“Russia’s invasion has revealed the extent of Europe’s weakness, but this very weakness means that for most countries on the continent, the only rational thing to do is to avoid anything that might undermine American commitment. This, in turn, further increases Europe’s dependence on the U.S., and further entrenches the continent’s weakness, resulting in a vicious circle. “Ukraine has made it easier to read the writing on the wall,” as one senior EU official put it to me. “But it has also made it harder to do anything about it.”
RECOMMENDED READING
- The Tropical Fruit That Could Have Been an All-American FavoriteNICOLA TWILLEY, CYNTHIA GRABER, AND GASTROPOD
- How to Live Better, According to NietzscheBECCA ROTHFELD
- A Better Way to Look at Most Every Political IssueCONOR FRIEDERSDORF
In the five months since Vladimir Putin’s attempted colonization of Ukraine, two more European countries, Sweden and Finland, have joined NATO, the American-led military alliance that guarantees European security. NATO has also moved to make sure that it remains relevant in Washington by listing China for the first time as a security threat. What’s more, since February, the U.S. has increased its military presence on the continent, and Europe has started importing American gas. Meanwhile, the EU’s proposed trade pact with China shows no sign of waking from its political coma, Britain has distanced itself from Beijing, and the G7 group of advanced economies has reemerged as the primary international forum for the Western world to coordinate its efforts. The euro has fallen so far in its value that it has reached parity with the dollar, French President Emmanuel Macron has lost his majority to govern, Mario Draghi’s government in Rome collapsed, Boris Johnson is on his way out, and Germany faces a winter of discontent with energy shortages.
Thomas Chatterton Williams: ‘If Macron loses, Putin wins’
Yet Europe is divided on the question of how it gets itself out of this mess, split between those who think the American order is the best and only hope, and those who see themselves as continental Cassandras, warning of the catastrophe but unable to persuade anyone to do anything about it.”
Comment: There is little doubt that the US is in decline. Many here on this blog rejoice in that spectacle.
Societal evidence is clear. The US now has a federal government that hates the country that this has been. We have a president who was elected by fools even as his mental incapacity was evident. Teachers’ unions are determined to indoctrinate children and university students with alien Marxist ideas imported from the fringes of European society. Military recruiting is down as much as 40% in a country in which much of youth is physically unfit to serve and/or not willing to serve in woke armed forces.
Yes, the country is tottering toward its end. We can only hope that it will finish with a whimper and not with a BANG. pl
What America’s Great Unwinding Would Mean for the World – The Atlantic
Judging by the neocon control of the state and defense departments combined with the weakness of the current potus, a Big Bang event may be coming at anytime.
The progressive tax system would work if we had a progressive voting system. No voting if one is on welfare or doesn’t pay at least 10% of their income. Once 51% can keep voting to redistribute wealth the game is over.
I voted for Trump so I am not responsible.
Amazing point is the Deep State has done everything possible to deny the American people the President that was elected by them.
The Liberal World Order/SPECTRE (LWO/SPECTR) has made the Climate Change hysteria their way of controlling the fools and low information voters.
America and the West are in decline due to zero emissions championed by LWO/SPECTRE yet the manufacturing will occur in China.
In China, the LWO/SPECTRE can maximize their profits by having the cheapest, dirtiest energy sources and materials without any regulations while signal victualling to the max.
The Ukraine War has only given China even cheaper energy sources and materials without regulations or consequences.
There is a madness to their methods…
BTW, the Miami Field Office of the FBI was not notified of the raid on Trump…WTF not?
Wow Jose, the Miami field office was not notified either… the FBI having a schism perhaps??? sounds like
Busying myself Jose as I am able to look into all these goings on I too ran across that assertion – at this point I can’t allow myself factual conclusions – but yes it “appears” the MFO was not notified.
Then as sometimes happens I get a text instructing me to check my email. I do not use an internet capable smartphone, merely the old school flip-phone. But then checking my email I find a link to a … well whatever the things are called [tweets, twits?] that come up on that Twitter application/network and behold!
https://twitter.com/nedryun/status/1557105658142539780
That there perhaps is a real there? (You’ll perhaps remember the phrase oft’ used during all the investigations of fairly recent vintage, “The [authority] concluded there’s no there there”?
