the division of the ruling class between the states and the feds which was a genius aspect of the constitution. The 17th amendment must go, and be replaced by a Senate made up of persons the Excutives of the States can appoint and dismiss at their leisure, for one third of the Senate, and the Executives of the States should be able to appoint persons to whatever seats the state legislatures do not fill, if those bodies fail in that duty.
uh, you need la plancha for bank notes
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38480478
54. Josh
It’s a sad commentary on our government that the immigration issue has gone fundamentally unaddressed for decades. Both sides agree on substantially all the isssues – we like having lots of cheap Mexican labor here, we just want them to carry a few more papers. The “hard” question regards the handling of those already here – those here for ten, twenty or more years, with kids born and raised here, citizens, serving in the military, etc. Once the border is sealed, odds are both sides would go for some amnesty (fee plus procedures yada yada but call it what it is).
The minority opinion (!), that we do NOT like having twelve to twenty million cheap “guest workers”, is just a political non-starter.
…………
Here is the problem. Left to become citizens these 12-20 million new voters would have two effects. First they would force open the borders once again for the next big wave. Second they would lock in a democratic ruling majority bent on looting the country–as they have done to California. ie these illegals would lock in the power of the ruling class.
#66. Skip_this_post
puts it well. The main harm that the current ruling class has done is to frame the terms of the debate in regards to just about everything.
Really the US can do just about anything it wants to do. Who exactly is going to stop us? It is not a matter of “can” we do something, its really about “should” and “how” we do something.
We “can’t” deport 20 million illegal immigrants. We just “can’t.” Really? Round up one hundred of them and give them a quick and public execution and let it be known that this is the wave of the future. I guarantee you that the rest would be gone in no time. I’m not saying this should be done, I’m just saying that this would indeed work. Don’t talk about “can’t.”
We can’t win a war unless we win the “hearts and minds” of the people we’re fighting? That is delusional. Wars are about killing people, not building up their self-esteem. Its that simple. If you kill enough of the enemy they won’t hurt you anymore.
We indeed can solve many of our problems. The key is to state that it will be solved, and to let the source of the problems know that the means by which they will be solved are up to them, to a point, after which the gloves come off and a round is chambered in the rifle, literally or figuratively as the situation merits.
To a great degree the political class owes its existence to problems, real or perceived. If the problems truly were solved their positions of privilege would vanish. They don’t want solutions, they want the status quo.
Looks like the Obama Regime intends on burning down the house; The very house that they grew up in, and gave them the advantages to rise to their levels of today.
And he’s supposed to be a ‘messiah’?
I’m digging deep in my history to find any ‘messiah’ that did this.
Washington D.C. you better start listening to the tax payers, not the tax leaches or even Nero and his fiddle in the White House. You time in the sun is running out. Tic, tic,tic,tic…..
“America is Insolvent. Why Would China’s Rating Agency Rate US Sovereign Debt AA When it is No Better Than Junk? ”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20176
hmmm the end of the beans soon ?
Mad Fiddler #55:
I bought an Atari 520ST in the mid-80’s; still got it. It was a great little computer. Beat the pants off the Mac. Had standard I/O. Very cheap to buy. Ran great, and reliably, and this without even a Hard Drive. The OS, GEM was bulletproof. And next it went….
Nowhere.
I guess the first indication of trouble was the fact it had a game port, or ROM port or whatever it was supposed to be. Back then I could visualize grizzled old 29 year old Atari employees saying to bright new college graduates “Now look here, sonny. You ain’t been here nearly as long as I have, but I can tell you that Atari products will ALWAYS have a game port and you can take that to the bank. So shaddup and quit asking stupid questions about what that port is for, y’a hear?”
I understand that what really killed the 520ST was the belief that the company only wanted to deal with professional developers and so charged an outrageous price for the software developer’s kit. By the time they realized how they had screwed up it was too late.
Sounds like just what you are talking about.
Tcobb, that is why I said we need someone with testicles. Say Sara Palin or That gal from Up north. Bachmann? The Arizona Gov would make a fiiiiine POTUS.
Remember, a Man only has two, a woman has as many as she wants.
3 Nuclear weapons and all talk of the USA being over the hill stops. I am thinking Moscow, Peking and Tehran, although New York, Chicago and L.A. is an alternative.
I know the UN Charter makes it illegal to nuke furreners, but I don’t think Houston is covered. Even though people in Dallas consider Houston to be foreign.
D.C.’s Race Quota Job Boom (You’re not going to believe this!)
I’d like to comment on the remarks of PA Cat (#4) about Sen. Kerry’s choice to keep his yacht in Rhode Island rather that his home state of Massachusetts to save on taxes.
I wonder if Kerry isn’t simply immitating a behaviour that is widespread in Massachusetts? While I am not from Massachusetts – I’m not even American – I have visited Massachusetts on business several times. On one visit to Boston, I noticed that there were a great many licence plates from neighbouring states on the streets and highways during the day on weekdays. I asked a local if this many people really came from out-of-state to work in Boston. No, I was told, most of these people were from Massachusetts but simply registered their cars in neighbouring states like Vermont where the fees were much cheaper. Perhaps Kerry simply applied the same technique but applied it to a boat instead of a car?
Interesting slant on foreign policy issues, as the debt drags under vibrant wanna-be’s; but there is also a mix of two diverse elements. One, the hypothetical trend in all democracies to go the way of tyranny within a few hundred years as the people who benefited under democracy raise progeny who lack the understanding of the vigilance required to keep it alive and, thus, become complacent and allow the greedy, power hungry to take over. I believe that macro tendency interleaves with Codevilla’s accurate history of the rise of progressive fascism in the US. The outcome is the oligarchy the US has today.
The future of that oligarchy is the dissolution into a UK-type mercantilism (already far in progress) which Hamilton championed in the early years of the country as Madison, Jefferson, and finally, Jackson fought. Nobody of any character within the “ruling class” has fought it since Lincoln was elected.
So, America, one wonders if the country has a choice of degrading into the second level country of its forefathers or if it has the unity of purpose in its people to arrest this decline and boot out the “ruling class” once and for all – or at least for a while. They will arise again, even if the entire lot is sacrificed at the polling booth and through eliminating the dross in the bloated bureaucracy that is indicative of the layers required to protect the incompetents at the top.
The US government now reminds me more of Monty Python’s Twit Olympics skits.
“Like Brecht’s fictional Atlantean who “the night the seas rushed in … still bellowed for their slaves,” the members of what Codevilla called the “ruling class” can’t believe it is happening.”
They and their supporters have no trouble believing in Anthropogenic Global Warming, however.
Leo III: The only way to break the Ruling Class is to break the cycle of incumbency, and the only way to break the cycle of incumbency is to beat incumbents in primary elections, and the only way to beat incumbents in primary elections is to mobilize large groups of otherwise unengaged voters to unite behind and vote for challengers.
I’ll hold this as wise and true through November Leo. If that fails then I’m going to want to put heavy emphasis on the “beat incumbency” part and follow SpeakEasy’s warm and poetic final line in post number 2. A good physic is what this country needs.
I admire you all for holding on and trying to use diplomatic reasoning, the ballot box and appeals to common decency to get this mess sorted out. Logically, looking at the macro I don’t see how it’s going to make the slightest impact though, the game is rigged.
Gordon, your description of the chat with your son gives me some hope. My father and I talk about the same things, with the same worries. You weren’t by chance sitting in lawn chairs as the heat of the day left and the fireflies and kids played in the background when you had it, were you? How many millions of other talks like this occur, yet we don’t know about them. We only have little windows like this blog to peer out of our realities, the large glass reflectors in the MSM are corrupted. Those talks are still real though, and they are happening. My point being that our combined strength is greater than we realize.
My biggest fear is that due to this disconnect, this lack of communication between our allies the social and national illnesses will simply stagger on and on, without any definitive prognosis or cure. That my children will be left to deal with it, when I’m too old and frail to help. I would much prefer to see the worst and then begin the work to be done with it, maybe even remember to yell “bahala na” when we start back up the hill.
And in parting, for all you doubting old folks, I’m pretty sure not many of you endured as your sires did and I’m quite confident that none of you were born and lived during the Book of Judges. Just because I’ve not traveled through the fires you’ve seen doesn’t mean I’m not steel, only what my final tempering is going to amount to. Too flexible? Too hard and brittle? Or just right? We’ll know when we get there. So use the army you’ve got.
In keeping with a theme of Codevilla’s essay (required reading), what you’ve suspected all along, why no one pushing Obama’s agenda in DC is particularly interested in the content of the convoluted, massive legislation they’ve passed or the convoluted, massive legislation they are working to pass.
The specifics don’t matter. What matters is the transfer of control from the private sector to the ruling class, the federal government.
The real goal of “healthcare” legislation, the real goal of “cap-and-trade”, and the real goal of the “stimulus” is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to the government to control.
(And who needs the legislature, anyway ? Members of Obama’s regime are contemplating …”a non-legislative version of amnesty” as we speak. They’re also working on, EPA style, a non-legislative version of cap-and-trade. Congressional process is such a bulky old impediment to the agenda !)
Apathetic USA
@71. Tom Perkins
“You have quoted the comment of a moron. In the first place because the state’s constitutions are no less flawed than federal one, and generally far more so.”
Look, I didn’t write the comment, but I thought it was interesting and illustrative of the twist in flow of current thinking that Codevilla article has provoked. And in any case, the specific weaknesses of any one states constitution is really not relevant to his rant because he is specifically talking about the federal government, and his argument that the constitution’s flaws have allowed the federal government to be taken over by elitists who have used the courts to take complete power has merit. The Federal government clearly had jumped of the guiding tracks by the start of the war of northern aggression, and arguably was already corrupted and out of control when lawyers were allowed to hold office after the war of 1812.
I have also lately seen much more open debate and criticism of Lincoln since Obama’s election, and the degree of disagreement with his “legacy” seems to increase in direct proportion to the degree of recognition of Obama’s blatant racism. The zeitgeist is in a state flux.
OT, but I have been trying and failing to say this properly for months (years?) and now Mr. Devine has expressed it perfectly, so I want to share.
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704201604575373253893718806.html
Nothing like a successful foreign policy initiative to silence the peanut gallery. Get Afghanistan off the front pages and those whining the loudest will stop for a breath again. At least until they find another sliver of doom and gloom to fixate on.
“He wants the Republicans on trial too …”
And just what did the Republicans do to deserve trails on ethics charges?
Oh yea, they opposed ObamaCare, no greater crime than that.
The sad thing is that whenever a Republican is caught in what even looks like it might be an ethics violation, they are quickly hounded out of office by the press and by the Republican leadership.
On the other hand, a Democrat can be caught taking bribes on camera, have the money found hidden in a freezer, and he will not only stay in office, he won’t even loose any of his chairmanships, until after he is sent to jail. (And maybe not even then.)
18. Forgotten Man
Learn a little history. Was anyone better off after Pax Romana collapsed?
The world exists in one of two states.
The first state is where there is no dominant player, in this state there is constant warfare as small countries constantly jockey for power and as larger states use military might to get what they want from everyone around them.
The second state is where there is a single dominant player, who sets and enforces rules for everyone to follow. This single player can either be someone like the US, or it can be someone like Russia or China. The US has never used it’s dominance to extract contributions from the other countries. Does anyone believe that Russia or China would not use their dominance to extract every ounce of tribute from everyone else?
19. Agoraphobic Plumber
I see you denigrate such skills as being able to use Word, be able to do accounting, or write reports.
I guess in your world, there is no advantage to being able to run your company more efficiently than your competitors or being able to know where your companies money is being spent.
Spread the word; Tell family and friends what to expect
and what to do when things that just don’t happen here
start to happen.
