Sunday, September 8, 2013

Visions of our Futures

For the past several years there has been an explosion of discussions about possible futures for the United States, often concentrating on two things: the growth of government with its inherent totalitarian/socialist/fascist values and the mass immigration of uneducable, crime-prone low-IQ Third World immigrants.

Neither of these things, contrary to the delusions of the open-borders/big government/anarchist-leftist-libertarian crowd, is good for the U.S. They’re terrible. They’re monstrous, and I mean “monstrous” in the original sense of the word: an offense against the natural order (the word "monster" also means "a demonstration of things to come").

The first problem is the growth of government, which I now believe has reached the tipping point, thereby leading to the coming economic collapse of the United States. Specifically, the economic collapse of the ever-growing Blob known as the federal government. This, I believe, is a foregone conclusion.

Unlike anarchists (all of whom are left-wingers, even if they call themselves libertarians), who think society can survive without government, I believe it will always exist.

For that matter, all societies have had some form of government. Those who think, following Murray Rothbard (a good economist but a lousy historian) that Ireland and Iceland were anarchist societies, know nothing about how brutal, savage and murderous these places were.

I operate on the Natural Law premise that the proper purpose of government is to protect what John Locke called “life, liberty and property” (which made it into the Constitution as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”).

Personally I think the best government is a constitutional monarchy.

When government goes beyond protecting life, liberty and property it then turns into what Franz Oppenheimer and Albert Jay Nock called “the State,” which is the Political Means based on violence, force, theft, lies and murder, and is always opposed to the Economic Means of persuasion, trade, the free market and political liberty.

As Alfred North Whitehead wrote in his book, Adventures of Ideas, about the difference between persuasion and force: "The creation of the world -- said Plato -- is the victory of persuasion over force...Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals...

"Now the intercourse between individuals and between social groups takes one of these two forms: force or persuasion. Commerce is the great example of intercourse by way of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion exemplify the reign of force."

So, from now on, for the sake of accuracy, I will generally use the term “the State” to describe what the United States federal government has mutated into (although not always, since I agree with what Emerson wrote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”).

I listen to no writer on economic and social issues unless they are logical, can explain their beliefs simply, and have a successful track record. One of them is Richard Maybury, who believes the State will collapse (neither he nor anyone else knows when) but that the country itself will survive. I agree with him on this point.

Maybury, who was in Vietnam and got wised up to the State’s mendacity at the age of 22, discussed with his wife about leaving the U.S. but decided to stay. I personally have no intention of leaving this country – my country. The invaders are uninvited guests, which ultimately is going to be a very bad thing for them. Ditto for the Muslim invaders in Europe, all of whom should learn how to swim.

There are some bad things to the collapse of the State but many more good things. The dismantling of the American Empire with its appallingly destructive military meddling in three-quarters of the world, the severe damaging of the American economy through the fed’s utterly incompetent neo-Keynesian policies; the State’s tinkering with hundreds of millions of people’s lives to achieve unworkable social goals…the disappearance of them is very good indeed.

I still have a hard time believing the mess the State has made. How can anything be so incompetent and engage in what is clearly long-term folly? How can our “leaders” not learn from the past? Unfortunately, the worst do get on top – the sheep have put the wolves in charge of the flock.

Wages have not gone up since January, 1973, one reason being Nixon’s going off of the gold standard in 1971, allowing the completely unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank to inflate without any brakes on it. They’ve also failed to go up because of the “crowding out” of private investment caused by the sucking up of capital to finance the national debt, and because of the State and corporations (which are creations of the State) sending tens of trillions of dollars of our wealth, and over 500 years of Western knowledge, to our enemies in the Middle East and China (I tell people that if exporting our jobs to China is such a good thing, we should export our military defense to them. It’d be a lot cheaper, at least until the U.S. ceased to exist. Penny-wise, pound foolish.).

If we had maintained the growth rates of the 1950's (which would have been easy), the average yearly income would be about $100,000.

Probably the worst consequence of the collapse of the State is that it takes up about one-third of the economy, so there will be cause substantial problems as the economy and society repair themselves.

Other writers, such as Theodore Beale, who writes under the name Vox Day, believes we are already in what he calls the Great Depression 2.0 and that there is not going to be a recovery of any note. I agree with him but wonder it will be as bad as the first Depression, which, not surprisingly, was the fault of the State because of its financial, intellectual and moral incompetence – and that includes whackjob court whores such as Paul Krugman, who in his sick delusions believes he is Hari Seldon from Isaac Asimov's The Foundation Trilogy.

