h/t Instapundit
As an author who has just published a book on the crisis of Western civilization, I couldnt really have asked for more: simultaneous crises in Athens and Rome, the cradles of the Wests law, languages, politics, and philosophy.
...Athens, Rome, Washington ... The shortest route from imperial capital to tourist destination is precisely this death spiral of debt.
#2
FTA: There are an unknown number of European banks that are effectively insolvent if their holdings of government bonds are marked to marketin other words, valued at their current rock-bottom market prices. The number of US banks that are effectively insolvent if all their holdings were to be 'marked to market' is also unknown - IMO most of the TBTF banks are in that category.
All that bad debt will have to be eaten by someone before economic growth can resume. The oligarchy prefers that the taxpayers eat their debt for them.
#5
There is a 3rd option - a massive asteroid with a 24kt gold shell and a creamy nougat center of pure light sweet crude 'unexpectedly' strikes Washington DC as Zero addresses a joint session of Congress.
The remains, being public property, are sold off to retire the national debt and reboot the moribund US economy.
What's not to like?
#6
I much prefer Ferguson's previous Newsweek article: America's 'Oh Sh*t!' Moment
Key point: Is there anything we can do to prevent such disasters? Social scientist Charles Murray calls for a civic great awakeninga return to the original values of the American republic. Hes got a point. Far more than in Europe, most Americans remain instinctively loyal to the killer applications of Western ascendancy, from competition all the way through to the work ethic. They know the country has the right software. They just cant understand why its running so damn slowly.
What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they representto say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic.
#11
You think gold will make you rich? Nope, I am less likely to get any gold than that gold asteroid is to strike.
But in my sci-fi scenario the US could easily revert to a gold standard & so force our creditors to eat the public debt, cost per troy ounce be damned. If they didn't want to redeem treasury paper in gold, the creditors would still be free to hold on to it.
But more valuable than that, none of the current federal incumbents would ever again hold a public office.
[Dawn] WHILE there can be little doubt that Pakistain`s religious minorities face discrimination, it is possible to read too much into the recent study Connecting the Dots: Education and Religious Discrimination in Pakistain. Sponsored by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the study concludes that many textbooks foster intolerance against religious minorities, particularly against the Hindu community. As a result of this "teaching discrimination", the likelihood increases that violent religious extremism will continue to grow in the country, weakening religious freedom in the process. Yet given the relatively small scope of the study -- 107 textbooks reviewed, 277 students and teachers from 37 public schools and 226 students and teachers from 19 madressahs interviewed -- it appears too sweeping a definition of teaching practices in thousands of schools and madressahs across the country.
That said, however, the findings should serve as a wake-up call when we consider the many ways in which religious prejudice is implanted in the minds of youngsters. The emphatic conclusion of the study would suggest that fostering religious intolerance through textbooks is a systematic move, underpinned by malicious intent. No doubt, there was much mischief done during Gen Zia`s regime. But in recent years, guidelines have been provided for revising textbooks -- even though we are not sure how far these have been implemented to remove the biases that many books still contain. It is far more likely that the attitudes evident in the books, and testified to by the interviewees, are inadvertent betrayals of a parallel societal prejudice that has seeped into every aspect of public life. Over the years Pak discourse vis-Ã -vis minority communities has grown more discriminatory -- and increasingly violent. The prejudice is to some extent rooted in historical circumstance and its portrayal is stoked by a societal psyche where the perception of the `other` is suspect in the eyes of the majority and exploited by religious turbans. This being the case, Paks need to turn their gaze inwards. It was her compatriots` refusal to drink water offered by a Christian, after all, that led to Aasia Bibi being charged and sentenced for blasphemy.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/13/2011 00:00 ||
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Not all of the two million madari students in Pakistan are terrorist in training. But I would ask some pointed questions about those jihadi factories religious seminaries that teach Salafist jihadism ....
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
11/13/2011 10:49 Comments ||
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#2
Not all of the two million madari students in Pakistan are terrorist in training.
No. But all are clerics in training, and expect well-paying jobs in their field upon graduation. Most will not find employment, and they know nothing that will enable them to turn their hand to anything more complicated than grubbing out stones or digging ditches.
Solyndra isn't the first dud for U.S. government officials trying to play venture capitalist in the energy industry. The Clinch River Breeder Reactor. The Synthetic Fuels Corporation. The hydrogen car. Clean coal. These are but a few examples spanning several decades -- a graveyard of costly and failed projects.