James Watt’s trade guild application was rejected. He went on to perfect the steam engine. Eli Whitney didn’t have the money to go to Yale, so he headed to South Carolina and be came a tutor, while he developed the idea of the cotton gin and pioneered interchangable parts. The young farmhand, Cyrus McCormick, perfected his father’s troubled reaper design. With the help of a slave. The young Thomas Edison supplemented his job as a telegrapher by selling candy and vegetables. This list of people who rose from anywhere but academia and came up with things that changed the world could go on and on.
In fact it has been the rule, not the exception, that the best and brightest over in their ivory towers prefer their manicured grounds and rarely come out. The attitude of scientists is best summed up by the book, “A Mathematician’s Apology” in which the greatest pursuit imaginable is number theory, precisely because it defies any practical application. It’s therefore imbued with an eerie purity against which other pursuits seem base. Bad things happen to those over in those manicured gardens, too, should they dare venture off the grounds. Time Magazine currently chronicles the fate of Dr. Ivon Van Heerden, a LSU professor who came out and said the super-surge explanation for the levee breaks during Katrina was wrong. Even though the Corps of Engineer investigation would eventually prove him right, he was uncermoniously fired from LSU. He bucked the prevalining views and paradigms, and this won’t do. He’s also been the subject of ridicule and outraged condemnations from the ivory tower set after the BP oil spill for saying the environmental impact will be minimal compared to the expectations, and he’s in the process of being proved right once again. He’ll never work in academe again, for being right twice now.
I’m criticizing the scientists, the ones in the elite set who bear the most trusted and most measured and verifiable credentials. They also subscribe enthusiastically to the scientific method, to peer review, and to all those things that give science its uniquely supreme epistemological status. But you can’t trust them. You can’t trust them to improve your life by their work, you can’t even trust them to know their own subject as Van Heerden among others have proved. It was a tragic, if understandable mistake that Plato made with this idea of a philosopher-king, and of classes of learned men tutored on the ways of wisdom and surety. Always when the best and brightest do get hold of the reigns of power it winds up in a smoking diaster. Look at Woodrow Wilson and his crew, or JFK & McNamara’s boys, or now this storied “Team of Rivals” at the helm. They’ll hubristically make the same mistake everytime, one a man like Rumsfeld would never: they don’t know what they don’t know, they’ll assume they know it, and so not know that they don’t know what they don’t know.
Bill Goss based out of California runs about 1/2 trillion in bonds and other investments. He’s known as the bond guy but I’ve heard lately he’s been diversifying out of bonds. Anyhow, I read him from time to time. Right now he’s not saying anything people don’t know. The feds are just flushing money down the toilet.
Investment Outlook
Bill Gross | August 2010
Privates Eye
It’s easy to get excited about Codevilla’s thesis, but we should remember a couple of points:
- The US political system has seen this sort of conflict many times before. If a political class gets run out of town on a rail it will be seen as a return to the proper operation of the system, not its overthrow.
- The unrest we see today has still so far barely nibbled at the edges of what would be required to make real change happen. For example, even the most strident opposition to public sector pensions is currently about making changes which would apply to new hires only, decades in the future, not about cutting benefits for existing retirees or for the senior guys still in government today. The same is true of tenure among college professors. Nor is there a serious popular effort at present to make congressional representatives subject to the laws they make for the rest of us, make them use the healthcare they impose on the rest of us, or put a cap on the retirement income and benefits they award themselves.
The Democrats in particular still see an economic depression more as an opportunity for them than a threat, because if they get to re-run the 1930′s they run just about everything at the same time as they write their own history. Then they literally get to teach that to kids in school so that future generations end up grateful and subscribe to the idea of Social Security as if it were tablets from Moses, instead of the Ponzi scheme it always was.
A political convulsion or ‘awakening’ is possible, maybe even likely, but it’s not here yet.
Great post!
Gordon @ 12
You don’t understand the behavior because its motives are for many honest folks unthinkable.
They, Obama & Co., that is, are deliberately weakening our country, and are out to destroy it.
“19. Agoraphobic Plumber
I see you denigrate such skills as being able to use Word, be able to do accounting, or write reports.
I guess in your world, there is no advantage to being able to run your company more efficiently than your competitors or being able to know where your companies money is being spent.”
Depends on what the world will be 5 or 10 years from now. If you can’t get a job using Word or preparing reports and have no other skills, can you go home and use those skills to feed your family or provide yourself with clean water, transportation or other things that really matter? I’m “denigrating” MY OWN professional skills, too. I’ve been a software developer for 2 decades, and that won’t do squat for me if I can’t find a job as a developer at some point. I’m now studying to be a teacher. In most scenarios that is better, because people will ALWAYS need to have their children educated, even if there is a total collapse…but it still won’t feed me if I can’t find a job.
The point I was making is that there are millions of people out there who are so specialized that they don’t even know how to change their own oil, or frame up a shed, or plant a garden or raise chickens. How the heck can they get their basic necessities if something happens where there are simply no jobs available for them?
It’s good to be a generalist.
we don’t need a second Reagan, we need a Cromwell.
97. Agoraphobic Plumber
Well Put! You do leave out the unhappy fact that all those hyper-specialists will be mooning about wanting somebody to feed, house and protect them. The generalists will also be forced to defend their product from the demands of the unproductive masses.
98. cjm
Perhaps a Petraus?
Niall Ferguson would be right if the USA ran 1.5 trillion
deficits for 10 years or maybe even 5-7 years. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. At least not this time. Both Obama and pubbies promise to chop down deficits
next year. Deficits will fall to under 1 trillion next year either by not renewing bush’s tax cuts or by budget cuts or by both. The big political football will be about who gets the blame/credit for various parts of the package.
The long term trend is whether the ruling elites will be able to lock in their power with the aid of the illegals and thereby loot the country and crack it up.
That’s what’s in play.
The Codevilla essay is a brilliant description of the Ruling Class and their pernicious effects in our time. What happens next is anybody’s guess.
In pre-WWII Britain a similar divide between Ruling Class and the ruled Country Class existed. When war came the Country Class made the required blood and economic sacrifices but only with a common understanding that after the war they, the ruled, would take over the country.
They did take over by voting for the socialist Labour party and the welfare state sprang into existence. Now the welfare state has spawned its’ own pernicious ruling class.
What happens next? Internationally the political dice are being shaken. Who knows what faces will come up once they are thrown? Strong men? Chaos? Less government? More government? Territorial wars? Back to the 19th century? Back to the US constitution in America? Orwellian conditions all over the map?
Interesting times.
62 ConfererateH:
Didn’t Heinlein write about a product called “PsychoHistory” whereby the future could be projected from peoples’ current behavior? May be I’ve the wrong term, but I believe the essence.
The wisest would be advised to note that the storied lemmings don’t individually do them self a whole lot of good, though their actions can be predicted… [translated: is this product of real value?]
tom
The real problem with this essay is: it will not be distributed to millions of American voters. Perhaps some conserv intellectuals, NRO, Reason, et al will comment but few Pub reps will make comments. No ads will be pursued to warn voters of this continuing collapse of American domestic and foreign power. No one in Fly Over country will realize that Obama is piece by piece tearing down America to drive us ‘down a peg or two.’ I am thankful for PM and others keeping us informed but how much this will do to undermine the progressive socialist pacifist dunces in the DNC is up in the air.
Great column, Richard.
Write more just like it.
Just keep in mind that our elected representatives are reflections of ourselves and of our society.
What we find objectionable in their characters and behaviors is what is wrong with our own.
…but, like Mr. Rangel and a host of others, from union members to government employees to soccer moms and t-ball dads. “…he simply refused to believe it was happening.”
“…because the “whole system” is guilty…”
Just a few weeks ago, most conservatives/Republicans would’ve laughed at the ideas espoused by Professor Codevilla. In fact, most will still refuse to take them to heart…and look in the mirror to see if they, themselves are guilty of similar behaviors. We know that most Democrats will refuse the exercise a priori… Many, if not most, conservatives claim the moral high ground, but how many will refuse to re-examine their own characters in the face of such corruption as is now seen in our ruling elite and corporate offices?
In order to legitimately claim the moral high ground, you must be a moral and ethical people. The claims must match the reality.
Agree with Mark the Great on #18- forgotten man. We have cops and jails because human beings are capable of great evil. We need a dominant USA for the same reason . The world is full of bandits. I fear they own the future. The question is is President Wonderboy and his posse of social engineers killing our nation out of malice or mind numbing stupidity. Either way,same result. I think we do all we can to turn the tide politically, be prepared for the worst, find a network of friends and pray a lot. Sneak in the enemy’s camp and listen to “New Speedway Boogie” circa 1970 by the Grateful Dead…”one way or another, this darkness got to give”….
#75 Cybergeezer
Look up “Taiping Rebellion”. Its leader, Hong Xiuquan, claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus, and used that as an excuse to massacre half the population of the Forbidden City, among other things.
#98 cjm
No, we need another Reagan. No country needs a Cromwell, period. Even England didn’t need Oliver Cromwell. Anymore than it needed Charles I or the Long Parliament.
The English Civil War was a classic example of what happens when you go from bad (Charles I) to worse (Cromwell and the Long Parliament) and end up back at bad (Charles II)- which manages to look like an improvement based on what it follows.
If The One’s end result is a Cromwell, he’s likely to be more like Nehemiah Scudder. (See “Revolt in 2100″ by Robert Heinlein.) And that will do no one any good, at all.
clear ether
eon
#103. Glenn Koons, Long Beach, Ca
The real problem with this essay is: it will not be distributed to millions of American voters.
And whose fault will that be? Yours and mine, sir. We have the means to spread the word. We should do it. The entire essay doesn’t take up any more bandwidth than a simple poor quality photograph.
Copy and paste it and send it as an attachment in your emails, and urge the recipients to do the same. As Papa Ray says, we must all get engaged. Sitting back in our own little ivory towers lamenting about the state of the world gets nothing for anyone.
Its time to raise the Jolly Roger and quit pretending that the people in power really only want to rape us “for our own good.”
106. eon,
I would argue Teh One IS our Nehemiah Scudder, except that he worships at the Altar of Marx.
No one in Fly Over country will realize that Obama is piece by piece tearing down America to drive us ‘down a peg or two.’
What do you think the tea party movement is ?
I gotta have a little optimism (even me) and disagree with your statement in some measure.
Another point made in the Codevilla essay is that this particular ruling class (and minions propped up the ruling class, e.g. unions) could care less about the will of the majority and are (freely and unabashedly) “governing” in direct contravention to the people, on healthcare, immigration, cap ‘n tax and virtually everything else under the sun.
Holding and keeping power while diminishing the citizen’s personal liberty is the ruling class’ single, over-riding objective
People in flyover country and everywhere else on the planet have been figuring this out.
tomw@102:
Right term, wrong author. Psychohistory was the product of one Hari Seldon, who in turn was a product of the imagination of one Isaac Asimov, as laid out in his foundation “trilogy”, later expanded to a quadrilogy.
Asimov was one of the fascinating (if egotistical) sci fi authors of history. But even he didn’t foresee the importance of computers in everyday life. I recently reread “Foundation and Empire”, and the manual calculations, use of paper for messages and so forth was very stark to my mind.
The man was still a genius, though. His 3 laws of robotics are a good template for AI developers to keep in mind.
97. Agoraphobic Plumber
“If you can’t get a job using Word or preparing reports and have no other skills, can you go home and use those skills to feed your family or provide yourself with clean water, transportation or other things that really matter?”
If things ever get that bad, it’s pretty much a given that 90% of the population is going to die, or already has died. And we’re talking about a Mad Max level of existance.
97. Agoraphobic Plumber
re: “It’s good to be a generalist.”
