Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States (This is great!)

ssi.armywarcollege.edu ^ | 1998 | LTC Ralph Peters

[RoosterRedux]

Ping.

[RoosterRedux]

HT to Freeper Dumbgrunt, who linked to this great article on another thread.

[Chauncey Gardiner]

Sounds like the U.S. Under obama

[IronJack]

Bookmark.

[Da Coyote]

Hmmm, those points lie extremely close to a certain “religion” coupled with progressives.
Both are cases of extreme lack of morals and intelligence.

[\/\/ayne]

Soviet Union:

Restrictions on the free flow of information. ✊
The subjugation of women.
Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.✊
The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
Domination by a restrictive religion.✊
A low valuation of education.
Low prestige assigned to work.

[Fiddlstix]

[Wonder Warthog]

"Domination by a restrictive religion.✊"

I assume that you are referring to the religion of Marxism here????

[spokeshave]

Domination by a restrictive religion. = liberalism progressivism communism rinoism deepstateism islamism.

[Vigilanteman]

Marxism acts very much like a religion as dogmatic as ISIS. This article is 19 years old and still very much full of timeless truths very much like the Bible.

[\/\/ayne]

I was thinking state-mandated atheism; a little different.

[goodnesswins]

Hmmm....I was thinking Oregon was on this list.

[miss marmelstein]

I imagine The Guardian will be picking this story up shortly, Rooster, and claiming it fits Texas to a tee!

[MCF]

It was not really atheistic. The worshiped Lenin and Stalin (for a while) so they were more of like a state mandated cult.

[kearnyirish2]

The valuation of education in the USSR is a tricky one; they were big on advanced academics and technology, but had to shut down whole areas of study to insulate their “revolution” from internal dissent. They are not known as the cutting edge in political thought or history, for example.

[RoosterRedux]

Heheh. It does fit Texas to a tee (in that Texas avoids being a loser).

[slowhandluke]

The subjugation of women.

I don't know about this one, seemed to work well all during the Industrial Revolution.

I'll duck now.

[DUMBGRUNT]

Nice!

[Phlyer]

Both are cases of extreme lack of morals and intelligence.

It's interesting how often authors miss that point. Where do morals come from? They are certainly not genetic. In essence, this author seems to think that they just 'happen' in cultures that have free flow of information, etc., but I don't agree.

Religions always claim to offer moral guidance. That doesn't mean we would agree with their guidance, but that is their claim. Families usually offer moral guidance, though his tribalism problem is also an indication that the guidance might be flawed. Nonetheless, it has to come from somewhere.

The top failure factor of all is the tolerance of corruption. I think this author is so close to the problem that he can't see that. Without exception, the 'failed' societies he recognizes are characterized by extensive corruption. Without exception, the failed societies in the US (e.g. Detroit, Chicago) are characterized by extensive corruption.

And where the leaders worship themselves - that is, worship mankind as secular humanists, regardless of what they might claim to be their religion - corruption follows.

It has been said that 'ethics is what you do when no one is looking.' The choice is either a totally repressive police state where the individual literally cannot be corrupt (which never happens - Qui custodiat ipso custodes?) or a society where a strong moral underpinning means that the vast majority of the people behave ethically even when there are no police around.

Without that fundamental basis, the rest of his article is flawed, even though every one of his points is valid if one does have that underpinning.