Long before Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the Roman Republic stopped being a serious political entity. The system was still a well thought out and conceived system of governance, but the people operating could no longer be trusted to operate it. The Roman political class could no longer trust itself, because the political class was no longer dominated by serious men. The proof of that was not just its collapse, but the fact that men like Marius and Sulla existed and needed to exist in order for the system to stagger on.
The old line about people getting a government they deserve always comes up whenever someone points out the defects of democracy. It’s circular reasoning but an effective way of not addressing the real issue. That is, a people with a capable ruling elite can get along and be happy with just about any form of political system. A people who need the restraint of democracy or a strong constitution to tame their ruling classes is a people with a ruling class incapable of operation a constitutional government and abiding by its limits.
What this means is the people don’t get the government they deserve, so much as they get the government their ruling class deserves. Even that does not explain why it is that the ruling elites of a society can go rotten within a generation or two. The human capital of America in the 18th century was certainly different than that of today. The ruling elite it produced was very different from today. But, the population of America a century ago was not that much different than today. We’re a little browner, but materially much better off.
As the circus of the Kavanaugh confirmation unfolds, it is important to note that the people creating the circus are not the brown ones. Sure, they were the opening acts, but the main stage is populated with geezers produced by the ruling class of a half century ago. Diane Feinstein is the representative of a the generations that produced the cultural revolution of the 1960’s, not someone from the current age. In other words, the American ruling class started going sour a long time ago. We’re just getting to smell the rotting corpse of it.
You have to wonder if if events like this are what gives the remaining serious men the idea of toppling over the system. In the Roman Republic, the one place where merit counted was in the military. There were plenty of politics, of course, but ultimately a man was what he showed on the field of battle. Read accounts of Caesar in Gaul and the man was not just a great general. He was a lion on the field. While there were plenty of old men in the Roman senate who served their time in the legions, none were the equal of Cesar.
No matter how sophisticated a society, men judge other men by the simple calculation of whether they can take them in a fight. You have to think that the men running the military look over at their civilian leadership and wonder why they are taking orders from clowns like they see in the Senate. This must be especially true of the junior officers, most of whom by this point have done tours in Afghanistan and the Middle East. As patriots, they have to be looking at the civilian leadership with nothing but contempt.
That’s not to say we are about to have a military coup. It’s always possible, but the one place where civic nationalism is strongest is within the military. The one place where multicultural lunacy is strongest is within the senior leadership ranks of the services. The civilian leadership remains cautious enough to make sure the top brass of the military are just as feckless and craven as the civilian side. Even there though, the ingredients are in place for a young and ambitious officer to start thinking about a short cut to the top.
Putting the military coup aside, watching the Kavanaugh circus should be a reminder that America is one serious crisis away from collapse. The financial crisis of 2008 was so terrifying to the elites, because they sense the fragility of their position. The central bankers were able to contain it and limit the damage to the public, by pushing the costs off into the future. The US debt now stands at $21.4 trillion for a reason, but you can only charge off the costs of a crisis so many times. At some point, the elites must act.
It’s clear that the political elite of America is incapable of handling a genuine crisis. They struggle to do the basics of government now. They still have not written and passed a budget for next fiscal year. This is ground floor stuff. If they cannot handle the simplest of tasks, how will the “world’s greatest deliberative body” manage to debate a response to a genuine crisis? The answer, of course, is they won’t because they can’t. Instead, they will look around for the strong man to arrive and take over the task from them.
That’s what we are seeing with the Kavanaugh hearings. Serious men would never have allowed a handful of deranged matrons, suffering from the typical middle aged female hysteria, to disrupt this process. Generation after generation since Gettysburg, the political elite has grown weaker as the quality of the ruling elite has declined. Maybe the system is to blame. Maybe the breeding patterns of the elites are to blame. Maybe it is just an example of reversion to the mean. Either way, our elites are no longer elite.
Long essay from Joe Sobran from 1985 and the National Review. Well worth it
https://joeportolano.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/pensees-notes-for-the-reactionary-of-tomorrow/
Fantastic read. Thanks!