If that assertion is factual, and again I conclude nothing yet, it would go some ways toward explaining just why certain parties took the quite extraordinary step of raiding a former president’s residence.
Thanks Jose. Now let’s talk about a way forward. I’m not ready to give up, and I think the change will come first here in California, amazing as that might seem.
Cobo- I hope California can turn things around – I was getting pretty down whenever I thought about that pretty state and the terrible things happening to it ; Then I found some amazing info on the grassroots work being done, county by county, legally and faithfully to restore that state… thing is – California HAS to come back – anything else would be untenable.
As to how to we move forward?
I am thinking on this points in this article – thinking on forwarding a copy to my legislators – I know of at least two that actually respond to me… (though I am sure it is just their staff responding, it is something at least).
https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/08/how-do-we-get-rid-of-the-fbi/
“There is little doubt that the US is in decline. Many here on this blog rejoice in that spectacle.”
I see very little rejoicing. I do see people posting the truth. America’s rotted gov’t has brought this upon us. Russia and China are laughing at what we have become…and the end is coming quite rapidly. I don’t think anyone could have foreseen what destruction Biden could do in just 18 months(although he is just the empty shell puppet).
The Manchurian President has been quite effective.
Sir,
Respectfully, the Conservatives in America failed almost completely in stopping the Liberal stupidity, and that is why America is in decline.
It is now clear, that Diversity is always a centrifugal force, and that the Salad Theory is conclusively wrong (as opposed to the Melting Pot Theory). All of the Conservatives who celebrate the hard-working immigrants, fail to understand that Culture is primal.
[It is now known that personality is 60-80% inherited, which means that Culture has a biological basis.]
Historically, Rural America made the fateful decision to ally with the Financial class against the Urban Proletariat – Urban Intellectual coalition in the 1900s, which started all of the ridiculous Conservative contradictions (Pro-Family vs Pro-Money, eg). It allowed the conservative politicians to repeatedly sell out on immigration and protect crony “capitalism”.
Jimmy,
“ the Conservatives in America failed almost completely in stopping the Liberal stupidity,”
The Republicans are a Liberal party, their ideas are derived from classical Liberalism, just like the Democrats.
That makes it impossible for them to create an intellectually coherent defense against the Democrats.
– Eliot
Eliot
Exactly right, both parties are inheritors of classical liberalism and both inhabit the same liberal, Utopian paradigm; a belief that rationalism & science alone will lead us to salvation. Statesmen who practiced the traditional pragmatic art of politics have been almost entirely replaced by a Congress full of mere administrators who defer an ever wider range of decision-making to ‘experts’. Between that and the creeping legalization of everything, politicians have very nearly rendered themselves redundant. No wonder then that “politics” is a dirty word, faith in their ability to achieve anything meaningful is at an all time low and amoral technocrats waiting in the wings plan a coup d’état. Liberal rationalism has replaced ethics with science and we’ve almost lost the language to even describe the catastrophe.
Liberalism has run out of road. Not until the idealist spell is broken and progressivism buried will any real progress be made. A quote from Hans Morgenthau’s polemic Scientific Man & Power Politics sums it up well IMO:
I am sad to read that, but matches my assessment. I hope that a nuclear war will be avoided at the end of the process.
Col. Lang,
I’m much more optimistic. The pendulum will swing back. Indeed, over the past 50+ years we have had an unprecedented consolidation of power. The merging of oligarchs and political power, combined with the predominance of woke ideology in our educational institutions.
I see the pendulum already starting to swing back. Ron DeSantis bucked the covidians and kept Florida open. Many are now seeing that Fauci, Trump, Biden,Birx et al peddled false information which DeSantis didn’t buy and the results of the two policies are there for all to see.
Youngkin won the VA governorship on the back of standing with parents against woke indoctrination. Arizona now has school choice.
