Mick Hartley quoted at some length the other day from this TimesOnline piece by Sarah Baxter, but I have only just read the thing itself. The first few paragraphs, which Mick Hartley did not recycle, are particularly choice, and I do quote them here, now:
A glorious culture clash took place in Iran recently that made me laugh out loud. The children of Che Guevara, the revolutionary pin-up, had been invited to Tehran University to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their father’s death and celebrate the growing solidarity between “the left and revolutionary Islam” at a conference partly paid for by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.
There were fraternal greetings and smiles all round as America’s “earth-devouring ambitions” were denounced. But then one of the speakers, Hajj Saeed Qassemi, the co-ordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom (who presumably remains selflessly alive for the cause), revealed that Che was a “truly religious man who believed in God and hated communism and the Soviet Union”.
Che’s daughter Aleida wondered if something might have been lost in translation. “My father never mentioned God,” she said, to the consternation of the audience. “He never met God.” During the commotion, Aleida and her brother were led swiftly out of the hall and escorted back to their hotel. “By the end of the day, the two Guevaras had become non-persons. The state-controlled media suddenly forgot their existence,” the Iranian writer Amir Taheri noted.
After their departure, Qassemi went on to claim that Fidel Castro, the “supreme guide” of Guevara, was also a man of God. “The Soviet Union is gone,” he affirmed. “The leadership of the downtrodden has passed to our Islamic republic. Those who wish to destroy America must understand the reality and not be clever with words.”
Don’t say you haven’t been warned, comrade, when you flirt with “revolutionary Islam” as if it were a mild form of liberation theology. …
LOL indeed.
I am actually quite optimistic that at least some (more) lefties will wake up, as time goes by, to the absurdity of them being in alliance with radical Islamists. The only rationale for this otherwise ridiculous arrangement is (see above) that the enemy of your enemy (the USA) is your friend, no matter what. If you really do think that the USA is the biggest baddest thing in the world and that curbing its power is the only thing that matters (think Hitler Churchill Stalin), then this alliance makes a kind of primitive sense. Although even if you do think that, encouraging the development of rampant capitalism everywhere except in the USA would make a lot more sense. That really would reduce the USA to the margins of history. But, if you think that lefty-ism is anything at all to do with positive support for civilisation, decency, freedom, female (in particular) emancipation, life being nice even if you do not submit to Islam etc., then you should surely turn your back on all such alliances.
Meanwhile, I cannot help noticing and rejoicing that those Islamists have such a genius for pissing off their potential allies. From what I have been reading, they have achieved this same feat in the last year or two with the people of Iraq, no less. Compared to that momentous own goal, if own goal it turns out to be, pissing off the Guevaras is small potatoes indeed.
Unless of course millions of lefties around the world read of this outrage and exclaim with one voice: “That does it. Not the Guevaras. How dare they silence these hereditary paragons of revolutionary virtue. We will now support the USA against the Islamists until the Islamists are utterly crushed. Then we will sort out the USA.” That would change things a bit.
Hardly a surprise. Look at the implosion of RESPECT.
There have been several such conferences of various Marxist and neoMarxist regimes and various radical Islamic regimes – there was one held in Cuba.
Nor is just “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” where the Marxoids and radical Islamic types get together to chant “death to America” – joined by whatever journalists and academics from the West who are there.
There are also ideological reasons for the alliance:
For example, the radical Muslims believe in “social justice” (i.e. the stealing of income and wealth and its “distribution” according some supposdely “fair” rule) – this applies both to radical Shia like the “Party of God” in Lebanon (as well as the Iranian regime) and radical Sunni like Hamas and A.Q.
Karl Marx himself may have sneared at such notions of “ethical socialism” but modern Marxists and neoMarxists tend to love “social justice” (as do some members of the British Conservative party – hopefully because they do not know what the words “social justice” mean).
And there is a more basic factor:
Both the Islamic radicals (both Shia and Sunni) reject REASON (in Christian terms they are ultra Calivinsts with a radical hostility to the notion that there can be any moral or scientific law separate from the ARBITRARY will of God).
