Moments After America
Aug 16, 2011
Elizabeth Scalia
It is rare for a book release, no matter how timely, to coincide with breaking news. In the case of Mark Steyn’s After America the alignment was downright spooky. As louts, brats and the non-thinkers who wish merely to be part of a “moment” terrorized the citizenry and burned down London neighborhoods, across the pond one could enter a bookstore, lift Steyn’s latest from a shelf and read:
The United Kingdom seems to be evolving from a nanny state into a kind of giant remedial institution for elderly juvenile delinquents. At bus stops in London, there are posters warning, “DON’T TAKE IT OUT ON US.” At the Underground station, you see the slogan, “IF YOU ABUSE OUR STAFF, LONDON SUFFERS” . . . I found this one of the bleakest comments on modern Britain: all the award-winning wit and style of the London advertising world deployed in service of a devastating acknowledgment of civic decay.
Pondering the fact that in Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of Northern England the state accounts for up to 78 percent of the economy, Steyn wonders, “why wouldn’t you take it out on the state?”
The chapter may be specific to the United Kingdom, but Steyn is very clear: what is a daily reality in Britain will soon be America’s reality, too, unless the country reverses its embrace of the social and economic policies that are bankrupting Europe and bringing its society to its collective knees.
It’s not like we cannot see this for ourselves. As we view security videos of “flash mobs”—unconcerned about either safety or prosecution—descending en masse upon a convenience stores and fast-food outlets and helping themselves to whatever they like, a future of anarchy is not too difficult to imagine. Already, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis are imposing or attempting to enforce curfews for young people who have figured out that if they co-ordinate their activities and don’t linger, their sheer numbers are enough to empower a petty criminality that will go unprosecuted. From there, a Molotov cocktail through a window is not such a great leap.
But Steyn is not writing solely about the social unrest and the hooliganism that so often comes with economic distress. After America warns that an over-regulated, bureaucracy-laden society, dissuaded from conceiving and achieving great things because too much has come between an idea and its execution, is a society dumbing down and numbing-up, growing not just stagnant, but inert, like Chesterton’s “dead thing” that “can go with the stream,” while “only a living thing can go against it.”
I thought of Chesterton a great deal while reading After America. Steyn quotes de Tocqueville liberally throughout the book and makes great, relevant references to H. G. Wells’ Eloi and Morlock populations, but in reading about the sort of creeping bureaucratic minutia that is shutting down childhood lemonade stands, depriving church groups of homemade pie and hardware store customers of complimentary cups of coffee, it was Chesterton’s warning I remembered. “When you break the big laws,” he wrote, “you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.”
And it’s the small laws, more than flash mobs or even terrorist threats, that will put the chokehold to the United States. It is the intrusion of governmental nitpickers into neighborly kindnesses—the punishment of the instinctive small generosities that have always defined American openness—that will eventually isolate us from each other, and from our understanding of ourselves, until we are just a nation of dead things, carried down the burbling river, or caught within the stagnant pools.
Steyn closes After America with a stout-hearted call to “De-complicate; De-credentialize; De-normalize; De-monopolize.” Good suggestions, all meant to de-lay de-volution in order to buy time for those still fighting the current, but the “after” American moment is nigh; the days of our future “past” are falling hard, and Steyn appears to know it.
It has only been a few years since Madeleine Albright proclaimed America “the indispensable nation,” but in very short order our influence has nose-dived precipitously. Though it may have been as much myth as reality, the idea that one could rise by one’s own lights was the distinctive mark of an exceptional America. We dared to think that one might pay one’s taxes, obey sensible “big” laws and be left alone to tinker in a basement, climb a ladder or rake and burn one’s own autumn leaves (actions all under siege, per Steyn’s citations) without fear of a clipboard and a fine and a voucher for a mandatory re-education class meant to certify one’s most benign moments.
With that freedom came the sort of can-do audacity that, in the mid-twentieth century, managed to pull a whole world out of war and then raise a tide of such prosperity that it lifted many boats.
Of course, that same bold exceptionalism developed The Marshall Plan, which in turn enabled the swift rise of nanny-statism and a culture of materialist excess, both of which have helped to shrivel the human soul, so there is an irony to all of this. But the fact is, if America is in decline—and eventually all governments, all societies do decline because they, like flash mobs, are the stuff of a moment, and not of eternity—her last gasps will not come at the hands of terrorism, but by her own acquiescence to the small laws; the Taliban already acknowledges that “Americans have all the watches, but we’ve got all the time,” and patience is all they need. Demographically, extreme Islamists know they will have decades of settling into and remaking Europe to attend to, while they wait for America to finish wheezing.
Elizabeth Scalia is the Managing Editor of the Catholic Portal at Patheos and blogs as The Anchoress. Her previous articles for "On the Square" can be found here.
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Comments:
8.16.2011 | 5:33am
edmond says:
The cultural aberration is the result of the tv generations believing in the dysfunctions they watch on tv and youtube. The case of Dr. frankenstein creating another frankenstein. From the creativity of a wharped mind to the vulnerable and gullible consciousness of the tv/youtube viewers. The british prime minsiter made sense over and over again in his address, but alas all too late. Anarchy is rearing its ugly head because Godlessness was not only tolerated but encouraged. Next casualty will probably be USA where Godlessness and gullibility is in critical levels...
8.16.2011 | 8:13am
ferd says:
In many ways America is like the famous harlot, riding the apocalyptic beast, claiming "I am no widow!", when we have all but abandoned the Bridegroom.
Teaching California children the benefits of homosexual history in this Fall's classrooms will just be one more sign of how Western Christianity is causing the collapse of our own civilization.
Teaching California children the benefits of homosexual history in this Fall's classrooms will just be one more sign of how Western Christianity is causing the collapse of our own civilization.
8.16.2011 | 9:14am
DVO says:
Outstanding column. When a people lose the ability to govern their own behavior, to control their appetites, the State will step in to do it for them. I personally fear that we will see not the current trend towards nanny-state leftism continue, but instead a sharp and violent lurch towards fascism. Both unthinkable alternatives to the traditional idea of American freedom, but inevitable in a culture busy destroying it's own moral underpinnings.
8.16.2011 | 11:26am
wws says:
I more and more am driven to this conclusion: For America to survive, the current Government has to be dismantled. Yeah, even parts like SS and medicare.
Americans can rebuild as long as there isn't a government in the way to stop them. With a bit of luck, we might even be able to hang onto our Constitution. But that's gonna be a close call.
