Posted on 06/16/2005 5:49:13 PM PDT by CHARLITE
The French sociologist Emmanuel Todd was one of the few experts to predict the fall of the Soviet Union. Now he is predicting the fall of the United States of America.
His book After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order (Columbia University Press, 2003) has been a bestseller in Europe. It plays into many Europeans' sentiments against the Iraq war and their belief that America has become an Evil Empire. (See "The Darth Vader fallacy," June 11.) But his book offers encouragement to America-phobes: Far from being an invincible hyperpower, according to Mr. Todd, the United States is really weak, decadent, and falling apart.
America's current war-mongering, in his view, is its last-ditch effort to be relevant in the new global environment that doesn't need it anymore. America's vaunted military is actually weak, only capable of picking on tiny countries. Even though America liberated his country, Mr. Todd insists the U.S. military was not so great even in World War II. Russia won the war, he claims, not America.
Isn't radical Islam a threat to the world? Not at all, says Mr. Todd. All cultures go through a revolution as they enter modernity. Islamic revolutionaries frame their ideology in religious terms. But so did the English revolutionaries when the Puritans beheaded the king and established the modern principle of parliamentary supremacy. So did the American revolutionaries. But the religiosity soon fades away once the revolution ushers in modernity. All revolutions are violent. Today's jihadist revolutions are just Islamic societies entering the modern world.
Isn't American democracy the beacon of the world? No. While the rest of the world is indeed becoming more democratic, America is losing its democracy. Mr. Todd points to the gap between the rich and the poor and the rise of powerful corporate elites. He maintains that America is becoming an oligarchy, in which only a few–the rich and the powerful–truly rule.
Mr. Todd sounds like a Democrat in his critique of the U.S. economy. America is actually dependent on the rest of the world for its investment capital, labor, and products. Pointing to the trade imbalance and the budget deficits, Mr. Todd says that America is no longer capable of production. All we know how to do is consume. And once the world stops subsidizing the American economy, our standard of living will collapse.
Into the vacuum left by the demise of America will rush the unified Europe. Contrary to the common assumption, he says, Americans and Europeans do not have the same civilization. America is still backwardly religious. Europeans, though, have embraced modern secularism. Europeans have nothing against Muslims. European economies are proudly protectionist, their foreign policies peaceful, and their governments truly democratic.
Mr. Todd predicted the fall of the Soviet Union by applying his crackpot theory that social liberation is a function of high education and low birthrates. Russia's birthrate fell so precipitously–largely from abortions–that Mr. Todd felt freedom was at hand. He guessed the outcome but surely missed the reasons. Mr. Todd is optimistic about Europe mainly because birthrates have fallen below replacement level, which he considers to be a good thing.
Never mind the economists panicked about the labor crisis that awaits the next generation. Or the historians who see such low birthrates as a mark of a civilization in decline. Or the political observers who see the Islamification of Europe–and the end of its secularism–as Muslim immigrants outpopulate native Europeans and vote themselves into power.
Today, Mr. Todd's boasts ring hollow. The statist European economies are stagnating, with unemployment as much as 10 percent and overregulated businesses unable to compete globally. Muslim terrorists are now striking the tolerant Europeans. And now Europeans–even the French–are voting against the constitution of the European Union.
Mr. Todd's projections are a mix of leftist ideology, the postmodernist construction of alternative truths, and, above all, wishful thinking. —•
I disagree on the motivation. Since Muslims came about, historically they always infiltrated failing countries and societies in order to exploit their weaknesses. And they always turn marginal areas into poverty-ridden slums, because the smart ones ripped off those areas off first.
Well, maybe it will hit the NYT list for best fiction.
Many Americans are just waiting for the battle cry to begin.
The leftist in this country are destroying it and we gentle folk are allowing it to happen.
Where are the masses of millions marching down Pennesylvaina Avenue in support of closing our borders.
Christmas being allowed back into our schools.
Not teaching 12 year olds in those schools how to satisfy your mate.
How being gay is ok.
Comparing our soldiers to Nazi's as they die for us in Iraq and around the world.
Where are the marches against senators selling out our country to the highest bidders?
Where is the outrage when terrorist live better than alot of Americans?
Where are the marches? Did I miss them?
I'm not speaking of twenty to twenty five protesters against hundreds of leftist.
When will we all come together and take our country back? Our elected officials won't do it.
America welcomes immigrants that can become regular productive US citizens. What crosses our borders illegally now can't even read or write a word in their own native languages. That is the big problem. Who wants to come here and excel just to pay high taxes to support the needs of essentially street bums? I believe you are wrong. Your view?
"Your view?"
The main problems that mass immigration brings are not those of terrorism, but rather, crime, job loss, educational chaos, language barriers and cultural erosion.
Third World illegal immigration also brings a massive subculture of unassimilable people inside the country.
American don't like their nation being colonized by an alien, 3rd world mass that speaks a different language, imports different values and often is loyal to a different country.
High time we plugged the floodgates before the torrent becomes a tsunami.
Current legal immigration policies and laws it's what will eventually, though, change us into another Third World country.
"How can one ideology be wrong about everything?"
Probably because everyone who adopts the ideology is an idiot.
Thanks for the ping!
That's the point. I met good people from many countries over time and we're the same. We find a way to communicate in a language and go from there. The ones coming over here now are low-skilled and illiterate. Of course they will form ghettos with similar people. That's normal human behavior. The medical system is collapsing though, and democrats are calling for national health care? Is the goal to have them drop dead from gunshots waiting in line? Hmmm. Just an immature idea.
It will take another terrorist attack traced across either border to shut them down and nationalize police in a state of martial law is my view. The Constitution will be the only Law then.
"But the religiosity soon fades away once the revolution ushers in modernity. All revolutions are violent. Today's jihadist revolutions are just Islamic societies entering the modern world."
The jihadists are trying to enter the modern world? What? I thought they were trying to suicide-bomb us all back to the 8th century.
the USSR collapsed because of RONALD REAGAN more than for some obscure cultural reason which only a Marxist sociologist could relate to...
You betcha!
The guy is as delusional as baghdad bob!
The French sociologist Emmanuel Todd was one of the few experts to predict the fall of the Soviet Union. Now he is predicting the fall of the United States of America.
The word French is all I need to see to know that this snail eater is dreaming..
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