The lessons of culture
The last two installments in The New Criterion’s year long series “Future Tense: The lessons of Culture in an Age of Upheaval” appear in our June issue, now winging its way to subscribers throughout the civilized world and available online now at www.newcriterion.com. In “The Fourth Revolution,” James Piereson asks whether America is “on the verge of a new upheaval, a ‘fourth revolution’ that will reshape U.S. politics for decades to come?” There are signs, he suggests, that it is, that “we may already be in the early stages of this twenty-first-century revolution” that follows the earlier upheavals of the War of Independence, the Civil War, and the widespread cultural transformation wrought by FDR’s New Deal. In “The Lessons of Culture,”I ponder some of the prerequisites of cultural confidence. “History,” Walter Bagehot noted in his little masterpiece Physics and Politics, “is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.” Both essays are freely available on the web.
Hmmm, I think the “loss of manliness” maybe seen in this posting:
http://thediplomad.blogspot.com/2012/06/mad-madder-and-madderer-europeans-and.html
“The Euro-fanatics, in a bid to save their sacred coin, are going to provoke a global economic catastrophe. I have written before several times about the fallacious thinking behind the EU and the Euro, and its dire consequences for Europe and the world. To sum up, this EU/Euro project was motivated by envy of and animus for the United States. The EU is formed largely by a bunch of bureaucrats from nations that are has-beens, never-weres, and never-will-bes. The EU reps I have encountered in my career were the most insufferable and boorish dolts imaginable–but very well paid. They could barely contain their hatred for the United States, and liked to brag endlessly about how “Europe” was going to be the next super-power. They attributed all sorts of magical properties and events to “Europe,” e.g., winning the Cold War, keeping the peace, designing an economic system that was the envy of the world, etc. The Euro currency would be the crowning achievement: a mighty amulet that would ward off the evil Americans and their almost as evil and deluded stooges, the British (Note: EU bureaucrats, as a rule, do not like the British, consider them only partially European, resent their rejection of the Euro, and, above all, detest the special military and intelligence relationship between the UK and the US.)”
Anthony Daniels aka Theodore Dalrymple has written an entire volume on the fraud that is the EU, and how it is make-work for politicians who do not want to be put out to pasture and who will ruin anything to further their own vanity.
For God so loved the world that he didn’t put me in charge of it, but if I were, the first thing I’d do would be put term limits on everything which received a check of taxpayer dollars. Everything. Contract out all clerical and construction and maintenance, and privatize education, and make sure that everyone else knows he’ll have to have a real job in say 12 years. It would clarify their minds wonderfully.
As an adjunct to this America hatred we have the rise of yet more virulent Judenhass. I fail to understand why the left has for centuries hated Jews, but in Europe they’re ramping up, yet again. I’m told that in polite circles in “Europe” it is entirely common to hear conspiracy theories about “the Joos” and that blaming THEM for the Middle Eastern terrorism is the norm. If you can stand it, read Melanie Phillips. Judenhass has to my untutored mind always historically led to some of the blackest periods in human history.
As addendum to your last paragraph I fail to understand why American Jews continue on the whole to support Obama with propaganda in their positions in elite universities, in information and entertainment Media, their votes and huge sums to finance his campaign of destruction of this USA.
This USA which has been in living memory the major safe haven, the bolt-hole from Europe AND the Soviet Union which proved to be lethal for them. And the most assiduous until Obama defender and supporter of Israel.
Yet they give avid support to Obama who as the corruptly insinuated Chief Executive and flag-bearer of the socalled Democratic Party of the USA now makes quite clear the promise to CHANGE America. Change from a Constitutional Republic “of, by and for the People” to their dreamed of collectivist State ruled -RULED – by self-arrogating, self-propagating state totalitarians. Very like that by elites in Europe dreamed of Empire their “United States of Europe”.
Given the known history of the Jews in the 20th century this is a puzzle.