Americans can rebuild as long as there isn't a government in the way to stop them. With a bit of luck, we might even be able to hang onto our Constitution. But that's gonna be a close call.
8.16.2011 | 11:27am
The Sanity Inspector says:
As for Chesterton, he came up with this very prescient metaphor 100 years ago, in critiquing what he saw as modern Britain's spiritual deficiencies:
"Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen,'"Let us first of all consider, my brethren the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--' At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark."
- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics, 1905
"Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen,'"Let us first of all consider, my brethren the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--' At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark."
- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics, 1905
8.16.2011 | 11:38am
Randy says:
DVO,
And when the chaos comes, not only will our "loving" nanny put her combat boots on and head to the streets, but a fearful public will probably welcome it. That's what's really frightening. I wish more people understood just how rare freedom is, and how you cultivate it to keep it healthy. People think houseplants are hard to keep alive. Freedom is the most delicate flower of all, and prayerful sacrifice is the best, most irreplaceable, fertilizer.
And when the chaos comes, not only will our "loving" nanny put her combat boots on and head to the streets, but a fearful public will probably welcome it. That's what's really frightening. I wish more people understood just how rare freedom is, and how you cultivate it to keep it healthy. People think houseplants are hard to keep alive. Freedom is the most delicate flower of all, and prayerful sacrifice is the best, most irreplaceable, fertilizer.
8.16.2011 | 11:46am
harry says:
For those who still believe the Bible is relevant and has something to say to modern minds: God's people would always end up enslaved or oppressed by the nation whose false gods they worshiped. God would let them experience fully the consequences of their idolatry. The God of the Old Testament is still God. It should surprise no student of Scripture that we find ourselves being oppressed ever increasingly by the modern, deified state that acknowledges no authority above itself. Silence and complacency in regards to Caesar's usurpation of God's authority over innocent human life is rendering unto Caesar that which belongs only to God.
Fortunately, the God of the Old Testament -- Who is still God -- would also hear the cries of His people when they came to their senses and deliver them from bondage. How long will it take for Christendom to stop burning incense to Caesar and reassert itself, restoring legal protection of the inalienable, God-given rights of humanity? What kind of godless totalitarianism must be endured and how many generations must endure it before God's people cry out to Him, acknowledging their guilt, and loudly and unashamedly seeking divine deliverance? I say "loudly and unashamedly" because it seems God always wants the world to know it was He Who delivered His people, that it wasn't done by their own might.
Fortunately, the God of the Old Testament -- Who is still God -- would also hear the cries of His people when they came to their senses and deliver them from bondage. How long will it take for Christendom to stop burning incense to Caesar and reassert itself, restoring legal protection of the inalienable, God-given rights of humanity? What kind of godless totalitarianism must be endured and how many generations must endure it before God's people cry out to Him, acknowledging their guilt, and loudly and unashamedly seeking divine deliverance? I say "loudly and unashamedly" because it seems God always wants the world to know it was He Who delivered His people, that it wasn't done by their own might.
8.16.2011 | 12:34pm
DWiss says:
Just one more example:
Think of that rustic aroma of a wood fire on a cold winter evening. Brings back all kinds of memories, doesn't it?
Not so fast! Your wood fire could be illegal!! Look here...
http://sparetheair.org/Make-a-Difference/Spare-the-Air-Every-Day/Winter.aspx
Read that page - it's exactly what Mark Steyn writes about. Make special note of the complaint line that you can call to turn your next door neighbor in. The Nazis would love this.
Liberty indeed.
Think of that rustic aroma of a wood fire on a cold winter evening. Brings back all kinds of memories, doesn't it?
Not so fast! Your wood fire could be illegal!! Look here...
http://sparetheair.org/Make-a-Difference/Spare-the-Air-Every-Day/Winter.aspx
Read that page - it's exactly what Mark Steyn writes about. Make special note of the complaint line that you can call to turn your next door neighbor in. The Nazis would love this.
Liberty indeed.
8.16.2011 | 12:38pm
DVO says:
Exactly right, Randy. The Nazis never obtained more than about 33% of the vote in any national election but the chaos in Germany with the economic depression and reparations debt made it all too easy for most Germans to turn a blind eye to the atrocities commited in the name of "restoring" the nation. I don't expect it would be much different here. Sadly, I suspect a lot of the people who haven't found America to their liking over the last 50 years and have worked so diligently to render impotent the values the nation was founded upon would be the first ones to suffer the consequences of such a development. Happily, I've never been much of a prognosticator, so I'm probably wrong about all of this.
8.16.2011 | 1:05pm
Niche ATMS says:
Pondering the fact that in Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of Northern England the state accounts for up to 78 percent of the economy, Steyn wonders, “why wouldn’t you take it out on the state?”
The chapter may be specific to the United Kingdom, but Steyn is very clear: what is a daily reality in Britain will soon be America’s reality, too, unless the country reverses its embrace of the social and economic policies that are bankrupting Europe and bringing its society to its collective knees.
The chapter may be specific to the United Kingdom, but Steyn is very clear: what is a daily reality in Britain will soon be America’s reality, too, unless the country reverses its embrace of the social and economic policies that are bankrupting Europe and bringing its society to its collective knees.
8.16.2011 | 1:22pm
publius says:
There are many reasons to believe that America's best days are behind us, but there is some cause for hope in that many Americans share Ms. Scalia's concerns and are trying to reverse the downward trends. It may be too late but then again we were written off many times in the past and we rebounded. With God's help we may experience another such renaissance.
8.16.2011 | 1:30pm
Brian LeCompte says:
I believe the problem is a loss of the fear of Hell. Nietzsche predicted that when liberal religion destroys man's concept of good and evil, he will be delivered over to his own irrational appetites. That was in reference to the coming world wars of the 20th century. We have yet to see the outcome in the 21st.
Lots of countries besides the UK have social welfare programs and are not faring so poorly in their moral example. What the UK today lacks is a sense of tribal unity. Its best and brightest are fleeing the country for work abroad. The bonds of ethnicity among the remaining are weathered by the large influx of immigrants. The bonds of religion are broken by the inevitable ennui brought on by liberal theology. Recent articles on the gang culture of UK youth point to an influence by American gang culture, with the same slang, music, and dress code here being appropriated there. American gang culture has always provided a sense of belonging in a world where one doesn't belong. The UK youth must feel adrift and lost.
But blame it first on the loss of fear of Hell, rather than on politics. Without fear of loss of heaven and the pains of hell, you cannot expect a population to be anything other than pagan.
