Posted on 05/21/2011 3:37:47 AM PDT by personalaccts
America's Ruling Class-And the perils of a Revolution Angelo Codevilla
As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets' nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
“They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America.”
It wouldn’t collapse America and that wasn’t what worried them. They feared the collapse of their careers and their reputations.
Mark for re-read. Great!
—bflr—
—bflr—
But if I had been a lib, with the success of my books, I'd have an endowed chair offered to me at a major institution and regular appearances on "Today." It's exactly what Codevilla says about Singer and some of the others who don't toe the elite ruling class line.
People denigrate "flyover" country, but consider this: within a 600-mile radius of Dayton, OH, you have 37%(!!) of the U.S. population. No other region---not California or the NY/Boston area gets higher than about 25%. Yet this is dismissed as backwater, unimportant, "behind-the-times," and so on.
Codevilla is absolutely right about the staffs and bureaucracies. I think one major reform that I suggested that I haven't seen anyone in power on our side discuss is a means to limit congressional staff to TWO PER SENATOR/CONGRESSMAN. This would greatly cut down on a) the number of laws they pass, and b) the amount of mischief they can get into. They might actually have to work. If we can't make them come home and see their constituents as the Founders wanted, perhaps we can so overwork them that they can't harm us.
America won’t collapse because of market forces.
If America collapses - it will be because we send a net 50 billion dollars out of America every month, through the destructive exporting of America’s productive capacity to communist China.
The Country Class—I had noticed when working in a State Capitol that the two major cities of the state operated one way (completely ignored state government) and the rest of the state operated another way. Now I know it was an ongoing contest between urban interests and non-urban interests.
Excellent article. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I will when I have time....
“Thus if you are not among the favored guests at the table where officials make detailed lists of who is to receive what at whose expense, you are on the menu.”
What i have noticed over the years is that the candidates are generally limited to Repbs and Dems. The electorial system won’t let outsiders in. In fact, the ins split the spoils between them and all others suck hind tit.
Bump for later read
This Codevilla essay is the best thing I have ever read of it’s sort. A massive blast of truth in a world of lies, indeed.
“Aristocracy of Pull”
“Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard—the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money—the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims—then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.—Atlas Shrugged, an excerpt from Francisco D’Anconia’s money speech
I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged (yet). The excerpts and comments about it that I’ve read seem very prescient to what we see going on around us.
Thanks
It makes you wonder how long the bastardization of our Founding documents will continue until the internal enemies of Freedom have their way and those documents are rendered impotent beyond repair.
This government must be reduced by half if this American Experiment is to continue. We have no need of king, sovereign, despot, or dictator nor the over engorged, bloated wealth robbing bureaucracy foisted upon us by those we elected to represent us who we have allowed to repress us by our silence. There needs a wholesale purging in Washington to eliminate the entrenched and protected. Whereas the Founders had the foresight to design a government that was fit for our past, present, and future, we have allowed noxious beliefs to take hold in our daily national conversation to the detriment of our country. We have allowed cancer to disease our nation, rust to nearly bring it to a grinding halt, and immoral theories borne of European philosophies to be acknowledged as Truth when in fact, they are Error.
Unless the candidate is a conservative on every issue, you support the status quo and the continued weakening of the nation.
Conservatism, like abstinence, works every time.
and c) the number of relatives they can hire. :)
I’ve read it three times, but two of those times were when I was younger and very ignorant.
Being more politically awake to what is going on made the book very compelling when I read it for the third time a couple of years ago.
Some passages are difficult to slog through, but for the most part, it really ties into what goes on today. It is simultaneously humorous and horrifying... but still a very good read.
This is a classic article, which the author later expanded to a book.
“Differences between Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas are of degree, not kind. “
I usually give this to my liberal friends so they can understand there is a battle between the “elites” on both sides and us ordinary people.
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