Decline Is in the Mind
With a whimper not a bang
Juxtapose pictures of Frankfurt and Liverpool in 1945, and then again in 2010 (or for that matter Hiroshima and Detroit). Something seems awry. Perhaps one can see, even in these superficial images, that something other than military defeat more often erodes societies.
Of course, losing a war can end a civilization (ask the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War or the Aztecs in 1521). But then again, the chicken-and-egg question reappears: why are some civilizations more vulnerable to foreign occupation or more incapable of reacting to sudden catastrophe — such as the pyramidal Mycenaeans rather than the decentralized Greek city-states?
In three wars, Republican Rome managed to end sea faring Carthage — in part through the building ex nihilo of a bigger and better navy — and in a dynamic fashion not repeated 600 years later when 1 million-square-mile, 70 million-person imperial Rome — now top-heavy, pyramidal, highly taxed — could not keep out barbarians from across the Danube and Rhine.
At the end of the Second World War, the industrial centers of western and eastern Europe were flattened. Russia was wrecked. China and India were pre-capitalist. Germany and Japan themselves were in cinders.
The factories of the United Kingdom (despite the 1940 blitz and the later V-1 and V-2 attacks) were largely untouched, and the United States pristine. Both countries had incurred massive debt. Yet Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s socialized, increased vastly the public sector, and become the impoverished nation of the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast, America began to return to its entrepreneurial freedoms, and geared up to supply a wrecked world with industrial and commercial goods, paying down its massive debt through an expanding economy. We thrived; yet socialist Britain did not become a West Germany, Japan, or Singapore.
One can see that natural resources, while important, are not all determining. Oil-rich Venezuela and Mexico are a mess; resource-poor Japan and Switzerland are not. There are few economic refugees now fleeing Shanghai to Hong Kong as in the past; nor is East Germany any more unlike West Germany as North Korea still is in comparison to South Korea.
Planned vs. Free
Cultural tradition plays a role, of course. But more important still is the nature of politics and the economy. As a general rule, the more freedom of the individual and flexibility of markets — with lower taxes, less bureaucracy, constitutional government, more transparency, and the rule of law — the more likely a society is to create wealth and rebound from either war or natural disasters.
These truths transcend space and time, and they trump race and nationality, weather and climate, resources and geography. The notion that we are doomed and the Chinese fated to prosper is not written in stone. It is simply a matter of free will, theirs and ours. They must deal with a new era of coming suburban blues, worker discontent, unions, environmental discretion and regulation, an aging and shrinking population and greater personal appetites, social protest, and nonconformity — in the manner that industrializing Western nations did as well in the early twentieth century.
In our hands
We in turn can easily outdistance any country should we remain the most free, law-abiding, and economically open society as in our past. A race-gender-ethnic-blind meritocracy, equal application of the law, low taxes, small government, and a transparent political and legal system are at the heart of that renewal. America could within a decade become a creditor nation again, with a trade balance and budget surplus, drawing in the world’s talent and capital in a way not possible in the more inflexible or less meritocratic China, Japan, or Germany. Again that is our choice, not a superimposed destiny from someone else.
Unfortunately, we are mired — as in the case of many complex societies that become ever more top-heavy and bureaucratic, when salvation alone is found in becoming less so — in a new peasant notion of the limited good. Anything produced is seen to come at the expense of others. Absolute wealth is imaginary, relative wealth is not. We would rather be equal and unexceptional than collectively better off with a few more better off still.
Yet I, like most Americans I hope, don’t care whether Bill Gates lives in a mansion or Warren Buffet flies in a huge private plane or even that George Soros has billions to give away to progressive causes or that John Kerry has millions to spend on power boats and sailing ships. The system that created these excesses, if we even call them that, also ensured that my hot water — and the hot water in nearby rather poor Selma — is no cooler than theirs. My Honda and hundreds in town run as well as their imported limousines. Last time I went to the local Wal-Mart I counted 100 cell phones, and I doubt Al Gore’s gets any better reception. The better off may or may not “at a certain point … made enough money,” to quote the president, but I have no idea where that certain point is (or whether it includes vacations to Costa del Sol), only that once our technocracy starts determining it, there is a greater chance that my town will not have as hot water as the rich and Hondas that run as well as their luxury cars.
When the end comes
Study the collapse of complex societies, and rarely is the culprit the environment or the enemy across the border. To the extent that walls are torn down or rivers silted up or volcanic eruptions become societal-ending, all that hinges on the preexisting nature of a society — whether it is flexible and wealth-creating or inward, acrimonious, and wealth-redistributing. Chile will recover from a far stronger earthquake than the one that hit Haiti. (I fear Haiti will not recover easily, if at all.)
In 1521, a brutal Hernan Cortés could no more have taken Britain with his 1500 conquistadors than he rather quickly figured out how to destroy an empire of 4 million with that same number. The trick for the command economy of the Soviet Union was not just to repel a 3-million-man Nazi-led invasion, but to do so in a fashion that did not lose 20 million of its own, while creating a postwar sustainable prosperous order inside the USSR and at its periphery.
“Spread the wealth” and “redistributive change” only occur when the enterprising, gifted, lucky, or audacious among us feel that they have a good chance to gain something for themselves (and keep most of it), or to extend to others that something they earned — or more often both motives, self-interested and collective. Deny all that, shoot their bigger cow so to speak, or burn down their towering grain, and we will end up as peasants and serfs fighting over a shrinking pie.
Odds and Ends.
1. We are already reaching nearly 50 signups for the June 2011 Tyrrhenian Sea cruise and exploration of Mediterranean military history — and our probable limit.
2. The publication date for Bloomsbury’s The End of Sparta. A Novel is April 1.
3. Don’t forget to follow Col. (ret.) Chris Gibson’s 20th NY Congressional District race, an uphill, but clearly winnable fight by a renaissance figure and rare individual.
4. From time to time I post replies to critics. Here is a letter I sent to the journal Democracy in reply to a quite strange rant from one Jim Sleeper about Makers of Ancient Strategy, which I recently edited for Princeton University Press. The book was about the influence of ancient strategy on the contemporary world, and had nothing to do with politics, ancient or modern. But somehow Mr. Sleeper skipped the book written and focused on its editor.
(http://www.democracyjournal.org/article.php?ID=6778)
A Reply to “Martial Flaw”
Jim Sleeper’s review essay “Martial Flaw” is the journal Democracy not an analysis of Makers of Ancient Strategy. It is an extended, though odd, personal attack on the editor, whom, he accuses of using the “classics as a cudgel to denigrate liberalism as a carrier of unprecedented options.”