At the risk of hyperbole, if Scalise had been a Democrat and the shooter from anywhere to the right of Paul Ryan, the crisis would have already been upon us.
At least the Romans had “censors” who in theory could clean the dead wood out of the Senate. The Romans also had patronage so that, like Donnie Brasco, you bring the wrong guy in, it’s on you.
We are beyond the “elite” using the levers of government for personal enrichment, and are to the point of the “elite” using their powers to beat their betters down out of insecurity and jealously.
This, as has been said, will not end well.
“Elites” now appears to be synonymous with grifters.
Human. Nature. Never. Changes.
Frail and Fallen, prone to error, such that all human systems succumb to spiritual entropy. The temptations of Power and the Lusting after it are the most seductive of all and so well known as not to need this restatement, except that this is never the First Premise of most discussions of the ways and means of our destruction.
Few want to admit this or the answer. We can’t relinquish the idea that we can solve the problem(s) through our own intellect and will. Full circle back to Human Nature, the root of all sorrow.
We have free will… choose wisely.
Choose to buy more ammo.
If a society is not led by its best fighters, then it will be led by its best liars.
I know the post is about our elites… but holy hell, it speaks volumes about the massive problem we have with our women too.
The rise of the hysterical matriarchy is well worth discussion. I’m reading up on the Frankfurt School and something that jumps out to me is that many of them believed that the natural state of humanity was a matriarchy. Capitalism was a part of the patriarchal system, designed to protect the interests of capitalists. It’s more than a bit nutty, but this was an enormously influential group.
And now that many of the desires of the Frankfurt School have reached fruition instead of turning into ‘the natural state of the matriarchy’ the denial of nature is predominant Blank Slate thinking and gender as a social construct as examples of that reveal the falseness of the Frankfurt School ideology and its lack of internal consistency
How do ideas created by creatures such as the Frankfort School come to dominate and become our ruling outline?
Like other ruinous ideas that come into being, they have a receptive audience, at least the ones that even think about ideology.
Tempters and willing sinners like the spiritual realm.
It really is quite amazing. Paul Gottfried has written about the subject quite a bit. I suspect he remains astonished at how such nutty ideas became so influential. Frankly, I get why fans of Kevin McDonald assume black magic plays some role. How could so many smart people support such ruinous ideas?
also recommended is the little known Marx-Engels co-production “The Origin of the Family” (compiled by Engels after Marx’s death). https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/origin_family.pdf
part 4, in the middle of the piece, is the most on point as it is where their conclusions are
The thing is absurd pseudoscience but definitely would have influenced later Marxists.
Industrial society, absent intervention by the state, typically requires both parents to work in order to maintain living standards. Mass immigration only intensifies this. While everyone worked in agrarian society, it was rarely outside of the household. The Internet society could have seen a decentralization of work to home-based consultancies, but the TechBro control freaks preferred to outsource what they could, and import foreigners for what they couldn’t.
When both parents are working, it creates the illusion that somehow women are “equal”, but they are discriminated against in the labor market and the deadbeat husband won’t do his share of chores.
If women believe that abortion rights are truly at risk with Trump’s nominees, it helps to explain their willingness to block Kavanaugh at any cost.
From day 1 in the military there was contempt for civilian leadership, and an acceptance that civilian leadership in how the universe works. The rule was (and I assume still is) that male officers make it up to Colonel based on merit. The jump from Colonel to General (or Admiral) is the jump from combat leader to politician.
Of course I see the truth in this essay—it’s the reason I find myself awake at night. At the same time, what might we identify as a period with a wholesome, dedicated ruling class? The elites who gave their countrymen the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, or the ‘60s cultural revolution? I have no problem asserting that our current batch is especially rotten; but compared to what?
OTOH, is the current ruling class really determinative of the future? England in the Regency period was led by rotten, decadent elites; but they were succeeded by the Victorians, whom I consider to have led a rather exemplary period in the modern age. How did the one lead to the other?
These are honest questions, sketchy and provisional though they are.
