How Much Ruin is in a Nation?: The Spain of Philip IV

First Things ^ | 3/24/2011 | Christopher S. Johnson

[mojito]

“Be assured my young friend, there is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” Adam Smith wrote to a distraught friend after the battle of Saratoga (1777). Smith’s assurance begs a large question: Just how much ruin is there in a nation?

History’s stores contain food for thought. For those seeking a classic case of precipitate unraveling, it would be difficult to better the example of Spain under Philip IV (1621–1665), a truly remarkable plummet from the heights of European power to something very like decrepitude in a span of little over twenty years.

[mojito]

An interesting historical essay that has some contemporary resonance.

[Siena Dreaming]

may yet escape the fate of Hapsburg Spain, but our cultural rot goes deeper; there will be no Velázquez capable of extracting the humanity from our ruin. Our end, should it come, will be accompanied not with a whimper nor a bang, but a tweet.

This last sentence is nonsense.

[mojito]

I don’t find it nonsensical at all. It reminded me of a David Warren column I read recently:

“I try, in writing these columns, not to climb out on limbs; to restrict myself to the obvious, the central, the balancing, the self-evident. If there is any point to my efforts, it is to draw attention to big obvious truths that almost everyone is neglecting. For little truths are little, but big truths are big.

And this is the big truth here: that we are, collectively, descending through layer under layer of fatuity, or as it were, mining our way to Hell. Look around in street, office, and bus, at all the people plugged into small devices, “linked,” as if in some stupendous electronic chain gang. Rigidly held, by short spans of attention.”

http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=1256

[livius]

Yes, very interesting. I’m not sure it’s entirely comparable to our situation.

[Fiji Hill]

And this is the big truth here: that we are, collectively, descending through layer under layer of fatuity, or as it were, mining our way to Hell. Look around in street, office, and bus, at all the people plugged into small devices, “linked,” as if in some stupendous electronic chain gang. Rigidly held, by short spans of attention.”

[Sax]

And extra points for using the word "decrepitude"!