Yet because what Mr. Sleeper writes is inaccurate and misdirected, the unfortunate result is that the review says nothing much about the book per se, little factual about its editor, but a great deal about the angst of Jim Sleeper.
His vocabulary is not one of a dispassionate reviewer, but devolves into caricature. Thus we learn that the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy is an advocate for “unilateralist U.S. hegemony” and “a geyser of vituperations.” Sleeper apparently wanted to prove that an apolitical scholarly book on the ancient world “reflects conservative polemics” by “showing how Athenians, Romans, and, even before them, Persians extended their sway and coped with challenges to it in ways that American grand strategists can learn from.”
But when he finds no evidence that I am trying to channel the ancients to the service of American grand strategists, Sleeper laments that, “Many of the book’s precedents point in directions Hanson doesn’t want to go.” That self-contradiction is thematic.
The absence of any indications in the book of my own political leanings disturbs Sleeper to such a degree that he sighs that in the editor’s introduction that I advise “cagily that “[r]ather than offering political assessments of modern military leaders’ policies, we instead hope that knowledge of the ancient world will remind us of all of the parameters of available choices–and their consequences.”
Thus as stated, when I offer an initial disinterested synopsis of a contributor’s essay, Sleeper again turns to further anger at what he has not found: “Citing the book’s first chapter by Thomas Holland, the British historian of ancient Persia, Hanson tells us: “Imperial powers . . . create an entire mythology about the morality, necessity, or inevitability of conquest. Their narratives are every bit as important to military planning as men and matériel in the field.” Fair enough, but one can’t help ruing Hanson’s own efforts to help Bush craft a grand narrative.”
In final exasperation at discovering no partisanship, Sleeper concludes that the book really is an effective scholarly account of ancient strategic dilemmas—although that leads unfortunately to unpleasant results: “This collection makes Hanson look good…”
For the record, Princeton University press asked if I would edit a prequel to its well-known Makers of Modern Strategy. The proposal was approved by a university press board, on the recommendation of two anonymous outside reviewers. There was no agenda of any kind in the book, since the political affinities of the scholars were irrelevant to the purpose of reviewing strategic thinking of all sorts from the Persian wars to the fall of Rome.
The contributors were selected on the joint recommendations of PUP and myself, based on both their chronological diversity and prior scholarship in military history. Two anonymous readers again reviewed the finished submitted manuscript. Their positive recommendations for publication were again approved by the university board—the necessary prerequisite for publication.
Because the anthology does not support what Sleeper wishes to write, the review turns into a personal screed against the editor—and at one point even his late parents. He calls my farm residence and work there the “staging of Hanson’s rusticity. ” Because at a stage in our lives, my mother was appointed a judge, my father an administrator, and I have taught, Mr. Sleeper apparently sees all that as proof none us continued to drive a tractor, take out crop loans, or peddle fruit after work, on weekends, or in the summer, or did so to find outside income to save the farm where we lived—although off-farm work is now the norm in much of American farming these days. Sleeper adds further proof that I am “staging” farming because I now commute in my late fifties from my farm to work at the Hoover Institution, was awarded the Bradley prize, and, worse still, President Bush and Vice president Cheney supposedly at one point read and liked Carnage and Culture.
Sleeper alleges in a review on ancient strategy that, “Hanson was in the White House in January 2005, working with the Cold War historian and would-be grand strategist John Lewis Gaddis to help craft Bush’s second inaugural address (both men received National Humanities Medals from Bush).” For the record, that is simply untrue. A diverse group of four historians was asked to offer historical perspectives on and comparisons with past wars in their own theaters of expertise. At no point in that formal one-hour meeting that I attended did I hear that anyone was asked to “help craft” a proposed presidential speech. Presidents Clinton and Obama likewise have asked historians for perspectives on history and contemporary foreign policy, and there seems nothing sinister about the practice.
The ad hominem attacks extend to some of the contributors. Again, because Sleeper hunts carefully, but ends up finding nothing political, much less partisan, in the volume, he concludes that contributors must be “tweaking” me. Of one’s contributor’s conclusions that please Sleeper, he imagines that “she “declines to do what I suspect Hanson hoped”.
Again, this is not a review of the book written, but, in passing, of the book suspected and imagined, as part of a personal attack on the editor. In exasperation, Sleeper finally cites the affiliations of just two contributors (and only two) whom he suspects are conservatives—“fellow Iraq War zealot Donald Kagan” and Barry Strauss “a neoconservative professor of classics at Cornell.”
He writes that my account of the preemptive war of Epaminondas is offered as proof of the wisdom of the Iraq war, but again he can find no evidence that I wrote that. In fact, I wrote that I didn’t know until the final verdict is in (e.g., “History alone will judge, in the modern instance, as it has in the ancient, whether such an expensive preemptive gamble ever justified the cost.”)
In Sleeper’s review of Makers of Ancient Strategy, the reader will learn little about the book’s essays, but instead be told that the editor works at the Hoover Institution, his family has supposedly not farmed where he lives, the occupations of his late mother and father, notes about the Bradley Prize, the National Humanities Medal, and political commentary published elsewhere in National Review and other journals, a White House visit, and the political affiliations of three of ten contributors—all offered amid Mr. Sleeper’s Orwellian warnings about the dangers of mixing politics with scholarship.
An angry Jim Sleeper offered up to Democracy an extended personal obsession, not a scholarly review of Makers of Ancient Strategy.
Victor Davis Hanson
Selma, California
Dr. Hanson:
Can you point to one republican or dimocrat politician today that will take us to that place? DNC/RNC Inside the game deal makers excluded?
This nation needs a leader to break the chains that bind we the people ever tighter and tighter. Without one, the task you outline is highly improbable, would you not agree?
Please consider running for the presidency in 2012. Your clarity and devotion are sorely needed at this time.
Beautiful, Mr. Hanson.
I confess I enjoyed the response to the book “reviewer” as much if not more than the essay before it.
I am always encouraged by the beauty of your writing. Thank you.
More, please!
just another loser, snapping at the ankles of giants, hoping to have some gravitas rub off on his teeth.
Project much allison?
This has got to be a self-description, so I have to congratulate you on your inward awareness that allows you to post such an illuminating example of outward jealousy. Carry on.
I suspect jsallison is referring to Sleeper, not Dr. Hanson.
“Giants”? Who are your Giants? Gore? Obama? Marx?
It is always sad to see someone who wants to comment so badly but finds themselves unable and then must resort to ad hominem attacks.