Not a single one of these much-ballyhooed initiatives is producing or saving a drop or a watt or a whiff of energy, but they have managed to burn through far more more taxpayer money than the ill-fated Solyndra. An Energy Department report in 2008 estimated that the federal government had spent $172 billion since 1961 on basic research and the development of advanced energy technologies. See? The Energy Department is trying to set us off foreign oil! They just need a little more time. And money.
What does Washington have to show for these investments? And should the government even be in the business of promoting particular energy technologies? Some economists, executives and financiers -- as well as Energy Secretary Steven Chu -- argue that the government must play a role because certain technologies have non-financial benefits, such as producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions or easing U.S. reliance on foreign oil. But not conventional technologies, like tar sands, pipelines to Canada, or fracking natural gas.
But others argue that the history of government attempts to reach for the holy grail of new energy technology -- a history that features both political parties -- is not inspiring. Several detailed failures are at the link.
Despite this track record and the recent Solyndra failure, Energy Secretary Chu remains undeterred. Citing examples from Civil War-era railroads to airplanes to semiconductors, he has defended government's role in funding new technologies and promising companies.
"Americans have always led by looking ahead. Even in the midst of the Civil War, when our country was under incredible stress, we planned for the future," Chu said in September. "President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, which authorized generous public financing for two private companies -- Union Pacific Railroad Company and Central Pacific Railroad Company -- to lower the investor risk in building railroads in unsettled territories. In 1869, the first Transcontinental Railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah, revolutionizing transport in this country and opening up a world of possibilities for industry." That's one summary of 100 years of history. What about a history professor's views?
Enter Stanford University professor Richard White, a historian of the American West who wrote "Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America."
"I admire Steven Chu a great deal, but his knowledge of the Pacific Railway Act unfortunately appears to be about equal to my knowledge of high-energy physics," White said in an interview. He said the legislation produced a disaster far larger than the lifeless factory that Solyndra has left behind. White said that Union Pacific and Central Pacific became two of the most hated corporations in the West, spawning political opposition wherever they went. Within 10 years of giving them land grants and loan guarantees, the federal government reversed its policy and eventually sued to recover its investment. The litigation dragged on into the 20th century. It DID 'open the west', however, fulfilled Manifest Destiny, and provided a cheap outlet for the agricultural products of the west coast.
Many policy experts say some of government's biggest energy investment payoffs have come in the small stuff, such as testing the use of magnesium alloys to make lightweight car batteries more efficient or developing ballasts that make compact fluorescent bulbs more efficient. Funding research, not mandating results.
Still others say that the nearly $40 billion paid out by the federal government so far to subsidize corn-based ethanol is a success story; ethanol has displaced more than half a million barrels a day of petroleum. Woo-hoo!
But that benefit must be weighed against whether ethanol has driven up corn prices, along with evidence that it may be worse than oil from a greenhouse gas perspective. Rats!
Doing all this requires massive sums of money -- and an acceptance of the inevitability of frequent failure. Yeah! Think of Thomas Edison and the light bulb. Without government support, he ... never mind.
That could be a tough sell in Washington, given the downfall of Solyndra and the unsteady status of some other recipients of Energy Department assistance. Coming up: More O-bumbles!
Massachusetts-based Beacon Power, maker of a nifty and effective -- but unprofitable -- method of using flywheels for electricity storage, filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 30. Ener1, a maker of lithium-ion batteries and a recipient of an Energy Department grant, was delisted by the Nasdaq Oct. 28 because of its low stock price. An interesting read, and one benefit of Mrs. Bobby's WaPo - they do some independent work: the author covers energy for the WaPo.
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/13/2011 08:05 ||
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#3
One can add to the list of failed project Joan Claybrook's RSV car. The government does not do well at design. Let these developments take place in the private sector; they tend to do a better job. The government has no skin in the game if they fail.
[Dawn] WITH the recent release of the ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran`s suspected nuclear weapons programme, temperatures in the Middle East and beyond are heating up once again. The IAEA says there is "credible" evidence Iran is working towards the bomb. But some observers point out that the document contains regurgitated information, only in greater detail. International reactions have varied greatly. The US and its European allies have called for more sanctions against Iran while Russia and China have expressed scepticism. In fact, the Russian foreign ministry has called the report "biased" and compared it to the ill-founded American claim in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. While Israel has hinted at pre-emptive strikes to disable the Gulf country`s nuclear facilities, Iran has hardened its tone, saying any military action would be met "with full force".