I’ve always liked the way Robert Heinlein put it:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
100. Charles
If the Bush tax cuts expire, the deficit is going to double. Increasing taxes on the productive, by that much, with the economy this weak, is going to cause economic activity to shrink dramatically.
My daughter lives in Australia. I worry about Australia–they have a superb navy but a thinly populated rim. They have helped us in all conflicts and the diggers offered a substantial hand in Iraq.
Will we be able to assist our ally if they need us?
Sometimes I think the passion behind this blog is a call to the anglosphere and those who are free.
The question is: What does China want?
The side war with Islamists(if we slip), can only help despots (China or similar). A population praying 5x’s a day is much easier to control.
102. tomw
That was Asimov in his “Foundation” series.
Holding and keeping power while diminishing the citizen’s personal liberty is the ruling class’ single, over-riding objective.
Tying us all more tightly to dependence on and reliance on government programs.
Putting us into the bony, grasping claws of the Harry Reids (this week, “we will have a public option”) Nancy Pelosis (when asked where in the Constitution the federal gov’t can require citizens to purchase health insurance or anything else…replies “you’re kidding, you’re kidding” and Barack Obamas (“community agitator is my essence”) and any countless number of horrific leftists currently running the country…if that doesn’t scare the crapola out of every nook and cranny of America, we’ve not got much left to preserve.
Consider the current chain of command of leadership of this nation, Barack, BiteMe, Pelosi.
And shudder.
13. cjm
how is this period different than the carter era? didn’t we come roaring back after that, didn’t the cccp fall after that? whose to say the prc won’t also take a tumble once governor christie is elected president in ‘12…
anyone here who isn’t a chicken little raise their hand, the rest of you go over there and stand with the dems.
Lived through Carter as a grownup. This is different. It doesn’t mean we can’t recover, but this is much worse than Carter.
97. Agoraphobic Plumber
Just because a person programs computers for a living doesn’t mean he can’t build a table or plow a field when he gets home.
111/90 Mark,
But you don’t have to be at a MadMax-level of poverty to understand that too many people now don’t have valuable skills, and that knowing MS word isn’t enough to be valuable.
Case in point: my husband worked at a startup that imploded about 6 months ago. He has since picked up all the revenue-making contracts that they had. At peak, they had 24 employees. They claimed they couldn’t run the contracts they had with less than 12. But husband has managed to do so by himself, with a bit of contract sw work on a temp basis for a few other folks. His wife (that is, me) does all of the HR work and accounting and the rest while running the home, the 2 kids under 5, and her own non profit. Us two manages where previously it took 24, and then they were sure it couldn’t take less than 12.
Why? Because we have critical thinking skills, personable skills, initiative, desire to learn, ability to handle competing interests, willingness to travel where the work is, etc.
MS word is not enough. You’re going to have be willing to empty the trash, answer that pager call at 2 AM, seek out new clients, get on that plane to Asia on a minute’s notice, seek out new business partners, etc. then you’re not going to have a career. In these ways, it helps to be a generalist. More, it helps to recognize you’re not the only one who can do what you can do. Someone in china only needs $1000 a year to feed his family. What do you offer that’s worth your 50-100x that?
Glenn@103:
“No one in Fly Over country will realize that Obama is piece by piece tearing down America to drive us ‘down a peg or two.’”
As taanstafl said, the tea parties are all about people in flyover country paying attention and not liking what they are seeing. There are a lot of us paying attention…but we’re not a large percentage of the population out here.
The tea parties are a reflection of the strategy of the rabidly anti-war leftists, in a way. The antiwar folks are/were also a small minority, but they got headlines by being loud and obnoxious (and having the media on their side didn’t hurt.) The tea party is doing the same thing.
Thing is, I believe that while the tea party is a small minority in that they’re actually paying attention, they are in the majority (at least in flyover country) in their take on DC and the various shenanigans that have been going on.
I mentioned upthread that my friends don’t pay attention to national and world politics much. That is not because they’re stupid or ignorant. In most cases, quite the opposite is true. It’s because they are very focused on their work, their families, and in general just living their life. Out here, there has been very little from DC or elsewhere that materially impacts our lives in perceptible ways…and people here are nothing if not practical. Why worry about some nebulous bill working its way through congress when there’s wheat rust on the back 40, or you have to get ready to fix the potholes on 5th street, or you’ve got to ramp up sales of speedboats or tractors?
The elite have been using this inward focus of ours for a long time…we’re the frog in their pot, and they’ve been slowly turning up the heat for some time now. Obama has gained a lot of hubris through that history of us not really reacting, and now he’s “transforming” America. The big changes haven’t hit us yet, but they will soon. And the moment that they do is the one I’m afraid of.
Because it will be too late then to turn back the clock, and the legal framework has already been laid. People out here are used to living their own lives without a lot of government interference. When that interference starts to be enforced…that’s when we’re going to see fireworks. Because while many–maybe even most–will bow to government authority, there are at least a large plurality of people out here who won’t stand for it. I personally know several who are even now on a hair-trigger.
These are people out here who (correctly, in my view) view the second amendment not as a guarantee that they’ll be able to hunt or even necessarily as something that will protect their right to defend themselves against lawbreakers, but as the point of law that legitimizes their right to fight back against the government when it ceases to be recognizable as a legitimate governing authority.
More than usual there are people around where I am, watching what happens with the Arizona illegal immigrant thing. I’ve filled some of them in on the back story. More than once I’ve been asked “what about the term ‘illegal’ don’t they understand?” People here aren’t against immigration. They’re against ILLEGAL immigration. Yet time after time, in the MSM they leave out the ILLEGAL part.
Why don’t they streamline the stupid paperwork that has been in the system for decades? If these people, the vast majority of which are harmless, just want work…why is it so hard that they will pay coyotes to get them here? THAT is the real scandal. It should be a matter of a few questions at the border, and they let them through (after checking their luggage or whatever). What drives these people to break the law?
117: you’re right, this is worse. For one, we never recovered socially from the Carter Era. 4 presidential terms for the Rs and we still had the destruction of the family as a unit of social cohesion. Illegitimacy has now left the Black ghetto and entered every other culture of America, too. The nuclear family is gone. Marriage is about to go away. Marijuana is about to be legal in CA.
These social concerns undermine the ability of society to fend off the welfare state. The Rs being in power might have helped conservatism in a couple ways–tax decreases, ending of the cold war with USSR, but it never turned back the tide on liberalism. We are much farther down the road now.
Here in California, Silicon Valley to be particular, I’m seeing only a few signs that the general populace is swinging conservative and is interested in taking back our government and society from the Ruling Class.
The polls for the governor and senate race show the Republican candidate about equal to the well-worn Democrat incumbent (Boxer) or recycle (Brown.)
A few people in the office are showing more political awareness but we’re engineers so a bit more conservative as a group anyway. My neighbors are pretty set in their ways and too many of them on the public tit anyway, as pensioners or employees of the government. Being visibly conservative is still not much of a social asset. Maybe a thousand people turned out for our last Tea Party in San Jose, a city of a million people.
Our state’s financial crisis is still an annoyance too many blame on the Republicans. Even after our recent large tax hike, not too many are grousing out loud.
To speak up is to still play the Cassandra – you may see the future and speak of it, but no one believes it – yet.
More pain and suffering in daily life will need happen to really get people’s attention. Even then, too many will believe the MSM and put the blame on the wrong cause and endorse the wrong remedy.
markthegreat@118:
“Just because a person programs computers for a living doesn’t mean he can’t build a table or plow a field when he gets home.”
Fantastic. Then I have no beef with you…as long as all the people who are diddling with MS Word know how to farrow, or plant a garden or whatever they need to do to provide for their family. My experience has been otherwise. One time I tried to go into a grocery store during a blackout in the outlying suburb that I lived in at the time. It took 2 hours to buy about $50 worth of groceries. I would have left, except that we were in line with people we hadn’t seen for a long time, and we were really enjoying it. But 2 hours? Really?
Now multiply that by 100,000. Because in a real, nationwide emergency, that’s what it would really be all about. Not our small town, but the whole country.
I’d rather be the one who is ready.
113. MarkTheGreat
If the Bush tax cuts expire, the deficit is going to double. Increasing taxes on the productive, by that much, with the economy this weak, is going to cause economic activity to shrink dramatically.
…………
You might be right. I have no idea where we are on the Laffer Curve.
The talk now is that the O’s Homeland Security is considering legalizing the illegals by fiat.
Tharkun, The Heinlein quote made my day. Thanks. I’ll spread it around.
Im giving props to the OP for the Tolkien reference, in the last line.
#124 Charles
The talk now is that the O’s Homeland Security is considering legalizing the illegals by fiat. I’m not doubting you, but can you give me a link?
#40 omitted the gerrymander. Political parties have always wanted to pick their voters instead of the other way around. With today’s tools they get to do it more effeciently than ever before. States that have districts that are fairly compact and contiguous tend to have both more competitive elections and more responsible governments than states that heavily gerrymander to protect incumbents and to maximize minority majority districts.
This is ridiculous. Niall Ferguson is almost — but not quite — Britain’s Noam Chomsky. Let’s have a look on how he tackles the Great Wah in ‘The Pity of War: Explaining World War One’ (copypasted from Wikipedia. Sorry, I’m feeling lazy):
The “myths” of World War I that Ferguson attacks, with his counter-arguments in parentheticals, are:
* That Germany was a highly militarist country before 1914 (Ferguson claims Germany was Europe’s most anti-militarist country)[16]
* That naval challenges mounted by Germany drove Britain into informal alliances with France and Russia before 1914 (Ferguson claims the British were driven into alliances with France and Russia as a form of appeasement due to the strength of those nations, and an Anglo-German alliance failed to materialize due to German weakness)[17]
* That British foreign policy was driven by legitimate fears of Germany (Ferguson claims Germany posed no threat to Britain before 1914, and that all British fears of Germany were due to irrational anti-German prejudices) [18]
* That the pre-1914 arms race was consuming ever larger portions of national budgets at an unsustainable rate (Ferguson claims that the only limitations on more military spending before 1914 were political, not economic)[19]
* That World War I was as Fritz Fischer claimed a war of aggression on part of Germany that necessitated British involvement to stop Germany from conquering Europe (Ferguson claims if Germany had been victorious, something like the European Union would have been created in 1914, and that it would have been for the best if Britain chose to opt out of war in 1914)[20]
And so on and so forth and suchlike. Acquaint yourself with an academician’s record before you take him seriously. Wretch, I’m disappointed in you.
Far as ‘American Empire’ goes, that’s more tommyrot. We’re a big muscular republic. We have no foreign possessions to lose. We have no slave class. Our debt/GDP ratio and the debt/earnings ratio of our financial institutions are still among the healthiest in the industrialized world, which still makes us a safe haven if the sky falls in. And as far as China goes….. my God. Does anyone actually believe their economy — half of which is still state-owned and corrupt as hell — is anywhere near the size it’s supposed to be? They keep mandating (and getting!) GDP growth of 8%-10% in quarters where their energy consumption is flatlined. It’s the biggest bubble in the world, and when it pops, it’ll seem like what we just went through look like sweet dreams….
We have problems. We’ll work them out. Meantime, I endured eight years of libtard OMG TEH SKY IS FALLING under Dubya, and now we’re getting the same line from you people. Can I call you conservatards? Okay, conservatards. Get a **GRIP.**
/stomps off
Alarm bells aren’t ringing because that is their goal.
For those who say these times are no worse than Carter, let me give you a concrete, easily measured financial example that will illustrate just how much more precarious our situation is today.
The country had been dealing with inflation throughout the 70′s, especially after the 1974 Oil Shock. (which had more to do with hamhanded governemnt regulatory mistakes than with any actual shortage, but that’s another story) Anyone remember Gerald Ford’s sappy little buttons with “WIN” on them?