According to them if God declares that rape and murder are good then they are good – because the DEFINITION of “good” and “evil” is simply whatever God commands or forbitds.
Also if God declares that 1+1=33 then it does.
And if God declares that A is not A or that I am not myself – then both these positions are also true.
And so on.
Marxists and neo Marxists also oppose reason.
To them reason is simply a creation of the ideology of the capitalist class and is used to justify their exploitation of the masses (the defence of the poor masses against the rich is also a basis of both radical Sunni and radical Shia Islam).
Such things as “economic law” have no independent existance outside class interests.
For example if Comrade Bob or President Chevez (or the President of Iran) declares that the price of bread is X and bread vanishes from the shops this proves simply that there is a evil plot by the capitalists.
Arguments from economic law (i.e. from REASON) are simply the cover these capitalists use for their evil plot.
The centre of such class evil is, of course, the United States of America – and many media, entertainment and academic people in the United States rush to agree that this is so (death-to-America is the unofficial motto of most universities and media outlets in the United States – their hatred is not just for President Bush).
In short the “mystics of the spirit” (the radical Muslims) and the “mystics of muscle” (the Marxists and neo Marxists) have found each other and have formed an alliance.
One does not need to go to a conference in Cuba or Iran to see this alliance – it can be found (for example) in most universities in the West.
Ayn Rand would not be surprised by any of this.
Lastly an education in natural science does not mean that a person may not join up in the “death to America, death to reason” alliance.
For example, many Islamic radical terrorists are not only from wealthy families, but also have an education is such rooted-in-reality subjects as engineering.
To give another example, President Chevez’s brother (who is presently ridding all schools, state and private [the latter soon to be exterminated), in Venezuela of any connection with rationality) has qualifications in physics.
There’s line in one of Bill Buckley’s cold war spy novels, where, after the Soviet ambassador to the US has made some typically hilarious blundering communist remark, and a US diplomat says to another, “I live in fear that one day, the Soviets will discover the art of Public Relations.”
Of course, they never quite made it, did they? and now Putin is well back on the 50’s era track. But maybe people like the leaders of Iran and the PRC are the new smooth-tongued Soviets
Sign of the times for this one hour photo instant oatmeal society we call life today. They fall out before the battle has even kicked off.
Those on the left wishing to form tag teams with Iranian Islamists should seek the advice of the 1979 Iranian socialists who… oh wait, they’re mostly dead from execution sickness now.
To the contrary, I’d suggest that Che has met God, and that the meeting was probably unpleasant.
I would love to think the inevitable idiocies of communists trying to embrace the crazy Islamists would indeed penetrate the dim world of left-leaners, but I fear they simply wouldn’t notice.
To notice something you have to be aware of the world and reasonably awake. Neither the Islamofascists or the lefties have ever noticed how ridiculous their position and philosophies are in the context of the world, so such events will be quietly swept under various carpets. Or under various Persian rugs.
And these are the masterminds who we expect to sweep across the civilized world, imposing a global caliphate. Personally, I think that when they try to march across the ocean with Allah to support them, they will discover that they’re all wet.
I do not know what ‘we’ expect but I certainly expect that these are the lunatics who will fail and die attempting to impose a global caliphate. They have no chance at all of defeating The West but they will kill a lot of us anyway trying.
But it’s their religion – opium of the people. But they’re brown – like the women and gay men whom they murder and maim. As a member of the actual Left, I have moved on from the terms fascist/fake/Stalinoid/pseudo Left to the term Vichy Left. I think it goes deeper than the ‘enemy’s enemy is my friend’ bollocks. I think the Islamists have brainwashed them into believing their triumph inevitable. One can find equally commentators on the Right intoning ‘We’re doomed!’ I think the Islamists will attempt a take-over. I don’t think they’ll kill a lot of us before being wiped out, some of us, maybe, not a lot, because as soon as the threat becomes up, close and personal it is a threat to every normal woman in the country, every woman who has ever sunbathed, gone running, worn a mini-skirt, swum five lengths, a threat personal and intimate, a threat to one’s being, going way beyond concepts such as freedom, secularism, Queen, country. Try and put me in a burqua and you die.