It has been apparent for some time that giving women, and especially single women, the vote injected a lethal, long acting poison into the American body politic…Women are genetically neurotic, inclined to favor invaders, and love the welfare state. That’s a trio of pathologies that invariably prove fatal.
The hedge fund manager, Ray Dalio recently addressed the debt problems of the US as a threat to the stability of society. He predicted serious cuts in various social programs to reduce spending. The alternative might be the end of the dollar as a world currency that would have more dramatic consequences for the US. He then spoke about that in his state Connecticut (80% white) 20% of the young didn’t have any qualifications to be in the labour force an money had to be spent to make them a productive asset. We know that that will never happen with 5-6.decades of educational reforms have tried to change that without any measurable effect. He sees the problems but he is also in denial. The interview with him is here and the crisis he sees coming in addressed from 6.min in the video;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C43i3yclec
I am curious about when and why the “tyranny of the judiciary” became a thing. This refers to the (supposedly)modern tendency of the court to interpret law so broadly as to function as a legislature as well as interpreter, hence making the appointment of a new justice a matter of such import as to motivate the vilest levels of character assassination. My first instinct would be to think that the cultural divides have grown so deep that there is not the minimum civic virtue to maintain the roles of government as intended by the constitution, but can the divided in modern America be so deep as they were in the days leading up to the civil war? What has changed?
The short answer is that it began to creep into jurisprudence in the 50s but really gained a foothold in the late 60s and 70s as the generation of attorneys steeped in Frankfurt School doctrine matured into command of the legal system.
The next wave of judicial lunacy is beginning now as the generation of attorneys steeped in Critical Legal Theory are coming of age and will soon take command of the legal system.
Yeah, but it must have always been possible, as defined by the system, but people didn’t actually try to subvert the system, ie political interest was seen as more important than the integrity of government, until the 60s and 70s. Similar to this Kavanaugh thing. No one ever tried to invalidate a confirmation with fake rape accusations. Of course classical civilization never allowed for such situations to occur….
With all due respect for your military, it is not the military of days past. To be fair, the US hasn’t won and held anything since occupying Japan and Germany.
Additionally, there have been plenty of top level military scandals including corruption, dereliction of duty, sexual harassment, abuse of power, etc. They may be wearing a uniform, but the only way you get to the top in any organization, especially a peace-time military, is through politics. The closest thing you had to Caesar was Eisenhower and there hasn’t been anyone like him in American military or politics since.
The aged hippies of the 60’s have been running things for years. In Europe it’s even worse since your liberals are not nearly as liberal as ours. Somehow we’re convinced it will always be this way and there are no consequences for idiotic political actions simply because our intellectual elites believe it to be true.
To your point of men sizing each other up in who could win a fight, that could not be more evident than meetings between Obama and Putin and Trump and Putin.
Please understand I have the full respect and appreciation of your young men and women in uniform. But I, as all men should, question the leadership that puts them in harms way.
To be fair the United States hasn’t been in a war since WWII. There have been many political actions that the US has engaged since then, but no wars.
I will say this about the neocons, you can’t have an effective military unless you practice practice practice. It’s the only way to effectively build up the noncom ranks and test equipment.
Russian equipment has always been significantly inferior and have the Chinese ever won a war that wasn’t against other Chinese in their entire history?
Most Russian equipment has been monkey models used by Third World armies.
A significant portion of what Saddam had in the first gulf war was the best the Russians had to offer. From the tanks to the air defense. Hot knife through butter is how I’d describe it. The rest of the world parades and brags about the best equipment in their respective militaries. I have zero idea what the best the U.S. military has to offer and, with all respect, neither do you or 99.999% of the people.
I can’t think of a single platform in which the U.S. is currently, or likely in the near future, outmatched. There has been some public noise about artillery, but I don’t know how much I’m buying even that.
The US is outmatched with ICBMs, we are using a vintage 70s model, while the Russians have continued developing them. I agree that isn’t a point in Russia’s favor, as they can’t afford a stealth bomber.
That’s mostly due to civilian leadership. A serious country would have fire bombed Kabul after 9/11 and then sent a list of demands to surrounding countries. The military itself is more than able to the job. It’s why the feckless civilian leadership likes having the military station all over the world, rather than at home it barracks, watching the circus of American life.