But thanks to a feckless Fed under G. William Miller, the fires of inflation were stoked and started to really take off under Carter while economic growth stalled – the dreaded “Stagflation” of the 70′s.
Consequently interest rates began to soar, driving the economy even further down. HOWEVER – this created the seeds for recovery, because when Reagan finally began to stimulate growth through his tax policies, interest rates were able to drop dramatically. It was the combination of lowered tax rates PLUS falling interest rates that combined to create the great drop in overhead costs which spurred the economic boom of the 80′s and 90′s.
Contrast to the situation today – interest rates are virtually zero, and have been there for some time. The Fed has no more tools to work with – interest rates cannot go negative, after all. (that would involve paying people to borrow money!) Practically speaking this means that there is no economic “recovery” to be gained from falling interest rates – that card has already been played and it’s had no effect. It’s even worse than that – any uptick in economic activity is likely to cause interest rates to jump back up since borrowing capacity is still maxed out due to our government deficits. Put another way, any shred of economic recovery carries with in it the seeds of it’s own very rapid downfall, since an interest rate rise will choke off any economic recovery before it takes hold.
One more thing – in the 80′s a great source of growth was growth in exports to the world, which had declined during the low quality manufacturing malaise of the 70′s. However, today American products are being undercut by Chinese goods worldwide, and world trade in general is shrinking. (as evidenced by the Baltic Dry Goods index, recently at a 14 year low)
Falling interest rates with no economic effect, falling world trade, falling economic activity and zero consumer or business confidence in the future, and add in soaring gold prices – the last time we saw a mixture of readings like that was in 1930 – 1931.
And in fact our government and our society was in far better shape fiscally then than we are now. Who honestly thinks that we have the cohesion to hang together today the way this country hung together then?
My greatest fear is that we’re about to live through a combination of 1861, 1931, and 1939 all rolled up together. Who knows how it will turn out – who can even guess what will be left standing when this wave has finally passed?
“The Decline and fall of the USA is complete nonsense, of course. Whenever some moron spouts off on how the American age is over, just ask yourself; “Self, who replaces America?”
The United Nations and the World Court replace American Government. The UN Charter and a plethora of administrative agencies replace our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
“The planning authority cannot confine itself to providing opportunities for unknown people to make whatever use of them they like. It cannot tie itself down in advance to general and formal rules (U.S. Constitution) which prevent arbitrariness. It must provide for the actual needs of people as they arise and then choose deliberately between them (choosing the proletariat over the middle class or choosing “intellectuals” over entrepreneurs).…To say that in a planned society the Rule of Law cannot hold is… not to say that the actions of the government will not be legal or that such a society will necessarily be lawless. It means only that the use of the government’s coercive powers will no longer be limited and determined by pre-established rules. The law can, and to make a central direction of economic activity possible must, legalize what to all intents and purposes remains arbitrary action. If the law says that such a board or authority may do what it pleases, anything that a board or authority does is legal – but its actions are certainly not subject to the Rule of Law. By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal, and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable (Law destructive of Human Rights).“ F. A. Hayek
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/05/obama_hayek_central_planning_a.html
“The Decline and fall of the USA is complete nonsense, of course. Whenever some moron spouts off on how the American age is over, just ask yourself; “Self, who replaces America?”
The EU is on the Road to Serfdom through maximum government (Fascist or Marxist or some combination). The New World Order will be a collection of totalitarian states led by the UN; nations where government of the people, by the people, for the people has perished from the earth; nations ruled by a tyranny of the minority; a worldwide oligarchy.
“It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan…. If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB .. not yet .. but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organisation will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a KGB with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes .. two of which are particularly worrying, one is called racism, another is called xenophobia. No criminal court on earth defines anything like this as a crime. So it is a new crime, and we have already been warned. Someone from the British government told us that those who object to uncontrolled immigration from the Third World will be regarded as racist and those who oppose further European integration will be regarded as xenophobes.” Vladimir Bukovksy
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/865
“To a great degree the political class owes its existence to problems, real or perceived.”
“Even the names of the four ministries by which we are governed exhibits a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts; the ministry of peace concerns its self with war; the ministry of truth with lies; the ministry of love with torture: and the ministry of plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink; for it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely.” George Orwell – 1984
“Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure; the same worship of a semi-Divine leader; the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare. It follows that the three super-states not only cannot conquer one another, but would gain no advantage by doing so. On the contrary, so long as they remain in conflict they prop one another up like three sheaves of corn… Their lives are dedicated to world conquest, but they also know that it is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly and without victory… The war therefore… is merely an imposture… For though it is unreal it is not meaningless; it eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War it will be seen is now a purely internal affair… In our own day we are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects; and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.” George Orwell – 1984
Eurasia will soon be called Ummah, otherwise the superstates are being lined up along the lines of Oceania and Eastasia. Only the American Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution can prevent us from becoming part of Oceania.
121. Greifer
You are aware that marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. were fully legal for the vast majority of this countries history.
124. Charles
Since the Bush tax cuts caused a substantial increase in tax revenue, it’s a fair bet that we are on the wrong side of the curve.
The evidence that has been analyzed from tax changes in the US and other countries indicates that the peak of the Laffer curve is somewhere around the 10% to 12% range.
Anyone who believes that a tax increase at this time is going to increase taxes, has not been paying attention the last 50 years.
123. Agoraphobic Plumber
I seriously doubt that anyone working in that store, blackout or no, was a computer programmer. With the exception of the teenagers working after school jobs, most of them lack any recognizeable skills whatsever, be it diddling with Word, or plowing a field.
Beyond that, a great many people who don’t know how to plow, build a table, whatever, lack that knowledge mainly because at present, gaining such knowledge gains them no advantage in the world as it is today. Should they need to learn how plow, field dress a moose, build a table, whatever, they could, and they could gain an adequate level of skill in a surprisingly short period of time.
“Because it will be too late then to turn back the clock, and the legal framework has already been laid.”
Actually, our government comes with a reset button that turns the clock to 12:00. It happens on demand or automatically whenever the power goes off.
Federal Code changes with the end of each Congress. The rulebook gets a make-over. That is one reason legislation doesn’t take effect immediately. The GPO keeps track of it all forever. That is because Legislation isn’t Law until the courts rule on it. That can take decades or centuries. If the Courts strike down the new Law, the old law goes back into effect. So somebody has to know what the old law was. That somebody is the GPO. They are reasonably current over there and it’s all automated.
A mouse click and a password and any legislation signed by the Usurper vanishes, to be replaced by what preceded it. Once Congress gives the OK, all the new code is replaced by the old code.
What happens out on the street is a different matter, of course.
As that Arizona Sheriff is proving yet again, the Law does not go where enforcement cannot reach. The Sheriff is going to ignore the Judge. He is bragging about it, daring the Judge to do something. We might have our Ft.Sumter here. When it gets down to it, the Sheriff has a lot more guns on his side. For now.
WND Exclusive INVASION USA
Senators warn Obama: ‘No amnesty by presidential fiat’
White House rumored to be planning stay of deportation for millions of illegals
Posted: June 22, 2010
8:43 pm Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
Demonstrators protest against Arizona’s controversial immigration law before marching to the State Capitol in Phoenix May 29, 2010. Angered by Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, several thousand protesters descended on a park in central Phoenix early on Saturday, urging Washington to block the new state law they call racist. REUTERS/Joshua Lott (UNITED STATES – Tags: POLITICS SOCIETY CIVIL UNREST)
Amid buzz that President Obama may be seeking to parole or “defer action” on millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., eight Republican senators are warning the president not to advance any such plan.
“There’s a lot we can agree on when it comes to dealing with the immigration problems in the United States, but this appears to be amnesty in disguise, and is simply an attempt to circumvent Congress,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement.
Grassley and Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; David Vitter, R-La.; Jim Bunning, R-Ky.; James Inhofe, R-Okla.; Thad Cochran, R-Miss.; and Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., signed a letter to the president dated June 21.
“We understand that there’s a push for your administration to develop a plan to unilaterally extend either deferred action or parole to millions of illegal aliens in the United States,” they wrote in their letter. “We understand that the administration may include aliens who have willfully overstayed their visas or filed for benefits knowing that they will not be eligible for a status for years to come.”
“Deferred action” is granted by the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a short-term suspension of deportation hearings for illegal aliens. With “deferred action,” illegals are often allowed to apply for employment-authorization cards.
The lawmakers noted that “deferred action” and parole are discretionary actions reserved for “individual cases that present unusual, emergent or humanitarian circumstances.”
“Deferred action and parole were not intended to be used to confer a status or offer protection to large groups of illegal aliens, even if the agency claims that they look at each case on a ‘case-by-case’ basis,” they wrote.
Eight senators write letter to President Obama, urging him to abandon any plans for “deferred action.”
The senators agreed that the nation’s immigration laws “need to be fixed,” but they added, “While deferred action and parole are executive-branch authorities, they should not be used to circumvent Congress’ constitutional authority to legislate immigration policy, particularly as it relates to the illegal population in the United States.”
Urging Obama for assurance that he has no plans to use either authority, the senators requested that he clarify the administration’s intentions immediately.
“The Administration would be wise to abandon any plans for deferred action or parole for the illegal population,” they wrote. “Such a move would further erode the American public’s confidence in the federal government and its commitment to securing the borders and enforcing the laws already on the books.”
(Story continues below)
As WND reported, former Obama adviser and SEIU executive vice president Eliseo Medina explained that granting citizenship to millions of illegal aliens would expand the “progressive” electorate and help ensure a “progressive” governing coalition for the long term.
“We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters,” Medina said during his speech at a June 2009 Washington conference for the liberal America’s Future Now!
Medina said that during the presidential election in November 2008, Latinos and immigrants “voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up.”
“Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three? Can you imagine 8 million new voters who care about our issues and will be voting? We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”
At what point does it have to descend to before we can label it as treason? Ah–but the Progressives have framed the terms of the debate. The very concept of “treason” is so provincial and backward. The truly Enlightened folks are citizens “of da whirl.” Treason cannot be possible when nation-states have been abolished.
136. MarkTheGreat
The evidence that has been analyzed from tax changes in the US and other countries indicates that the peak of the Laffer curve is somewhere around the 10% to 12% range.
I checked with Wikipedia They put the number at 70%. I figured that since they’re liberal rag — that number was too high.
Where do you get your number from.
MarkTheGreat@137:
“Beyond that, a great many people who don’t know how to plow, build a table, whatever, lack that knowledge mainly because at present, gaining such knowledge gains them no advantage in the world as it is today. Should they need to learn how plow, field dress a moose, build a table, whatever, they could, and they could gain an adequate level of skill in a surprisingly short period of time.”
I hope you’re right. I hope ALL people who have skillsets designed “for the 21st century” also are able to plow a field, or dress a moose or are able to do a lot of other things. However, based on my experience, they don’t have a prayer, if it comes to that. And the ones who don’t are going to be banging on my door when the time comes.
Make you a deal…all of your people (the ones who don’t know how to plow or dress a moose or deer) leave me alone completely, no matter how hungry or desperate they are, and I will leave them alone completely. Deal?
Of course not. Because when people are hungry…well, every deal they ever made is out the window. Nor would I withhold aid…if we have it to give.
People who are in shock, and have done the same things all their life, will NOT just magically pick up the things they need to know to live in a new world where a whole new skill set is needed to survive. That’s magical thinking. It takes time. I bet you think that farmers are dumb people who just couldn’t figure out the things they need to survive in a technological world too, right?
