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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| We're doomed! America is in decline! (again) |
| 2008-02-05 |
| Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal In 1788, Massachusetts playwright Mercy Otis Warren took one look at the (unratified) U.S. Constitution and declared that "we shall soon see this country rushing into the extremes of confusion and violence." This, roughly, is the origin of American declinism -- and it's been downhill ever since. . . . Declinism is again in vogue. "America's unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order," writes Parag Khanna in a recent New York Times Magazine cover story titled, cheerfully, "Who Shrank the Superpower?" In Sunday's Los Angeles Times, Fred Kaplan observes that "the United States can no longer take obeisance for granted." Mr. Kaplan's new book, "Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power," sounds just a bit derivative of Nancy Soderberg's "The Superpower Myth" (2005), Roger Burbach's "Imperial Overstretch" (2004) and Charles Kupchan's "The End of the American Era" (2003). American "decline" is the foreign-policy equivalent of homelessness: The media only take note of it when a Republican is in the White House. Broadly speaking, declinists divide between those who merely accept America's supposed diminishment as a fact of life, and those who celebrate it as long overdue. As for the causes of decline, however, they tend to agree: declining (relative) economic muscle, due in large part to the rise of China; an overextended military bogged down needlessly in Iraq and endlessly in Afghanistan; the declining value of America's "brand" on account of Bush administration policies on detention, pre-emption, terrorism, global warming -- you name it. Yet each of these assumptions collapses on a moment's inspection. . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #5 SOCIALIST-GOVTIST-COMMIE "REGRESSION" goes GLOBAL AND BEYOND, as per from LOCAL-NATIONAL, i.e. "POTEMKINIST" PC APPEARANCE/FALSE FACADE of strength and prosperity disguises belies underlying, serious or catastrophic weakness(es). As a GUAM Library visitor reminded yesterday, MARXISM = COMMUNISM kept RUSSIA-CHINA SO WEAK THAT IN REALITY THE COMMIES NEED "BOURGEOSIE" PEACE, NOT MARX-PREMISED WAR OR REVOLUTION, TO REALISTICALLY ACHIEVE ANY "PROGRESS" + MARXIST-SOCIE "UTOPIANISM", ETC. * TOPIX/FARK > VATICAN reports another substantial drop in the overall number of PRIESTS + NUNS. By this aboesame[extended]logic or scope, the PAN-SECULARISTS in reality need GOD + RELIGION + NON-SECULAR BASED MORALISM-ETHICS TO ACHIEVE ANY AND ALL OF THE SECULAR AGENDA. notsomuch ATHEISM, SECUL-ATHEIST SCIENTIFISM, etc, IOW, "TO KILL THE MESSIAH/SAVIOR IS TO KILL THE SUN". Iff I'm reading and comprehending my Bible, other Religious-Moralist texts, Mythic, and differens Pert/Personage Opinions-Commentaries correctly, to include vv Secularists, IFF THE SO-CALLED [World]HEAVENLY MESSIAH/SAVIOR IS DESTROYED OR OTHERWISE PREVENTED FROM FULFILLING HIS DIVINE MISSION, THE NON-SECULAR SUN = UNIVERSAL NATURAL SCIENS FORCES WILL BEGIN TO CATASTROPHICALLY DETERIORATE/WEAKEN UNTO NATURAL = SECUL SCIENTIFIC DESTRUCTION - EMPIRICALLY, MEASURABLY, QUANTIFIABLY BUT NO LESS DIVINICALLY OR GREATER. Perhaps as best illustrated by the post 9-11 MOUDIAN/OSAMA BIN LADEN "END-TIMES" ISLAMIST APOCALYPSE, GOD WILL NOT ALLOW MANKIND TO SUCCEED OR EXPLORE DEEP SPACE WIDOUT GOD-FAITH??? Sub-IOW, BY ANY MEASURE "OWG AMERIKA" NEEDS MORE GOD-FAITH, NOT LESS. In the 1960's or early 1970's, did young Vietnam soldier-veteran OLIVER STONE know about his future movie JFK, or 9-11 + Dubya + Osama + Moud, etc.??? SECULARISM + SECULAR SCIENCE SAYS "NO", ERGO SUPPORT DEFECTIVE NON-KNOWING SECULARISM = SECUL SCIENCE??? DON'T THINK SO. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-02-05 19:15 |
| #4 That's why Afghanistan isn't important. We're funding the same people in Pakistan we are trying to kill in Afghanistan. Better to ship enough weapons via FSU Stans to the Northern Alliance and let them deal the traditional way with the Pashtoons and any frisky Pakis. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-02-05 15:07 |
| #3 Trailing Wife, we're now at the point of sending financial aid to the country that performed the 9/11 attacks because it's the only way we're allowed to actually send supplies through to where we're fighting them in a proxy war in Afghanistan. If that isn't a decline, I don't know what is. |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2008-02-05 15:01 |
| #2 It's astounding how many people live in Fairyland. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-02-05 13:08 |
| #1 ..."the United States can no longer take obeisance for granted." I got news for all these geniuses: their predecessors were writing the same things in 1977. I'm wondering when exactly this obeisance was taking place, because it sure hasn't been in my adult lifetime. I'm beginning to wonder if the golden myth of American supremacy during the Eisenhower years wasn't a bunch of crap, too. Any of you old guys know? |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2008-02-05 13:01 |