Paul Marks –
As ever, you seem to have seen through the cant and to have the nail on the head, so to speak.
I have to wonder – have you considered the parallels between Britain today and Britain a century ago? I have yet to see anyone drawing the connections. About this time in the last century we had anarchists setting off bombs in central London. Joseph Conrad even wrote a novel about them.
The difference today, of course, is that instead of being Eastern Europeans as they were in Conrad’s day, they are Muslim extremists.
To the contrary, I’d suggest that Che has met God, and that the meeting was probably unpleasant.
“Being an atheist I can understand, son. But a fuckin’ Commie?!?!?”
– God, said to Che just before he gets smote.
“Try and put me in a burqua and you die.”
Noble sentiments, but I take it you are not British? Our girls only have lip gloss with which to defend themselves.
I take it you havent been downtown on a Saturday night lately then, John K?
High heels, handbags, steel teezer combs and projectile vomiting will see them ok for a while yet.
Ysabel,
But you don’t get it do you? The burkha or niqab means that you are treated as a person and not a “sexual object”.
Or at least that’s what the burkha-lurkers claim. Some undoubtedly mean it and others are perhaps frightened of being beaten-up, for their own good, by their loving family.
Now, I don’t know exactly but my sensitive nasal passages detect a stink here… They detect a right Dame Judi because the way I see it the burkha or Niqab is bi-lateral sexism. It is essentially saying (a) Women are delicate flowers that must be protected and if that means they have to where a tent and never run and swim and play on the beach in sensible attire then so be it.
It’s also saying (b) that men just can’t help themselves. And that butressed by the concept that a non-hijabed woman is complicit in her own rape and the deeply sexist rules rules on giving evidence at a rape trial under Shariah. Isn’t it the case that you need the evidence of four muslim men for a rape conviction. Now, if they were in a position to give meaningful evidence what were they doing at the time?
It is gender apartheid of an appalling level. To put it simply I need to see the faces of women who have been my bosses, colleagues and clients. If not I miss out on subtle and important aspects of communication. Unlike what the bizarrely twisted Islamic propaganda if you dont’t see a smile or a frown or whatever it is much harder to see that person as a person and not as some bizarre species of perversely forbidden fruit. I used to think Islam is just arse over tit demented on this one. I now think it’s absolutely deliberate. How better to impose a form of apartheid than by dehumanizing the “other”. Perhaps even the stunningly high rate of situational homosexuality in Arab lands is deliberate too. Perhaps it helps bond the jihadis. Please do not attempt to visualize Al-Zawahari taking one up the Gary from bin Laden (even if it may explain the callous on his forehead).
I know that was crass but then I am. I am not homophobic at all but I do think it pathetic and sad that a culture results in homosexual activity purely because it’s the only way you can have sex with an equal and someone that you have a friendship with. In the West this is mostly something that happens in prisons. What does that say about Islamic sexual mores?
RAB,
Maybe downtown in your neck of the woods but the country is changing. twelve years ago, when I lived in Nottingham, it was reported on East Midlands Tonight that gangs of muslim vigilantes were beating the shit out of female Derby University students tottering back on their heels for not being appropriately dressed. They justified it with the usual pony about driving out whores… I seem to recall that Peter Sutcliffe said something very similar.
And these are the masterminds who we expect to sweep across the civilized world, imposing a global caliphate
Nope,
There are the masterminds who are instead infiltrating our societies and undermining our principles from within. Successfully demanding laws which prevent us subjecting their beliefs to proper scrutiny, successfully inserting neologisms like islamophobia into the language in order to shut up their critics, successfully getting those critics smeared as racists for daring to subject ideas to examination.