Farmers, at least the ones I know, are smart, hard-working people who love the life they are living. You strike me as the type of coastal person (or flyover person who lives in a big city who wishes that flyover country could be more like the coastal people) who would vastly discount the skill and planning it takes to successfully raise a crop. I can assure you…it’s hard. It takes YEARS of practice. Nobody can do it the first year. NOBODY.
This is ridiculous. Niall Ferguson is almost — but not quite — Britain’s Noam Chomsky. … Can I call you conservatards?
Yes you can. But the “conservatard” put-down no longer carries the weight of the Voice of Command. The argument goes on. But what has changed is the former feeling of automatic superiority the left could automatically assume. Once upon a time mounting the ever-ready high horse would give one the whip hand. But the high-horse has become a midget pony. This is significant and changes everything. The left wing argument is, and ought to be put forward daily, like any other. There was an era, not too long ago, when it could also effectively convey a superior social position, imbue the speaker with a greater implied knowledge and suggest sophisticated advantages over his opponent than it now does.
This was largely achieved by stereotyping, the cumulative effect of thousands of TV shows and movies and articles in which all the conservatives were portrayed as morons and all the liberals were correspondingly depicted as caring, brave and deep thinkers. That was a large part of the attraction of liberalism. It was a cool pose. There were smart liberals. But even if you weren’t smart you could pass for it by wearing the threads. The reality was that you had morons and geniuses, sinners and saints on both sides. That is a consequence of statistics and should have been obvious to anyone. But culture can create stereotypes both racial and political.
And the stereotype was of the liberal Martin Luther King and the conservative Bull Conner. And even though Bull Conner was in fact the Democrat and Martin Luther King the Republican, if you exchanged the voices, you could alter the stereotype.
You can actually “hear” exactly when this Voice of Command is invoked: a combination of bemusement, despicion and contempt that you can mark in movie scenes or talk show programs. This is when the “conservatard” is put in place. Then everybody reacts as if on cue, the sneering laughter comes with the precision of an audio track. And even the conservative knows what to do — hang his head down or respond incoherently about his service in the military or quote the Bible about hellfire and sulphur. That makes the laughter even louder. He knows. He’s seen the movie too.
This has changed. And this atmospheric change is the most telling fact at all. It’s a danger sign in fact. Conservatives no longer cross the road to let Mr. Liberal stroll by on the sidewalk. A dangerous feeling of equality has crept into the debate which is making many members of the cultural elite uncomfortable. The deference is gone.
That doesn’t mean the argument is ended. The truth is the monopoly of no man. The unfortunate consequence of that for some liberals is that bandying the word “conservatard” becomes a description of their own mental limitations, the ultimate curved-barrel verbal shotgun.
141. Agoraphobic Plumber
Actually I live in Iowa.
As to farmers, they have to very technologically savy these days. There are more computers in your average combine these days than is found in a dozen offices.
“Nobody can do it the first year. NOBODY.”
Are you saying, that the first year, every single plant dies? Pretty hard to stay in business with that kind of model.
If society ever collapses to the point that you fear, most of those farmers are going to be lost as well. No more fuel for that combine, do they know how to hitch a mule to a plow? Do they even have an old style mule/horse drawn plow?
Fertilizers, all the modern ones gone, they have to learn how to make the best use of that horse manure. Pesticides, all gone as well. Better learn how to make a scarecrow, and fast.
Farming has changed a lot over the last 100 years or so. Your belief that farmers could easily revert is quaint, but I don’t know how accurate it is.
You need to stop making so many assumptions about people who disagree with you. Not pretty at all.
#84 – LFMayor wholeheartedly agree with your post. There’s a lot of steel in this country which the elites are quite rightfully afraid of. Steel that’s not been used is still steel.
As for China – it is in the nature of hostile regimes to push until they find steel. The idea that China is even a shadow of the US, even on a good (Chinese) day, is laughable. Look at any of the stats – what are all those people going to do when they have to quit eating American and Australian wheat – go back to five year plans? Who else produces anywhere near that amount of food for the world? Its the American farmer that holds the Chinese government by the testicles, and the PRC oligarchs know it.
Charles Rangel to get “Reprimand”
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/07/ethics-panel-recommends-reprimand-for-rep-charles-rangel/1
That’s it, a reprimand.
Please Ross Doughtat, tell us again there’s no ruling class?
127. Tcobb
Actually I just heard it on Fox news. Here’s another link
GOP blasts Obama over ‘amnesty’ plan
DES MOINES, Iowa – An internal Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has created a firestorm on Capitol Hill over revelations the Obama administration is considering sidestepping Congress to grant illegal immigrants “amnesty” by executive fiat.
Make you a deal…all of your people (the ones who don’t know how to plow or dress a moose or deer) leave me alone completely, no matter how hungry or desperate they are, and I will leave them alone completely. Deal?
Get real Agoraphobic Plumber. The whole idea of the “Progressive State” is predicated upon stealing and oppression in the name of stopping stealing and oppression. It won’t, and it can’t, work without it. The now defunct Berlin Wall is a testament to this. You cannot have socialism without slavery. The trick is to give the slaves a designation other than “slave,” and to make everyone believe there is a difference between the two terms. That is the “Progressives” dilemma.
People who are in shock, and have done the same things all their life, will NOT just magically pick up the things they need to know to live in a new world where a whole new skill set is needed to survive.
Picture Paris Hilton in that show, what was it called, where they made her do stuff like work on a farm. How’d that work out?
You would get the same result from millions of youngsters today, who have only a fraction of her wealth and priviledge, yet much the same attitude. The response to “you need to do this” would be “gross! no way!”
Granted, empty bellies would rapidly change minds. But man oh man, we are starting way behind, and if it comes to that, it won’t be pretty.
I’m one of those guys that does Word and Powerpoint for a living, but I spent a lot of time in the mountains as a kid, and at least I know how to shoot a rabbit and catch a fish and plant tomatoes (which is not the same as planting a crop) and light a fire. But for hordes of urban and suburban kids, even the idea of such things is utterly alien to them. Most of them won’t be able to do it. They will succumb to despair and die.
Imagine the first winter in New York City when the food has stopped arriving and the power’s out. Good lord, they can’t even COOK their own food, much less grow it or gather it.
The girls will survive better than the hapless metro-boys, because at least the cute ones will have a chance of becoming part of a strong man’s harem (channeling Whiskey). The metro boys will disappear in no time flat. And those objects of endless sophisticate mockery — the Boy Scouts — would find themselves much in demand everywhere they went.
Greifer & Agoraphobic Plumber,
And I’m yet another. I grew up in the Twin Cities. Subsequently I’ve been a refugee across the state border for several years, but have spent half a life in Lutefisk Land. Drop me an email: stogramov-at-msn-dot-com. You betcha.
141
What do modern farmers know about farming in the absence of fuel, fertilizer, seed, water or some combination of the above?
It’s easy to visualize some hypothetical future, but nobody ever gets it right.
Skip,
I’m not wishing for an American decline. I think a large enough remnant of people that are trying to make things work exists so that, if the elites will simply step aside, things will get back on track. We’re carrying a lot of people who run the disability/welfare racket and are content to exist, but we can carry them all the same, for a while anyway.
But the argument that ‘We can’t decline because there’s nobody to replace us’ is pretty hollow. Nobody really replaced the Western Roman Empire once it well and truly fell, not for hundreds of years. The idea that the Forum would be buried under sediment and plants would be just mind-boggling to the Romans of Caesar Augustus’ time, and yet a thousand years later there it was. There doesn’t need to be anybody to replace us, we can always limp into obscurity whilst being ridden by the elites so bent on equality that low mediocrity is all they can manage. Lots of things can be forgotten, there are truths even now that will not be acknowledged for political reasons, like the fact that men and women are biologically different, fathers and mothers are not interchangable, people do not receive a uniform set of mental and physical gifts at birth according to Congressional mandate. A couple of generations that cannot acknowledge those things will lead to further generations that cannot identify them. When you’ve lost common sense, quantum mechanics and nanotechnology and all the other nifty stuff we’re working on disappears in a poof, from a historical time period. Heck, it took how long to rediscover higher math, waterproof cement and indoor plumbing?
We have not failed. But we can, and this government is making it more likely, pushing us ever closer to the tipping point.
131. wws
HOWEVER – this created the seeds for recovery, because when Reagan finally began to stimulate growth through his tax policies, interest rates were able to drop dramatically. It was the combination of lowered tax rates PLUS falling interest rates that combined to create the great drop in overhead costs which spurred the economic boom of the 80’s and 90’s.
………..
Well, you don’t want to forget that there was also the Saudi induced dirt cheap oil prices.
My dad got me turned on to Foxfire magazine back in the day, and we collected a mess of them. Foxfire set out to chronicle, to preserve, and to transmit knowledge of Applachian life and folk ways from the subsistence days. It is an impressive and encyclopedic trove of knowledge and skills showing how people with nothing lived off the land. Your given urbanite is not going to thrive in these conditions, and he isn’t going to come up to speed very quickly, either. Ever tried to build a fire using sticks? It’s hard, very hard, even if you’ve got all the right principles and techniques in your mind’s eye, to pull that off. The learning curve on so much of this stuff is steeper than it might seem.
I doubt it’ll slip into a Mad Max world, but if it does what might save the moderns is the social nature of man. I imagine it will break down kinda like Survivor with tribes of folks who individually would die off pretty fast but collectively might organize and muster enough skills to survive. We’d have a balkanized, tribal and soon to be warring society though, in quick order. Again, it probably won’t happen, but it’d be good to have some guns and tons of ammo, just in case.
The metro boys will disappear in no time flat
Come on– Barney Frank will always have plenty of room for the cute ones.
Wretchard @ July 30, 2010 – 1:53 pm:
You are spot on. You’re hearing doubt creep into the once omniscient ABC (Oz) reports on the fabo new PM Julia Gee’s campaign efforts… The media’s 360 spin on the Sherrod debacle… the general consternation of the elties with the people’s increasing unwillingness to go along with the program… to paraphrase the general in Black Hawk Down, they are admitting to themselves daily… “Gentlemen, we have just lost the initiative.”
(I’m late to this post and have not read the preceding 150+ comments.)
The Codevilla essay is arresting not because of its originality but because it simply captures the common mood in a concise way. Its greatest virtue is unoriginality. It says everything we already know. The bell sounded was already cast in the foundry of public opinion. All Professor Codevilla did was take out a hammer and tap it. Five years ago the ideas in it would probably not have occurred to him. Had he written the essay as little as two years ago he would have been laughed to scorn.
It’s true that I’ve muttered under my breath most of what Codevilla says. The great virtue is that he says it in a cohesive way that, together with economic proposals like Paul Ryan’s, can be the basis of a political program. He gives intellectual structure and focus to the inchoate feelings expressed by the Tea Parties et al. That kind of structure is necessary–but, alas, far from sufficient–if American decline is to be halted and reversed.
Five years ago the ideas in it would probably not have occurred to him. Some of Codevilla’s other writing is available online and at Amazon. You do not refer to it in support of this assertion.
Richard Fernandez, I have not been your regular reader but I have always been a respectful one. The tone of the paragraph I quoted strikes me as unworthy of you.
House (dem)leadership details recess strategy
gs,
Considering our host has referred to the article in his posts three times in the last 13 days, I don’t think he has negative feelings toward it. It’s entirely possible Dr. Codevilla has thought this for years, but it’s far less likely that this same essay would have caused such a splash were it released five years or two years ago. There is something in my conceptual middle ear that has told me things are tilting beyond a normal axis in our country for a while, Codevilla’s essay is the equivalent of a turn-bank indicator that suggests yes, things are tilting, and this is an explanation of why. For a long time, I thought it was about trust, and our increasing unwillingness to proffer it to people who have proved themselves unworthy of it. When you can’t give trust to the government, you realize you’re on your own and so gold prices go up, ammo sales skyrocket, and suddenly preparedness looks a lot less silly. Withdrawing trust from society is like pulling the rods out of a nuclear reactor — minor changes until things start going seriously wrong, and quickly.
