Posted on 07/30/2010 8:55:45 AM PDT by Kaslin
Caroline Glick’s article on the foreign policy implications of Angelo Codevilla’s essay on America’s Ruling Class comes as Niall Ferguson is touring Australia warning that the end of American dominance may be imminent and sudden. Somehow the ideas in Codevilla’s essay are popping up everywhere, whether people have read it or not. Ferguson describes how rapidly empires can fall.
The Bourbon monarchy in France passed from triumph to terror with astonishing rapidity. The sun set on the British Empire almost as suddenly. The Suez crisis in 1956 proved that Britain could not act in defiance of the US in the Middle East, setting the seal on the end of empire.
But those things happen only to the denizens of history. People who live in the today usually think they are different. So despite evidence of dramatic change, people who have spent their whole lives among the policy certainties of the postwar period find it difficult to accept they may have to build a world of their own from first principles. Ferguson asks his audience: “what would you do in a world without America? Has the question even crossed your mind?”
Australia’s post-war foreign policy has been, in essence, to be a committed ally of the US. But what if the sudden waning of American power that I fear brings to an abrupt end the era of US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region? Are we ready for such a dramatic change in the global balance of power? Judging by what I have heard here since I arrived last Friday, the answer is no. Australians are simply not thinking about such things.
But if the Australians are not thinking about it, the Chinese are certainly preparing for it. The Wall Street Journal recently noted that Beijing objected to the right of US naval vessels to exercise in the Yellow Sea, despite the fact that they are international waters. At least they used to be. Waters are only international if kept so by a powerful navy committed to the freedom of the seas. People sometimes forget that treaties reflect realities rather than create them, no matter what the European Union may think. In another era the US would simply have bulled through. Not this time? According to Greg Palkot at Fox “so, at the last minute, word came from the exercises would happen east of South Korea (and well east of China) in the Sea of Japan. U.S. officials denied to us there was any cave-in to Beijing.”
Ironically, the exercises themselves were designed to send a signal of resolution to North Korea following the Obama administration’s decision not to respond to the sinking of a South Korean frigate by the North. Palkot, who was present for the exercises, said “the signal being sent during our U.S. TV exclusive embedment: Solidarity with South Korea, Deterrence to North Korea.” The plan was to show China who’s who. In that the Obama administration eminently succeeded.
But from the run-up, to the end, the maneuvers were also marked by some mixed messages. …First there was the timing. Following the suspected sinking of the South Korea warship, the Cheonan, by a North Korean submarine, South Korea announced the exercises. …
Which were then delayed by the U.S.
The main reason given was diplomacy needed to play out, including efforts in the UN Security Council to come up with a strong resolution against Pyongyang.
Council member and North Korea ally China blocked that and a much weaker “statement” came out. So it was back to military might.
Next … where to hold the drills? South Korea apparently pushed for them to be held in the Yellow Sea where the incident occurred. And the U.S. seemed good with that.
But China wasn’t, complaining loudly about the drill being at its maritime front door.
The actual message sent was that America was afraid to mess with fourth-rate North Korea and even more afraid to mess with China. But Glick is not surprised. “There is a clear foreign policy corollary to Codevilla’s discussion. Just as US bureaucrats, journalists, politicians and domestic policy wonks tend to combine forces to perpetuate and expand the sclerotic and increasingly bankrupt welfare state, so their foreign policy counterparts tend to collaborate to perpetuate failed foreign policy paradigms that have become writs of faith for American and Western elites.” In other words, when it comes down to funding politics or funding defense, fund politics. Ferguson made the same point more starkly: “it is quite likely that the US could be spending more on interest payments than on defense within the next decade.”
If the love of money is the root of all evil, the lack of it is the cause of the fall of empires. Ferguson gave some examples:
Think of Spain in the 17th century: already by 1543 nearly two-thirds of ordinary revenue was going on interest on the juros, the loans by which the Habsburg monarchy financed itself.
Or think of France in the 18th century: between 1751 and 1788, the eve of Revolution, interest and amortisation payments rose from just over a quarter of tax revenue to 62 per cent.
Finally, consider Britain in the 20th century. Its real problems came after 1945, when a substantial proportion of its now immense debt burden was in foreign hands. Of the pound stg. 21 billion national debt at the end of the war, about pound stg. 3.4bn was owed to foreign creditors, equivalent to about a third of gross domestic product.
Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed in Washington, as the US contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $US1.47 trillion ($1.64 trillion), about 10 per cent of GDP, for the second year running.