The bottom line is that both parties have been bought by the oligarchs and the small group that dominates are corporate, political and governmental leadership only care about their narrow interests. The covidians only cared about the fears of the laptop class not the working class who were screwed over big time.
Trump had the opportunity to expose the nexus of the intelligence apparatus, the media and the establishment political leadership, but he turned out to be wimp who only cared about his own celebrity. This idea of the white knight is ludicrous.
Change happens as voting citizens get activated. Like we saw with parents in VA and woke central citizens in San Francisco recalling the school board wokeists and the DA.
When more of our fellow citizens get out of the mold of always voting Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum the pendulum will swing faster back.
I’m happy to be born an American. I like liberal democracy in its republican form. I know libertarians can never control a country (they don’t know how to compromise) but I usually think libertarian! Willingness to compromise has always won the day for America, but not for all. Indians compromised themselves out of land and then were killed by European “settlers”. After political freedom was granted by civil war amendments, former African slaves had voting rights reaffirmed, were given welfare (some of the white man’s money), and a head start in hiring/admissions. That welfare and AA offends merit did not matter to the social engineers in the federal govt. and the devil’s taken the hindmost. A wag has said America does not have a race problem but a problem race. Numbers speak loudly. Thirteen percent of Americans account for 85 % of violent crime. The violent are young blacks in an exponentially growing segment of our pop. They are the “fruit” of ’64 War on Poverty” and live in the cities, w/o fathers, guidance, real families, desire, ability, respect for work, or for other humans. Cities can’t hold this demo forever so they’re coming to a neighborhood near you. I know what I write; I live there. Combined w/socialists, who hate capitalism, free mrkts, personal ppty, and liberty, the drain on the average American is clear and makes them question who we are. I told you about me, how about the rest? We were a group of Europeans who risked all (a tough and resilient bunch) to make a living in a wilderness; some made a fortune, some died real early. We came to make a buck. Few came for the ideas of democratic philosophers who guided the hands/heads of our founders. And I don’t think people coming to America today are doting on the differences b/t Hobbes, Locke, and Marx. But w/o the sinews of 17th/18th century political philosophy, commerce is not enough to hold a people together. Teaching a shared history won’t help. History requires you to remember stuff. BTW, math and English reqrs you to think; all those rules to remember are hard. You don’t know why American schools score so badly today? Its b/c learning is hard and American kids (and parents) don’t want to do it. Don’t expect help from public schools. Compromise has kept America together but socialist seem unwilling to compromise. They’re up for a fight. An explosion’s coming. I’ve never been to war, seen nor made it. Back in the pages of SST Col Lang once remarked how brutal it is. I fear it for America. It’s time for us to pull apart b/f it comes. We can’t go on like this. I despair for our progeny.
Bill…I Appreciate Your Honest and Stable Thoughts..
In That Regard..I Would Like to Share One of My Poems..
“FREEDOMS FORGE”..
They First Landed Up The Atlantic Shores
Of a Brave New Land,That Opened Its Doors
To The Dreams of Those, Who Would Be Free
Seeking on Peace..and Place of Liberty……
They Came, Not Wanting a War..Or Fight..
Only To Follow the Path Of Freedoms Light
To Find a New Home…And Make a Stand..
As They Built a Nation..And Made It Grand..
Pilgrims,Peasants, Poor or Rich They Came
In Gods Creation..They Were ALL The Same
Creating a New Nation..Not To be Ruled By Hate
Following..Destiny..Dreams and unknown Fate,,,
Uniting as a People..That Tyrrany Might Fall
They Gathered in Numbers..At Independence Hall..
A Hand Written Document..Would Soon Declare
Liberty and JUSTICE..Had Brought Them There..
A Continental Army Joined To Carry The Fight
At Valley Forge. The Fires Burned Bright…
That United Her Into States in a JUST Revolution
Creating Her Freedom..And New Constitution..
Those Banners Pass On..From One to Another,,
To Make This Nation…Unlike Any Other..