There is a need for common sense to prevail all around if further hostility is to be avoided. The UN secretary general has opposed military action and emphasised a diplomatic solution to the stand-off. In this respect, the sanest voices seem to be coming from Moscow and Beijing. While it is true that Russia and China -- both veto-wielding members of the Security Council -- have extensive economic ties with Iran, there can be no disagreeing with their position that dialogue and engagement with Iran is the only solution. The Iranian government, on its part, must tone down its rhetoric and eschew the path of confrontation. Meanwhile, ...back at the scene of the crime, Lieutenant Queeg had an idea: there was a simple way to tell whether Manetti had been the triggerman -- just look at his shoes!... one report must not be made the basis for further squeezing Iran with sanctions or military action. The West must realise that several years of sanctions have accomplished little, and that military aggression against Iran will have devastating consequences for regional -- if not global -- peace and economic stability.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/13/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Most arab regimes would be happy to see the ayatoilet's nuke plan smashed. Unfortunately, the US has a President that hugged the islamofuhrer of Turkey, which is an ayatollah puppet. Very little can be done as long as the current clown is in the White House.
Dear Readers,
From time to time on Sunday mornings we'll review books Rantburg regulars might find interesting. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, grab a pastry and enjoy.
The Mods
By lotp
Civilizations die. Sometimes they disappear -- these days nobody except a few historians knows or cares about the Hittites. Other times they collapse more slowly, unevenly, hints of their prior greatness strewn about like the armless statues and ruined temples that still remain from the Roman empire, or the Greek city states before them. But quickly or slowly, completely or with painful disintegration over time, civilizations die amid suffering, chaos and loss. And on occasion, several of them die at the same time.
In two recent books - It's Not the End of the World, It's Just the End of Youand How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying Too), both released this year - David Goldman argues that we are seeing the collapse of multiple civilizations and cultures today. This much is not news to most Rantburg readers, although the extent to which it is true has been significantly underplayed or ignored by our media, academics and most political leaders.
More controversially, Goldman argues that collapse is being chosen by these societies, as witnessed by deep and irreversible demographic changes.
And more controversially still, he argues that the reason for this choice is neither economic/technical nor military, but rather spiritual.
It's Not the End of the World, It's Just the End of You is a collection of articles Goldman wrote as 'Spengler', sometimes reworked. The book is best read slowly. The chapters range over a wide variety of topics, with a few closely argued theses that tie them together. Rantburg regulars might want to savor (and ponder) Goldman's chapters on Tolkien's Ring trilogy as a deliberate answer to the Ring cycle of Wagner, on Wagner's deliberate destruction of Sacred Time in music, or the chapter on the equivalent destruction of meaning in modern art (titled, delightfully, "Admit it - you really hate modern art"). Others here might want especially to engage with Goldman's discussion of the American Civil War as a sacred war, or his closely reasoned rejection of Leo Strauss and neo-conservatism.
The heart of the book, however, is the lens through which Goldman sees these and other cultural phenomena. At root, he argues, there are only two attitudes towards life: paganism, with its (acknowledged or implicit) fear of death and the resulting desperate desire to propitiate a hostile universe, or faith that transcends the terror of individual death through membership in a community vouchsafed by the Creator. The 19th and 20th century history of Europe is precisely a rejection of Christianity's promise of such membership in order to once again embrace paganism -- explicitly in Wagner, philosophically in e.g. the existentialist philosophers. To embrace paganism is, at heart, to embrace despair.
Goldman asserts that there are only two "communities of blood" that can bring us out of pagan despair. The first community is made so literally by shared blood and is God's chosen people, i.e. the Jews. Goldman is Jewish by birth and returned to active worship as an adult. The second such community is Christianity, entry into which is made possible by the shedding of blood. In each case, faith that the community is called and protected by the Creator gives meaning to history, overcomes fear of death and makes the future of the community worth investing in -- or dying to protect.
Studies show that The United States and Israel produce the most babies and the most entrepreneurs per capita in the industrial world and are also the only two industrial countries in which religious faith still occupies the public square. ... There is a deep affinity among love of life, risk-friendliness, entrepreneurship and religious faith.