Lots of countries besides the UK have social welfare programs and are not faring so poorly in their moral example. What the UK today lacks is a sense of tribal unity. Its best and brightest are fleeing the country for work abroad. The bonds of ethnicity among the remaining are weathered by the large influx of immigrants. The bonds of religion are broken by the inevitable ennui brought on by liberal theology. Recent articles on the gang culture of UK youth point to an influence by American gang culture, with the same slang, music, and dress code here being appropriated there. American gang culture has always provided a sense of belonging in a world where one doesn't belong. The UK youth must feel adrift and lost.
But blame it first on the loss of fear of Hell, rather than on politics. Without fear of loss of heaven and the pains of hell, you cannot expect a population to be anything other than pagan.
8.16.2011 | 2:02pm
Richard says:
Elizabeth,
I am surprised and pleased at the absense of backlash at this point, though I would be surprised were approbation to be the last unmitigated word.
Brava! Vatically and wisely done.
Best,
Richard
I am surprised and pleased at the absense of backlash at this point, though I would be surprised were approbation to be the last unmitigated word.
Brava! Vatically and wisely done.
Best,
Richard
8.16.2011 | 2:20pm
Stephen J. says:
"But blame it first on the loss of fear of Hell, rather than on politics."
I blame it not on losing all fear of Hell, but on the pernicious belief -- founded by Marx, mostly, but a hallmark of virtually any ostensibly benevolent tyrannical impulse -- that we are *entitled* to Heaven, defined as freeing all people, here, now, on this earth, within our lifetimes, from all suffering of any kind whatsoever. (The possibility of achieving which is a delusion that classical pagans never succumbed to; they were too resigned to the nasty brutishness and pain of the world.)
The tragedy of this kind of liberalism is that in its origin it is founded on compassion, mercy, pity, and indignation on behalf of the suffering; all good things and all Christian sentiments. Every left/liberal person I have ever known adopted their position because they wanted, on some level, to help people. But it ultimately founders because it sets these things up as more important than anything else: more important than freedom, than individual responsibility, than truth and honesty, than respect for law, than fairness to *all* (not merely the poor), than even love of God, family or country. In its ultimate form it is a literal manifestation of the old gag, "I love humanity; it's people I can't stand" -- someone so dedicated to "saving" the suffering as a group that he has lost all ability or desire to see, know or care for them as individuals. And it is certainly possible to go the other way as well; putting law over compassion, or honesty over charity and forgiveness, or loyalty to a country over justice to its citizens.
Like two blades of a pair of scissors, truth and love are both necessary to live as Christians and as humans; and the greatest disappointment is that even when you have both of them, they do not and cannot prevent suffering, but only make it possible to endure it. The tragedy of most Western nations' politics is that they wind up arguing over which blade of the scissors is more important or does the "real work".
I blame it not on losing all fear of Hell, but on the pernicious belief -- founded by Marx, mostly, but a hallmark of virtually any ostensibly benevolent tyrannical impulse -- that we are *entitled* to Heaven, defined as freeing all people, here, now, on this earth, within our lifetimes, from all suffering of any kind whatsoever. (The possibility of achieving which is a delusion that classical pagans never succumbed to; they were too resigned to the nasty brutishness and pain of the world.)
The tragedy of this kind of liberalism is that in its origin it is founded on compassion, mercy, pity, and indignation on behalf of the suffering; all good things and all Christian sentiments. Every left/liberal person I have ever known adopted their position because they wanted, on some level, to help people. But it ultimately founders because it sets these things up as more important than anything else: more important than freedom, than individual responsibility, than truth and honesty, than respect for law, than fairness to *all* (not merely the poor), than even love of God, family or country. In its ultimate form it is a literal manifestation of the old gag, "I love humanity; it's people I can't stand" -- someone so dedicated to "saving" the suffering as a group that he has lost all ability or desire to see, know or care for them as individuals. And it is certainly possible to go the other way as well; putting law over compassion, or honesty over charity and forgiveness, or loyalty to a country over justice to its citizens.
Like two blades of a pair of scissors, truth and love are both necessary to live as Christians and as humans; and the greatest disappointment is that even when you have both of them, they do not and cannot prevent suffering, but only make it possible to endure it. The tragedy of most Western nations' politics is that they wind up arguing over which blade of the scissors is more important or does the "real work".
8.16.2011 | 2:51pm
Sally Morem says:
Were people nice when they believed in hell? Not that I eve noticed, even with a close reading of history.
8.16.2011 | 3:31pm
Dave Dutcher says:
This is just a common conservative myth. The direct problem is simpler: whenever you have large amounts of unemployed youth in urban areas, you are going to get crime and riots. Regardless of the type of economic system or even belief system; people forget the muslim riots in france in 2005. Idle hands do the devil's work. You could make the USA a libertarian paradise, and it would be just as bad, because jobs aren't there.
8.16.2011 | 4:08pm
Gil Costello says:
When I spent time at my grandson's school it was amazing how many teachers and other staff would turn a blind eye to bullyism. I think first and foremost they fear the many little laws of multi-cultural empowerment that effaces the big laws that make a truly pluralistic society of mutual respect and courtesy of the heart possible.
Great column.
Great column.
8.16.2011 | 4:13pm
Doc says:
With all due respect to Sally M above, I'm afraid your reading of history is deficient. Using 'nice' in context with the behavior of societies in general, which is the topic of discussion above, rather than in its mundane usage, one might be tempted to label, e.g., Wilberforce's pursual and eventual victory over the slave trade in Britain as 'nice'. Likewise the willingness of large swathes of the young men of the North to give their lives to purchase the freedom of people of color held in bondage whom they didn't even know. Yes, you might say, but people who 'believed in Hell' enslaved them and kept them as slaves. Yes I will respond, but up until then slavery was the norm in all human societies of whatever 'faith'. Only when the Christian duty to abolish slavery was put forth did any society voluntarily give it up, at cost to themselves. That was, if you will, 'nice'.
OTOH, when atheism reigns, as in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany, things aren't that 'nice'...
OTOH, when atheism reigns, as in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany, things aren't that 'nice'...