America Was Built..On Blood..Faith..And Tears
And FREEDOM Forged Her…Through All the Years..
JT
A terrific contribution to the Founding Myth. But not the way it happened.
Bill,
“They are the “fruit” of ’64 War on Poverty” …”
Re-enslaved by the democratic party.
I don’t have any glee in American decline; the Republican government of the US Constitution is a noble one, and the ideals in that document being discredited by incompetent and venal leaders and administrators is a tragedy. That said, there needs to be either a decline in American power, or an increase in competence and intelligence of America’s leaders and institutions. It’s the present situation, massive power in the hands of fools that creates intolerable risks for everyone.
grimgrin
Canada will look like easy meat to a truly imperial America.
There would be some symmetry in that at least. Canada exists in at least some part because of fear of an imperial US in the aftermath of the WBS.
I should add that I don’t think Canada’s leaders are any better, and in many cases are worse than those in the US. They just don’t have the ability to do anything significant outside of Canada. Which makes Canada’s parallel and accelerating decline more of a curiosity to be watched than a problem to be managed.
I agree with every word, but there is also a lot of division that a better man in office might fix.
I don’t know how things will end, but eventually all things do. May better judgement prevail and may we find a happier millieu until then.
“… much of youth is physically unfit to serve …”
This has always been more of a problem than you might think. We admire the greatest generation as tougher than later cohorts, but in 1952 the rejection rate for draftees was 42%. This was seen as a problem because it was 6% higher than for World War II. Fitness seems always to have been a problem.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1952/10/06/93581303.html?pageNumber=9
I think that I may have overstated this. The unfitness that is easily observable on the street today is primarily obesity. The army has effective ways of dealing with that. I observed the process in basic training and was glad not to be part of it. I have read that earlier in the century a lot of men (especially farm boys) turned up for the physical with very few teeth in their mouths. (Did not find a link for that.) Not much could be done about it in those days. Not sure about today.
Dear Sir:
The thirteen states wrote concerning “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them {the American People}” —
“…a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they {the American People} should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”
The Declaration of Independence is not law, but it reminds us in the first few lines that the American People had put their faith in Nature’s God when they separated. The various “political bands” that current connect various political entities are obviously less permanent than God. We are only mortal and we can only hope that we will act in ways that befit our unalienable nature. It does not matter that we currently cannot trust our current political bands. We were never supposed to trust our political bands. We can only trust in God. Sir, I truly pray that God gives you every possible blessing.
When and if as opposed to what and because are parallel versions of the same equation.However the are not mutually exclusive.
With this in mind decline is not a symptom of enthropy as such but a reimaginging of what are the higher priority goals.
I think there is a very specific problem we are having and much of the current culture wars and economic instability are due to it and efforts to divert attention from it.
Government, as executive and regulatory function, is analogous to a central nervous system, while money and banking mirror blood and the circulation system.
The West saw fit, between the French and American Revolutions and Work War 1, to make government a public utility, but has yet to understand the same logic applies to banking.
Basically if the medium on which markets depend is in private hands, it’s not a “free market.” Basically the rest of the economy are tenant farmers to the banks. That is why much of our industry has been outsourced, because it creates more short term profits. Why the government is compelled to create ever more, increasingly exponential debt, because the banking system and financial market need public debt to back private wealth. Why our military is so inept and so expensive, because it’s essentially a burn pit for that borrowing, so more can be borrowed. Why the financial sector has gone from like 5 % of the economy over the last hundred years, to 40%.
Yet surprisingly no one comments on this? Is it simple stupidity on the part of the vast majority of people, or that it’s taboo?
Does anyone here want to try to argue I’m not making a valid point? Yet all we whine about is American decline. Bullshit. We have a job to do and we are only going to get around to it when there is no alternative. What did Churchill say of Americans? They do the right thing. After trying everything else.
Comment: There is little doubt that the US is in decline. Many here on this blog rejoice in that spectacle.