It is no accident, Goldman believes, that only in the Jewish state of Israel and "the last Christian nation" (the US), will current childbirth rates sustain long term demographic growth. In both Europe and the Islamic world childbirth rates are plummeting. Both the US and Israel were founded in the belief that they were called to bear a special destiny in response to God's will and Word. Only in these two nations, and perhaps among the growing churches of the global south, is despair (often combined with egocentric "will to power") rejected in favor of a faith which makes culture, society and the future worth investing in.
I'll postpone discussing Goldman's critique of Islam as paganism, and his analysis of the response of Western elites to Islamism, until next week's review of The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis by Robert Reilly. For now I'd like to close with a short discussion of Goldman's second book this year, namely How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too). Here Goldman lays out in detail the demographic trends that he believes are driving both the self-extinction of Europe and also -- less well recognized -- the collapse of impoverished Islamic societies.
Goldman argues that we know of three times in history when multiple civilizations collapsed at once. We are, he says, in the midst of a fourth, with Europe and Islam at its center.
Will the fourth great extinction of nations sweep Israel and the US up in the destruction? Prediction is difficult, especially about the future. But Goldman argues that there is good reason to hope that these nations, founded at their core on faith, may outlast all the others if they re-affirm the morality of their own interests and of their two unique, inter-related identities.
Taken together, these two books offer a good deal to ponder and perhaps to debate. Goldman is well read, but more to the point is a serious thinker who lays out a deep, incisive and challenging analysis of the crisis we are living within. Not all, however, will find his core thesis palatable.
Next time: How Islam came close to dialogue with the West, how it closed its doors to critical thought, and how Islamicists are now in a dead-end trap from which despair is the only way forward.
#2
Ok, Amazon.com links added to the titles, per Skidmark's request. I don't know if that connects to whatever Amazon does to credit Fred's account. If someone cleverer than I about such things would be kind enough to check, I'd be grateful.
#5
To embrace paganism is, at heart, to embrace despair.
So according to Spengler's view, is Buddhism a pagan religion of despair?
I am inclined to agree strongly with the idea that spiritual disease/maladjustment can tip a civilization over; I'm not so sure that the emergency exit is quite as narrow as described.
If Fred takes part in the Amazon partner program he'd need to rewrite the Amazon link, so that any sale on Amazon coming from that link will be credited to him.
#9
So according to Spengler's view, is Buddhism a pagan religion of despair?
Yes, I think he would say so. (See, for instance, The 3 Vinegar Tasters, where the Buddha finds the world bitter.)
Forgive me for pointing it out, but both Indian & Chinese civilizations been around a lot longer than Christianity, or even Judaism.
Certainly true for Christianity. A little more ambiguous with regard to both Chinese and Indian culture vs. Judaism. It depends on whether you're tracing a general cultural thrust or a specific sense of shared identity.
What we now think of as Chinese civilization is seen in a few parts of China by 1700 BC (Shang dynasty). Does the Jewish identity start with the Exodus from Egypt, usually dated to around 1300 BC, or with the patriarchs (roughly 2300-2000 BC)?
The Exodus is roughly in line with the postulated IndoAryan move into the Indian subcontinent. But if you start Indian culture earlier, say, at Harappa, I suppose it would be equally appropriate to date Judaism back to its geographical predecessors as well, in which case there is Jericho, which has been occupied for several millenia longer than Harappa's founding. And if you date Indian culture to the old oral parts of the Vedas, well, how far back do you want to trace the equivalent oral traditions in the Pentateuch?
FWIW, Spengler tells us he takes his cue on such things from the early 20th century German Jewish philosopher/theologian Franz Rosenzweig. He is less interested in archaeology than he is in the experience of religion in a day to day setting, and how it influences our choices. This passage from It's Not the End of the World might make Spengler's position a little clearer:
"The history of the world is the history of Israel," Rosenzweig asserted. That is not an utterance of ethnic megalomania but rather a statement that human history is a quest to overcome mortality. Religious faith is woven into the fabric of traditional society, in which individuals have no choice about the roles and rhythms of life.
Unravel this fabric, and faith dissolves. That was the position of Europe after the First World War ... That is the predicament of the Islamic world today .... Nietsche insisted that God was dead. In 1914, Europe believed not in God but in nation and Kultur. By 1918, these gods were toppled, and Europe began to worship the false gods of historial materialism and national socialism....
Along with the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth, Rosenzweig opened a path for a modern faith, a faith strengthened by skepticism as if by innoculation.... It was not science that threatened the faith of the West, Rosenzweig explained, but rather a competing idolatry: the resurgent "inner pagan" inside every Christian ... It is the Jew, he argued, who converts the inner pagan inside the Christian, because the existence of the Jewish people itself stands surety for God's promise to Christians as well ....
