Posted on 01/14/2013 3:25:07 AM PST by Kaslin
It's often good fun and sometimes revealing to divide American history into distinct periods of uniform length. In working on my forthcoming book on American migrations, internal and immigrant, it occurred to me that you could do this using the American-sounding interval of 76 years, just a few years more than the Biblical lifespan of three score and 10.
It was 76 years from Washington's First Inaugural in 1789 to Lincoln's Second Inaugural in 1865. It was 76 years from the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865 to the attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Going backward, it was 76 years from the First Inaugural in 1789 to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which settled one of the British-French colonial wars. And going 76 years back from Utrecht takes you to 1637, when the Virginia and Massachusetts Bay colonies were just getting organized.
As for our times, we are now 71 years away from Pearl Harbor. The current 76-year interval ends in December 2017.
Each of these 76-year periods can be depicted as a distinct unit. In the colonial years up to 1713, very small numbers of colonists established separate cultures that have persisted to our times.
The story is brilliantly told in David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed." For a more downbeat version, read the recent "The Barbarous Years" by the nonagenarian Bernard Bailyn.
From 1713 to 1789, the colonies were peopled by much larger numbers of motley and often involuntary settlers -- slaves, indentured servants, the unruly Scots-Irish on the Appalachian frontier.
For how this society became dissatisfied with the colonial status quo, read Bailyn's "Ideological Origins of the American Revolution."
From 1789 to 1865, Americans sought their manifest destiny by expanding across the continent. They made great technological advances but were faced with the irreconcilable issue of slavery in the territories.
For dueling accounts of the period, read the pro-Andrew Jackson Democrat Sean Wilentz's "The Rise of American Democracy" and the pro-Henry Clay Whig Daniel Walker Howe's "What Hath God Wrought." Both are sparklingly written and full of offbeat insights and brilliant apercus.
The 1865-1941 period saw a vast efflorescence of market capitalism, European immigration and rising standards of living. For descriptions of how economic change reshaped the nation and its government, read Morton Keller's "Affairs of State and Regulating a New Society."
The 70-plus years since 1941 have seen a vast increase in the welfare safety net and governance by cooperation between big units -- big government, big business, big labor -- that began in the New Deal and gained steam in and after World War II. I immodestly offer my own "Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan."
The original arrangements in each 76-year period became unworkable and unraveled toward its end. Eighteenth-century Americans rejected the colonial status quo and launched a revolution and established a constitutional republic.
Nineteenth-century Americans went to war over expansion of slavery. Early 20th-century Americans grappled with the collapse of the private sector economy in the Depression of the 1930s.
We are seeing something like this again today. The welfare state arrangements that once seemed solid are on the path to unsustainability.
Entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- are threatening to gobble up the whole government and much of the private sector, as well.
Lifetime employment by one big company represented by one big union is a thing of the past. People who counted on corporate or public sector pensions are seeing them default.
Looking back, we are as far away in time today from victory in World War II in 1945 as Americans were at the time of the Dred Scott decision from the First Inaugural.
We are as far away in time today from passage of the Social Security in 1935 as Americans then were from the launching of post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Nevertheless our current president and most politicians of his party seem determined to continue the current welfare state arrangements -- historian Walter Russell Mead calls this the blue state model -- into the indefinite future.
Some leaders of the other party are advancing ideas for adapting a system that worked reasonably well in an industrial age dominated by seemingly eternal big units into something that can prove workable in an information age experiencing continual change and upheaval wrought by innovations in the market economy.
The current 76-year period is nearing its end. What will come next?
War Communism lasted all of a year. They tried 100 percent confiscation and redistribution by the state. After that - the black market took over.
It’s simply not possible to overcome human nature.
Ahh, it’s good to see the boomers writing us off already. :)
Strauss and Howe (who were boomers: sadly, Strauss died at 60 in 2007) weren't really being empirical when they came up with their theories about Millennial. According to their scheme a hero generation would emerge, so they assumed that the Millennials (or Generation Y) would be it.