This is an unfair statement. I’m an American, and I’m not pleased by the decline in the US. I have been expressing myself to friends, family, society and politicians about this decline for many years. You too, Colonel, have been righteously pointing out the errors of our so-called “elected officials” and their evil ways. Now it seems that the evil, and it is evil, that is not hyperbole or too strong a descriptor, has completely captured the levers of power in the nation, from government to the judiciary to the military to academia to think tanks to media to medicine to corporations and so on. At this point, a logical, independent thinker HAS TO take a stand against the growing evil, even if it means taking a stand against one’s beloved country. Believe me, the conclusions that I have reached have caused no rejoicing in my heart or mind. They are rational conclusions, however, and they will demand rational action. Until we see rational action from the parts of this nation that still believe in the principles and values that it was built upon, we will have to continue to point out its myriad faults and mistaken actions. This causes us pain, not rejoicing.
At this point, I firmly reject “My country, right or wrong.”
Without Red America there is No NATO.
Not sure “decline” is the right word inasmuch as it implies a process that will continue going forward. I think the decline is “baked in” already, so any improvements the US may undertake will be a benefit for America and Americans. But such “improvements” have to be real, not just moving money around to different interest groups or propping up the American Imperium.
There is a simple way to fix military recruitment, raise salaries. PFC salaries start at $18K, average is $25K, that’s not much above minimum wage. NCO’s start at $30K, average $40K. Walmart pays more than this, it’s a disgrace that the country spends $800 billion a year on military can’t afford to pay its soldiers a decent salary.
Col. Lang,
I am very pessimistic. What we’ve seen over the last ten years, is the result of decades of work. We can’t undo the damage they’ve done to us, and society, it’s permanent, and we have no way of fighting them.
Maybe in their recklessness, they will destroy themselves. That seems like a dangerous thing to hope for.
– Eliot
I Was on The “Blue Line” in the 1960s..When The “Culture War”..Berkley .Cal
Started in The United States..Also the 70s…80s and 90s.. I Saw the Monster Grow,
“THE UNSUNG SONG OF VIET NAM..”
Let Me Tell You Something Boys
And Im Gonna Say it Nice..
Freedom Called in Viet Nam
America Paid the Price..
We All Knew..It Was True
Back Home Was Some Unrest
Because We Fought the Viet Cong
And Put Them to the Test..
There Are Lots of Reasons Why
In Nam We Took a Stand..
You Took Yours With Ho Chi Mihn
Do You Wear That Devils Brand..???
Listen Well You Activist
That Lies Have Turned Your Head
Underneath that Bright Red Star
Theres a Hundred Million Dead..
Now Millions Lost Thier Freedom
Are Locked behind Red Doors
If That Makes You Happy
TRhen All The Credits Yours..
We Didnt Run..When Asked to Serve
Altho YOU Made that Choice
You Did Your Job on Viet Nam
To Smother Freedoms Voice..
In Democracys..We All Can March
If We Think We Really Should
But We Dud it in Battle Fatgues
Like a Real American Would..
JT
The Atlantic Article is self pitying twaddle.
“ A peculiar cognitive dissonance seems to have taken hold in the world. The Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—led and propped up by the United States—has reminded the world that the international order is, if anything, more dependent on American military, economic, and financial might now than only a few years ago. Yet everywhere you turn, there is a sense that the U.S. is in some form of terminal decline; too divided, incoherent, violent, and dysfunctional to sustain its Pax Americana. Moscow and Beijing seem to think that the great American unwinding has already begun, while in Europe, officials worry about a sudden American collapse. “Do we talk about it?” Michel Duclos, a former French ambassador to Syria who remains well connected within Europe’s diplomatic network, told me, somewhat indignantly, after I asked whether an American implosion was ever discussed at the highest levels of government. “We never stop talking about it.”
The cognitive dissonance is between the authors ears. The current international situation is all Washington’s own work.
Remind me exactly which country:
(a) engineered the maidan coup in Ukraine and precipitated the ethnic fragmentation of the same?
(b) refused to support the Minsk II agreement or even suggest to its client government in Kiev that abiding by it was a good idea?