I do not fear Islams military might, rather it is a military mite, but I do fear the suppression of ideas which the left is cooperating on imposing. Tehran may get the bomb, and if it is used it will hurt, a lot, but it won’t destroy us. Its use will, however, result in Iran being destroyed.
What I do see from here is that the world is changing. Europe is still insane in its dealings with Islam, but sanity is spreading. It is popping up all over the place, and its suppression is getting harder.
countingcats,
You are right. Islamaphobia and the (to some) too subtle conflation of this with racism is a greater threat than any number of bearded loonswith AK-47s.
But, a nuke in Central London whilst it would not destroy Western civilization would be an economic, humanitarian and cultural atrocity with which I sincerely hope to live out my days without ever seeing. It would, in short be utterly intolerable.
And you know what? I don’t think even that would move the Islamist apologists and useful idiots in the MSM. Let’s assume it’s a fairly low-yield bomb and “only” 200,000 die. Well, they’d dust off the old Lancet study of muslim deaths in Iraq and ask if a Londoner is worth more than three Iraqis? five Iraqis? Whatever the figures are.
Because quite obviously, if London gets whacked it has clearly been our fault. How can it be the fault of a less developed state like Iran which has pledged so much to help the poor of the world and has forged relations with that other great hero of our time, Hugo Chavez? Surely it is the fault of Bush & Cheney? Don’t you see that? They even planted the bomb in order to give them an excuse to seize Iran’s oil.
Well, folks seem to believe that Dick Cheney stole a load of kids’ Thanksgiving fireworks and blew up the WTC with them in person. He was operating on instructions from Moshe Dayan via a ouija board. It’s obvious if you think about it.
Mahmoud needs a bitch-slapping sooner rather than later.
Nick the MSM is dead in the water.
The ordinary folk are talking to each other like we are doing now.
Our opinions are hitting the MSM in their comments sections the very day their pontifications are published.
The comfortable clique of “Commentators” have had their day.
We dont like the way things are going in this country and that cliche phrase” The Tipping Point” is coming.
If someone was to dirty Nuke even Darby, well like Mr Bridger said, We would push them into the sea.
Wait. What?
You criticize the left for being hypocritical and ignoring the threat of Islamofascism… only to suggest that they instead be hypocritical and ignore the threat of US imperialism?
Obviously much of the Left is wrong on the Islamists. But it is worth pointing out that the US government (slash the various corporatist global instruments of political power like WTO and IMF) have a hell of a better shot at taking over the world in a permanent way.
The Islamists may eventually blow up some cities, but at the end of the day they’re just idiotic rabble with no depth to their momentum.
It would be utterly irrational for the Anti-Authoritarian Left to suspend its struggles against the capitalist west until such day when the Islamists stop being a threat.
I mean, if you want them to act nonsensically in a different direction, that’s a valid desire. But there’s not a good logical case for that sorta change.
It would be utterly irrational for the Anti-Authoritarian Left to suspend its struggles against the capitalist west until such day when the Islamists stop being a threat.
Fantasy Island.
Capitalism is incompatible with authoritarianism. No truly capitalist society can be authoritarian without ceasing to be capitalist.
No society can eliminate capitalism and/or free enterprise without being authoritarian.
To compare the ‘threat’ of a successful advocate of free choice and enlightenment values with the hatemongering and psychopathic murderers of Islamofacism is delusional.
at the end of the day they’re just idiotic rabble with no depth to their momentum.
One and a half millenia of expansion through violence must provide some depth surely.
But it is worth pointing out that the US government … have a hell of a better shot at taking over the world in a permanent way.
Although there is no serious evidence that they wish to.
RAB,
Is the MSM dead in the water though? That seems to be an axiom of blogocrats but is there any real evidence for it beyond wishful thinking. I find it hard to believe that these monster corps are incapable of change brought about by necessity. There’s gotta be at least some smart folk at News Corp for instance though a glance at timesonline would seem to suggest otherwise. I wouldn’t rule out them making a comeback in more modern form.