8.16.2011 | 4:22pm
Greta says:
Having lived to nearly 80, you have a lot of history to look to for perspective. America of the 1950's led by Eisenhower, who was also instrumental in winning WWII, was a time a great achievement in this country. The Federal government, even then too big, was a fraction of the size it is today. Faith was something still very much a part of everyday life for most families and divorce was rare in most neighborhoods. Even more rare would be a single mom and the federal government had not started to create the mess to come under LBJ which would reward bad behavior. Same sex attraction was viewed by all faiths and by the medical community as well as a grave disorder and no one would have thought about saying it was equal in any way to the normal relationship between one man and one woman in marriage. Abortion was rare and not sanctioned by the state because the vast majority would have said it was killing innocent life in the place God created as the most safe in this crazy world, the mothers womb. Who could have predicted that we would so start a holocaust that would have made Hitler, so recent in our past with his death camps, pale in comparison to the coming holocaust of 54 million babies. In fact, brith control was still viewed as very negative to marriage and was sinful in most churches. Most women dedicated themselves to the virtuious life of mom while donating a lot of time to many worthwhile causes. Life moved at a slower pace. Dad earned more because the work force was smaller without the massive influx of women soon to come. Today, many have both working and less time and money for the family at the end of the day. Many had TV, but only one and many times not yet color. We had one car in the family and had to share it. Homes usually had one bath with a few having a half bath added. Bedrooms were shared and our airconditioning was open windows with fans. Almost every night we ate at home with a rare trip to a resturant for very special occasions.
What have we gained with all our advances? I seldom see families well connected and at peace with time for each other, friends, and the community. They have more gadgets and things which are mostly disposable. We seem to be a country in search of a soul. de Tocqueville said it best when he said our country was founded on the basic premise that it required a country where the people had very strong faith and morals. Out democracy does not work without it. Those that want to tear America down started with the lie of separation of Church and state when the truth was the exact opposite. The government should not be telling us to remove God from our schools our from our courthouses or that killing babies is legal or that gay same sex attraction deserves to have special rights. The government and by connection the courts should not be allowed to infringe in any way on religion through tax codes, laws, or any other act. We are all paying the price for these changes and until we see an end to this liberal progressive mindset, we will continue to be heading in the wrong way. By instinct, the vast majority of Americans know we are headed in the wrong way, but many do not seem able to connect the dots back to the solid faith our democracy must have at its core with the people. Democracy does not work without God first as a country of one nation under God must be to make any sense.
What have we gained with all our advances? I seldom see families well connected and at peace with time for each other, friends, and the community. They have more gadgets and things which are mostly disposable. We seem to be a country in search of a soul. de Tocqueville said it best when he said our country was founded on the basic premise that it required a country where the people had very strong faith and morals. Out democracy does not work without it. Those that want to tear America down started with the lie of separation of Church and state when the truth was the exact opposite. The government should not be telling us to remove God from our schools our from our courthouses or that killing babies is legal or that gay same sex attraction deserves to have special rights. The government and by connection the courts should not be allowed to infringe in any way on religion through tax codes, laws, or any other act. We are all paying the price for these changes and until we see an end to this liberal progressive mindset, we will continue to be heading in the wrong way. By instinct, the vast majority of Americans know we are headed in the wrong way, but many do not seem able to connect the dots back to the solid faith our democracy must have at its core with the people. Democracy does not work without God first as a country of one nation under God must be to make any sense.
8.16.2011 | 5:11pm
Paul Wescott says:
Dave,
If you wish there to be jobs... A more conservative and, in some respects, libertarian governance would foster, i.e., get out of the way of, the jobs you suggest would lead to fewer idle hands. The myriad small laws to which Ms. Scalia refers are deadening at even the lowest level and the grand, big laws like Obamacare meant to address the unforeseen (by a majority of at least 536 people I can think of) side-effects of previous grand, big laws are deadening nationwide. It is no accident that the line on the chart showing growth of employment after the recent recession bottomed out went from sharply up to flat at exactly the time Obamacare was signed into law.
The Monk of the article and others, lately, David Mamet, are on to the fact that conservative values and governance in the West, Christendom, were cobbled together by millions of individuals in thousands of communities over millenia. That occasionally messy evolutionary process is proving to be a far more trustworthy procedure than the current practice where the latest hypotheses of social, economic and environmental salvation, springing from the minds of a relative few sages of academia, Wall Street and the City and promoted by a credulous press, are seized hungrily by the political class and fashioned willy-nilly into progressive legislation. Britain may be a little ahead of us in that regard, but only a little.
If you wish there to be jobs... A more conservative and, in some respects, libertarian governance would foster, i.e., get out of the way of, the jobs you suggest would lead to fewer idle hands. The myriad small laws to which Ms. Scalia refers are deadening at even the lowest level and the grand, big laws like Obamacare meant to address the unforeseen (by a majority of at least 536 people I can think of) side-effects of previous grand, big laws are deadening nationwide. It is no accident that the line on the chart showing growth of employment after the recent recession bottomed out went from sharply up to flat at exactly the time Obamacare was signed into law.
The Monk of the article and others, lately, David Mamet, are on to the fact that conservative values and governance in the West, Christendom, were cobbled together by millions of individuals in thousands of communities over millenia. That occasionally messy evolutionary process is proving to be a far more trustworthy procedure than the current practice where the latest hypotheses of social, economic and environmental salvation, springing from the minds of a relative few sages of academia, Wall Street and the City and promoted by a credulous press, are seized hungrily by the political class and fashioned willy-nilly into progressive legislation. Britain may be a little ahead of us in that regard, but only a little.
8.16.2011 | 6:01pm
Mike says:
Interesting piece and comments. I recently read some of the intro to Steyn's book on the net; even more interesting social commentary. OK, I cry uncle. I'll go get the book.
8.16.2011 | 6:20pm
TXW says:
@ David Dutcher: "This is just a common conservative myth. The direct problem is simpler: whenever you have large amounts of unemployed youth in urban areas, you are going to get crime and riots"
To a point, but there have been many episodes with unemployed youth who seem to not flip out and further destroy the already poor economy.
How many of the rioters are young males with uninvolved fathers and have no marital instinct?
I believe it was Spengler in these pages who discussed the Greek riots and wrote that the chain is broke at the weakest link.
To a point, but there have been many episodes with unemployed youth who seem to not flip out and further destroy the already poor economy.
How many of the rioters are young males with uninvolved fathers and have no marital instinct?
I believe it was Spengler in these pages who discussed the Greek riots and wrote that the chain is broke at the weakest link.
8.16.2011 | 7:23pm
Doc says:
@D Dutcher above:
And you're spouting a 'progressive' myth. If we indeed made the US a 'libertarian paradise', which would basically happen if we actually followed our own Constitution (what a radical thought! Actually obeying our own foundational Law! Whoulda thunk it!), since it is a deeply libertarian document, vast swathes of unConstitutional Fed agencies/regs/bureaucrazies would disappear, from EPA to OSHA, from Depts of Labor to Education, from SocSec to Medicare, and certainly no Obamacare. Goodbye ATF. This would take the shackles and chains off businesses large and small. The economy would boom. Wealth would spread. The poor would benefit from skyrocketing employment and entrepeneur opportunities they long have been unjustly denied by our unConstitutional progressive/socialist Congresses for many decades. In other words, the jobs WOULD be there.