If you can’t comment on the article then please don’t embarrass yourself anymore.
“. . . we instead hope that knowledge of the ancient world will remind us of all of the parameters of available choices–and their consequences.”
That’s a very, very cagy statement indeed, VDH.
But only to the Leftists who think all such statements are like theirs: bullsh*t written for other purposes, with the purpose always being defined by political goals. Of course, that pretty much describes Sleeper’s review, and he’s not very cagy about it.
The Left just can’t fathom the concept that an argument — as written — stands on its own merits. That’s because none of theirs do.
Oops. Forgot the Name box.
More than a decade ago I was involved with a one of the few non-partnership (totally foreign-owned) companies that was growing a division in Beijing. One day the company got a knock at the door and a gentleman presented himself with a letter from the city government stating he was authorized to collect fees from foreign-owned enterprises. He said he needed $50K or so as our share of a half-million dollar bill to complete work on the road bordering our business and an onramp to the new (outer ring) highway. We asked for a meeting with his bosses in the bureaucracy and after discussions with them and two other companies along the same street in the same position as us, we paid. And paid again the year after for more improvements. All of which exceeded the expectations they had set initially about what was to be done (i.e. more than expected in less than the estimated time & disruption. To say nothing of how hard they worked on the roads after midnight. As an engineer, I followed some of the work pretty closely given it was an exhilarating mix of “arm-strong” and modern technology – where the product (in this case an cantilevered overpass w/ high-tech reinforced concrete, with discipline and care required in the pouring and curing) was as good or better than anything I’ve seen in the U.S.)
What was interesting was how apologetic he (the tax collector) was. He’d had some U.S. education and understood U.S. county and city property tax customs. He admitted that they were only taxing foreign entities but that they had a plan and political support to also begin taxing the partnership companies, and then the china-only companies. And that they were embarrassed that they lacked rigorous budgets and ability to project taxes for five years (to allow businesses to plan). He said he would not be proud of his work until they could do this.
In his office I found books by Friedman (and Rand!). As well as in his cohort’s office on the floor above.
This same international company regularly has local U.S. municipalities hold its business and building permits hostage for supposedly related improvements (but in locations that clearly have no relationship). And the county and city bureaucracies are shameless in their demands, no humility, no embarrassment, no apologies.
Not a good sign.
China contains within itself the demographic time bomb of too many young men, because the society aborted so many baby girls. This is a huge factor of destabilization of the society, and the bitter fruit of a collision between an ancient culture and a socialist government that does not value the individual.
I think their military leaders will be tempted to try their fortunes with quantity going up against quality.
This, and from other cherry-picked problems China faces: sooner or later, China will be pressed by modernisation to have a different political system, i.e. the current monolithical PC having become an unresponsive and unsustainable burden – I cannot see China becoming a perpetual Singapore, governed by a benevolent, efficient yet authoritarian government -
And that political transition will, quite likely cause a major upheaval – so, between a tranquil Singapore or a turbulent Russia’s 1990-s, I’d go for the Russia as model -
As you know China has a half-century modern history as totalitarian, and a much longer imperial, culture. That assures the population having little effect on strictures, by the rulers/emperors. They do not and have not ever, as you state, acknowledged “individual”. They have no need for such “sentimentality”. Their populations massively bigger, except for their neighbour India, than any other national groups in the world. AND they have the WILL to murder their countrymen, in the millions, if required, to contain them. Even troublesome males without possibility of female partners.
The future of China is one to watch if possible. The Chinese are not Western, not Christian. They are Chinese, a practical and gifted people who accept their destinies, and seed themselves in other propitious ground when necessary as they have throughout their history.
there are more females than males in china. if i understood it right, the ratio is 6 females for every one male. so, even troublesome males may have a shot at these “desperate” females.
Not correct – China, in fact, has a significant surplus of males over females. It’s been a problem for at least a decade now.
Your right on point about this, China has one of the fastest aging populations in the world. Much of this China talk reminds me of Japan in the 1980’s, there was talk of Z theory, fear of Japan buying up most of the United States. The almost hysterical fear in some circles here in the United States of the Japanese taking over the world.
Japan now has a 200+ government debt to GDP ratio, a rapidly aging population and a 10-year recession.
China has much more other problems that the ones stated above and in this post.
Not a 10 year recession – it’s over 20 years at this point.
True. And other parallel developments to the industrialization of over-male China make the future almost a certain defeat for America.
1. 1.3 Billion Muslims in dysfunctional feudal nations follow the strictures of the Koran that guarantee overpopulation of testosterone crazed single male adolescents for their warlord machines.
2. Americans between 16 and 24 are 51% unemployed and structurally ensured to remain so and to grow in numbers due to minimum wage hikes, extended unemployment benefits, and indoctrination of false expectations. The 60′s radicals in power have institutionalized Saul Alinsky’s rule to destabilize the country with unemployed youth.
Ergo, if the U.S. wanted to oppose its destructors — no sign of which yet — it wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of doing so successfully.
Isn’t much of this also the result of a successfully-implemented Cloward-Pivan strategy?
I seem to remember that the Cloward-Pivan strategy was being implemented (waged?) in New York City and had nearly brought that city to its knees until the 1993 election of Rudy Giuliani, whereupon he reversed most of the “progress” Mayor Dinkins had made.
I admired Giuliani well before he became “America’s Mayor” after 9/11.
Polly:
I certainly hope you’re not suggesting that Rudy run for president again. Never forget, he is the ultimate inside the system deal maker. In my opinion he is of the “ruling class” not the “country class”. And all of them need to be sent packing, not praised.
Without actual liberty, something Chinese are not known to greatly value at any level, the Chinese advance will flame out even sooner than the Japanese model did.
It would be excellent were someone to emulate the greatness that was America; then we could be reminded of it. No takers.
As CGW says, you have laid out what I see as the Tea Party manifesto. Set up a campaign committee, and we will all support it.
RE: Mr. Sleeper. Too bad he doesn’t live up to his name. If one has nothing of note to say, don’t say anything!
Capitalization needed:
penultimate paragraph, 1st sentance: “sleeper”/”Sleeper”
Thank you for another informative post. I will look into your war history books.
Well put, doc. I’ve always contended that the existence of the Tea Partiers constitutes a very strong argument against American decline, which seems to be something only the Lefties want.
“Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s socialized, increased vastly the public sector, and become the impoverished nation of the 1960s and 1970s.”