But I guess the question is whether the millenials really are all that different from Gen X. Girls reminds me way too much of the slackers of 20 years ago. Whatever gains were made by stepping up after 911 may have been lost by this lousy economy.
But I don't know if the early millenials who came of age ten years or so ago and young people coming out of school now are similar or are going to turn out the same.
I think that "probably" is a big assumption. The size, complexity and global nature of the current mess is uncharted territory - how long can it continue on sheer inertia alone until the inescapable laws of math and economic gravity causes a crash the likes of which the world has ever seen? Or could that even happen? I don't think anybody really knows the answer to this and, on the sheer size of the numbers alone, the stakes are frighteningly high.
Are we talking about overcoming human nature? Maybe you can’t turn everyone into 1984 automatons. But you can perpetuate and grow the Welfare State despite economic meltdown.
So the Bolsheviks stutter-stepped out if the gate, and even Lenin realized they needed free market reform. Relative reform, that is. But is that what this thread is about? They never got to 100% textbook Marxism, therefore the entitlement programs here must soon fail? Huh?
Something—the Whites, the laws of economics, the indomitable human spirit, whatever—prevented them from achieving total communism. But whatever it is they switched to, be it Stalinist gangsterism or making suckers out of the West by getting them to subsidize their failures, lasted 70+ years. And it was far, far worse than what we have now.
My point was even with collapse the Welfare State can grow bigger than we can imagine. The Soviets buttress rather than contradict that argument.
Okay, set aside the “probably” argument. Weimar Germany’s hyperinflation is the worst monetary disaster of modern times I think everyone agrees. It also heavily contributed with the global economic meltdown which spawned the Great Depression, which was possibly the biggest economic disaster in human history. I absolutely agree with you that things could get worse, but it remains that the future is only a possibility and Germany in the 20s and 30s was real.
Point is, they emerged with bigger government.
Okay, set aside the “probably” argument. Weimar Germany’s hyperinflation is the worst monetary disaster of modern times I think everyone agrees. It also heavily contributed to the global economic meltdown which spawned the Great Depression, which was possibly the biggest economic disaster in human history. I absolutely agree with you that things could get worse, but it remains that the future is only a possibility and Germany in the 20s and 30s was real.
Point is, they emerged with bigger government.
Despite Hitler’s rearmament programs, and the bob-bons occasionally dropped into their hands, the German people were pretty downbeat when Hitler started his war in 1939. That’s because too many of them were still lived on boiled potatoes. Dictatorships like Hitler’s Germany and Castro’s Cuba stay poor.
Oh, the future is an absolute certainty. The only question is what's it going to look like. ;-)
“They never got to 100% textbook Marxism, therefore the entitlement programs here must soon fail? Huh?”
The point being that 100 percent marxism is not just in theory impossible to acheive, but in reality, impossible to acheive. That is the point. No matter what the state does - there will still exist a black market. The state can greatly hinder the operation of capitalism, but it cannot be destroyed. Far from it.
“And it was far, far worse than what we have now.”
True, it can get worse. But capitalism will never die, no matter what the state throws at it.
“even with collapse the Welfare State can grow bigger than we can imagine. The Soviets buttress rather than contradict that argument.”
Several problems with this. One, the Soviet Union fed off the West and the Communist block - transporting wealth from the people of eastern europe to feed the Communist state. Two, generous donations from the west also fed the communist state. No such alternative exists for America. This is what the Russians get that America does not. Once the welfare state collapses here, that’s it. It’s not coming back - the iron laws of the marketplace dictate that not only is the welfare state going to collapse - the state is going to shrink in response. How long will it take? That’s a good question. Demographics DOOM the welfare state - there are simply not enough young people to get the whole show going. America has been greatly sustained through immigration - but that is going to dry up soon as well. That leaves one outlet - conquest of large areas of north america (which isn’t going to happen, because again, no young people), and two, eventual collapse. Collapse is coming, but it will take 20 years to get here.