The other issue where Dr. Codevilla’s conciseness may have been aided by current events is the Tea Party movement, something that appeared in the last two years. It’s not just the Red-Blue divide that occupied the media since 2000. It really is different than that, and the Tea Parties show that in clearer relief.
For the record, I like Professor Codevilla’s essay very much. Not necessarily because I agree with everything it says but because it strikes me as true in the very largest of senses. I think a lot of people have said to themselves, “I wish I wrote that” and that envy speaks for itself.
But I think it would be a mistake and demeaning of Codevilla’s actual accomplishment if we were to think that the impact of the essay was solely due to his literary skill. His logical and literary abilities, those considerable, do not account for the influence it wielding. Something else is going on. And that something else is timing.
The greatest skill a speaker can have is timing. It is to articulate a thought that has been hovering around the room, that has been suggested by the debaters on the stage, but never quite in a definite form. To snatch that idea out of the air and give a memorable shape is a greater skill than mere articulateness. That was Professor Codevilla’s achievement. He could not produce the moment, nobody can; but he recognized it. And it is that skill which is on display in this essay. It is an essay whose time has come.
So please don’t think I’m dissing Professor Codevilla when I say he could not have written the essay two years earlier. He wrote it, I think, at the earliest possible moment it could have been written. And yes, I do sympathize with those who wish they had written it themselves. But they should console themselves in this: most of us already did in bits and pieces, but lacked the skill and sustained narrative power to put it all down at once.
wretchard @ #159,
“…but lacked the skill and sustained narrative power to put it all down at once.”
I’ve always been stunned by your ability to utterly, but gently, dismiss an argument. May you enlighten yourself, and us, for decades to come. Thank you.
# 66
The Decline and fall of the USA is complete nonsense, of course. Whenever some moron spouts off on how the American age is over, just ask yourself; “Self, who replaces America?”
Start thinking about that answer and it quickly becomes obvious that those seeing the collapse of the USA as imminent are actually doing a bit of wishful thinking.
Any other nation put forth as replacing the USA is even more flawed then America.
Uh, it is not a nonsense. The point of the matter is not whether US is declining and will fall but whether people in US (and elsewhere) think that US is declining and will fall.
Many systems which replaced other systems were (at the beginning) more flawed than the system they replaced. The system that replaced Roman Empire was more flawed that imperial system of Rome. The communist system which replaced capitalism in Russia was definitely not better then capitalism/tsarist rule but some people thought it better and so for a time it replaced capitalism… ….and so on and so forth. The flawlessness or flaws of the said system do not make good prediction whether the system will survive or not, the best prediction whether the system can survive is whether the majority of people think the system is strong. – if they believe in the system then the system can survive, if not – probably it will not.
Some people say that there was conflict in the US before so the present one is not much different. But I tend to disagree. Bad economic situation of USA, much better economic and political situation in China, rising Islamic ideological movement, slow economic/political decline of Europe and very bad decisions of the US ruling parties make the present situation different.
#114/144
The question is: What does China want?
China want primacy and the US stands in its way – at least that is what the Chinese communist party teach in primary and secondary schools, in the party schools (CCP is, in theory, meritocracy) and in major universities.
“China is not happy” a book about China conflict with USA was bestseller in China.
Thank you for the response, Richard Fernandez (and Darren). For the record on my part, a perhaps suboptimal choice of phrasing in a single paragraph does not dilute the respect I’ve acquired for you over the years. Please continue your valuable work.
OT: I just clicked on a random selection of PJM posts. All except yours allow direct reply to individual comments. Don’t know if that’s a decision on your part, but thought I’d mention it.
Never in history has an ultra-dominant power left the stage without warfare — and a lot of it.
So…
Pushing America off her pedestal is a terrifying prospect — for everyone else!
She is at once a great island power with a crushing naval superiority…
And, a staggering continental power with absolutely no consequential nearby military rivals…
She exports culture on a scale never before known…
She exports food and food technology — far and away a world dominant position…
Hyper-dominant military-industrial power and potential. Able to use virtually all of its potential in expeditionary operations. No other major power able to move at all without American tolerance. Extremely wide ranging military-diplomatic relations with virtually every other power. Controls essentially all the oceans of the world all the time against all comers. Can single handedly shut down oceanic trade at will. Can destroy any blockage attempts at will. Counter-force opponents normally restricted to the illiterate…
Preferred mode of war ranges between complete occupation of enemy lands and destruction of hostile government or total war.
Previous operations against Axis Powers proved that America could fight in two major theaters at once while supporting all Allies with staggering economic inputs — especially military requirements. Also able to re-configure entire economies on the fly, and provide enough liquid fuels for civilian and military operations on an unheard of scale.
Currently able to support this by exporting paper and electronic money.
Even able to survive a Marxist-muslim racist Resident intent upon dissolution of the Union.
The bulk of the planet wants to move there. Only the successful want to exfiltrate.
Too many signature inventions, by Americans and immigrants, exist to list.
World dominating market for most goods.
——-
Yeah, when you think about it: America is finished.
gs…
We prefer to stream comments and allow direct references.
Nesting comments is a nightmare for the Belmont Club.
It was tried. It was a bust.
Cowboy @ 153: “what might save the moderns is the social nature of man”
Undoubtedly. We each tend to focus on the survival of the individual, having skin in that game ourselves. But communities will far outlast individuals. Still, it is a reasonable guess that membership in the community of Oprah viewers is not going to count for much in the aftermath of the Big One.
By analogy with the Roman Praetorian Guard, the community to watch is the Secret Service; that community could remove a US government in a heartbeat. And that would be the hopelessly optimistic best case scenario.
Assuming the Political Class keep heading in the same old dumb direction, the community best placed to survive is the US military — any number of individual elements within which has the physical capability to eliminate an out-of-control Political Class before breakfast. They also have secure bases, self-defense capabilities, logistical capabilities. The only question is whether the military could act cohesively to replace a failed Political Class (in the Turkish mode), or would fracture.
If the military fractures, there still are the religious communities around which people would organize and survive, ranging from the Mormons nationwide to individual black churches. And whatever happens, the community of the Amish will survive.
I used to worry about collapse, but the Political Class has tried my patience once too often of late. Now the challenges of figuring out how to restart a city’s sewage treatment plant seems much more attractive than watching yet more rounds of Political Class incompetence and corruption. Wretchard is right — something is changing, and you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.
Will they allow us to continue our Belmont conversations in the concentration camps?
This is off-topic, but has anyone seen Subotai Bahadur lately?
(Great post and comment thread, by the way. I haven’t had anything to add, so I’ve just been reading.)
Speaking of missing persons, where is the resident poet laureate? Been looking forward to a Walt-authored villanelle on Codavilla.
tomw @ 102: Didn’t Heinlein write about a product called “PsychoHistory”
That would be Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series in which Hari Seldon invents PsychoHistory, predicts the fall of (the galactic) empire, and establishes two foundations to preserve culture and shorten the interregnum.
The image of the little queen from Newton pitching a hissy fit over a discount for the Fire Island ferry is just too delicious.
I can also envision a whole new series of lectures on the international rubber chicken circuit: Providing for a National Defense in the post-American World: Turning Yesterday’s Antagonists into Today’s Allies. How far we’ve come in the past couple of years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPDE-yFH_WM
Professor Codevilla is indeed a fascinating writer with whose interest in history is greatly influenced by the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville. While giving Tocqueville his due, Codevilla’s own concepts are easy to read, understand and adopt. I just started reading his long essay, “Character of Nations.” He ends the essay with these hopeful words for America:
Mad Fiddler @ 166:
http://bartleby.net/19/2/13.html
Try line #74.
OT: I just clicked on a random selection of PJM posts. All except yours allow direct reply to individual comments. Don’t know if that’s a decision on your part, but thought I’d mention it.
gs – blert beat me to the reply but I will add. As blert mentioned, we did try nesting comments for a while. Threads became unreadable; you didn’t know where the most recent comments were, and in long threads you gave up looking for them.
Commenters reverted to linear posting on their own intiative, and asked Wretchard to kill the nesting feature. This was a “by popular demand” action, not a unilateral decision on Wretchard’s part.
165. Kinuachdrach
Now the challenges of figuring out how to restart a city’s sewage treatment plant seems much more attractive than watching yet more rounds of Political Class incompetence and corruption.
………..
Actually, a big research issue in municipal water circles is how to turn municipal sewage from cost centers to profit centers. They’re already pulling methane from it. Electricity and oil are the next two energy outputs. From what I’ve seen they’re about 1/2 of the way there. imho in 2-3 years the algae to oil business is going to become cost competitive. One of the side effects of that may well be to make municipal sewage disposal a profitable business.
Carl @ 96
Glenn @ 103
I spent 20 years in big metropolises until I moved out here to “Flyover Country.”
Back in my Big City days, I was a leftist dupe and very involved in the peace movement, in which I and my well-meaning peacenik colleagues were constantly trying to keep out the communists who kept trying to subvert our well-meaning, naive little peace groups. When I say communist, I mean the Workers World Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Communist Party USA and, worst of all, the Maoist fanatics of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
After I moved up here to rural Kansas, anytime I would mention American communists, people would look at me as if I were talking seriously about the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy: They simply DID NOT BELIEVE that communists even exist–at least, not in the United States of America.
However, this is finally changing, thanks in huge part to Glenn Beck, who has a big listenership around here. I will be forever grateful to that man for FINALLY getting some folks around here to admit that maybe, just maybe, there really are communists in America–and they really are DELIBERATELY trying to bring this country crashing down around our heads.
Skip @ 138
Sheriff Joe is simply applying the law as decided by the Supreme Court, which, I believe, trumps a District Judge’s stay.
#176. Kathy from Kansas
With all due respect, the politically correct label for communists is “Progressives.” Calling them communists is like calling gays “queers.” It just isn’t done in polite society anymore.
And that says a lot about the current state of polite society.
#177
It is a well known fact that judges cannot make mistakes, so when different judges have different opinions, then one of them is in error. Which is somehow different from making a mistake.
It looks like either the Democratic Judge either decided that Muehler v Mena didn’t apply or she didn’t know about it. I suspect the former. Or it could have just been a way for her to pass the buck and avoid a ruling that would gain her nothing and cost her a lot down the road.
Regardless, the Sheriff is sworn by Law to respect her opinion, no matter how much he disagrees with it.
I suspect the ruling will be overturned.
It might not be, since the Muehler v Mena might not apply.
This case is a 10th amendment case, while the Muehler v Mena sounds like a 5th amendment case. One is over the rights of an accused person while the other is over State vs Federal rights.
Saying the police have the right to ask for ID IS NOT the same as saying the Executive Branch has the right to prevent a State government from protecting it’s borders.
The Constitution gives the Executive Branch the authority and responsibility to protect the nation. The Question is ‘Do the states have the right to protect their citizens if the Feds refuse to? I suspect the Courts will say yes. It is a standard legal theory that when a right is abandoned, then taken up by another party, that right then belongs to the party that takes it up. Going back several centuries to Merry Old England.
As I have posted before, the simple solution is to call out the militia. Have the Gov. deputize about 40,000 militia and let them camp on the border and hunt wetbacks. One way or the other, that will jump the wagon out of the ruts.
She could even make up for lost tourist revenue by charging 10$ for a hunting license and letting Yankees come down to hunt wetbacks too. Might have to set bag limits, since after about 2 days of being hunted like rabbits, there wouldn’t be very many trying to sneak across.