(c) Gleefully allowed multiple arms control treaties to expire?
(d) Refused to discuss, let alone negotiate, European security issues with Russia as late as last December despite multiple entreaties from Russia?
(e) Did its level best, successfully, to sabotage European energy security?
…….and now we are led to think about poor, misunderstood, America, trying diligently to live up to some sort of noblesse oblige? Why he even quotes Kipling! Ah! The nobility of it all! Kipling and the White Mans Burden revisited.
Let me tell you that the British Empire in Kiplings time was as great a criminal protection racket as anything run by Al Capone, although much better mannered, and the creeps in the deep state in Washington are doing their level best to emulate the same. Poor weak, helpless, misunderstood Washington, shouldering the burdens of empire for pity’s sake?
Don’t make me laugh. A finer collection of carpet baggers and swindlers you will not find.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
walrus
Kipling welcoming America to the imperial club in White Man’s Burdenin the wake of the Spanish-American war reflects his naïvety but by the same token his genuinely held views on noblesse oblige. It is fashionable these days to dismiss Kipling, Churchill and innumerable others as wicked white imperialists. But empires there will be and a fair treatment must compare the British to other examples. I doubt may of us will get to see how the empire of the Han figures on the scale of the benign, but if it comes I can only hope it has its share of Kiplings. I also think the world will be very fortunate indeed if the American empire goes the way of the British.
Barbara Ann, if you had lived through part of your life as a “subject” in the brown skinned part of the British empire you would have a very different view regarding how benign it was. Furthermore, if you were white you would be well aware of its commercial rapacity as well.
Australia, for example, was excoriated by the British in WWII for having the temerity to turn to America for some of its defence needs (eg. aircraft) as well as developing its own defence industries, instead of waiting for Britain to come good with its promises to supply the same. Thank G-d we didn’t wait!
I grew up with the mantra that Australia sold its wool, wheat and meat to Britain and was expected to buy British manufactured goods in return. You have no idea of the negative effects of these and similar economic policies on the country.
Socially it was just as bad and it still is to this day. The British still think that anyone not born in britain is an ignorant colonial. The British upper classes still hate America for having to save Britain …..twice.
Walrus,
That’s a rather rich statement of victimhood coming from a member of the colonial aristocracy. Though I do agree with most of what your first response to the Atlantic article (a-d) contained. The EU, the German government especially, is very much responsible for its own energy policy and the predicament they face now.
As an anecdote, today I had the joy of listening to a wealthy German expat here in the US expound on the need for ‘sustainable energy’ and how great all the solar power was – and how it was mandated by his own government. He couldn’t answer me when I asked why he didn’t fly that private plane of his back home to the fatherland so that he could enjoy all that great sunshine and low cost energy right now, rather than be in Florida where it is 94F and humid. Though he did almost choke on his latte trying to suppress his glee at having been called out by one of the local yokels.
Fred
Re the Germans’ need for ‘sustainable energy’, I see “firewood” is trending heavily over there for some reason:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=DE&q=brennholz
Google may take exception to you trying to view this, in which case you’ll have to use your imagination.
How’s this:
America is a sinful country and is therefore being punished.
?
Works for me.
‘ There is little doubt that the US is in decline.’
Obviously, but I personally most certainly do not celebrate this development. What is troubling me, is that no outside enemy was needed to bring this development about. On the contrary! The moment the Soviet Union keeled over, the process gained momentum. The driving force was not a growing demand for American patronage, as the article suggests, but this idea of creating the need for ‘A New American Century’, which flirted openly with world dominance of a ’Superior System’, hinging on ‘Financial Capitalism’, the recognition of a superior ‘Rent Seeking’ and unproductive class which ‘owned’ everything. And the only thing needed to bring it about, were some ‘smart’ moves to steer the people in the ‘right’ direction.
This very concept is not ‘geolocated’ and glued to a country, or a people. On the contrary! It envisions ‘borderless bliss’, with ‘peasants’ paying the ‘Rent’ to the ‘Owners of the World’. European and NATO expansion did not happen spontaneously, but were programmed to take one sovereign country out after the other, and create a huge amount of migrating people, settling where they were needed to erase the middle-class locally.
