Posted on 10/18/2013 7:50:40 AM PDT by ScaniaBoy
Those old enough to remember the 1929 crash on Wall Street and the US exit from the Gold Standard under Franklin Roosevelt thin in numbers these days will recall the pervading sense that America had already peaked, its capitalist model overtaken by history.
The Russian trade agency Amtorg in New York famously advertised for 6,000 skilled plumbers, chemists, electricians, and dentists, and suchlike, to work in the Soviet Union, then deemed the El Dorado of mankind, or the "moral top of the world where the light never really goes out", in the words of Edmund Wilson. It is said that 100,000 showed up.
The commentariat went into overdrive, more or less writing off the United States. The Yale Review, Harpers, and the Atlantic all ran pieces debating the risk of imminent revolution.
Just 12 years later the US accounted for half of all global economic output and was military master of the West, literally running Japan and Germany as administrative regions.
Those a little younger like me who remember the impeachment of President Richard Nixon and the last American citizens being lifted by helicopter from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon in 1975, will recall the ubiquitous claims that the US could never fully recover from what looked like a crushing defeat.
The Carter Malaise, the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Iran hostage humiliation all followed in quick succession, and seemed to seal the argument.
As we all know now, it was instead the nadir before the second yet greater episode of US global domination. By 1990 Ronald Reagan had seen the Soviet Union into the dustbin. America was well on its way to becoming the world's undisputed hegemon in all fields at last.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
AEP is not a tea-partier, but he acknowledges that the conflict concerns much more than just the public debt; it is about the "the size and role of the US government" which are "matters of great political weight".
The historical perspective is illuminating. Think if our reporters and commentators had a memory span just slightly longer than that of a gnat.
NB! Explanation to those who don't know or don't remember AEPs previous writings, the term "my old friend Bill Clinton" is laced with sarcasm.
Excellent post. “Those who forget history...are doomed”, period.
Sheeeeeyit. Not to mention a Republican House that prevented him from passing HillaryCare and forced him to cut the growth of government against his will among other things.P>A good read otherwise.
NB! Explanation to those who don't know or don't remember AEPs previous writings, the term "my old friend Bill Clinton" is laced with sarcasm.
Nixon wasn’t impeached. He resigned. Clinton was impeached but not removed
That quip did seem out of phase with the rest of article.
True, so true. Definitely a point to you for historical accuracy. (I guess AEP knows this, but either he was a bit sloppy there or he just was short of space.)
What a scumbag that guy was. Is.
Ha haaaaa!!! What are the odds of that!
Ya might just remember it if you're over 90.
If I remember correctly this guy was stationed in the U>S> when Bubba was prez. He was assuming that any day he would be impeached & replaced. Aside from that I have always liked his columns.
—Just 12 years later the US accounted for half of all global economic output and was military master of the West, literally running Japan and Germany as administrative regions. —
Ironically, millions of tons of that “economic output” went to prop up the Soviet State in the face of the Nazi onslaught.
Isn’t it scary when supposedly serious commentators remember things that you know never happened?
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