Calling out the militia sounds great, but think of the economic cost of pulling 40,000 reservists away from their regular productive jobs, and putting them on border guard duty.
The state legislature ought to pass a law deducting the cost from any taxes otherwise payable to the U.S. Treasury for federal levies.
Folks on the left are very familiar with the concept of a “rent strike.” (As in “We’ve deducted the cost of the new roof from the next 6 months’ rent.”)
Blert:”Yeah, when you think about it: America is finished.”
Too often people forget that America has chosen, through the efforts of our progressive Ruling Elite, to restrain our military efforts to the equivalent of fighting most of the time with both hands tied behind our backs. Your long post reminds us of that fact. If America would ever allow herself to use the full force of our military capabilities against our adversaries and enemies without concern for some self loathing progressive idea of wartime etiquette, those enemies would be cut down to size in short order. America still has many more options that our adversaries if only we have the will, courage and fortitude to use them.
Gadfly/172: Codevilla’s The Character of Nations is not just a long essay (maybe you were reading an excerpt somewhere?) but a full-fledged book published in 1997.
“The Character of Nations”
It’s excellent. Particularly interesting is the middle portion of the book surveying the regimes of various countries, the common theme being the debilitating effects of government coercion in economic life. It’s been several years since I read it but iirc Codevilla seems to think that all modern governments foster in their people habits of social and political atrophy. (Read the book for further elaboration on this point; it’s terribly interesting.) I don’t know exactly how optimistic he really is about America’s prospects, but the very last sentence on the last page – as you quoted, “Even in America, there is only one regime at a time” – underscores the crucial point: this current regime has got to go!
In addition to ridding ourselves of the current regime, government itself must shrink, and shrink drastically. Somehow government has to be stripped of the power to bestow goodies on special interests/favored groups; otherwise, nothing will change and we’ll just keep on heading down the road to the abyss. If we can’t find the will and the way to shrink the size and power of government, then there really is no hope. With so many people now accustomed to turning to government for aid and/or favors, well, that’s a lot of people in need of redirection.
BTW, I have found out from personal experience over the past couple of springs/summers just exactly how unbelievably DIFFICULT it is to grow your own food. I tell you, the ground is truly cursed. Not to mention all the bugs and blights.
I planted potatoes… the voles did not go hungery.
I planted a peach tree… forget organic gardening — every pest known to peach found an isolated tree — and ruined my ‘crop.’
EVERY planting since childhood went to the ‘environment.’
Even GREEN tomatoes don’t last enough to be ‘fried.’
As my grandfather explained…
Farming is a …..
——–
For further insight view UNFORGIVEN.
I am immediately suspicious when an “expose” of the ruling class appears in MSM, which is of course, run by the ruling class. (How else would they control the “great unwashed”.)
So while I welcome this essay for the details it may provide, I feel that there must be something in here that deflects one from the full, and thus real, truth of the situation.
One only has to look at this technique of deceive and rule, such as the rulers’ tool of labour unions, to see how they use one ostensible thing, to actually achieve the opposite of what it is actually supposed to be about.
I must confess that first reading Codevilla’s essay fills me with profound respect. I am amazed that such an article has made its way into print in main stream media.
His perceptions and conclusions are very similar to those of Dr Sean Gabb, Director of the UK Libertarian Alliance, in his book ‘Cultural Revolution, Cultural War’, published in 2007.
May Angelo Codevilla go from strength to strength, and may the ruling elites deception, control and exploitation of humanity be exposed in ever greater detail!
Codevilla’s essay was a good read. I mostly agree that NEITHER political party represents the wishes of the electorate. When going to the polls, and upset with “the ruling class” since BOTH parties voted for the Wall Street bailout, there just is no choice. Why even vote?
storm rider
“Someone from the British government told us that those who object to uncontrolled immigration from the Third World will be regarded as racist and those who oppose further European integration will be regarded as xenophobes.” Vladimir Bukovksy”
actually those that push to uncontrolled immigration from the third world are the eurosceptic Brits, ie last Cameron discourse in Turkey
John B -
Codevilla’s essay appeared in The American Spectator. I could be wrong, but I don’t think this publication qualifies, even by a stretch of the imagination, as being part of “the mainstream media.”
You are right to be wary of & skeptical towards the MSM and what they proffer.
But it also helps to draw accurate boundaries as to who constitutes MSM and who does not. Admittedly one cannot always do so with X-acto knife precision, but “publication that predates the web, therefore is not alt-media, therefore must be MSM” is a clumsy and erroneous boundary.
Generally speaking, a good place to start is by asking, “Does the organization consistently offer conservative and/or libertarian views?”
With the MSM having been dominated by and selling leftist propaganda for something like four decades now (and some individual media organizations, longer than that), an institution or publication that consistently voices and backs opposing political philosophies is a good candidate for being non-MSM. One should not stop the credibility check there, however, but as a starting point to divide A from non-A, this is probably the most useful question one can ask.
Just a very short list of some opposed-to-the-left publications that have been around for a while:
American Spectator – since 1924
National Review – since 1955
Human Events – 1944 (Ronald Reagan’s favorite)
Reason – 1968
Commentary swung right in the 1970s and has, from what I understand, been pretty consistent since then.
The Weekly Standard (1995), First Things (1990) and World Magazine (1986) are relative newcomers but are not Net 2.0 babies.
And the Christian Science Monitor has been what I guess you might call a loose cannon since 1908.
As an aside, there really is no excuse for anyone with an internet connection these days to NOT be aware of stories that are getting buried & distorted by the MSM. Sad to say, though, I do have conservative co-workers who are unaware of both ClimateGate and Journolist, two of the biggest (if not THE biggest) media duty-dereliction scandals of the past year. My co-workers don’t find because they don’t seek.
We have reached a stage in American life where, to echo L3, citizens can’t afford to coast along anymore. It isn’t just political engagement. It’s basic political AWARENESS. And political awareness, these days, if it’s going to be even semi-accurate, has to involve a high degree of MEDIA awareness.
The MSM are the American version of Pravda. It really is as bad as that, and anyone who thinks that’s an exaggeration hasn’t been paying attention.
106. eon:
You must be as well read as Dr. Victor Davis Hanson.
I believe Obama will not be satisfied until he creates the United States into a slum, of which he will reign as slum lord, of course.
Tcobb@127
Foxnews reports it; but there’s NO OUTRAGE!
Just think. This adminstration is spending taxpayer money to fund a dept. I’ve (anyone?) never heard of, to detail how amnesty can be granted to 20M illegals, absent Congressional authorization (actually in spite of it) and in direct contravention of the Constitutional rights of US citizens. Knowingly!
The person(s) who ordered this activity should be fired and prosecuted, along with any others who influenced / facilitated the decision, along with the staff who were tasked.
How is this activity not TREASON? Wouldn’t this same team happily plan the roundup of undesireables, and the takeover of anything necessary.
106. eon
No country needs a Cromwell, period.
………….
Colonial Puritans from Massachusetts went over to England on Cromwell’s side.
Cromwell like the Hugoenauts was a Calvinist. Both were defeated. As were Calvinists all over Europe. The German Swiss French Swedish Dutch Scottish and Puritan churches in America were all Calvinist. They were the losers of the wars of the 1600′s. America at the time of the revolution was Calvinist
The Brits originally called the war of independence the Presbyterian parson’s war.
The Calvinism took a political form when it was codified in Madison’s federalist papers.
Even assuming a conviction, let us all understand that Rangel will be re-elected with 89% of the vote. The citizen in his district is quite as corrupt as he is. There lies the problem with the future of democracy.
Apparently the Declaration of Independence is to a large degree “Calvinism.” If “Calvinism” means each individual (as opposed to the King – or the Pigs of Animal Farm); naturally possesses his/her equal, God-given, unalienable rights to life, liberty and property – creative pursuit of happiness, then three cheers for Calvinism and the Presbyterian Parsons. I think “Calvinism” (Code for Americanism) is preferable to Marxism (State Atheism), Fascism (State Paganism) or Monarchy (State Church).
“Calvinism was undoubtedly the ideological engine of the American revolution. The King’s advisers in Britain virtually called it a “Presbyterian revolt”… The Calvinist Reformation in Geneva swept through France as well and had a powerful impact. The Huguenots, the French Calvinists, became a powerful faction in the nation. They almost prevailed and made France a Calvinist state. Their political leader, Henry the Fourth, the Huguenot King of Navarre converted to Catholicism to unite the nation upon ascending to the throne of France, but his famous Edict of Nantes procured religious liberty for the Calvinists. When a century later Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes it ushered in horrendous persecution of the Huguenots, driving many of them to emigrate and destroying those that remained as a force in the nation. From that point on the Huguenots were a negligible part of French society and France returned to being a strict Catholic state. This set the stage for the religious and civil tyranny that finally erupted in the cataclysm of the French Revolution. To therefore say that the ancien regime under Louis XVI, that supported the colonies in their bid for independence was a Calvinist state is so ridiculous as to be beyond absurd. And to lump the philosophes of the French Revolution, such as Rousseau, with the Calvinist leaders of the American Revolution is a travesty of the truth. The French revolutionaries were secular humanists who wanted to extirpate Christianity, and the French Revolution was an atheistic one that was a prototype for the Bolshevik Revolution that plunged Russia into a secularized tyranny for most of the twentieth century.”
http://www.amprpress.com/calvinism_in_history.htm
“When we come to study the influence of Calvinism as a political force in the history of the United States we come to one of the brightest pages of all Calvinistic history. Calvinism came to America in the Mayflower, and Bancroft, the greatest of American historians, pronounces the Pilgrim Fathers “Calvinists in their faith according to the straightest system.” John Endicott, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; John Winthrop, the second governor of that Colony; Thomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut; John Davenport, the founder of the New Haven Colony; and Roger Williams, the founder of the Rhode Island Colony, were all Calvinists. William Penn was a disciple of the Huguenots. It is estimated that of the 3,000,000 Americans at the time of the American Revolution, 900,000 were of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin, 600,000 were Puritan English, and 400,000 were German or Dutch Reformed. In addition to this the Episcopalians had a Calvinistic confession in their Thirty-nine Articles; and many French Huguenots also had come to this western world. Thus we see that about two-thirds of the colonial population had been trained in the school of Calvin. Never in the world’s history had a nation been founded by such people as these… It seems that the religious persecutions in various European countries had been providentially used to select out the most progressive and enlightened people for the colonization of America… With this background we shall not be surprised to find that the Presbyterians took a very prominent part in the American Revolution. Our own historian Bancroft says: “The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster.” So intense, universal, and aggressive were the Presbyterians in their zeal for liberty that the war was spoken of in England as “The Presbyterian Rebellion.” An ardent colonial supporter of King George III wrote home: “I fix all the blame for these extraordinary proceedings upon the Presbyterians. They have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures. They always do and ever will act against government from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchial spirit which has always distinguished them everywhere…” Prime Minister Horace Walpole said in Parliament, “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson” (John Witherspoon, president of Princeton, signer of Declaration of Independence).”
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/issue06/calvin.htm
How do you stop “it” without an organization?
A leaderless revolt may be what is necessary to get-er-done. Given the ability of walmart to determine where all the fat people live based on sales of large sized apparel, flying underneath the radar is improbable. Peaceful acts of civil disobedience will likely not be tolerated by the progressives. Such tactics work only on those who believe in the notion of due process.
Where a state’s government is a part of the problem, California, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Virgina? well good luck guys. I think the rest should ignore the current federal farce, refuse to participate in a massive display of peaceful civil disobedience. Don’t send in revenues, don’t spend in accordance to federal mandates, don’t stop deporting undocumented or fraudulently documented alien citizens of other nations. Don’t send senators or representatives or staff their offices or the offices of chambers of commerce and recall all officials claiming residence in your state from the District of Columbia.