So that is a taste of the underpinnings that Spengler brings to bear on current events. He gets a lot more detailed and focused on here/now, but he starts with some explicit theological and philosophical positions as his basis.
These are just my musings, FWIW. I don't necessarily agree with Spengler on all points, just felt the books were noteworthy and worth reading / thinking about / debating.
#11
My view on Japan follows that of John Mauldin: Japan is a disease. They're like a bug searching for a windshield. It's a dying country. Nominal GDP is where it was 17 years ago. Plus, the population is very old. When they stop funding their own debt [as a result of retirees ceasing to save], it's going to get ugly.
#12
Forgive me for pointing it out, but both Indian & Chinese civilizations been around a lot longer than Christianity, or even Judaism.
And both Indian and Chinese civilizations have collapsed and been rebuilt several times. Not always improving in the process. The Confucius the Ming built their dynasty around was a different set of writings than the Han or Tang used, and formed the basis of a much more oppressive and stratified society. And the descendants of the refugees from one of the collapses of Indian civilization, the Roma, are scattered across Europe and the world. The British did a lot to rebuild it, much of which got undone because Gandhi was as interested in partition as the Pakistanis were.
-----------------------------------
Regarding the whole Christianity/Judaism/Buddhism/Paganism thing... it's kind of hard for me to square the circle in light of the paganization of the worldview of all the mainstream Christian denominations in the West, as they are currently practiced, and not as they are described in theory.
#13
Snowy, you might like Spengler's analysis of the growing Christianity of the global south. I'll include some of that in next week's review. Spengler suggests that the West will be rather taken aback at the vigor that is emerging.
#14
I was searching online for the book. At the Barnes & Noble web site, they offer a sample of some of its pages (unfortunately not in order). You have to create a free account with B&N, download their NOOK software, then the free sample. It's better than nothing.
#15
The connection between Spengler's thesis and the WOT is this: The simple truth--call it Spengler's Universal Law #1-- is "A man or a nation at the brink of death does not have a "rational self interest." p. 24
#17
Some must-read material! Thanks, LOTP for the review and 'burgers for the comment threads. There is a lot of protein to digest here.
I think that every nation and individual should think about these things. It adds depth to the individual and the society, and makes an individual sense his/her place in society and the big scheme of things.
It would be asking too much at this point to put aside our useless fixations on the screwed up lives of Michael Jackson, Lindsay Lohan, et al. But I can dream, can't I?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/13/2011 14:35 Comments ||
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#18
OK. Left brain going off. Right brain firing up. Later.......
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/13/2011 14:37 Comments ||
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#19
The point is, Thing, they're still around.
p.s. Look up Toynbee.
#20
paganization of mainstream Christianity? I think you missed the last quarter century of Catholicism return to orthodoxy under Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, both of which emphasized the vital role Judaism has as the foundation of Christianity.
#21
Re: GWOT, from How Civilizations Die, pg 111+:
Iran's leaders warn openly that a rapidly aging population portends national extinction. And the depletion of Iran's aging oilfields has their undivided attention ... Iran's economic decline is irreversible, - and so is its complete demographic collapse - unless Iran can conquer adjacent oil production in Southern Iraq, neighboring Azerbaijan, and perhaps northern Saudi Arabia ...
"Geopolitics" that confines itself to the rational interests of nations is wholly inadequate to explain how the American South poured out its young men's lifeblood in defeat, or why Russia descended into bloody terror at the beginning of the twentieth cenury and risked nuclear annihilation near its end. How much less can conventional political science cope with the motivations and choices of Muslim nations that are currently living under existential threat?
Spengler has a strong recommendation re: our response:
The lessons of the First World War, the Civil War and the Cold war point to the same conclusion:
preemption with overwhelming force is the appropriate means to contain an adversary who knows he has nothing to lose. The strategy most likely to avoid war in the Middle East is not to reach out to Iran but to humiliate it. (emphasis added)
#22
OS: a) I'm waiting to see how effective it'll be.
b) I'm specifically talking about those protestant groups, both evangelical and "mainstream," who push a strongly gnostic and/or manicheistic viewpoint, a world balanced between The Forces of Good and (under the command of the almost-equal-and-opposite Anti-God) The Forces of Evil, complete with end-time Eschaology (or however that's spelled) and all that stuff, people beaming up, etc. Also all the little groups that teach about a small group of elect, usually themselves, and a great mass of safe-to-judge unbelievers or corrupt christians-in-name-only.