The inner cities would blossom. Why? Along with the massive increase in employment and wealth, the average citizen would be able to defend himself. When a 'flash mob' or whatever came calling, they might be answered by a Mossberg 500. Crime would no longer be as attractive an opportunity.
And you're spouting a 'progressive' myth. If we indeed made the US a 'libertarian paradise', which would basically happen if we actually followed our own Constitution (what a radical thought! Actually obeying our own foundational Law! Whoulda thunk it!), since it is a deeply libertarian document, vast swathes of unConstitutional Fed agencies/regs/bureaucrazies would disappear, from EPA to OSHA, from Depts of Labor to Education, from SocSec to Medicare, and certainly no Obamacare. Goodbye ATF. This would take the shackles and chains off businesses large and small. The economy would boom. Wealth would spread. The poor would benefit from skyrocketing employment and entrepeneur opportunities they long have been unjustly denied by our unConstitutional progressive/socialist Congresses for many decades. In other words, the jobs WOULD be there.
The inner cities would blossom. Why? Along with the massive increase in employment and wealth, the average citizen would be able to defend himself. When a 'flash mob' or whatever came calling, they might be answered by a Mossberg 500. Crime would no longer be as attractive an opportunity.
8.16.2011 | 7:27pm
Fr. Jim says:
There was a saying in Rome near the end of the Empire: "Rome grows downward, like a cows tail."
8.16.2011 | 7:32pm
BackwardsBoy says:
I hope Steyn isn't too prescient, if you know what I mean. There is still hope that we will recognize the many mistakes we've been making by trusting politicians who don't have our best interests in their hearts, only power, and begin to reverse them.
8.16.2011 | 8:56pm
Dave Dutcher says:
Paul:
I don't think that would work. There are many factors, from the obsolescence of many former businesses with no job-creating replacements, to the markets coalescing into 2 or 3 big companies that prevent smaller ones from forming. There needs to be ways to create jobs, but regulation is a smaller part than people think. The worry is that getting rid of those regulations just enables businesses to hoard more cash instead of creating jobs, because the lack of regulation changes nothing about demand.
TXW:
You can't get married without a job, or be part of society enough to have a stake in it. People that own houses and be good fathers to their kids are less likely to rebel, but you can't have either without them being employed. It doesn't mean they will always be such, but you're not going to be either sleeping on your mom's couch in the basement, your car, or in the homeless shelter.
I don't think that would work. There are many factors, from the obsolescence of many former businesses with no job-creating replacements, to the markets coalescing into 2 or 3 big companies that prevent smaller ones from forming. There needs to be ways to create jobs, but regulation is a smaller part than people think. The worry is that getting rid of those regulations just enables businesses to hoard more cash instead of creating jobs, because the lack of regulation changes nothing about demand.
TXW:
You can't get married without a job, or be part of society enough to have a stake in it. People that own houses and be good fathers to their kids are less likely to rebel, but you can't have either without them being employed. It doesn't mean they will always be such, but you're not going to be either sleeping on your mom's couch in the basement, your car, or in the homeless shelter.
8.16.2011 | 10:53pm
Michael Peevey says:
This is a beautifully written article. I wish that I had the same facility to be able to express myself so fluidly and concisely.
8.16.2011 | 10:58pm
Joseph Marshall says:
I think a couple of facts need to be reasserted here. In America there is no The Government run by Darth Vader and his henchmen. There's a Federal Government, fifty different State governments, 88 county governments in my state alone, and numberless cities, villages, and townships all with governments of their own.
If there is a street peddling law that is abused to shut down childhood lemonade stands or an anti-pit bull ordinance stretched to cover any dog breed with a blocky nose, if there is a no leaf burning or open fires ordinance, if "depriving church groups of homemade pie and hardware store customers of complimentary cups of coffee" is the result of petty and inane lawmaking, then it was your neighbors who proposed them, your neighbors who debated them, your neighbors who passed them, and your neighbors who are abusing the enforcement of them. Such laws as you are speaking of are rarely even proposed to the Commissioners of your County, let alone any larger government.
Such things are not a matter of some faceless bureaucracy somewhere else. It's your near neighbor who is the city council member from your ward, your mayor or police chief who might even live in your part of the city or lunch downtown at the same sandwich bistro you do. They were elected by only thousands, or hundreds, or even tens, of people who live near you and around you, not millions. And their campaigns weren't bankrolled by $millions either. The only time you even saw most of their names was on street signs one week before the election.
Who else is responsible for government at that level but YOU? And what is our democracy worth if you can't step forward where you live and change laws of this type, rather than simply blaming them on everything from "nanny government", to "indifferent bureaucrats", to lack of a general fear of hell.
This is one of the great glories of our country, that so much of our law making and law enforcement is devolved almost down to the neighborhood level, where if every parent laid up with the flu that came from the schools is too sick to get to the polls on election day, the results of the election may be hostage to it.
To my knowledge there is not nearly any such degree of truly significant local democracy anywhere else on earth.
Next, we have largely been freed of a great many genuinely oppressive laws over the last few decades rather than hampered by them. Any of you remember municipal Vagrancy laws? These were well nigh universal when I was young, and made it a crime for you to be on the public streets with less than $5 in your pockets. Really. Or Blue Laws. that forbade retail sales on Sunday of any kind, sometimes even vital ones like Pharmacies? Or laws prohibiting the personal possession of even the least dangerous of fireworks? Or having to pay a tax in order to be able to vote?
I remember all of them. And I'm not even sixty.
Finally, whatever difficulties we will have, it will have to go a long way to be anywhere near the America of lynching, tar-and-feathering, cross-burnings on the lawn, and murder for hire; of backcountry family feuds of mutual murder lasting generations, hundreds of unpunished bank and train robberies, gunfights over the gambling tables, and tent cities of the unemployed; of police who solved every crime by beating confessions out of people, guilty or not, in the back room of the Station House; of companies with deputized private armies of thugs to break strikes by breaking heads, and neighborhood extortion rackets enforced by throwing acid in your face, or putting a pipe bomb under your car.
Now I don't remember this America. But my father did. And he only died 12 years ago. It was that same America of "bold exceptionalism", but the bold exceptionalism of the lawless and the hungry.