I don’t know if that would get the message across or just get the attention of the “political class” I refuse to consider them leaders. As centralized as the current system has become it would be interesting to see how many different agencies can be defunded by the states. It would be interesting indeed to figure out ways to effectively defund them. I suppose all notions of projecting American power and influence will just have to be put on hold because while the matter is worked through we won’t be paying attention. Mr Netanyahu you’ll just have to make do, President Lee Myung-bak do what you have to do while we’re so occupied hey do you think the UN will kick us out for that?
Just a few words of encouragement to those whose experience with gardening (as opposed to “farming”) has been otherwise than successful…
There are some good books with astoundingly concise information about growing plants.
Here’s a link to the 2006 edition of the classic Square Foot Gardening that has helped a lot of folks focus their energies. If memory serves, the author Mel Bartholomew was spurred to work out a solution after he’d been stuck with the task of supervising a small town’s “community garden.” He saw that way too many folks started out immediately setting up a garden project that was far too ambitious for them to maintain. Most folks gave up after a few weeks and got nothing for their efforts. Mr. Bartholomew’s solution is to create a small patch divided into individual squares accessible easily from all sides. Within each square, if I recall, you only have to cultivate the central patch with SINGLE plants place in several individually separated portions.
Looking at the cover of this edition clearly shows what the guy is doing. He’s set up individual beds that appear to be about 3 feet on a side, with maybe 10-inch boards. (My experience with boards like that is that they keep out a LOT of seeds and critters.) Within those boxes, he further subdivides with partitions that probably go several inches below the surface to discourage burrowing.
That single plant can become pretty substantial, and provide amazing bounty. The “subdivided squares” concept allows you to work effectively on just a few plants at a time. It tends to provide sufficient distance between adjacent plants that they aren’t starving each other. And when one plant is finished producing and reaches the point it would begin to die, the system allows you easily to start a new plant appropriate to the new season in its place.
In Northern CA foothills we had a LOT of moles. I found that I could protect plants by giving each one a hole about 2 feet across and 2 feet deep LINED WITH GALVANIZED WIRE. The grid or weave of the wire needs to be a little smaller than the size of the critter. All the plants so protected survived the whole season; most of the unprotected plants eventually succumbed to underground root-chompers.
The times I’ve tried gardening, I was between fulltime jobs and had the time to do the necessary preparation and cultivating. It is important to have enough time to work on the garden for several solid hours per week, and check it for a half hour daily to spot developing problems, water & feed, etc.
PREPARING the soil means breaking up the clods and aerating, mixing in lots of organic stuff (say, from a compost heap, where you’ve been tossing all your vegetable waste all winter…), a few bags of potting soil, manure, and/or just plain old top soil. Do this in the late winter or early spring weeks before trying to set any seedlings or seeds in the soil. A few hours of labor on each of 5 or 6 weekends can do wonders to create a really fertile patch.
READ up on the needs of each plant you want to grow, and don’t assume you can bully the thing into satisfying a schedule that’s convenient to YOU. Ditto for the cultivation, nourishment, and WATERING schedules. Some plants will rot with half the moisture that will leave other species gasping for a drink.
Raised Bed gardening – that is, creating a bed that has a protective wall even just a foot or so above your lawn – provides a huge advantage. This seems to work because a lot of seeds carried by wind do so only in the six inch layer immediately above ground level… unless you have a lawn of tall uncut grass!
Covering the soil BETWEEN plants with tough black plastic or even tar paper suppresses weeds very effectively. Once the desired plants are well started with vigorous root systems, grass and weeds growing at the surface can’t compete with’em anyway, so the cultivating and weeding chore sorta goes away. You can even use old newspapers!
Look, I knew NOTHING about gardening before I tried it the first time. But for two summers from a back yard only 40 x 60 of which only about 15 percent was “garden” I had so much produce that I was giving away 4 or 5 grocery bags full of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, brussels sprouts, okra, and peppers every week starting in August, and I put up something like 50 quarts of peppers & tomatoes. That’s in addition to enjoying fresh veggies all summer.
It WAS A LOT OF WORK, no question. I couldn’t have done it if I’d been working full time. But GOD AMIGHTY it was satisfying!
Mulching saves SO much weed-pulling labour, and helps prevent the plants from drying out, so you don’t have to water so often. There’s a biodegradable black plastic (made primarily from cornstarch, I think) that you put down in the spring, and by fall, when your garden is winding down, it’s broken down and dissolved into the soil. But what I do for mulch is rake up all the dry leaves I can get my hands on (I even offer to rake up and remove my neighours’ leaves, and they never object!), shred them with one of those electric combination leafblower/mulcher things, put them in paper yardwaste bags and store them over the winter in our shed. Then in the spring and summer I used them to mulch in the vegetable garden. They’re especially usefully for growing potatoes, as you have to cover the plants to keep the forming potatoes from poking out of the soil and turning green. It makes a beautiful mulch, and in the fall I just rototill it all under, to keep improving the soil. The book you describe sounds very practical and good; I never did the raised beds, but managed to figure out on my own a lot of the rest. Especially not being too ambitious when starting out. We started with a small strip in the back yard, pretty much for tomatoes and zucchini, and have now expanded to about 1200 sq.ft. Being able to access it from all sides makes it much easier to work.
That’s OK for practice, I guess, but why not start by growing actual food?
193. Storm-Rider
It should be remembered too that within 50 years or so of the revolution calvinist denominations lapsed into the minority.
‘
The big animating heresy of the elites of the 19th century was the arian heresy. But there were others.
Charles,
If political expression of Calvinism is tantamount to our Declaration of Independence; which Thomas Jefferson (raised an Anglican) called “an expression of the American mind,” then three cheers for Calvinism. That part of Calvinism embedded in the Declaration can and should be accepted by all Christian denominations. Political expression of Calvinism, i.e.: The American Declaration of Independence, is anathema to Marxism, Fascism, Islamo-Fascism and Monarchy.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” Thomas Jefferson
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
With my zucchini plants, typically I make one or two nice cakes at the beginning of the season, then I forget all about them, and end up with 5 lb overgrown green blimps! (I’m not growing any this year.) But maybe for a first-timer, a zucchini isn’t a bad idea; they grow really fast, and at least they cover the soil so weeds can’t take over. Just the fun of watching it grow can be inspirational for a beginner; they can get into more serious cultivation the next year, once they’ve hardened up a bit.
#153 cowboy ‘Ever tried to build a fire using sticks?
I’m truly not being sarcastic but, how else do you light a fire? Yes you use dried grass/moss or pine cones to get it going; or you feather some firesticks with your knife, or in the rain you find some nookie-wood to start it with; and of course a match. But a fire is by definition made of sticks. Am I missing out on some space age way of making a camp fire?
Also people are joking about the “gardening” – right?
I’m pretty sure he’s talking about starting a fire without any matches by rubbing sticks together.
Dear westerncanadian,
You may be a person fully accustomed to self-reliance, but I would estimate that something on the order of 95 percent of Americans have NEVER done any of the following:
Raised ducks, chickens, goats, sheep, or horses – I mean building shelters & fences, feeding & caring for them, tending to their health, milking the ones that give milk, or collecting eggs from the fowl…
Slaughtering or dressing their own meat animals…
Operating a wood stove regularly as the primary means of heating a home AND cooking meals AND heating water for washing…
Producing most of their own food by gardening, raising animals, fishing, and hunting…
Hired a shearer for sheep, cleaned the wool, carded it, felted it for cloth or slippers or hats, or spun it and knitted…
Built a musical instrument from raw wood…
These are skills that were commonplace in the USA just a few generations back, and are in danger of being lost.
Others could expand the list, but you get the point.
199. Storm-Rider
The declaration of independence was Jefferson’s work. He was not Calvinist.
The federalist papers and the constitution were principally written by Madison who was a Calvinist. These documents limited government by way of the separation of powers and the balance of powers within and between the executive and the legislative branches of government and between the federal government and the states.
Calvinists believe that men are basically evil and therefor men with power have ever more opportunities to do evil. For that reason, their powers have to be constrained.
This is to be distinguished from the French revolution that held that men are basically good. It is only society/their environment etc that makes them evil.
46. batman said: “Taken as a whole, the alarming debt/GDP ratio, the kowtowing to our adversaries (enemies?) and disrespect to our friends, the transformation of our economy with health care “reform” and other measures, the breaching of procedural precedents and Constitutional restraints, and the steady weakening of our military presence are not mistakes made by this administration. Nor are they the product of naïve theories they genuinely thought would make things better. They are not bugs. They are features.”
Eric Hoffer’s book “The True Believer” written in 1951 describes just how true is this comment. Hoffer describes the psychology and belief system of those who join mass movements and the fanatical leaders who start them. Nobody should be fooled by the disingenuousness of those leading the Democrats and the country over the cliff. Usefully, the book lists ways of dealing with the true believer. Anyone who has passed the point of outrage and now realizes that the tough have to get going should read it.
#202 Kirk Parker and # 203 Mad Fiddler
Yes, I get the point. Thank you.
Charles,
English Puritanism had a basis in Calvinism, so Calvinism (along with enlightenment reason) had a strong influence on the political philosophy underpinning the American Revolution.
“Calvinism became the theological system of the majority in England (The English Reformers and the Puritans), Scotland (see John Knox), the Netherlands…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
Even though Thomas Jefferson, raised an Anglican, wrote the Declaration of Independence; the philosophy contained therein derived from John Locke who was raised a Puritan, and therefore an individual with Calvinist influences. The Declaration of Independence certainly was not based on a political philosophy deriving from Anglicanism or Roman Catholicism, both of which favored the Divine Right of Kings (in political alliance with their favored churches of course).
“In a natural state all people were equal and independent, and everyone had a natural right to defend his “Life, health, Liberty, or Possessions”, basis for the phrase in America; “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”… Locke also advocated governmental separation of powers and believed that revolution is not only a right but an obligation in some circumstances. These ideas would come to have profound influence on the Constitution of the United States and its Declaration of Independence.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
From #85,
“(And who needs the legislature, anyway ? Members of Obama’s regime are contemplating …”a non-legislative version of amnesty” as we speak.”
This is an old innovation.
The modern version hides it’s simple “Declaration of War” in a blizzard of words which amount to one repeated phrase, “The Secretary shall XXX…”
I believe the meme is the War on Poverty. (tm LBJ)
The Bismarkian/Wilsonian class is to step in and churn the butter and stuff the sausage. Just don’t look in while it’s happening.
I must point out again these are Process Players niching out within the Rent-Seeking empire that is ‘Progressivism/Communism/Fascism/Hitlerism.
Both Stalin and Hitler ALWAYS used super-authority(ies) to over-ride the very system that they headed. Commissars for Stalin and Gauleiters for Hitler. With Obama we have Czars: 32 at least but still counting.
That the Resident should hop all over the command norms for dictators can only mean that his copy of “Dictatorship for Dummies…” is extremely dog-eared.
Our fellow citizens would be shocked to count the number of times Congress — yes, even this Congress — has rebuffed the Resident. Not to worry — he doesn’t respect congress any more than a pimp his string. Time to send in the Czars!
That’s the number one reason he’s know back in the hood as the Long Legged Mack Daddy!
Pimping out the citizenry for the benefit of the top crowd is styling for any 3rd world colonial pauper baron.
——-
“Enabling legislation?… We don’t need any stinking legislation!… I don’t have to show my legislation to you!… Just hand over your rights and you can go…”
( Gunshots )
“Okay boys, let’em have it!”
(General melee until the Federales troop up.)
….
“Why did they run off?”
“Look, down there… Am I glad to see the Federales!”