The thing is, the likes of the BBC, which is where a lot of chatter takes place is heavily censored. Is the Guardian? The Times – I seem to recall – vets comments. I think you may’ve just gotten used to the liberal nature of our hosts here.
Of course, the BBC’s current business model is shot to buggery but I dunno about the rest.
Although there is no serious evidence that they wish to.
I would suggest there is actually a great deal of evidence to the contrary.
One and a half millenia of expansion through violence must provide some depth surely.
Therein lies what makes Islamism a real Fozzie Bear of a problem.
I would suggest there is actually a great deal of evidence to the contrary
Although, I thinks the yanks are now experiencing the same problem the brits did in the latter part of the 19thC. During the scramble for Africa it was actually British Government policy to avoid imperial expansion. Circumstances simply forced more territory onto them than they wanted.
The Americans are in a similar position, and they are not even an empire. Circumstances are forcing them to engage in adventures that they really would rather avoid.
Well yes. Did we really want the Sudan? Does America really want Afghanistan? This seems to be the cute delusion / cuter propaganda bin Ladenites pedals when they claims that the US is looting Somalia or whatever. Looting it of what precisely?
Ah yes “U.S. Imperialism”.
The idea of “saturated developed markets” leading to demands by capitalists that the governments of such nations as America gain control of “underdevelped” countries.
The idea that Lenin stole from the radical liberal (and antisemite) Hobson, who in turn stole it from the writings of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (way back in the 1830’s).
The problem is that the theory is crap.
As a country develops the people in it are not less of a market (either for goods or investiment) they are more of a market.
As for colonies – they almost always make a loss.
“Ah but it was American companies that got Bush to invade Iraq for economic reasons”.
More crap.
The judgement to go into Iraq in 2003 may have been wise or unwise (I thought, and still think, that it was unwise) but it had nothing to do with “corporate profits”.
“America out to take over the world”.
If the United States government had wanted to do that it would have done so when it had an atomic monopoly (1945 to 1949) or at least before any other power had the means to launch large numbers of nukes at the United States (only in the 1960’s were large numbers of accurate Soviet I.C.B.M.s developed – before this was the time of the bomber with the U.S.A.F. could have dealt with).
In short the “America out to take over the world” stuff is rubbish.
Rich Paul, Perry, and RobtE.
I am sure that the West as it existed in the 19th century could have defeated the forces of radical Islam without difficulty.
However, the modern “West” is rather different.
The financial system is a fiat money credit bubble.
Taxes take up about half the economy – to support the ever growing Welfare State.
And all the cultural institutions (from the arts to the schools and universities) are rotten to the core.
We even depend on immigration to maintain physical numbers (fertility rates having collapsed). And the immigrants show little sign of wishing to assimilate in things other than Association Football and other such (and given the decline of Western culture and society WHY SHOULD they wish to assimilate?).
If there were no external threats at all (and “external threats” seems to include the newcommers and, even more so, their children and grandchildren) the West looks like it would destroy itself.
We should not blame the radical Muslims for our decline (it is our own fault) – they sense weakness and attack.
In their place I doubt I would be kinder.
the immigrants show little sign of wishing to assimilate
As a flat statement, I would argue to the contrary. This is a problem with Islamic immigrants, others assimilate quite happily if they are allowed to.
“The leadership of the downtrodden has passed to our Islamic republic. “
Heh, I think he meant to say “The treading on of the the downtrodden.”
You can be arrested for possession of foreign newspapers in Iran. You can be executed for being an “unchaste” teenage girl.
I don’t think the US really wants those lefties to be on our side. They’re not assets.
I am actually quite optimistic that at least some (more) lefties will wake up, as time goes by, to the absurdity of them being in alliance with radical Islamists.
This “absurdity” you refer to is an artifact of your continued insistence that Leftist fanatics differ in some fundamental way from religious fanatics.
This “absurdity” is an artifact of a broken understanding of politics, no more.