See for reference Milton, who looks as if he filed the serial numbers off of Norse myth and turned it into Christian mythology, complete with a rebellious divine being of fire and the underworld in rebellion against the One God or the Rest of the Gods. Also see the entire history of the Covenanters in Scotland, who more or less broke their country's chance at independence because it was too horrible to contemplate to cooperate with Catholic highlanders or various Episcopal groups in fighting Cromwell's forces.
c) Gr(o)m, after I'm through with my current fit about reading about the history of Scotland and England, next on my list is the history of China and other parts of East Asia. But to make a long story short, look at these figures:
There was a lot of ethnic cleansing going on during this period, and "Chinese" civilization wound up with a much different ethnic composition than it started out with. The focus changed from North to South, such that the groups we think of as "Classically Chinese" are more typical of Southern China than the Northern Chinese who actually founded the country. I suspect large segments of the populations of surrounding countries are basically descended from Northern-Chinese-origin groups who couldn't get along with what the central government became and either left (in the case of the Philipines) or rebelled (in the case of Vietnam). And the Northern-origin "guest workers" (or as they were called in Chinese, Hakka) didn't always get along with their neighbors, even a thousand years after their migration. In the 19th century there were the Hakka-Punti clan wars, that killed more people than the US Civil War, but barely rates an extended footnote in the history of the civil wars that were happening in China at the time.
They literally became, to coin a phrase, strangers in a strange land, in the country their ancestors founded, while subsequent dynasties (in particular the Ming) rewrote Confucius to keep all the Wrong People from actually getting decent educations to the point where they could pass the examinations and join the pseudo-aristocracy. Someone should have told them to take their vases and shove them up their asses.
#25
Nominal GDP (Japan) is where it was 17 years ago.
Which means GDP per worker is much higher.
And individual wealth has increased dramatically over the last 20 years.
John Mauldin is talking nonsense. Declining population makes everyone richer.
The Left's argument that you need immigration to maintain national wealth is really all about the Left needing to maintain the Left voting demographic as an aging population moves to the Right.
#28
For everyone's consideration, from "How Civilizations Die" the first 20 of Spengler's Universal Laws, with page numbers where the quotes came from. There are more. I think this is fair use, but if mods don't agree, please delete this post.
#1 A man or a nation at the brink of death does not have a "rational self-interest." x
#2 When the nations of the world see their demise not as a distant prospect over the horizon, but as a foreseeable outcome, they perish of despair. xiii
#3 Contrary to what you may have heard from the sociologists, the human mortality rate is still 100 percent. xviii
#4 The history of the world is the history of humankind's search for immortality. xxi
#5 Humankind cannot bear mortality without the hope of immortality p. xxii
#6 You don't know who's naked until the tide goes out. 21
#7 Political models are like automobile models: you can't have them unless you can pay for them. p. 35
#8 Wars are won by destroying the enemy's will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women. p.46
#9 A country isn't beaten until it sells its women, but it's damned when its women sell themselves p. 48
#10 There's a world of difference between a lunatic and a lunatic who has won the lottery. 67
#11 At all times and in all places, the men and women of every culture deserve each other p.75
#12 Nothing is more dangerous than a civilization that has only just discovered it is dying. p. 99
#13 Across epochs and cultures blood has flown in inverse proportion to the hope of victory. p. 102
#14 Stick around long enough, and you turn into a theme park. p. 120
#15 When we worship ourselves, eventually we become the god that failed. p. 122
#16 Small civilizations perish for any number of reasons, but great civilizations die when they no longer want to live. p. 122
#17 If you stay in the same place and do the same thing long enough, some empire eventually will overrun you. p. 124
#18 Maybe we would be better off if we never had been born, but who has such luck? Not one in a thousand. p. 126
#19 Pagan faith, however powerful, turns into Stygian nihilism when disappointed. p. 128
#20 Democracy only gives people the kind of government they deserve. p. 128
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Solyndra isn't the first dud for U.S. government officials trying to play venture capitalist in the energy industry. The Clinch River Breeder Reactor. The Synthetic Fuels Corporation. The hydrogen car. Clean coal. These are but a few examples spanning several decades -- a graveyard of costly and failed projects.
By lotp
