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The small minded, but financially well-endowed folks that profit
from trade deficits by taking our tax breaks and innovation oversees
for individual profit are shaking our foundations. The
foundations of America.
We think highly of
ourselves. We feel good about our grandeur, our grand ideas, our
grand accomplishments, our grand place in the world. But we are
disintegrating as our economy leaves us... as our innovation
leaves us... as our ideals become hollow.
This blistering article
goes beyond trade, but our current trade policy is a major cause of the
ills diagnosed. I don't know Charley Reese, but this article is
powerful.
***
The Empire Is Over
by Charley Reese
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese399.html
The American government has come to resemble the characters in The
Wizard of Oz. We have the Cowardly Congress, a president without a
brain, and a foreign-policy establishment without a heart.
Our politicians are still trying to play the empire game long after the
age of empires has ended. Blinded by arrogance, they cannot see that
with every passing day, the world needs us less and less and hates us
more and more.
We are passing through that phase when the grandeur of the empire
exists only in the minds of politicians who have insulated themselves
from reality.
(Read More)
A friend of mine, a classical scholar, sometimes tells his students,
"No one woke up one morning in 476 A.D. and said, 'Gee, I'm in the Dark
Ages.'" The transition from the heyday of Roman power to a stage of
barbarism was a gradual process.
We are in a process of change. No one is going to announce on TV that
the U.S. is no longer a superpower. Nevertheless, the signs are there
if you look for them. A nation that was able to help crush the Axis
powers in three and a half years hasn't won a war since then.
We have had four years of struggling with an insurgency in a small,
poor and broken country. Our economy is shaky under mountains of debt.
Half of our people make less than 42,000 inflated dollars a year. Where
we were once the arsenal of democracy, today there is hardly a major
weapons system that doesn't rely on imports of one kind or another.
Much of the industry that is left is foreign-owned. Japan, which once
lay prostrate, dominates the American car market. It is extremely
difficult to find anything today that is not made in China or some
other cheap-labor country.
In the meantime, the cowardly Congress doesn't have the guts to tackle
any of the major problems confronting the American people. Our
president continues to embarrass us practically every time he opens his
mouth in public.
The foreign-policy establishment is riddled with aging draft dodgers
agitating for more wars – against small countries, of course. True,
we still have lots of nuclear weapons, but do you think any American
president would want to get into a nuclear shooting match with China or
Russia?
Look at how we reacted to two airplanes crashing into two office
buildings. What do you think we would do if San Diego, Los Angeles and
San Francisco became radioactive ruins with millions of casualties? We
are not prepared mentally, spiritually or materially to deal with a
nuclear war.
We are like all empires in their final stages. We have grown soft. We
like our comforts. We don't wish to be inconvenienced. We like poor
Mexicans to do our stoop work and poor Americans to do our fighting,
provided they do it far away so we won't be disturbed by explosions and
screams.
We enjoy our decadence, and there are always people in the media who
can rationalize anything, no matter how sick and revolting it is.
As for trying to understand the world, we are just too busy being
amused and following the adventures of Britney Spears and other
celebrities. We like to let the TV and the politicians do our thinking
for us. It saves energy. They tell us whom to hate.
The only way to avoid a bad end is to find some realists and put them
in public office. We need a brave Congress, not a pack of cowards. We
desperately need a president with a brain.
We need to retire the warmongers in the foreign-policy establishment.
Otherwise, we will join the other third-rate countries, once empires,
on history's discard pile.
September 29, 2007
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