States collapse but countries and societies survive. England survived the disappearance of its empire. Italy and Greece are still around. Germany survived World War I and even the appalling destructiveness of World War II. America will also survive, although in what condition no one yet knows.

Now we come to immigration. If things continue on the path they are on now, there is one thing of which I am convinced: we will have a society with upper-class whites and Asians living in guarded gated communities, “Hispanics” in the middle, and blacks at the bottom (and the last two are now ethnically-cleansing the other from their “territory”). There of course will be individual exceptions to this but the general rule still stands.

Not surprisingly, the deluded “free-market” types (who don’t understand the free market), think that different tribes can peacefully share the same land by putting the materialism of DVD players and SUVs above tribe, race, religion and ethnic group. They’re finding out, and will continue to find out, just how wrong they are. That old saying, “There is no education without tears” only applies to the blind and ignorant who refuse to see the truth, even if it’s right in front of their noses.

There is a woman I know, a Filipina raised in a wealthy family in the Philippines. Not surprisingly her family lived in a gated community and later in a high-rise with guards at the entrance. What did surprise me was her fear of traveling alone: she told me that had anyone known her family had money, she could have been kidnapped. These kidnappings are now a bit closer than the Philippines; in Mexico, specifically.

It is of course impossible to tell the future, but history does repeat, and the further you look into the past the further you can see into the future. And if history is any guide, there is only one tiresome story that repeats itself over and over: the growth of the State until it collapses. The United States will be no exception to this rule.

One possible future scenario, written about extensively by Jerry Pournelle, is that the military might take over. He refers to the military as “the Legions” and has written many novels about them, several of which I have read.

Pournelle points out that when military leaders perceive the military they love as being destroyed by inept politicians – such as what is happening now with six undeclared wars and U.S. troops in 144 countries – they’ll take over. It’s happened quite a few times in the past.

I get the impression – I may be wrong here but I don’t think I am – that Pournelle is not averse to this scenario. Considering the shape this country is in, I sometimes wonder if I would be.

In a compilation that Pournelle wrote with S.M. Stirling called The Prince (after Machiavelli’s treatise), groups of colonist are voluntarily and involuntarily sent to a distant planet. The involuntary colonists, who lived their lives on welfare while on Earth, with the remaining productive members of society paying for their entertainment and drugs, are the ones who become violent, just the way they riot in the U.S. for any excuse. The liberals of that future time support them – no surprise there.

Pournelle’s reoccurring main character, a mercenary (not a pejorative term in Pournelle’s universe) named John Christian Falkenberg - of “Falkenberg’s Legion” - is the one who battles these rebels. From this and other of Pournelle’s novels it is clear he is a conservative in the true sense of the word – he understands that a massive welfare state undermines people’s characters and will ultimately lead to social and economic disorder, including collapse and starvation.

An aside: in college I drove a taxi, sometimes at night. I found that in the high-rise public-housing buildings a hundred young people, most of whom were never employed and with no intention of seeking to be, were up at 3 am every night and gathered in the parking lot to do who-knows-what. Based on my experience driving a cab, I’d wager they did nothing but socialize, drink, get high, and sell drugs and women.

Some of Pournelle’s characters have said such things as “Governments have no honor” and “Politicians get themselves into trouble that only the military can get them out of.” I am reminded of the fact politicians have for all practical purposes ceded parts of the border states to violent, murderous Mexican drug smugglers.

In a nutshell, to Pournelle (originally a Southerner) governments lie, cheat, steal and murder – this is their nature and their history. They have none of the ideal martial virtues such as honor and trust and sacrifice. And the purpose of a military takeover is to eradicate leftist policies and to allow the natural conservative/libertarian values of Western society to re-establish themselves and flourish.

How would a military takeover work in the United States? The United States isn’t Europe - thank God for that - with its millennia-old love of fascism, so I do not think we’d end up with the horrors that have afflicted Russia, Spain, France and Germany (the late Ray Bradbury once made the amusing but perceptive comment, “If it comes out of Europe, it’s probably wrong”).

Another aside: many Hessian mercenaries (draftees) sent here during the Revolutionary War stayed, having no intention of going back to the statist Hell in which they were raised. Yet another: Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House on the Prairie fame), wrote in her pamphlet, "Give Me Liberty" (which can be downloaded on free on the Internet) about the troubles she had in Hungary and France, where the police asked for her papers two or three times a day, women who hadn’t worked in the last week (stamped on their cards) were issued prostitute’s cards, and once, after buying a car, she didn’t make it two blocks before the police checked her and wouldn’t let her drive any farther because the seller had forgotten to screw a metal plate into the dashboard with Rose’s name and address on it.