Could you imagine, just imagine, how Britain would have prospered if it did NOT socialize after the war and it had a free-market economy, like the United States did? Think about it. It had an enormous industrial base that was in very good shape after the war. True, economically Britain was pounded by the war, but after the war its industry had the opportunity to help rebuild all of Europe as well as Britain itself. Had the British Government just left the private sector alone, Britain would have thrived economically, as it did in the United States.
But the British Government did not leave British industry alone and thus began England’s experimentation with socialism, an experiment that failed badly and is still failing today. Although Britain made some major progress under the Thatcher administration, things went to hell as soon as the liberals got back into power. Now Britain is all but financially bankrupt, living on loans from other nations and waiting for the day when it no longer can pay for all of the social-welfare benefits it has promised to its citizens.
And now the United States wants to copy this economic model? Why is the far-left so anxious to follow economic models that never work? Why are we so anxious to be like Britain when we have the opportunity to repeal all of the laws and regulations that will allow businesses to thrive? Liberal MUST answer these questions before they will win any more elections.
Libertyship-
“Why is the far-left so anxious to follow economic models that never work? ”
They are not ignorant, nor are they interested in making the U.S. thrive economically. In fact they are striving for the exact opposite. They are creating for themselves the power over the rest. The power to rule others’ lives is and has been an aphrodisiac. And of course the people in power never have to suffer the consequences of their own dictates. Obamacare is but one case in point.
Victor’s veritable “geyser of vituperations.” Oh my! LOL.
Dr. Hanson’s heart and mind working in conjunction is a beautiful thing to behold.
Last night I had a turkey pot pie that costs 1 dollar and a cold heineken. Solomon didn’t have it so good. Dr. Hanson is right, and to underline a point he may be too modest to name: the idea that the poor are suffering at the hands of the rich in America is predicated on the greed and envy of the poor. Class Warfare is Jihad for the left.
It is information, objective, verifiable, and modified by experience that is the key. Once a cadre of experts with everything to lose and nothing to gain by adapting their knowledge gains control, contact with reality becomes tenuous. Checks and balances don’t just apply in politics, they work in any process that requires up-to-date information – and modern economies require a constant stream of accurate information.
Of course, modifying your mental or actual databases requires humility, a willingness to be taught, something that those with prestige and positions to lose often do not have. One of the root causes of the financial meltdown was the insistence by government that bankers ignore the information they had. Global warming? Inflated test scores? Oil spills? – Same scenario.
A culture committed to information cannot fail. It may not always obtain the goals it sets itself in the short run but once it adjusts those goals in the light of the data it has, it must succeed.
Thanks, Dr. Hanson, for more thought provoking discourse.
It follows that the short sighted, inflexible, extravagant, emotionally based movements, are usually the ones to fall from power, and lead their societies to ruin.
“Short sighted, inflexible, extravagant, emotionally based” just so happens to describe our Congress, at this time.
But, your articles and views spark optimism.
Mr. Hanson, I am sorry that you have had to respond to a personal attack disguised as a book review. As the progressives come so close but no closer to imposing their will on the many, the attacks will become more frequent and desparate.
VDH should be required reading in our junior and senior high schools. I hope that many parents across the nation are encouraging their kids to read his columns.
Keep knocking ‘em out of the ballpark, Dr. Hanson!
Recognizing truth and being able to do something coherent to affect it are two completely different things. The cognitive dysfunction now in place in our nation is more akin to handcuffs and leg irons than a mere lack of understanding or a loss of vision by leadership. We are seeing a purposeful and willful dis assembly of a recipe that has shown with tremendous success the capabilities of the American people not known in any other society in history by petty vile jealous and vindictive enemies of that greatness. This ain’t no ‘decline’ via loss of spirit. This is the purposeful destruction of that spirit. An attack at the root of mankind’s heart. There is nothing so dis spiriting as the caging of freedom. And among citizens who have no history in the last few generations of such despair it can be spirit breaking.
Where the heck is Mike McDaniel’s comment this morning? I read Dr. Hanson daily to gain deep understanding, but absolutely enjoy the additional context provided by Mr. McDaniel which enhances my understanding of Dr. Hanson.
MikeT:
Rumor has it that Mike McDaniel is busy on some other web sites doing his usual good work, herding sheep. He hopes to prove that he is smarter then Victor Davis Hanson. Fat chance.
I see lots of wishful thinking in these essays of Dr. Hanson. An example of how things actually work is the sale of F35s to Israel. This was apparently pushed hard by H Clinton in order to justify a 60 billion sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. In the first place, the arms industry does not exactly work on capitalistic principles; see: lobbyists. But if this is capitalism, it needs a rework. The ‘need’ to arm Saudi Arabia in this fashion – as if the Saudis were about to take on Iran – is hardly a reflection of the capitalistic principles that VDH and many enthusiasts point to a proof of America’s greatness and superiority. But these articles and posts do reveal that what people are really thirsty for (speaking of ‘testerone’) is maintaining a high material standard of living. And that’s okay, but it has little or nothing to do with freedom. The economy of California, where VDH lives, is essentially failed. Real unemployment is disastrously high. Some of this is due to illegal immigration, whose ‘success’ is a marriage of business’ need for such labor and liberals’ need to protect the concept of illegal immigration as an expression of humanism.
Them’s the values, but they’re skewed. The need to prop up the Saudis is directly related, again, to the triumph of selfishness by which conservatives have utterly failed to stand up to liberal politicians blocking energy development. Thus the self-congratulatory tone of posts by many folks here is misplaced, to say the least. The US is profoundly in debt, and only a radical Congressional change starting in 2010 would begin to change this.
Since you’re in the Silicon Valley, are you by any chance unemployed? If you *are* unemployed, whose fault are you attributing that to? (Unless, of course, your inherent stoopid manifested itself on the job, and you were fired for being incompetent.)
And, how does it look to you to find a new job with the current administration sitting in both Sacramento and DC?
I believe it’s a tenet of VDH’s philosophy that free countries…those that value liberty will definately prosper where as those under more government control…that is, less liberty will have declining prosperity.
Mr. Hanson is, of course, correct, in part. Ultimately, it is the common unified will of a society, coupled with technology (e.g. steel swords vs. wooden clubs) which controls earthly power. What is omitted, in his analysis, is time, specifically, as the global warmists shout, “the tipping point”. At some point of decline, events are taken out of the hands of those who clearly know the future, but are powerless to prevent it. I suspect some thinking Roman deduced this as the barbarians poured over the Alps. He knew they lacked a navy.
