Posted on 03/28/2011 12:26:54 PM PDT by 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). Smiths assurance begs a large question: Just how much ruin is there in a nation?
Historys 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 (16211665), a truly remarkable plummet from the heights of European power to something very like decrepitude in a span of little over twenty years.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
This last sentence is nonsense.
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
Yes, very interesting. I’m not sure it’s entirely comparable to our situation.
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