While I was not in the military I know several people who were, and was surprised, but should not have been, when they told me that many people have joined to learn how to defend their race or ethnic group in case of a violent collapse. This includes not only whites but blacks and Hispanics. Such are the “wonders” of diversity, which have now infected the military.

Unfortunately, I have little idea what would happen during a military takeover in the U.S. The leaders of all branches would have to support it – and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they did. Democracies are the worst form of government; they all fail since they set up massive welfare states while destroying their militaries through overextension.

In some ways it is unfortunate humans are hierarchical animals. Maybe it would have been better if we had evolved from dogs, with their sunny manic natures. We’d still be hierarchical and probably downright stupid, but we’d spend lots of time playing and no time imposing the anti-American leftist delusion of “democracy” on other dogs by killing their puppies and their mothers.

As things stand now, our hierarchical nature has allowed probably less than 500 people in the federal State to severely damage this country. And the more than 300 million people in this country let them get away with it. It’s a cliché, but it does boggle the mind.

The fact there are so few people in the federal State is what convinces me how easy it would be for the military to take over, if they were motivated to do so. In fact the people could easily take over if the police and military stood down.

Traditionally when democracies fail they turn into dictatorships (which generally only last until the dictator dies), but what dictator could rule the entire U.S.? I consider the idea ridiculous; we’re not some postage-stamp-sized country, as is common in the rest of the world. But people supporting the military ridding us of the terminal cancer that our originally small federal government has metastasized into…I can see that. Besides, who else could do it? After all, it is a truth that only power can fight power. Weakness certainly can’t.

Even today most Americans don’t have the fascist mindset that has afflicted Europeans probably since the time of the Roman Empire (the blind, ignorant, hubris-ridden Eurofascists of the EU have designs on Europe that Hitler never had). So even if the military took over here I believe it would be temporary. At least, if it ever did happen, I hope so.

I’d like to think that phrase about the military defending the United States from enemies “foreign and domestic” is true, especially since most countries fall not from attacks from without, but from within, from traitors who pretend to be patriots, such as the leftist chickenhawk/chickenshit “neo-conservatives” who pushed for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now Syria.

Another scenario is that the United States breaks up politically into several independent sections. Neal Stephenson has written about this in some of his novels such as Snow Crash. I believe such a break-up is improbable to the point of near impossibility but what Stephenson has correctly pointed out is that each of these tribal lands is armed to the teeth to protect itself against attacks by other tribes (try his The Diamond Age for a better illustration of this).

Stephenson has been influenced by the novel The Camp of the Saints, in which Europe is overrun and destroyed by hordes of envious hate-filled Third Worlders. Although Stephenson is a funny writer, his depiction of a future U.S. is essentially that of a Hell in which the protagonist of Snow Crash lives with a friend in a storage unit, can’t find any job except delivering pizzas (for the Mafia, of all things) and has to arm himself with two swords.

As things stand now, one percent of the people in the United States control 40% of the wealth (one percent of the people in the world control 39% of it). They didn’t do this through the free market. They did it by perverting the State’s power to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Of course these people, as James Burnham warned in his The Machiavellians, are going to do whatever they can to maintain their power and privilege. Or as Richard K. Morgan, author of the satirical (but somewhat leftist) Market Forces, writes, "Society is, always has been and always will be a structure for the exploitation and oppression of the majority through systems of political force dictated by an élite, enforced by thugs, uniformed or not, and upheld by a willful ignorance and stupidity on the part of the very majority whom the system oppresses."

Morgan’s and Burnham’s observations have been the history of the world. As theologian Marcus Borg has pointed out, during Jesus’ times the elites (the term is used neutrally) were the ten percent who owned two-thirds of the wealth. The other 90% had to share the other one-third.

This concentration of wealth is why Jesus used such insults as “vipers” who would steal the last penny of widows and orphans to describe the corrupt, wealthy Jewish leaders who were allied with Rome. Obviously, human nature does not change. While wealth does not necessarily corrupt, political power, except for truly exceptional individuals such as Marcus Aurelius, does.

It is only in the West that political and economic liberty was discovered and took root (the words “liberty” and “freedom” are Western words and do not exist in any other culture). As Charles Murray wrote in Human Accomplishment, it flowered in the areas comprising northern Italy, France, Germany, northern Europe, England and southern Scotland. One of the main reasons they took root is because of Christianity, as many writers have noted. No other culture, religion or race has achieved but a single-digit fraction of what the Christian West has achieved.