Convergences between the so-called “opposites” of Left and Right like this are happening almost every day now, and yet most commentators keep insisting that they are somehow absurd, or exceptional, or inexplicable, rather than consider the obvious: that their tools of political measurement are thoroughly broken.
You’d think the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact would have driven that point home, but no; the same tools of political “science” that failed most observers then, continue to fail them now.
Clue: if your yardstick makes reality look absurd, you need a new yardstick.
The author is “quite optimistic” that more lefties will wake up to the absurdity of being allies with radical Islamists.
Good luck with that!!
Might want to check out one of Zeev Sternhell’s books. He argues that the original Euro National Socialists movements were similar left – right arrangements and/or alliances that ended up swapping memes to create it….
First time as tragedy, second time as farce… we can only hope.
The whole left-islamist mutual aid phenomenon to me is an indication of how weak the left has become. For them the arrangement is one of necessary opportunism, and the result is a confederacy of dead enders.
I mean, can you imagine the socialists of 1930 or even 1950 making common cause with medieval religious zealots? Back then socialist economic theories were still taught in university economics departments and socialism was considered scientific by western elites. Certainly the idea of issuing apologia for ignorant, tribal, hyper-violent religious fundamentalists would horrify the old left, unencumbered as they were with today’s post-modern multi-culti catechism. Today’s left no longer has any credibility or professional reputations to protect, but rather have an ash-heap of history to evade.
yours/
peter.
Paul Marks,
As I understand it, the difference between Yahweh and Allah is that Yahweh has repeatedly said that He cannot be untrue to himself. I’ve heard that Allah is not bound by his own self.
The reason we have Reason, Beauty, Truth, Love, and all that good stuff is because they are part of God’s character. If God did perchance say 1+1=33 then it would be so, and we’d all be making jokes about those idiots who thought 1+1=2. The universe is bound up with the character of God, and is a reflection of his artistic intentions. There is no place to stand outside the system.
The furthest you can stand outside the system is to ask yourself this question: ‘Well, what if 1+1=33? What then?’ I’m not imaginative enough to tell you what happens, but this I do know, whatever lives in that universe won’t be recognizably human.
One last bit…the fellow who pointed out the changeable nature of Allah suggested that Allah most closely resembled another being of power, of pure, rebellious power devoted to his own whims….Satan. Its an interesting idea at the least.
“Also if God declares that 1+1=33 then it does.”
Sounds like public school education……..
“And if God declares that A is not A or that I am not myself – then both these positions are also true.”
…..and a university education,too.
Tennwriter…
The Judeo-Christian God (at least the later version informed by Hellenic thought) is bound by logic. this means that he is bound by his own “character” so to speak but it also means that he is bound absolutely by logic which is in some sense prior to God. God can’t make 1+1=33 because that’s simply impossible*. It is also answers the old chestnut about whether God can create an object to heavy for Himself to lift. Of course he can’t because no object can be too heavy for God to lift so therefore such an object can’t exist and therefore God can’t create it.
Allah ain’t like that. the Qu’ran contains abrogated passages so clearly Allah changes his mind. Allah has absolute power of the universe and it isn’t just his sand box because Allah can make the sand do whatever he wants to regardless of anything like physics or logic. Allah can create complete contradictions if he wants.
The Allah=Satan meme is superficially appealing but Satan does not have anything like the absolute power to do anything that Allah can. Allah is perhaps more like the evil demiurge that Descartes hypothesizes and then rejects. Or an unbelievably petulant and spoiled child playing God with an ant-farm. A very significant difference between Christianity and Islam is that Christians choose Christianity whereas Muslims are selected by Allah. There is no free will in the Universe except that of Allah and that free-will is total and can do anything, even the impossible.
For more on the completely irrational nature of Allah check out this by Robert Spencer.
*Because of the absolute meaning of the symbols used. The only way “1+1=33” could be true is if “33” was the symbol we used to denote the concept we usually write as “2”.