I am in my late sixties, have engineered a score of nukes, and two score of fossil plants. These technologies supply 2/3 of the US’ electricity. There are few, or no Americans, younger than I who have engineered these life supporting facilities, from scratch. I have read that foreign born engineers are leaving the US; they no longer judge this nation is the place to practice. Without them, we will not have electricity, potable water, flush toilets, or air conditioning. I do not mean a five day outage: I mean a five year outage. At some point, we will just have lawyers, PR journalists, and 250 million guns. When it occurs, young people had better know Mandarin. I am be wrong, but I also study history.
When will that point occur? Perhaps yesterday. Certainly we are on the cusp.
R.L. Hails Sr. P.E.:
Sir, it is not the lack of foreign born engineers that is the problem of the future, the problem is that the “ruling class” in the United States of America insists that we distribute our national treasure, the labor of Americans, to each according to his perceived need, all around the world.
You know and I both probably know that the United States of America with a combination of fossil fuels and nuclear energy could meet our nation’s needs for decades into the future and with even newer technologies, perhaps into infinity. All that’s lacking is honest politicians who would do the work that is necessary to get on with it.
The party line of “the international community” adopting the United States of America as one of its dependents is simply ludicrous and extremely tiring.
I hope I didn’t miss your point.
I think the point R.L. Hails Sr. P.E. is getting at is that we train too few American engineers, and the foreigners who train here are leaving for greener pastures in which to practice their profession. Soon there won’t be enough engineers to maintain infrastructure, let alone add to it. I don’t know if this is true, but if so the results would be the same as what happened to the USSR when Stalin purged his engineering corps.
The root problem, again, is successive Administrations in D.C. who made it impossible for students who would study nuclear engineering, for example, to have reasonable expectations of putting their skills to use. Energy policy is a political football, tossed about at whim by whoever’s in charge in Washington. Thus, our engineering-minded students go to law school instead.
Let me concur, and add to the thoughts of CGW and TLM. I learned, in 1991, that 69 US engineering schools had dropped coursework, which my employer, a major engineering firm, considered fundamental to engineering power plants. The primarily reason is that the schools learned that their graduates could not find work. The US stopped building both large nuclear and fossil power plants in the 1970s. We lack three generations of experienced native born engineers. America met this need by opening up engineering visas, and attracting foreign born engineers, for several decades. 3/4 of our PhD level engineers are foreign born. However these very bright and energetic people came to the conclusion, circa 2005, that this nation does not have a viable energy policy which provides a professional career. There is evidence that they are leaving. Our heavy manufacturing capabilities went off shore decades ago. The US can no longer manufacture a large heavy walled nuclear reactor, perhaps 1,000 tons.
There is no universal definition of what constitutes an educated engineer, but China produces almost 8 for every 1 American engineer.
When we essentially lose all capability, that will be the tipping point. At that point, no policy decision, the political football, will have any meaning.
Yes, we have centuries of coal, and uranium in our land, as well as significant oil and gas fuels, but, by policy, regulation, and litigation, Americans are forbidden to utilize them. The US has allowed its infrastructure to rot. I know of no society which successfully resurrected a lost vitally needed technology, e.g. the Roman legion and highway system.
Thank you for your contribution. This kind of topic occupies my thoughts continually. Please consider writing a book about the state of our infrastructure, including what steps should be taken in the near future.
There are jobs and economic stimulus aplenty in plain sight for the restoration of our infrastructure, but laws and regulations have painted us into a corner! Laws and regulations based on global warmism and misguided environmentalism are the most insidious, with nuclear energy phobia coming in a close second.
The Sept. 20′th issue of the New Yorker (NOT a conservative magazine) has run a cartoon agreeing with you. The cartoon shows two men walking down a city street, one saying to the other
“If you want something done right you have to live in the past.”
China has and always has had such massive internal contradictions that it will never prosper permanently.
Our fate is much less fated.
You mention that freedom and its resultant creativity and resilience are why some societies proper and some do not, some are able to successfully overcome inevitable adversity and some not, and that it is the central zeitgeist, and the nature of the political and economic structure of a society that is the expression of that zeitgeist, that determines which societies have the ability to succeed, survive and/or thrive, and which cannot cope with adversity—from whatever quarter and fail, wither away, or are conquered by more robust/aggressive societies.
Surely another major factor is how alert, aware, clear sighted, and far seeing each society is with respect to possible threats—both internal and external, and how effective their responses are.
For me, surveying the existential challenges that the U.S. (and indeed the whole Western world) faces, none is more of a threat, none is more insidious, nor more overlooked, ignored, and underestimated, none more obscured by a cloud of deliberate disinformation and denial, than the immanent and existential threat to the United States and the West from Islam and its Jihad.
I have found no better unflinching and informed delineations of this threat from Islam than the report released by the Center for Security Policy this past week titled, “Shariah: The Threat to America” (http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/upload/wysiwyg/article%20pdfs/Shariah%20-%20The%20Threat%20to%20America%20%28Team%20B%20Report%29%2009142010.pdf ), and Maj. Stephen Coughlin’s earlier report (whose candor and dangerous accuracy got him canned from his position as an intelligence analyst with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the behest of a very influential Muslim civilian employee, Hesham Islam, in the Office of Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England) Coughlin’s report is titled, “To Our Great Detriment” (http://www.carlisle.army.mil/DIME/documents/20080107_Coughlin_ExtremistJihad.pdf ).
Last week’s report, in particular, warns of the existential threat to us “unbelievers” here in the U.S. from “stealth Jihad,” from Muslim infiltration and subversion of our society and political system, our government, and our national security apparatus, infiltration by Muslims whose central objective is to subvert and destroy us from within, to make Islam and Shari’a law dominant over the U.S. and over us all.
As the Muslim Brotherhood’s (Ikhwan) 1991 strategy document for their work in the U.S. put it, in a document captured by the FBI and introduced into evidence—without objections as to its authenticity or content—in the recent Holy Land terrorism funding trial:
“The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all religions.”
The reason why people believe that China’s rise is inevitable is that they think the China model is best. The model where you have gov’t control of the economy but preserve market features to use as a spur for motivation and self organization. The China model allows their govt to mandate low wages which then can be marketed abroad as a resource.
Alot of people really dont believe in freedom and private property.
Which is why there has only been One USA in the history of Man.
Think of it – a country that was 90% wilderness, populated by a small number of dirt farmers and a couple of guys in the backwoods running around with muskets and wearing deerskins, was WALKING ON THE MOON two centuries later.
That’s why the rest of the world will NEVER reach the heights that America has reached, and why America can still do MUCH BETTER than this – if America simply remembers who we really are.
