America, the fragile empire Here today, gone tomorrow -- could the United States fall that fast?

LA Times ^ | February 28, 2010 | Niall Ferguson

[C19fan]

Intersting viewpoint on historical processes.

[GeronL]

Yes, the politicians seem to be doing their best to make this “just another country, no more special than any other”

[BobL]

Actually a system built on freedom can be VERY STABLE...but when you start nibbling away at that freedom, and then run a HUGE DEBT...anything is possible.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

[ClearCase_guy]

Along with the Soviet Union, consider the Ottoman Empire -- its great days were past, but it tottered on into the 20th century. A series of mis-steps and poor rule sealed their fate. The empire broke into pieces and the Arabs inherited a series of bastard kingdoms, while the Turks retained only Asia Minor.

At the rate we're going, I think the United States may become something like Greater Texas, while the Liberals will inherit bastard kingdoms on the coasts and along the Great Lakes.

[freedumb2003]

Sounds like psychohistory to me.

Not that it is wrong, but Asimov should be given credit, as he plumbed the very same material and anlysis in 1965.

[Touch Not the Cat]

.
Obama, Pelosi and Reid are doing their damnedest to kill America.

And they are in the right position to kill our Republic quickly.

[BornToBeAmerican]

No, because Americans know freedom and for every action there is going to be a reaction.

Believe me, there is a Tasmania a comin’

[GeronL]

I will be very interested in seeing that... hopefully while I am still alive.

[Billthedrill]

I rather like the complex-system model of empire, but it is, after all, only a model. A close study of history reveals that, in fact, the complete fall of an empire is so rare as to be nearly nonexistent. It changes to something else, something (1) less centralized, (2) less capable of force projection, and (3) more self-sustaining.

Let us take Rome as an example. That empire was cleft in two before the "fall" of the Western empire, the Eastern lasting another thousand years. But within the West the model reduced itself from an immense system dependent on external sources for both wealth and food, to a more fractional model built on manors and city-states, each more or less self-sustaining. Even within the city of Rome the Goths maintained much of the civil infrastructure until the Greeks threw them out in the 6th century. Throughout it all the Church endured. None of these component elements was the old empire but despite that incredible 90-day period during the Gothic Wars when Rome was nominally "empty," Rome endured as well.

Let us consider, as the author did, the Soviet Union. There too centralization failed, spinning off a cloud of ex-clients. There too the ability to project some sort of imperial force was lost. There too the component parts coalesced around something that is proving quite formidable. It didn't "fall" any further that Rome did, albeit much more rapidly.

What does this imply with respect to an American "empire" that isn't really an empire at all? That turns out to be a bit more difficult to model, because ceteris paribus is too much of a stretch. But if what we have to look forward to is, broadly speaking, a decrease in centralization, an increase in regional focus, a diminishing of the ability to project power, and an increased necessity for self-sustainment, then we discover that much of this is already incorporated into the country's history. We've been there before, in short.

[combat_boots]

Paging Pam Geller. Paging Atlas Shrugs:

27 February 2010
“Pictures of a Market Crash: Beware the Ides of March, And What Follows After”

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/02/pictures-of-market-crash-beware-ides-of.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JessesCafeAmericain+%28Jesse%27s+Caf%C3%A9+Am%C3%A9ricain%29

Wednesday, February 11, 2009
“RIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION OF PRESIDENT HUSSEIN:
‘A $550 Billion Electronic Run on the Banks’”

http://www.capitalismgonewild.com/2009/02/electronic-run-on-banks-550-billion.html

(Posts on) “SOROS: The Black Hand”
Saturday, October 10, 2009
“The US has ‘more oil than all the Middle East put together’”

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/soros_the_black_hand/

[combat_boots]

Maybe someone should read up on Ibn Khaldun’s al Muqaddimah and the cyclical elements of history:

“Ibn Khaldun: dynastic change and its economic consequences”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_n2_v16/ai_16502941/

---

Study your enemy. He studies you.

[arthurus]

A system built on freedom, especially ecnomically cannot long be stable because it gets rich. A rich society can and does support an ever growing class of parassites, people who do not produce anything but live off the work of theproducing class.. These can be some of the highest IQs in the society as well as the dregs. I mean academics and much of the lawyer class. In the lawer class the effect is particularly pernicious in that they make their livings by judicially pillaging the producing class. This class of nonproducers loses understanding of why the society is wealthy in the first place and begins to see “disparities” and feels that, wealth being a given, it is maldistributed that “must be corrected”. There is no reversing of that progression and we only fight to delay the inevitable totalitarianism til after we are dead. Alternatively the parasite class, in gradually knocking the economic props out of the country’s ability to project power and protect itself, weakens the society until it is overrun from outside, like by Islam, maybe.

[pallis]

With our greatest enemies running Washington, a rapid fall isn’t hard to believe.

[RachelFaith]

...not with a bang, but with a whimper...

[ccmay]

A rich society can and does support an ever growing class of parassites, people who do not produce anything but live off the work of theproducing class.. These can be some of the highest IQs in the society as well as the dregs. I mean academics and much of the lawyer class. In the lawer class the effect is particularly pernicious in that they make their livings by judicially pillaging the producing class. This class of nonproducers loses understanding of why the society is wealthy in the first place and begins to see “disparities” and feels that, wealth being a given, it is maldistributed that “must be corrected”.

I suspect that there will be an opportunity to construct a Second American Constitution within my lifetime. When we do, it is incumbent upon all patriots to ensure that no lawyer sets foot in the assembly hall, and that their profession is excised from power by that document to the greatest extent possible.

[patriot preacher]

In a word, yes, the US could collapse, and quite rapidly. There are 4 or 5 scenario’s that would topple us in days or weeks, months at the outside. That’s especially true with respect to the fact that our own Federal Government has pushed the nation to the very precipice of collapse with their insane policies in the last 18 months.

Be prepared folks, personally, and be prepared to take the initiative if/when our nation must “reset.” If it does shake out, I hope we can restore a true Constitutional government, or at least a few true “free, sovereign states” failing a return to the Constitution nationally.

[central_va]

And they are in the right position to kill our Republic quickly.

King Lincoln already did that.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

My take on this is that people have had it too good for so long that they have become complacent which has allowed the weak to run everything into the ground.There has been an awakening though and I hope it is enough.This didnt just start yesterday.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

I see I’m not the only one who sees lawyers as the problem.

[redangus]

Just the other day I was telling Mrs. Redangus that I thought we were seeing the end of the concept of centralization. I felt the days of to big to fail were rapidly becoming to big to sustain. I believe we will be seeing more of a move towards decentralization in the future.