“At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done. Our most enlightened citizens think it’s rather vulgar and boorish to obsess about debt. The urbane, educated, Western progressive would rather “save the planet,” a cause which offers the grandiose narcissism that, say, reforming Medicare lacks.”
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Gotta love Steyn! 🙂
Some things are made fashionable (red stars and uncle Joe) while others are made unfashionable. (Let us not mention them here!)
I do not feel these things happen by accident or negligence but rather by design.
The current ‘black hole’ system of fashionable economics concentrates wealth/power in the hands of those who have structured the system.
The Fixed Quantity of Wealth Fallacy is well-known. The leaders of the Western world are in the grip of its opposite, the Infinite Quantity of Wealth Fallacy. They really seem to believe that they can always increase spending without ever having to worry about how it will be paid for. They seem to believe that the private sector is a magic money machine that will always continue to work no matter what burden of taxation and regulation they impose on it. They act as if they have an infinite quantity of resources at their disposal because they simply cannot imagine that our current prosperity could ever come to an end. No doubt the Roman aristocracy of 400AD were of a similar opinion.
They believe neither, Andrew – what they do believe in is in buying time for themselves with our money, and it has been working for them not too bad at all.
What we are looking at are the effects of dissatifications with life. Humans are forever dissatisfied.
To the extent we can examine the many varied sources of of those dissatisfactions as they vary in individuals we may gain some understanding of rhe effects. All else is conjecture.
One could whine that Mark is a bit late to the party (O.K. I have just whined by typing that) – but the arguments and evidence he presents in “After America” are overwhelming.
The leftists will respond in their usual two ways.
Most of them (most of the time) will totally ignore Mark Steyn’s work. The left (especially the establishment elite left) tend to believe that if they refuse to talk about something it does not exist (“if I cover my eyes and can not see it – it is not there” and “if I cover my ears and can not hear it – there is no sound”).
Those few leftists who do accept that the work exists will just denounce for lack of “compassion” for the “less fortunate” .
As if this has any connection to a situation where TAX EATERS OUTNUMBER TAXPAYERS.
Where all the basic things that were once a matter for civil society (the education of the young, the care of the sick, the care of the old…) are now overwhelminging (and utterly UNSUSTAINABLY) financed by the govenrment.
And where the slightest effort at reform (such as Paul Ryan’s plan to limit the increase of Medicare) are met with hysterical hatred (and tricks – such as all Google searches, during the key period of time, leading to attacks upon the plan never defences of it) – and with Paul Ryan himself shown (on television) as a murderer litterally pushing an old lady (in a wheelchair) off a cliff.
Note to the igorance – the real Paul Ryan did no such thing, it was a faked up thing with a man dressed as Paul and …. (oh I am not going to bother).
This is not “Ancient Rome with Bread and Circuses” this is much WORSE than that.
Most Romans (the farmers) got no entitlements from government – only the people in Rome (and a few other cities) got the “free” this and that.
The modern West where the state tries to cover all the basic requirements of MOST people (not most people in the capital – most people in the entire country), is insane.
Utterly insane.
There is an old maxim which speaks of “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations”.
We are in the midst of that process now.
The enormously powerful and wealthy economic engine that the US became during the first half of the 20th century has been dissipated during the second half by its inheritors.
The generation now maturing into its peak period of earning and managerial capacity is being handed a bankrupt, demoralized society with endless committments and limited resources.
Not only our wealth, but also our spirit, have been drained into a swamp of bottomless needs and state mandated follies.
It will require the very best efforts of the next two generations to undo the damage and rebuild our society.
I can only hope and pray the will and the wisdom is there for the task at hand.
“The urbane, educated, Western progressive would rather “save the planet,” a cause which offers the grandiose narcissism that, say, reforming Medicare lacks.”
These are not two unconnected issues.
Saving the planet – saving Gaia – saving Mother Earth – mostly means ending all trace of human impact upon it. Whatever humans do to the earth is “unnatural”, and therefor somehow harms the planet.
Walk slightly off the path in Yellowstone – drive a motorcycle over a fern – build a cooking fire – pee on a bush – and there’s apparently a spirit of the earth somewhere crying out in pain.
They’re going to be upset when they figure out that Gaia is a big, round rock with some abraded rubble on its surface – when they see that this inanimate lump has been spinning around in space for some 4.5 billion years taking absolutely no notice of anything that happens amongst that surface rubble, and that we could wage ultimate, landform-altering nuclear war, turning the entire surface into a melted, dead cinder pile, and – are you sitting down? – the earth wouldn’t care.
Because rock has no feelings or perception or preference.
Some hundreds of millions of years after that final war ended, as new life forms began to crawl out of the ooze, it will be as if it all never happened. Because it’s a big frigging rock.
But they don’t quite understand this yet, and so they seek to end our influence upon the rock. And the most comprehensive way to end our influence would be to end . . . us.
And so, ultimately, failing to fix Medicare serves that same purpose, since we’ll all die quicker if we have no medical care.
“such as all Google searches, during the key period of time, leading to attacks upon the plan never defences of it”
Paul, I think that’s a little paranoid. I don’t think it’s possible to rig google searches like that. I know some sites will bury words in the headers, so that google wrongly directs traffic to them, but you won’t see much of that. If more attacks than defenses came up, its because the attacks were heavily linked to from other sites.
A fine quote, but the essay also contains another gem: “In a mere half-century, the richest nation on earth became the brokest nation in history, but the attitudes and assumptions of half the population and 90% of the ruling class remain unchanged.” Which neatly echoes veryretired’s perceptive “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations” comment above. That maxim used to refer to the arc of individual families; now it refers to an entire nation. Astounding.