China had its agricultural revolution, cultural revolution, and economic revolution. i would strongly urge anyone thinking they know Chinese society to come here and live a few years before expressing opinion about its future.
Also, Ive met thousands of people acting more Christian like than churches attended in the USA, and contrary to whatis spread in religious rumor mills, there are many churches / Temples here and anyone can follow whatever belief they wish.
Life here was terrible from WW2 until the early 90′s. From then on it has been a relatively straight line out of poverty and increasing individual freedom. There is much work to be done, that is sure, but foreigners are shocked at the speed of modernization and creation of wealth. With Wealth comes education, freedom and Liberty.
It is important to read and study History of China before assuming they will suffer the same fate as Japan. They are completely separate systems of government and economics. Reading the Art of War Sun Tzu, or writings of Mencius is also a good start to what underpins Chinese Society.
China has massive Cash and Asset based reserves. The Chinese Dollar has been slowly moving to backing from Hard asset reserves; Copper, Nickel, Gold, Silver. Smart and shrewd Move protecting the Value of their currency. Japan never had the reserves China does, or the ability to move the price of any commodity.
Over 90% of Global rare earth metal exports are from China, required for any electronic component. China has a bright future, and scares the pants off geopolitical strategists, as well it should.
Alex:
Don’t forget that it was not Godless communism that got ancient China to where it is today. China’s current position as a world power is directly related to its disignation as the slave labor driven manufacturer for the world led by the United States in the days of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Absent that “International” tactical move China would still be depending on fishing boats and rice paddies for its substanence.
Don’t expect China’s rise to continue into the future if Americans have the courage to rise up and rid our corrupt two party political system of its United Nations worshiping Globalists.
Unfortunately, China will not go quietly from its seat of newly found power. That is why it so prepostorous that we provide them with the wealth, through our displaced manufacturing base, to build the weapons with which they will probably one day tend to challenge us militarily.
Having met them more than sixty years ago, I still do not trust the Godless communist Chinese. And I never will.
I appreciate your perspective but with a billion people and no formal constitution or creed, I think it’s hard to be too optimistic. I knew somebody whose family was ruined by the communist takeover. It was unexpected too.
The Chinese are on a roll. Whether that’s a bubble or not remains to be seen. Money in the bank is a great cushion and they have that.
As usual, brilliant!
Yesterday, I lucked out to see Dr. Hanson gift us with his hard-earned wisdom on C-SPAN 2, at a bookstore in Santa Cruz, CA, taped last May.
It was stunning! How anyone can even try, such as Sleeper, to critique what VDH so clearly says is beyond stupid!
Actually, what we students of VDH receive is not only the historical truth, but in fact we get to witness how a real objective reporter does their job.
Also, it struck me that a devastating way to understand Obama and his leftist ilks is as follows—
Thieves dressed like Santa Claus.
“whether it is flexible and wealth-creating”
Medium incomes rise under Democrats more than Republicans.
Those medium incomes that pay for college tuitions and create those “enterprising, gifted, lucky, or audacious among us.”
Just like Rome, under the Republican authority, 1998-2008, Rome starts to burn.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/
I’m not against conservatism, I am against the GOP’s love affair with lobbyist’s and Wall Street. Sounds like ancient Rome to me.
Congratulations on seeing through the matrix of corporate propaganda even if for only a split second. While the corporate establishment would ideally like to keep the population completely illiterate, impoverished, and docile, and the Republicans gladly pursue this agenda, the Democrats seem to want to provide the lower classes with hope via education. It is of course, a false hope; this is becuase the same plutocracy runs the universities that runs the government. The plutocracy uses the universities to train its minions in law and business schools who will go on to become tomorrows’ jack-booted oppressors of the workers.
If the universities were freed from corporate influence, they could train the next generation of Chomskys, Vidals, Maos, and Martin Luther Kings who could lead our society to a state of compassion and love.
Dennis Sweatt:
Are you able and willing to preseent any empirical evidence that the GOP’s love affair with lobbyist’s is any greater than the DIMOP’S love affair with lobbyist’s and criminals.
Excellent synthesis, thank you Prof.
Instead we have :
affirmative action
unequal application of the law
high taxes
huge government
bribed politicians (think Saudi money)
So, yes, it is a matter of free choice, but we do have to work hard to roll back the semi-marxist regime that is being built by this administration of fools.
Let’s start next November, and let’s build it today !
Under the leadership of Chairman Mao, China built a society based on compassion and love rather than hate and greed. Unfortunately, in his desire to pursue peace, he was beguiled by the serpent “Tricky Dick” Nixon who decieved him into opening his compassionate society to the forces of American corporate greed. Now, despite their hosannas to the Great Helmsman and the freedom and justice he procured for them, the average Chinese is now in thrall to the greed of McDonalds and Coca-Cola almost as much as the average American.
(Of course I hope you are kiddin’…but just in case…)
I am sure that the (probably tens of) millions of victims of the so-called “cultural revolution” have highly appreciated the “compassion and love” of mao.
You should meet their families and hear their terrifying stories.
Tortures, concentration camps, summary executions, that’s what the marxist cultists call “compassion and love”.
How do you know this? The CIA and the corporate media manufactured the evidence of political persecution in order to discredit a society that provided justice to workers and the poor and hence set an example for American workers. I bet all of the so-called victims of the cultural revolution were CIA operatives trying to overthrow a democratic and just society. Mao probably believed he could end the CIA insurgency when he signed the Shanghai Treaty that opened the door of China to the rapacious greed of American corporations.
you are not very educated. that doesn’t mean schooled incidentally.
“The CIA and the corporate media manufactured the evidence of political persecution in order to discredit a society that provided justice to workers and the poor and hence set an example for American workers.”
Throbbin, how do YOU know that the evidence was manufactured?
It fits the pattern in the media’s compliance with the corporate agenda. It is just like the made-up weapons of mass destruction in Iraq whose existence went unchallenged and unchecked, or the equally non-existent nuclear weapons program in Iran the media is currently hyping. Everything you hear in the press are lies told to serve the interest of K-Street lobbyists.
Remember how they told you that saccharine was safe, and how we were winning the Vietnam War, or how President Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed by “lone nuts?” Do you believe those things? Do you believe it was a weather balloon that crashed that fateful day in Roswell, or a black-ops reconnaissance balloon as the second cover story stated?
During the 1930′s the brave, Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Walter Duranty told the truth about Stalin’s reform programs. However, when Henry Wallace wanted to use this model of what could be accomplished for American workers, he was immediately made out to some sort of monster on the scale of Pinochet or Hitler by the corporate power structure. Why didn’t they “know” this when it was happening?