Another scenario – which is occurring in some areas today – is the expulsion of illegal aliens, most of whom hold values inimical to American ones. The states are leading this fight since the feds has so far shown themselves to be actively hostile to it.

These expulsions are more prevalent in some states more than others, so essentially what is happening today is the fracturing of the United States among racial and ethnic lines. Big cities have become magnets for the Third Worlders in our midst. The formerly-beautiful city of Detroit, for example, has been destroyed and some sections of it are returning to wilderness.

Those in the middle-class and above (and often below) are moving into better and safer areas. I lived in Missouri for several years and have seen a flow of middle-class white people into the Ozarks, a vastly underrated area of lakes, streams, meadows and wooded hills (which, among other things, accounts for the popularity of Branson). I have also seen a flow into the Pacific Northwest; unfortunately, some of the people are so implacably hostile to government they’d like to see a violent revolution.

My view? The United States federal government will collapse sooner or later. Every government in the history of the world has disappeared. The country, fortunately, will survive, and it won’t break up. More power will return to the states, as it should be. I’d like to see Washington D.C. return to being the fetid backwater that is was until after World War II. The economy will be fairly good in some areas and terrible in others.

The expulsions of illegal aliens will continue, which is a good thing with no downside to it. It will work better in some areas than others. Many whites will immigrate into areas where there are other whites, because people are tribal and want to be with their own. The economies in the areas with mostly white people will be fairly good. The big cities will be basket-cases because of unemployed (and unemployable) Third Worlders living permanently on welfare and crime.

Those who are dumb enough and wealthy enough (the two are not mutually exclusive) will be living in armed gated communities. I believe this will occur mainly in the coastal areas of southern California, although I’ve also seen them in Las Vegas. These things would be amusing – gated wealthy communities a five-minute drive from slums – if they it weren’t so tragic.

Another digression: throughout the world whites live in the hills and non-whites live in the valleys. This is why one of the worst places to live is in big cities located in valleys, which are going to turn into slums even worse than the ones they are now.

I have to admit that I am amazed at what this country has turned into, most especially since 1965, when the State decided to allow hordes of non-Europeans into this country. It has happened quite rapidity, so fast it appeared to be in the blink of an eye (and when anyone points this out, there are some who do can’t anything except engage in point-and-sputter and wail, “That’s ray-ciss!”).

As always, there has been a backlash, one that anyone who isn’t a deluded leftist (which should be one word) could see coming. Now as to exactly what form this backlash will take, no one can predict with any great accuracy. But I will say it won’t be pretty.

It is safe to predict that the future will be one of both happiness and agony, just as the past has been. So, as always, forearmed is forewarned.

3 comments:

Glen Filthie said...

Well Bob there is hope. Slight, I admit...but some hope none the less. The crash may be less of a crash and maybe more of a very rough landing. Consider:

The socialist press that has pushed for most of these detrimental initiatives is now so thoroughly discredited that most of them can't sell a newspaper and are going broke. I would believe YOU and your take on issues before I would trust the New York Times, for example - to be my source of opinion and information.

Look at the recent Zimmerman trial - the papers were doing their level best to get a guilty verdict. They lied through their teeth about the case specifics. The liberal-infested courts wanted desperately to go along with them - and they STILL lost because Americans made it clear that trial would be fair - or else...black race whores be damned!

The schools that produced these leftist/socialists are now the recipients of public ridicule and rage. The political correctness, the censorship, the feminism that they push - is falling apart at the seams.

Americans are not stupid. American patriots will go along until they feel themselves being cornered...and then the teeth and claws will come out. You will not see the rise of a 4th Reich in America as you would in Europe. they are smart, strong, and resourceful and there is nothing they did back in their greatest day that they can't do today - provided they are properly motivated.

An American resurgence is quite possibly in the works.

Anonymous said...

Also in 1971 the poverty rate stopped going down on a systematic basis. I don't know if it's all due to the ending of the gold standard; Nixon did have good reasons for ending it. But what replaced it was certainly worse for this country.

Anonymous said...

I think we are at the inflection point-- I'm in Oz where there was just a big backlash against the Cathedral aspirations of unlimited immigration and green social engineering. Now the new cabinet will be about deconstructing the garbage the Left constructed-- with the massive support of a common sense electorate.

A hopeful sign!