But alarm bells aren’t ringing in Washington. The entire alarm system has been disabled, disconnected, perhaps scrapped. Anyone who wants to turn it back on will have to root through the dumpster to see if any usable parts can still be retrieved. No better symptom of the absence of alarms is the genuine astonishment of Charles Rangel that it is illegal to break the law. Almost as a matter of course he concealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in income, used Congressional letterhead to solicit donations for private causes, took four rent controlled apartments for himself. Innocently. He probably didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. Things had been so sweet, so long that even after he was offered the chance to negotiate his way out of 13 separate violations of House rules and federal statutes he simply refused to believe it was happening.
Like Brecht’s fictional Atlantean who “the night the seas rushed in … still bellowed for their slaves,” the members of what Codevilla called the “ruling class” can’t believe it is happening. They still want their last dollar, their last perk. Literally, no matter what. “Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank caused a scene when he demanded a $1 senior discount on his ferry fare to Fire Island’s popular gay haunt, The Pines, last Friday. Frank was turned down by ticket clerks at the dock in Sayville because he didn’t have the required Suffolk County Senior Citizens ID. A witness reports, ‘Frank made such a drama over the senior rate that I contemplated offering him the dollar to cool down the situation.’”
The worst thing about the ferry incident is the possibility that if the witness had really offered Frank the dollar he might actually have taken it. Automatically; out of conditioning, like a Pavlovian dog. The culture in which the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee rose to power is one in which it is OK to blithely borrow more money than the entire defense budget can service and yet refuse to spend one whole dollar of his own money. The ethos of that world can be captured in one phrase: “don’t you know who I am?” Earth to Barney Frank. Earth to Barney Frank. People know who you are. They also know what you are. You’re a member of a world where never mind what as long we’re the who. Asked to describe the 1,990 page, $894 billion health care bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “it’s going to be very, very exciting,” [Congress has] “to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it, away from the fog of controversy.”
The Codevilla essay is arresting not because of its originality but because it simply captures the common mood in a concise way. Its greatest virtue is unoriginality. It says everything we already know. The bell sounded was already cast in the foundry of public opinion. All Professor Codevilla did was take out a hammer and tap it. Five years ago the ideas in it would probably not have occurred to him. Had he written the essay as little as two years ago he would have been laughed to scorn.
Charles Rangel’s problem is that the old world has picked this moment to suddenly die underneath him. He won his last race with 89% of the vote, as big a margin as you can get outside of North Korea or Syria. Now he faces 13 counts at the hands of colleagues who are his “friends,” but maybe not “friends” enough to lose their next election on his behalf. It’s unfair in a way. Nick Nyhart of the Huffington Post says that because the “whole system” is guilty, Charlie Rangel shouldn’t be singled out for punishment. He wants the Republicans on trial too and hopes Rangel doesn’t have to face ethics charges. “Rep. Rangel may be the one in the spotlight today, but it’s the whole system that’s guilty.” He might be right at that. But he should be careful what he wishes for. The road is like a river. Once you step on to it, there’s no telling where it takes you.
The left has always been too stupid to realize that our powerful capitalist economy funded our powerful military, which made it possible for the United States to have a major influence on world events.
You have got that right
Oooh, a Tolkien allusion! Here's to the downfall of the Dark Tower!
Perhaps we truly are exceptional. Perhaps the idea of American exceptionalism is true. In that case perhaps we can come back from this, take back the country, and continue to live in prosperity and freedom with a better life bequethed to our children. It will take sacrifice, risk, and hard work. This is the time.
If we do not succeed in taking back the nation, future historians will read these stories of Rangel, and Barney Frank, and Clinton, and Obama, in the same way and with the same attitude that we today read about Nero, Caligula and Tiberius and the panoply of Senators and the Roman elite of their eras.
I’m reminded about something I once read about the Cheetah: you could amputate all four of a Cheetah’s limbs and its muscular strength could still propel it along the ground at approximately 30 miles per hour.
Let's hope America goes the way of the English, not the Russians or the French, but there are people in the world who would love to guillotine Americans or line them up before firing squads regardless of what Americans may do.
Empires fall because of economic failure, but U.S. decadence became obvious in the 1960's when the spoiled, overindulged children of the self-reliant men and women who prevailed over the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, and the conquest of the American wilderness launched the Hippie Revolution--a revolution whose purpose was self-indulgence and pleasure and a repudiation of the values that had made the United States the greatest, richest, and most just nation in the history--despite its claims to moral relevance by including the highly admirable demands for racial equality.