It is an interesting question though, with regards to the US military in a domestic setting. Could our government call out the national guard in an emergency? The response to Katrina suggests no. If you can muster the guard units in a natural disaster, how can you call in the regular army to quell civil unrest? Would the army even respond?
I would assume there are people sitting around studying these sorts of scenarios, but maybe not.
A serious country wouldn’t have been meddling in that hornets nest for all these years.
A serious country would have seriously investigated 9/11 instead of blaming it on Kabul.
The Israelis, ably assisted by US Neoconservatives, did 9/11, not Osama Bin Laden.
The bigger question is whether or not conflicting organizations (e.g. Army, vs. Guard vs. FBI vs. Local SWAT) would end up turning on each other.
“…it is not the military of days past.”
On a slightly related note, I’m always running across the firmly-held belief of those on the Right that “the military would never fire on its own citizens” and similar sentiments. Basically, the Left could never successfully use the military against the Right because all order takers (if not all order givers) lean Right. But my experience – admittedly, it’s a small data set, ~20 – runs about 50/50 for ex military guys leaning Right (usually Moderate) vs Left (always Far Left). Maybe that’s specifically a result of no longer being active duty (although why, I couldn’t say), but I do wonder what the split is among active-duty soldiers.
They wouldn’t even risk seeing how much they could trust regular army units. The point of drone warfare is that it can be tightly controlled by a small central group.
Besides, any war against civilians would consist entirely of atrocities and false flag attacks.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that these people are constrained by any form of Christian morality.
If you have been a dependent parasite for most of your life, the coming crisis (or perhaps collapse) is indeed a trauma of existential anxiety because you understand that you’re likely to die off due to a lack of productive contribution or even survival skill. Conversely, the able-bodied citizen views this event as a necessary catharsis and remedy for what ails us. The former will respond with handwringing, pouting, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. The latter will get to work and fight off all threats before rebuilding the next civilization. The crisis, when it comes, will be a cure, not a catastrophe.
Vomiting up last night’s party is never fun, but it is necessary.
Leftists radicals became deeply entrenched in the principal institutions of society. That had much to do with what happened when my generation came of age in the 1960s. Perhaps the nation became ungovernable at that point and it’s more a matter of the elites pandering to the masses in order to keep the whole thing from going off the rails rather than a decline in the competence of the elites.
“became deeply entrenched….in the 1930s.”
“Short cut to the top.”
Can you spell T-R-U-M-P?
There is a reason the moral stock of our leaders was much higher 150 years ago and that reason is our society was mostly Christian. The values of Christianity have withstood the test of time:
Male leadership of the home and workplace.
High value and commitment to marriage and children.
High value of sexual purity and rejection of sexual deviancy.
Rejection of excessive use of alcohol and drugs.
Honesty in our judicial system.
And on and on…
It is no coincidence that the moral slide in our country goes hand and hand with it’s rejection of biblical Christianity.
The point Z-man has made in past posts is we can’t get back to the early 1800s. I agree with that. However, if our country is broken up into pieces in the future which I think is the inevitable end game of all this, a good start to the new country would be white/christian. Then a good form of government could be worked out from that starting point.
Yes.
We see quotes from some of the Founders about how the Constitution is meant for a religious, moral people and will not work for any others. We steadfastly ignore this because so many of us “know better”. There is no end of solutions proposed to bring sanity back but they all have no chance of being implemented for the simple reason that only a religious, moral people will go along with them and we no long have that. We have a mass of people who no longer even try to understand morality let alone the religious doctrines that give rise to morality.
I want and expect the US to break up and I hope to end up—in my lifetime—in a new Christian nation governed by laws, free of Satan, at least mostly free. My hunch is that it will include the present states of Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and the “oustate” areas of neighboring states. I hope economic collapse brings this on but I have a feeling it will come about through bloodshed.
My understanding is that no potential independent and ambitious man, as the military is currently run, is be able to get above lieutenant colonel. And it really would have to be ambition and glory, not patriotism, that drives such a man.