We are seeing workforce participation on the levels of the 50s, which is not a bad thing - because the millenial girls are going to enjoy being stay at home moms. :)
A person never gets back what he invested plus interest.
On the flip side, a person who dies young, his estate should receive his investment plus interest. That never happens.
That’s not the point, though. Or not the main subject of the thread. Where did you get the idea that I or anyone else was arguing government can eradicate tge black market? If you wanna make that point, fine. However, doing so is not to contradict my point, which is that economic disaster won’t doom the entitlement state. It’d probably expand it.
If you’ll notice I brought up how the Soviets were subsidized by the West. That hardly contradicts my point. All that means is they were a little more capitalistic than they let on. If the US lacks the other America necessary to support Soviet-proportion communism, we still have a long, long way to go to make up the difference.
You say once the Welfare State collapses, but to so assume is to overleap our argument. The Welfare State won’t collapse, is my position. What we’re assuming is some sort of monetary collapse or other economic disaster. The Soviets, like I said, experienced that, as did Weimar Germany, and emerged either with bigger government, or in the Soviet case government slightly smaller than its wartime high yet thanks to the ratchet effect much bigger for decades and decades than it had been before the Bolshevik coup.
It was a while before the US recognized their government as legitimate, by the way, until FDR fell in love with “Uncle Joe.” So Western Seth didn’t keep them afloat in the early years.
“The iron laws of the marketplace dictate that not only is the welfare state going to collapse - the state is going to shrink in response”
But the marketplace can’t dictate that, for government is outside it. They make a living through violence, or the threat thereof, not the marketplace. Granted, there needs be some minimum amount of wealth produced to support not only the state in a position to remain in power, but also to support peasants to a degree necessary to keep them alive to support the state. Anything short of that, and the apparatchiks will simply push the effects of “the iron laws of the marketplace” onto less powerful classes.
Tens of millons of innocent civilians were murdered for this very reason, most famously among peasants in the 1930s famine in the Ukraine and elsewhere and in the peasant famine in China during the Great Leap Forward. Government did not shrink, for they had the guns and therefore ate, whatever the iron laws said.
Demographics do mot doom the Welfare State. They doom our standard of living. We’ll have intensified competition for scarcer handouts, is all.
“Dictatorships like Hitler’s Germany...stay poor.”
Yes, exactly. Something has gone wrong on this thread, for it feels like this is supposed to be a refutation of my argument. But it supports what I’ve been saying. If things were so bad in 39, they forthwith were to sink to where they hadn’t been since they were starved into surrender in 18. Then half the country was doomed to decades of Soviet occupation and communism.
Things can always get worse, there is no definite limit to tyranny. The wages of economics are not eaten by the Welfare State, but the unfortunates not politically connected.
“I am pro-Sulla.” I’d have to say I’d be too now.
See it’s like this. When I came up with my FReephandle, there was still room to ward off the damage of the Incrementalist Marianettes (heh, heh). I wanted to avoid the need for Sulla.
I’d be interested in knowing who comes close to a Sulla? I’m even more sure the oligarchs want to know too, so don’t tell me of any candidates who you think might fill the position. Wouldn’t be healthy.
However, we don’t have generals who vie for the Consulship like the Romans did. What we have had is two terms of Marius lite (GWB) and now beginning two terms of Marius unleashed (Bummer), but neither of them ever served on the front lines. Fronts for the real powers as Plato told us the Sophists taught. They were both really and truly marionettes, and the number of people in denial of this remains astronomically high.
A personal insight that has stayed with me for 60 odd years. My grandfather in the 1950s would get angry after reading the news and say something like “Americans are so stupid that should a demagogue take how here he’d make Hitler look like a piker.”
Should a Sulla come along he’d be hung out to dry by all the Lilliputians surrounding him. TWANLOCs would kill our best chance because my grandfather was far to clear sighted.