It is sad to see that people who wouldn’t vote for something like that are easy victims nevertheless. Any country, or group of people outside the sphere of influence of NATO/Davos (the ‘Financial-Military Complex’) is marked as ‘The Enemy’, and off we go!
The American revolution is the only revolution that succeeded. No bloody aftermath like in France, Russia or Iraq. It succeeded because its aims were modest. Knowing the frailty of the human heart and the propensity of all human beings for evil the founding fathers opted for rather moderate aims. No great social engineering, no reordering of the calendar, no utopian goals.
Recognising that there is no and can be no absolute truth they devised a system that wouldn´t allow any one man or even one group of men to dominate all others. Nevertheless the US had their share of government crimes, horrible policies and finally the civil war. Still my country man (I am German) the anarchist Robert Bek-Gran thought he had found the closest to true democracy when he lived as an exile in Vermont.
The above is the true strength of the US and the reason she prevailed in the cold war.
No, it wasn´t Reagan and Star Wars that ended the USSR. It was the American music of the Sixties and the longing for freedom that ended the Soviet Union. The Neocons and the Wokies are really latter day Bolsheviks. Everybody from Eastern Europe concurs in that.
I believe that it wouldn´t be a tragedy if the US pulled back from Europe. First she has to take care of her own problems. The US is no use to the world if rainbow flags are haning from her embassies as they do now. The world doesn´t need another totalitarian madness. Time for the US to get back to the roots and chop off some of the wild growth since 1776. Some founding father said the US shouldn´t look abroad to look for monsters to slay. I concur and would add that otherwise the US herself will become a monster. And nobody needs another monster.
@tom67
The American Revolution only succeeded because it wasn’t actually a revolution. It was a secessionist uprising that succeeded. In many or most ways the the underlying civic mechanisms were already in place. Society, culture, and economic activities proceeded for the most part just as they had before.
I am not aware that there was a senate, a congress and a supreme court before the revolution. Not to speak of the bill of rights a.s.o. The American revolution is called a revolution because it resulted in a new type of government. Otherwise we would call it the war of secession. Finally just consider the heavy price that the revolutionaries paid. Here I recommend Pat Lang, who has written here about it. I confess I didn´t know before what courage it had taken to rebell against the crown and how terrible the retributions had been. Indeed something new was born and it would be good for America and the world if it was preserved. What is endangering it is the permament warfare state and the just as permanent bureaucracy in DC.
Religious institutions formed the core of colonial American society. That former America did share a predominant Anglo-European culture. This cultural common denominator no longer exist in America’s demographics today.
Many have come in the recent decades for the envied benefits of America, but are devoid of the foundational principles that originally created and previously sustained this “shining city on a hill”.
America at one time was as much a giving society, as a taking society. Americans honored both right and duties of civic participation. Today the pendulum as shifted to America becoming primarily taking society.
Things could very conceivably get so extreme that only reparations to blacks and cancellation of all student debt keep the titanic from it’s rendezvous with davey jonestown’s locker.
Alasdair MacIntyre offers some sage advice for the inhabitants of unwinding countries/civilizations in his conclusion to After Virtue:
Barbara Ann,
That sure explains why all the red states have been flooded with illegal immigrants who have no connection to the ‘local forms of community’.
Fred
I should have added that MacIntyre’s book and that conclusion in particular was the inspiration for Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option.
Obama, SEIU and the teachers unions take a victory lap. But where are the spoils?
Spoils…?? There are Many “FRUITS” Of Their Labor…In a Big Pot of Gold
Stew ,,Cabbage,,SourKrauts…Liverwurst..Bloodwurst..Chicken Scheize..
Made with Green Kool Aide and ALL SPICE>…Under The “Rainbow…”
Shining Down on the over DNC..and All The Rooms..In Its “Compound”
Oh Yes.. “Spoiled” Rotten..That the Odor We Smell..all across the USA..
JT