It wasn't that long ago. And it didn't exist because of "nanny government".
Can we come to it again? Certainly. What else is life like in most of Africa and the Middle East? And the only thing that stands between it and us is the Law and the Governments that are powerful enough to enforce the Law.
If there is a street peddling law that is abused to shut down childhood lemonade stands or an anti-pit bull ordinance stretched to cover any dog breed with a blocky nose, if there is a no leaf burning or open fires ordinance, if "depriving church groups of homemade pie and hardware store customers of complimentary cups of coffee" is the result of petty and inane lawmaking, then it was your neighbors who proposed them, your neighbors who debated them, your neighbors who passed them, and your neighbors who are abusing the enforcement of them. Such laws as you are speaking of are rarely even proposed to the Commissioners of your County, let alone any larger government.
Such things are not a matter of some faceless bureaucracy somewhere else. It's your near neighbor who is the city council member from your ward, your mayor or police chief who might even live in your part of the city or lunch downtown at the same sandwich bistro you do. They were elected by only thousands, or hundreds, or even tens, of people who live near you and around you, not millions. And their campaigns weren't bankrolled by $millions either. The only time you even saw most of their names was on street signs one week before the election.
Who else is responsible for government at that level but YOU? And what is our democracy worth if you can't step forward where you live and change laws of this type, rather than simply blaming them on everything from "nanny government", to "indifferent bureaucrats", to lack of a general fear of hell.
This is one of the great glories of our country, that so much of our law making and law enforcement is devolved almost down to the neighborhood level, where if every parent laid up with the flu that came from the schools is too sick to get to the polls on election day, the results of the election may be hostage to it.
To my knowledge there is not nearly any such degree of truly significant local democracy anywhere else on earth.
Next, we have largely been freed of a great many genuinely oppressive laws over the last few decades rather than hampered by them. Any of you remember municipal Vagrancy laws? These were well nigh universal when I was young, and made it a crime for you to be on the public streets with less than $5 in your pockets. Really. Or Blue Laws. that forbade retail sales on Sunday of any kind, sometimes even vital ones like Pharmacies? Or laws prohibiting the personal possession of even the least dangerous of fireworks? Or having to pay a tax in order to be able to vote?
I remember all of them. And I'm not even sixty.
Finally, whatever difficulties we will have, it will have to go a long way to be anywhere near the America of lynching, tar-and-feathering, cross-burnings on the lawn, and murder for hire; of backcountry family feuds of mutual murder lasting generations, hundreds of unpunished bank and train robberies, gunfights over the gambling tables, and tent cities of the unemployed; of police who solved every crime by beating confessions out of people, guilty or not, in the back room of the Station House; of companies with deputized private armies of thugs to break strikes by breaking heads, and neighborhood extortion rackets enforced by throwing acid in your face, or putting a pipe bomb under your car.
Now I don't remember this America. But my father did. And he only died 12 years ago. It was that same America of "bold exceptionalism", but the bold exceptionalism of the lawless and the hungry.
It wasn't that long ago. And it didn't exist because of "nanny government".
Can we come to it again? Certainly. What else is life like in most of Africa and the Middle East? And the only thing that stands between it and us is the Law and the Governments that are powerful enough to enforce the Law.
8.16.2011 | 11:10pm
Susan says:
I'm no longer resident in the UK, but I spend the summer there every year, and over the past few years I've noted that people seem to be very angry without actually knowing what they're angry about (I'd say the loss of Christian morality, of course). But I think (or pray!) that at least anger is better than the atheistic complacency of some other European countries - it holds out the hope for change. And remember, England has had to be reconverted at least once!
8.17.2011 | 12:35am
Doc says:
@ Dave Dutcher
Your worry that getting rid of regulations will enable businesses to hoard more cash i/o creating jobs is counterintuitive. An over-reg'd business, especially when the owner knows that Congress or a reg agency could capriciously change/increase the regs at any time since they are not bound by the Constitution, is more likely to hoard cash, afraid to invest even if there's opportunity for it. Free the business from the restrictive and capricious regs, and they will be more willing and able to invest in new production, therefore increasing employment and supply of goods/services.
Lack of regulation won't increase demand; it will increase supply and decrease price. This will improve almost everyone's lives. It will allow entrepeneurship and increase business opportunities. It will decrease the power of the bureaucrat and the megacorps, the megacorps being ones that benefit from regulation since they can afford rafts of lawyers to tie the regulators in knots, whilst the smaller co's are inhibited from competing by these same regulators.
And finally, it is grossly illegal to continue the vast Fed bureaucrazies as they are now. Anyone who claims EPA/OSHA/Depts of Labor and Ed/SocSec/Medicare/HHS/ATF/etcetc are actually Constitutional is ignorant, in denial, or lying. So I really don't care whether someone thinks that the regs have this or that effect: they're illegal. Get rid of them. If they're so all-fired good, I'm sure you'll have no trouble getting a Constitutional amendment passed authorizing Congress to create them.
Your worry that getting rid of regulations will enable businesses to hoard more cash i/o creating jobs is counterintuitive. An over-reg'd business, especially when the owner knows that Congress or a reg agency could capriciously change/increase the regs at any time since they are not bound by the Constitution, is more likely to hoard cash, afraid to invest even if there's opportunity for it. Free the business from the restrictive and capricious regs, and they will be more willing and able to invest in new production, therefore increasing employment and supply of goods/services.
Lack of regulation won't increase demand; it will increase supply and decrease price. This will improve almost everyone's lives. It will allow entrepeneurship and increase business opportunities. It will decrease the power of the bureaucrat and the megacorps, the megacorps being ones that benefit from regulation since they can afford rafts of lawyers to tie the regulators in knots, whilst the smaller co's are inhibited from competing by these same regulators.
And finally, it is grossly illegal to continue the vast Fed bureaucrazies as they are now. Anyone who claims EPA/OSHA/Depts of Labor and Ed/SocSec/Medicare/HHS/ATF/etcetc are actually Constitutional is ignorant, in denial, or lying. So I really don't care whether someone thinks that the regs have this or that effect: they're illegal. Get rid of them. If they're so all-fired good, I'm sure you'll have no trouble getting a Constitutional amendment passed authorizing Congress to create them.