The fact that we thought you were writing parody should tell you something. Next time don’t pass on the chance to say you were kidding.
“Under the leadership of Chairman Mao, China built a society based on compassion and love rather than hate and greed.”
He “loved” millions into their graves through famine and slave labor. Millions were compassionately shot, too.
Grow up, please.
One estimate of the number of people murdered in cold blood by the Chinese communists: 77,000,000.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE2.HTM
And, the result of all this slaughter?
China is a poverty-stricken hellhole, and that’s IF you believe the economic figures put out by the communists, who aren’t exactly famous for telling the truth about conditions in their countries. Likely, things are a good deal worse than what you’re seeing in various publications talking about the Chinese economy.
The World Bank gives U.S. per capita GDP(PPP) as $46,436. China’s per capita GDP(PPP) as $6,675.
As usual, communism produces the same old results: stacks of dead bodies and grinding poverty, but at least, if you’re a resident of the PRC, you do have the boundless joy that comes with living under a one-party tyranny.
I think your head’s a bit swollen there Throbbin Yobbin: your brain has turned to goo. The dumbest Leftist around doesn’t believe the CIA was responsible for Mao’s atrocities. If you’re trying to bait people here into over-reacting to your bs, good luck.
Thanks Throbbin! I needed this laugh this morning. You had me going until half way through your post and I realized no educated person could be saying these things without tongue firmly in check!
Perfect sendup to liberals, claiming such grandious effects for the only person to kill more of their own people than Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.
Dr. Hanson — you yourself acknowledged the role that demographics played in “Carnage and Culture” in Rome’s success in responding to the disasters of Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae.
Which was demographics. Rome possessed, as America did in 1940, an overwhelming supply of “middling” class young men who could be pressed into service. America in 1940 was 89% White, 10% Black, and about 1% everything else. This allowed the US to sustain half a million war dead, total disruption of normal economic life, and unity of social effort, in WWII, as opposed to not being able to sustain around 7,000 dead in Iraq. Or about 3,000 in Afghanistan, site of the 9/11 planning and command.
I would argue that both America and China are doomed to irrelevance and defeat, and both from the same issue — demographics. Defeat in different ways, but certainly defeat.
Dr. Hanson has written on the role that culture plays, and it does play large, but it in turn depends on demographics. Demographics (i.e. a supply of a large amount of middling class, or “yeoman” young men, in a unitary ethnic and racial component speaking the same language, with the same “very extended family” genetic component) is the “necessary but not sufficient” component to survival under extreme stress like war or famine or natural disaster.
Rome in the 300′s had a culture, largely Christian, backed by the best of Republican Rome, a long martial tradition, and was obliterated by Visigoth and other barbarian tribes because of sheer demographics. Instead of sending Legions to Spain, or Gaul, or Britain, Rome lacking any young men of its own stripped those places of the Legions, which themselves were comprised of mostly barbarians anyway.
America today is around 65% White, and Whites are now the minority in California. Dr. Hanson wrote a book on it, “Mexifornia.” Mexicans may have many virtues, but being Americans is not one of them. In the 45 years or so of untrammeled illegal mass immigration into the US, Mexicans have not assimilated, have indeed grown in separatist and racialist identity (official slogan of La Raza — “For Those Inside the Race, everything, for those outside the race, nothing”) and have remained in poverty.
Alongside this is the continued demographic growth of Mexican ancestry people in the US, birth rates of around 4 compared to 1.4 for Whites.
America is doomed because it is already turned into Mexico. As Mark Steyn pointed out, if you closed the borders to Mexico tomorrow, Arizona and many other states would be Mexican majority in twenty years because of differential birth rates. The native born Arizonans under 20 are mostly Mexican.
Culturalists argue that “real soon now” Mexicans in the US will start acting like Anglos, with low birth rates, high value of education, Anglo level of gang-involvement and criminality, income, and so on. If it has not happened in forty five years, it is not likely to happen. Mexicans like being Mexican, they see no reason to be Anglos/Whites.
This is why America is doomed — it turned into Mexico.
China is doomed because it has not been able to stimulate internal consumption, or create internal middle class wealth (per capita income remains at $2,000 per year), it has massive poverty unimaginable to Westerners in the rural, dry, Muslim-beset West. It is very dependent on African natural resources which is a huge vulnerability. It faces massive, looming labor shortages (already strikes are rippling through the Chinese economy as there exists a worker shortage) while wealth is concentrated on “Red Princes” and there exists little ability to innovate. China is entirely export-driven, and depends on Americans buying cheap sneakers and the like to keep its factories running and workers fed, clothed, housed, and its Red Princes fabulously wealthy.
China, like Rome in the 300′s, faces both internal strife and chaos, and external challenges (aggressive, demographically on the rise Muslim states in the West).
Both China and the US have the advantage of a national culture, but both face demographic challenges so extreme that the culture is no more likely to save them than Rome’s did in the 300′s.
“Both China and the US have the advantage of a national culture,…”
China does, despite the ravages of the Red Guards.
The USA does not. IMO.
Under the leadership of Chairman Mao, China built a society based on compassion and love rather than hate and greed
Either this is parody or the ignorance is truly astounding!
just another loser, snapping at the ankles of giants, hoping to have some gravitas rub off on his teeth.
Hi Jim Sleeper!
Concerning the conquest of Mexico,one would note for accuracy’s sake that it was not solely accomplished by 1500 Spaniards. In the final battle for Tenochtitlan, Cortes was aided by upwards of 200,000 Tlaxcalans and other Indian allies (some historians put the figure at half a million). The Mexica (Aztecs) were almost universally hated by the other inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico, and when Cortes called upon the latter to take part in the destruction of the Aztec capital they came willingly, in vast numbers. But Cortes and the Spaniards organized and spearheaded the effort: without them the Aztec grip on the valley of Mexico would not have been broken, much less contemplated.
Hate to be a stickler, but didn’t Cortes have a bunch of help (as in several tens of thousands of warriors) from other local Mesoamerican nations and subject states when the Aztecs were overthrown? As I remember, they were all itching to kill the Aztecs; they hated them.
“Deny all that, shoot their bigger cow so to speak, or burn down their towering grain, and we will end up as peasants and serfs fighting over a shrinking pie.”
The Anti-American residents of the USA know that perfectly well. They are betting that when the American economy is reduced to a heap of rubble, they will, by sheer dialectical ruthlessness, end up on top of that heap. Like Milton’s Lucifer, they would rather rule a hell than be merely a part of Paradise.