The current occupants of the offices created by the founders have failed, decisively.
Their failure stretches over the past 40 years, perhaps as much as 100 years. It is entirely bipartisan, and my naive hope that the GOP coming to power in 1994 would help was, in retrospect, foolish.
They need to be dismissed. We need a timeout. Perhaps the skeleton of the old system (a bicameral legislature, an individual executive, and a lifetime judicial office) can be retained and repopulated with virtuous men chosen by a limited franchise, perhaps not.
Keeping the status quo is just wasting time.
Well, we do face a similar dilemma that Sulla faced, don’t we? Let’s discuss it so that those who are uninformed understand what obstacles face them.
Sulla succeeded by repression and fiat to enforce the old ways while he was dictator. When he left after his four years he planned on keeping an eye on things while in retirement.
But he only lived another year. And then what happened? The people were already converted into dependents on State handouts.
The West, and the United States in particular, have been under the constant drip drip drip attack of Critical Theory. The Progressive agenda has succeeded through incremental changes that has created a vast set of classes of people who like the way things are now.
You and I and a small number of people know what we would like to see. And even the bastards in the GOP who’ve been marginalizing conservatives for many generations will nod their heads that your ideals are good ones. But then they will claim to be pragmatists and marginalize us again. In my opinion they have always been the brains behind the decline. A free nation is not made unfree except by incremental attacks. And who exactly has been in the forefront of labeling as extremists (slippery slopers) anybody who saw where the increments had to lead?
It is my guess that the Progressives used the Marius/Sulla pattern to advance us to where we find ourselves today. Those Progressives (like T Roosevelt and HGWells to name two) who wished to rule the world needed to control the reigns of the most powerful nation on Earth. (And only became so powerful because of the resources that grew from unrestrained minds of free people.)
They obviously see USA today as ripe for the plucking. And they don’t give a damn that we see it — look at how blatant and brash are their current efforts and you know that proves that they think they cannot be stopped.
This is the world our Sulla faces. Even if he overturns the creeps in power now, who will follow him when he dies? It will be people who’ve for the last three generations have had their forebears’ values attacked via Critical Theory and institutional rot from the inside.
I’ve never been a religious man. But it surely seems like a task that can only be achieved with a great deal of divine intervention. Like the angel of death passes over anyone who still retains old values and wipes out all pretenders.
That would leave us with having to start all over again. And then in each new generation there will be the seed of those who will seek to gain power over other men. Will we, as a species, have finally learned our lesson? I would hope so, but past performance informs my doubts.
Look — here we now are facing worse (IMO) than what Sulla faced. I am not liking our prospects.
In short:
Those how know their history are condemned to watch those who don’t repeat it.
“All that means is they were a little more capitalistic than they let on. If the US lacks the other America necessary to support Soviet-proportion communism, we still have a long, long way to go to make up the difference.”
The point being that, as any of the survivors of the former Soviet Union will tell you- “we had someplace else to go. America”. There is no where else.
“The Welfare State won’t collapse”
Rubbish. It can and it will. It’s collapse is inevitable.
“But the marketplace can’t dictate that”
Yes, the marketplace can and will dictate that. When it becomes impossible to pay the bill, people will simply stop paying. They will hide income, they will participate in the black market, they will barter goods and services for other goods and services. We are already seeing the start of this.
“government is outside it”.
No, the government is not outside of it. You yourself have just admitted that the Soviets needed capitalism in order to keep the state running. Ergo, my thesis is the correct one. it is impossible for the state to run without capitalism.
“Tens of millons of innocent civilians were murdered for this very reason”
And Tens of millions of innocent civilians are murdered here for similar reasons.
“Government did not shrink, for they had the guns and therefore ate, whatever the iron laws said.”
And the Iron laws previaled, the state collapsed when they could no longer bear the load.
“Demographics do mot doom the Welfare State.”
Yes, it does doom the welfare state - the welfare state will go before the standard of living will be destroyed.
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