I read “Reading Lolita in Tehran.” The author says many leftists supported the Iranian Revolution in 1979. However they were rounded up and shot after the revolution was successful.
The logical end of techological development is that SOMEONE is going to take over the world, and soon. If a libertarian, well-engineered, and corruption-tolerant government like the US won’t, then it will be taken over by either an insane perfection-demanding control-freak leftist dictatorship like the UN is trying to evolve into, or a ruthless rock-worshipping superstitious theocracy like Iran. (Don’t laugh about that; more people are demanding a return to a time when narrative and oratory were more important than reason and science than you’d think.)
If I have to choose, I’d choose a government modeled after the original US government. Yes, the slaveholding woman-banning one. It has the historical precedent of being able to administrate a slaveholding misogynist population, while eventually moving toward abolition and equal rights, albeit with a lot of bloodshed, in the case of abolishing slavery. This is an important quality in a government that would have to start administering slavery-legal countries like Sudan and misogynist theocracies like Iran, and even nations like Saudi Arabia, which is both.
Tatteremalian
I do not agree that the logical result of technology is that someone is going to take over the world. Technology may make it less difficult to take over the world – but it does not make such a nightmare inevitable.
And it would be a nightmare – for if there was only one government there would be pressure to keep down taxes or regulations.
Of course such a world government would eventually suffer economic collapse – but the restoration of civil society can not be assumed, there might be a new dark age (but on a global scale).
As for the United States being “libertarian”. It is less statist that the United Kingdom, but government is still VAST (both in size and in scope).
Also the United States reached its peak as a percentage of the world economy in the late 1940’s (1947-48 I believe) when its output was about half the world economy – it is much, much less now.
I was going to reply to Tennwriter, but Nick M. has already done it for me.
However, if Tennwriter replies that this is a Roman Catholic view of Christianity I would point out that many Christians who reject the claims of authority of the Bishop of Rome (for example I reject these claims) also take the view that logic and reason are real things.
Countingcats:
I accept your correction. I was indeed too loose in my comment.
“Also the United States reached its peak as a percentage of the world economy in the late 1940’s (1947-48 I believe) when its output was about half the world economy – it is much, much less now.”
That was an anomaly caused by the devastation of WW2.
U.S. economic output historically(100yrs+or -) accounts for 22-27%(avg.25%,a figure staggering in itself) of the global economy.
Euro/Asian economic growth in the post-war period(roughly 1945-55)was simply rebuilding all that was destroyed between 1931(Japan’s war against China) and 1945.
100 yrs ago a nation’s economic strength was measured by the tons of steel produced and it’s military power by the number of capital ships.
Such statistics and heavy industry matter far less today than technology,and information technology specifically.
The U.S. leads in advanced technology,advanced information technology,and most important of all,the ability to translate all this into new products,services and yet more advanced technology.
Nanotech ans bio-genetics are just the beginnigng.
And,yes,I’m quite aware there are plenty of people nipping at our heels.
American manufacturing may not be in formal decline (I believe British manufacturing is, whatever the official stats say), but other countries are expanding much faster.
Whether copyrights and other such are statist protections OR NOT, it is foolish to rely on them (as they will be ignored by the Chinese and others).
A country the size of the United States (over 300 million people) must be based on making things.
And, by the way, even a lot of military use stuff comes from overseas now.
This is NOT an argument for taxes on imports. But it is an argument for lower taxes, less government spending and less regulations – especially an end to “anti trust” and pro union regulations.
Austrian school people often point to the similar situation between now and the late 1920’s, and it is true that both situations are credit-money bubbles.
However, in the late 1920’s that was basically the only problem the American economy had (yes there was also anti trust stuff – but not much).
Taxes, government spending and regulations were low enough for manufacturing industry to be basically sound in the United States of hte 1920’s.
Today, even if there was no credit bubble the basic American economy would be unsound – for example the “entitlement progams” alone (even without all the other problems) make it unsound.
“And the British economy?”
I do not believe there is any point in talking about the British economy.