Y, look at all the jobs Bill Gates has created over the years – the thousands who work at Microsoft today, the thousands who over the years became rich, retired early or started their own businesses using the profits from their Microsoft stock options. Look at the thousands of folks who collect dividends from their Microsoft stock and still stand to make a small fortune if the stock becomes popular with investors again. Look at all the people who have profited one way or another from using the products Microsoft created. All this was done with not a dime of “stimulus” money or advice from central planners in Washington. Their contribution was to be somewhere else, out of the way, when all this was happening.
Bill Gates is not a saint, he was rewarded for this benevolence (for those can overcome their envy and call it that): he is a BILLIONAIRE! And why not? His inventions over the years did not redistribute money from haves to have nots, they created WEALTH for many of us. We have forgotten the difference. The government can print all the currency it wants and hand it out like flyers in front of the dime store. But it cannot readily create a Microsoft or any of the other enterprises which produce the things that improve our lives. So rather than resenting the billionaires of this nation, we need to be hoping to find many more of that ilk.
We need more of this optimism in America’s potential. I drafted a plausible Federal budget that balances within four years, http://JeffVanke.com/balanced-budget/ . (Like Hanson, I happen to have a Ph.D. in History.)
VDH said, “As a general rule, the more freedom of the individual and flexibility of markets — with lower taxes, less bureaucracy, constitutional government, more transparency, and the rule of law — the more likely a society is to create wealth and rebound from either war or natural disasters.”
Yep, and the examples are all out there to see.
Germany/East Germany, Taiwan/Mao’s Communist China, and South Korea/North Korea to mention the most obvious. Then there is the failure of centrally planned economies with litlle freedom such as the USSR, Cuba(Even Castro admits it has failed), Burma, and Venezuela out there as object examples of what not to do. With such glaring examples of what works and what doesn’t, why do the Progressives and their Marxist fellow travelers keep trying to drag us down into the hell of state plannned economies? Wishful thinking and an obstinate inability to see evidence that is right in front of them is my judgment.
With you leading the way we all have to keep pointing this out to our fellow citizens over and over until the urge toward central economic planning is dead and buried.
We have to talk about the common benefits to a lot less government. Food, health care, housing, and closing and cars would all be a lot less expensive if there wasn’t so much taxation and government regulation. We need to take spending down to $1B and privatize everything: schools, transportation, the post office, end welfare, the energy department, commerce (we should just have unilateral free trade),
“As a general rule, the more freedom of the individual and flexibility of markets — with lower taxes, less bureaucracy, constitutional government, more transparency, and the rule of law — the more likely a society is to create wealth and rebound from either war or natural disasters.”
Victor, has anyone ever taken a critical look at successful societies to see if there are underlying factors that inspire these qualities to flourish? For example, what is in the underlying culture that make these traits possible?
I ask because as time passes, I become less and less convinced that leadership makes greatness; rather it is the ability of leadershihp to tap into the greatness of the people that makes a nation strong.
“With such glaring examples of what works and what doesn’t, why do the Progressives and their Marxist fellow travelers keep trying to drag us down into the hell of state plannned economies? Wishful thinking and an obstinate inability to see evidence that is right in front of them is my judgment.”
It’s all about power – and “proving” that “they” are so much wiser and smarter then the rest of “us”. Their self image is at stake. All “they” need is “one more try”, and this time everything will be successful; proving for all time “their” greater worth.
Dr. Hanson is a gift from the Almighty. I have read his work for a long time, and learn so much. My goal is for my 30 something daughters to become fans as well. Thank you so much.
Why are the States that are supposed to be United allowing a great natural resource like industrial hemp to languish when it has the potential to create millions of jobs in thousands of industries?
That’s a whole other topic, Dude.
America has never been a pyramidal, top-down society. Although our current
leadersrulers are now trying to impose that model on us, this post gives me hope that their efforts will ultimately fail.I just read Mike Pence’s speech at Hillsdale College. It is outstanding, although I tremble at the thought that many contemporary Americans will not even understand it.
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”Yet Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s socialized, increased vastly the public sector, and become the impoverished nation of the 1960s and 1970s.”
And that’s how it all started!
The British government economically broke even to the point o…f borrowing money yes from the Shah of Iran who so brilliantly enriched his nation in a short 37 years! Britain so increasingly broke, jealous with such deeply rooted colonial past could not see such wealth in a far away land without having it taxed or even destroyed for its own survival or at least recovery.
Just read this little quote from one of British politicians of the day:
“Mr. Healy, Chancellor of the Exchequer in a speech addressing the British parliament on July 22, 1974 thanked the Imperial Iranian government for providing Britain with a line of credit of $1,200m.”
Yes Britain with the help of that peanut farmer US President Carter destroyed Shah and his country to seat an Islamic fascist theocratic Khomeini all for recovering its increasingly bankrupted country.
America must realize once and for all that Britain is not an ally but an adversary, it has and still does USE US as a tool for its own survival holding its grip onto power.
All is written in history if we just research and read back…..
Another great article sir! I wish everyone would read history by scholars such as Hanson. The world we live in now would have been a safer place!
I always find answers to our world problems in history and that is when I read books written by historians such as you.
And yes I am an Iranian freedom fighter a friend of peace, a friend of freedom, liberty, advancement and entrepreneurship like the kinds ushered upon me and millions of other Iranians by my ancestors!
We must defeat socialism, Islamism, PC world view, big governments, elitism, authoritarianism, MSM, and the garbage propaganda indoctrinated onto our todays’ youth in schools and colleges these days….
My list can go on but…
One very significant finding to me in a nutshell is in this little read below:
There was 1 Reagan, and then there was 1 Shah!
Both visionaries we may never find again!
This is a must read piece:
http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/2009/12/him-mohammad-reza-pahlavi-late-shah-of.html
Wish more people knew and able to cross the T’s…..the answer is all written in history!
Hate to disagree with you, but again, ‘decline’ is NOT in the mind of the observer. Although decline is not a natural state of america, or americans, it is being specifically *designed* and *implemented* by the Left for past 6 decades, at the least, *and* it is being exponentially accelerated by the Obama admin and 111th congress—and successfully so. It does *not* serve any purpose to deny this fundamental truth. It would be wiser if great minds such as VDH not waste time on reassuring the people that everything’s gonna be alright, and rathr put together their minds in figuring out how to rescue the Republic and the America from what is shaping up to be a certain assisted suicide.
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