Symptoms of a perishing society

World Magazine ^ | October 15, 2013 | Andree Seu Peterson

[upbeat5]

In a speech at Harvard in 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said:

“There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen. Indeed, sometimes the warnings are quite explicit and concrete. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy. …”

Yet another “explicit and concrete” symptom occurred this past weekend at two Walmarts in Mansfield and Springhill, La. When a three-hour-long glitch in the EBT (electronic benefits transfer) system on Saturday disconnected cashiers at the stores from the federal food stamp database that keeps track of how much credit is left on individuals’ cards, shoppers looted the shelves in a frenzy. They were only stopped by the repair of the computer problem, at which point aisles became filled with stuffed shopping carts abandoned by disappointed would-be plunderers.

[RedStateGuyTrappedinCT]

0bama's people.

What happens when there's a "glitch" in the healthcare system? They can't even get a website working correctly after 3 years, how will they ration heart bypass surgery?

[DJ Taylor]

We (the human race) just aren’t as civilized as we would like to think we are. Genus Homo sapiens isn’t that long “out of the trees” and the veneer of civilization is very thin, to non-existent, upon us all.

[qam1]

This Ayn Rand's prophecy that has come true

“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed. - Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged 1957

[MrB]

When the EBT’s flash error,
and the stores are looted by locusts,

there won’t be any food left to buy by honest folks.

Keep this in mind and buy 2 when you intend to buy 1.
Put the second on the shelf.

[kearnyirish2]

Over a decade ago I watched a sting on “Cops” where a truck parked on a main street in West New York or Union City (in NJ, facing NYC). Within minutes small foreigners were all over it, breaking open the back (in which cops were hidden who arrested them); they could have continued netting them for months it was so predictable.

The Wal-Mart situation is simply more of the same; once the WASP ethic was marginalized, it was all over. I have no sense of “nation” when I look around me, and only care about people like me. Hey, it’s more than the looters care for...

[oldbrowser]

particularly among groups that have never learned about morality and responsibility.

[CivilWarBrewing]

There are HUNDREDS of symptoms! Miley Cyrus is one, for example. Not joking.

[originalbuckeye]

We are already there. The lack of any moral compass in so many Americans these days is the best indicator. The Bamster is a classic example.

[wally_bert]

She was dead on right in that statement.

[kearnyirish2]

“The Bamster is a classic example.”

Libs were determined to have a black face up front herding blacks into the abortuaries; it is working well, and he is happy to oblige. They just got another kapo with Booker...

[warchild9]

That sting occurred in Jersey City. I used to work in that foul place about six blocks from where the trucks were parked.

There are some nice places and decent people in Northern Jersey, but you’ll find neither in JC.

[demshateGod]

3 years and 600 million dollars.

[tophat9000]

The reality is we live in a fascist state now..it is soft fascism at the moment but it still is fascism..the people are now servants of the state..it was voted in by the lazy and self center of us in the act of a “democracy mob” that they will make other citizens there new bond servant..

[Codeflier]

The best monologue in all of Atlas Shrugged. You left part of it out - Money is the root of all good and that the U.S. was the first society to use the phrase “to make money” etc.

I think about this d’Anconia speech to the idiot at the party all the time.

[kearnyirish2]

That would be a couple of miles east of me (at most). Jersey City is a dump, though it relocated some the permanent underclasss to successfully revitalize the waterfront. Newark has no such hope of attracting taxpayers.

[Digger]

We are already there. The lack of any moral compass in so many Americans these days is the best indicator. The Bamster is a classic example.

Where one has from the president & Supreme Court down to the school janitor nothing but corruption you know the country is lost.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

There is a quick solution to an at-risk society.

The realization by the public that they are the enforcers of the law, that the police are just a convenience. Taken to its logical extreme, the public are the military as well.

[GJones2]

>"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.'" [Atlas Shrugged]

I wish we could claim that distinction, but I checked to see if that is so, and it isn't. With Google Ngram it's pretty easy now to look for early occurrences of expressions, and "to make money" occurred in that sense in England long before there was a United States. (This is not to say, of course, that the United States did not distinguish itself in the degree to which making money became a means of social mobility.)

Here's an ngram that charts the occurrence of that expression in published books. If you follow the links at the bottom you can see the expression in the context of the books themselves.

One of the earliest I've seen is in a book about English dogs printed in 1576. It speaks of bringing in wolves to be exhibited to make money. Also I notice it being used in the early 1600s in the official records of the English government (Acts of the Privy Council of England) regarding permission being given to some ships "...which are now in the Downes bound to some places Southwarde there to make money of their marchandises...[merchandises]"

[GJones2]

Doing some further checking on the net, I came across this page that claims that the English expression has been documented as far back as 1457 (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) and that a comparable Latin expression ("pecuniam facere") was used by the Roman Cicero when speaking of the Greek philosopher Thales. "Thales of Miletus, who, in order to confound his critics and show that even a philosopher could make money, if there is an advantage, is said to have bought up an entire olive crop before it began to flower."

The United States, being a country of relatively recent origin, is likely to have had predecessors in most of its endeavors. It often took them to a higher level, though, and carried them out on a greater scale. (I don't believe we had a predecessor in reaching the moon, though. :-)