8.17.2011 | 12:21pm
Brian English says:
"This is just a common conservative myth. The direct problem is simpler: whenever you have large amounts of unemployed youth in urban areas, you are going to get crime and riots"
You are missing the real answer as to why many of those individuals are unemployed:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903918104576504033881168802.html?mod=djempersonal
You are missing the real answer as to why many of those individuals are unemployed:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903918104576504033881168802.html?mod=djempersonal
8.17.2011 | 4:56pm
ahem says:
Blame Rousseau: he's where the idea of enforcing the Left's version of 'moral superiority' originated. William F. Buckley once said: A liberal is someone who reaches into your shower and changes the temperature of the water." That's it in a nut shell. They inherited that feeling of smug superiority from Rousseau.
So certain are they that they--and they alone--possess all the answers to life's problems that they run around legislating the moral discretion out of everything. Who needs God?
Unfortunately, when you micro-manage people, you make criminals of perfectly honorable citizens and end up creating a tyranny. To enforce conformity, it becomes necessary to hire a larger bureaucratic edifice to make sure no abrogation of the law, however small, slips through the cracks; no fine remains unpaid: You create a police state.
I for one am thoroughly sick of their tyranny. Throughout the 20th century, these stupid Utopian ideas have been thoroughly discredited. Let's strike a blow for personal freedom and vote the Left out of office in 2012.
Just say 'no' to Marxism.
So certain are they that they--and they alone--possess all the answers to life's problems that they run around legislating the moral discretion out of everything. Who needs God?
Unfortunately, when you micro-manage people, you make criminals of perfectly honorable citizens and end up creating a tyranny. To enforce conformity, it becomes necessary to hire a larger bureaucratic edifice to make sure no abrogation of the law, however small, slips through the cracks; no fine remains unpaid: You create a police state.
I for one am thoroughly sick of their tyranny. Throughout the 20th century, these stupid Utopian ideas have been thoroughly discredited. Let's strike a blow for personal freedom and vote the Left out of office in 2012.
Just say 'no' to Marxism.
8.17.2011 | 11:58pm
Hale Adams says:
Joseph Marshall is both right and wrong.
He's right that the most obvious and irritating restrictions on our freedoms are put in place by local governments, but there's a lot of petty tyranny at the state and federal levels as well, and he errs where he doesn't see the common thread running through all those petty tyrannies: old-fashioned Progressivism.
To make a long rant short:
Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) introduced a lot of changes in how products were manufactured. He, more than any other single person, is responsible for our modern way of economic life. The average manufacturing company in 1875 was a smallish affair, perhaps a sole proprietorship, employing a few tens of people, and made goods of good quality in small quantities at relatively high prices.
Taylor's methods resulted in a revolution in manufacturing, prompting the emergence by 1925 of giants such as Ford Motor, General Electric, US Steel, etc. These firms, for all their faults (which were and are many) did have the virtue (through employment of Taylor's methods) of producing goods of high quality in vast quantities at ridiculously low prices.
Political scientists and philosophers of the day (circa 1900) looked at the miracles that Taylor's methods wrought in the realm of manufacturing and set about applying them to societies, imagining that they could wring out all sorts of "inefficiencies" and bring about a more nearly perfect human society.
That, in short, is the whole Progressive project.
It sounds nice, but Taylor's methods involve finding out "the one best way" to do something, and then apply that way ruthlessly and on the largest possible scale, under the watchful eye of experts trained in Taylor's methods. That's all well and good when it comes to things, but people aren't things.
It's hard to argue with success, and so the Progressives won the policy arguments a century ago on how best to "run the country"-- it was so easy for our grandparents and great-grandparents to turn the chore of government over to "experts" and not have to think about the nitty-gritty of government any more.
Unfortunately, the "experts" aren't (and never truly were) all that expert, and it's becoming more and more obvious that said "experts" regard us as things, raw materials for their plans for a "perfect society". Fortunately for us, none of them have the will-to-power and the ruthlessness of a Stalin or a Mao, but the spectacle is still unedifying.
The solution, as Joseph Marshall noted, is to take back power into our own hands. But we have to do that at ALL levels of government. And we have to treat the "experts", our would-be masters, with the respect they deserve, which is precisely bupkis.
Belief or unbelief in God really doesn't enter into this. The key point is that no one is fit to govern another in the fashion the Progressives (either the old-fashioned kind, or the modern-day wannabes) envision. Anyone with a firm grasp-- however arrived at-- of the frailties of human nature can see that point. Which only shows how clueless the Progs are.
He's right that the most obvious and irritating restrictions on our freedoms are put in place by local governments, but there's a lot of petty tyranny at the state and federal levels as well, and he errs where he doesn't see the common thread running through all those petty tyrannies: old-fashioned Progressivism.
To make a long rant short:
Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) introduced a lot of changes in how products were manufactured. He, more than any other single person, is responsible for our modern way of economic life. The average manufacturing company in 1875 was a smallish affair, perhaps a sole proprietorship, employing a few tens of people, and made goods of good quality in small quantities at relatively high prices.
Taylor's methods resulted in a revolution in manufacturing, prompting the emergence by 1925 of giants such as Ford Motor, General Electric, US Steel, etc. These firms, for all their faults (which were and are many) did have the virtue (through employment of Taylor's methods) of producing goods of high quality in vast quantities at ridiculously low prices.
Political scientists and philosophers of the day (circa 1900) looked at the miracles that Taylor's methods wrought in the realm of manufacturing and set about applying them to societies, imagining that they could wring out all sorts of "inefficiencies" and bring about a more nearly perfect human society.
That, in short, is the whole Progressive project.
It sounds nice, but Taylor's methods involve finding out "the one best way" to do something, and then apply that way ruthlessly and on the largest possible scale, under the watchful eye of experts trained in Taylor's methods. That's all well and good when it comes to things, but people aren't things.
It's hard to argue with success, and so the Progressives won the policy arguments a century ago on how best to "run the country"-- it was so easy for our grandparents and great-grandparents to turn the chore of government over to "experts" and not have to think about the nitty-gritty of government any more.
Unfortunately, the "experts" aren't (and never truly were) all that expert, and it's becoming more and more obvious that said "experts" regard us as things, raw materials for their plans for a "perfect society". Fortunately for us, none of them have the will-to-power and the ruthlessness of a Stalin or a Mao, but the spectacle is still unedifying.
The solution, as Joseph Marshall noted, is to take back power into our own hands. But we have to do that at ALL levels of government. And we have to treat the "experts", our would-be masters, with the respect they deserve, which is precisely bupkis.
Belief or unbelief in God really doesn't enter into this. The key point is that no one is fit to govern another in the fashion the Progressives (either the old-fashioned kind, or the modern-day wannabes) envision. Anyone with a firm grasp-- however arrived at-- of the frailties of human nature can see that point. Which only shows how clueless the Progs are.