Such claims of moral loftiness were merely a camouflage for the real reason for the Hippie Revolution: self-indulgence.
Today the Left and the Democrat Party have inherited the Hippie Revolution. Some are still under the delusion that they have some kind of moral authority though all of america has embraced racial equality.
The mendacity of the American press--open disregard for lawlessness--expansion of government burocracy--not to mention a national debt poised to exceed the gross domestic product--all the signs of American Decadence are extensions of the Hippie Revolution of the 1960's and its followers, viz. The Left.
Make no mistake--there are people right now watching and waiting for a chance to seize control of the United States--who imagine themselves as contemporary versions of Roman Emperors. There always have been, but today they see a real possibility of success.
Leftists would probably support such a takeover--just as the Roman mob supported Julius Caesar.
The first Roman Emperor--Caesar Augustus--was horrible--the next was Tiberius, who was much more horrible--the next was Caligula--and Nero was soon to follow.
I keep coming back to this quote from Mike Vanderboegh:
This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can’t be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won’t be done. The Founders’ Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.
But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.
And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.
Mike Vanderboegh “The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the “Socialism of Imbeciles” and Refusing to Submit”
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I can’t find the full essay. Do you happen to know where it was originally published or resides?
I share your opinion of the self-indulgent hippies but disagree on the supposedly great generations of the Depression and World War II. It was that exact generation that gave us Franklin Roosevelt’s endless reign and took us much farther down the path to destruction.
Codevilla’s American Ruling Class is a long article, but it is simply MUST reading for conservatives and very much worthwhile.
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print
If you haven’t already read it, set aside an hour or so and read Codevilla’s essay.
The idea of Codevilla’s essay — the conflict between the ruling Court class and the ruled Country class — is not new. The original idea dates back to the 19th-century French classical liberal economists JB Say and Frederic Bastiat, and several classical liberal French historians, Charles Comte, Charles Dunoyer, and Augustin Thierry. (The original, classical meaning of liberal was about 180 degrees opposite of its modern meaning.) Codevilla’s contribution is to identify correctly and completely the constituents of the American ruling class, which includes the leadership of the Republican Party as well as the entirety of the Democrat Party. Codevilla’s assessment of the dismal American situation uses libertarian class analysis that is identical with developed by the these French liberal radicals. To see this for yourself, compare Richman’s article titled Libertarian Class Analysis, http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0606b.asp which summarizes 19th-century libertarian class analysis, with Codevilla’s updated analysis of the American Ruling Class.
The Left understands that very well actually. Hence the never ending war on the economy.
The Greatest Generation meme is nonsense — virtually every living member of the Greatest Generation has been a ward of the state for at least a decade, dependent upon the government’s largesse in the form of Social Security payments, Medicare, Medicaid and other welfare benefits. It was the so-called Greatest Generation that transformed a republic of self-reliant Americans to a welfare state.
But one could go back to Wilson who introduced the income tax, Prohibition, the Federal Reserve, Federal racial segregation mandates, and world war with weapons of mass destruction to American history.
Or, one could go back to Teddy Roosevelt who first declared the the US should act as the world’s policeman, celebrated the glories of war, and introduced the idea of eugenics to the American political discussion among other things.
Or to the sainted Abraham Lincoln, who presided over the slaughter of over 600,000 Americans, suspended habeas corpus, abrogated freedoms of speech and press, and introduced conscription to America.
Or to His Rotundity, John Adams, who signed the Alien and Sedition Acts which, if still in force, would subject virtually every poster at FreeRepublic to fines and imprisonment.
Or even to George Washington, who thought that some men could rightfully own other men as chattel property.
There has been a lot of rationalization of evil by the American ruling class and it goes back to almost the beginning of American history. The conflict between today’s ruling Court class and the ruled Country class has waxed and waned since the founding. The most significant lasting improvement was the elimination of slavery.
Hussein has hired a few of them. Cass Sunstein and Dr. Death Berwick would happily thin out the conservative population.
I demand that you show clear evidence a factual basis for your claim for I consider it vile calumny.
Good post. Thanks.
I guess this is where we discover if there really is such a thing as "American Exceptionalism".
The part the left doesn’t understand is that without the military, a nation has little influence. They are really idiot enough to believe that they can talk, talk, talk their enemies to death, à la modern day Europe.
In reality, when all is said and done, the entity willing to use force will call the shots.
The Hero Generation generally refers to the people who came of age during the Great depression and WW-II. For the most part, they are NOT responsible for electing FDR in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. The vast majority of voters for those elections were older generations.
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