8.18.2011 | 12:05am
edmond says:
@Dutcher- I lived in asia where in many countries unemployment was and still is at an all time high, sorry no riots still. I lived in New Yourk during the blackout in '77 where lootings and pillage were the order of the day, the cops were scarcely present, they called it the "blue flu" in those days. In some asian countries power outages last for weeks. Still no riots.... Go figure.
9.4.2011 | 2:37am
Bjelland Cleotilde says:
And you're spouting a 'progressive' myth. If we indeed made the US a 'libertarian paradise', which would basically happen if we actually followed our own Constitution (what a radical thought! Actually obeying our own foundational Law! Whoulda thunk it!), since it is a deeply libertarian document, vast swathes of unConstitutional Fed agencies/regs/bureaucrazies would disappear, from EPA to OSHA, from Depts of Labor to Education, from SocSec to Medicare, and certainly no Obamacare. Goodbye ATF. This would take the shackles and chains off businesses large and small. The economy would boom. Wealth would spread. The poor would benefit from skyrocketing employment and entrepeneur opportunities they long have been unjustly denied by our unConstitutional progressive/socialist Congresses for many decades. In other words, the jobs WOULD be there. The Monk of the article and others, lately, David Mamet, are on to the fact that conservative values and governance in the West, Christendom, were cobbled together by millions of individuals in thousands of communities over millenia. That occasionally messy evolutionary process is proving to be a far more trustworthy procedure than the current practice where the latest hypotheses of social, economic and environmental salvation, springing from the minds of a relative few sages of academia, Wall Street and the City and promoted by a credulous press, are seized hungrily by the political class and fashioned willy-nilly into progressive legislation. Britain may be a little ahead of us in that regard, but only a little.
9.9.2011 | 12:38pm
Lancon Celina says:
With all due respect to Sally M above, I'm afraid your reading of history is deficient. Using 'nice' in context with the behavior of societies in general, which is the topic of discussion above, rather than in its mundane usage, one might be tempted to label, e.g., Wilberforce's pursual and eventual victory over the slave trade in Britain as 'nice'. Likewise the willingness of large swathes of the young men of the North to give their lives to purchase the freedom of people of color held in bondage whom they didn't even know. Yes, you might say, but people who 'believed in Hell' enslaved them and kept them as slaves. Yes I will respond, but up until then slavery was the norm in all human societies of whatever 'faith'. Only when the Christian duty to abolish slavery was put forth did any society voluntarily give it up, at cost to themselves. That was, if you will, 'nice'. And finally, it is grossly illegal to continue the vast Fed bureaucrazies as they are now. Anyone who claims EPA/OSHA/Depts of Labor and Ed/SocSec/Medicare/HHS/ATF/etcetc are actually Constitutional is ignorant, in denial, or lying. So I really don't care whether someone thinks that the regs have this or that effect: they're illegal. Get rid of them. If they're so all-fired good, I'm sure you'll have no trouble getting a Constitutional amendment passed authorizing Congress to create them.
10.11.2011 | 11:51am
Fram says:
Anglo-Saxon mentality has been a dominate mentality on this planet for two hundred years - since 1815, the fall of France. And it brought a complete devastation and collapse of the entire Western Civilization. Collapse of America is only the most catastrophic, the least expected. Whether America will be able to clean up its government system or not – is irrelevant at this point – every nation deserves its ruler. Recovery for the West comes only on one condition - we honestly admit that we screwed up the world. We have to revisit our philosophy prior to be able to cope with the situation. Blindly believing that there is a point of return for the West is a self deception that we have already done gazillions of times. If we were to survive we have to go to drawing boards and start from blueprints.
12.19.2011 | 6:37pm
Rhinestone Suderman says:
Well, Joseph Marshal, just because someone's my neighbor, doesn't mean he can't be a cement head.
And, whatever problems America had in the past, doesn't make the America today---with its high crime, broken families, America-hating protestors and dishonest, power-hungry politicians good. I know, I know. . . you hate America's past, and scorn what came before. You see it as a country that is totally evil and depraved, except for the efforts of a few supposedly noble politicos. You also want to believe that government always has the right answer. But, if it's run by cement-heads, how can it?
You believe in the mercy, and benevolence, of big, all-powerful government, forgetting---as you, yourself pointed out---that such people really are, in the end, merely our neighbors.
And our neighbors are, sometimes, cement-heads. Yes, we're working to try and make things better---but, when we do, people like you show up and scold us for not accepting the dictates of our "Betters"---and for not agreeing with your politics.
A cement head doesn't necessarily become all-wise, all-kindly and all-knowing, just because a lot of other cement-heads voted him, or her, into office, for whatever reason.
Also, one your cement head neighbor gets power, it's not always that easy to vote him out. I believe our current government is trying to find a way not get voted out---for our own good, of course. Because they know what's best for us.
Take a lesson from North Korea.
And, whatever problems America had in the past, doesn't make the America today---with its high crime, broken families, America-hating protestors and dishonest, power-hungry politicians good. I know, I know. . . you hate America's past, and scorn what came before. You see it as a country that is totally evil and depraved, except for the efforts of a few supposedly noble politicos. You also want to believe that government always has the right answer. But, if it's run by cement-heads, how can it?
You believe in the mercy, and benevolence, of big, all-powerful government, forgetting---as you, yourself pointed out---that such people really are, in the end, merely our neighbors.
And our neighbors are, sometimes, cement-heads. Yes, we're working to try and make things better---but, when we do, people like you show up and scold us for not accepting the dictates of our "Betters"---and for not agreeing with your politics.
A cement head doesn't necessarily become all-wise, all-kindly and all-knowing, just because a lot of other cement-heads voted him, or her, into office, for whatever reason.
Also, one your cement head neighbor gets power, it's not always that easy to vote him out. I believe our current government is trying to find a way not get voted out---for our own good, of course. Because they know what's best for us.
Take a lesson from North Korea.
12.19.2011 | 8:47pm
Rhinestone Suderman says:
By the way, I'm roughly the same age as Joseph, I believe, and I do not remember people being arrested all the time for having less than $5.00 in their pockets. (Otherwise, my family would have been constantly in and out of jail.) Nor do I remember being horribly inconvenienced by any "Blue laws" which were becoming a dead letter, as I recall, when I was growing up. I don't recall my father having to pay a tax in order to vote, and as for regulating fireworks----omigawd, oh the humanity! They dared to regulate fireworks? (okay, sarc. off.)
