Architectural Failure
If one had to sum up the legacy of Karl Rove as political adviser to the 43rd president, it could probably be done in four words: tactical brilliance, strategic blindness.
Though George Bush was not given the natural gifts of a Ronald Reagan, his victories in Texas, followed by successive victories in the presidential contests of 2000 and 2004, put him in the history books alongside Reagan, who won California and the presidency twice.
None of Bush's wins were nearly so impressive as the Reagan landslides in the Golden State and the nation. But it is a testament to Rove that he and Bush never lost a statewide or national election in the four they contested from 1994 to 2004. Rove has two Super Bowl rings. How many political advisers can say as much?
But if Rove's contribution to the career of George Bush will put him in the Hall of Fame, the Bush-Rove legacy for their party is worse than mixed. Rove wanted to be the architect of a new Republican majority. Instead, he and Bush presided over the loss of the Reagan Democrats and both houses of Congress.
The house Nixon and Reagan built, Bush and Rove tore down, leaving rubble in its place. Rove's failure was a failure of vision. He and Bush believed the future of the party lay in adding to the Republican base the Hispanic vote, now the nation's largest minority, approaching 15 percent of the population.
They went about it the wrong way.
Pandering to that voting bloc, Bush stopped enforcing the immigration laws and offered amnesty to 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and the businesses that hired them. Bush and Rove were going to lure the Hispanic vote away from the Democratic Party by putting illegals on a path to citizenship.
But as we saw in June, when the nation rose up in rage against the Bush amnesty, the pair did indeed unite the GOP—against themselves, and they severed themselves from the Reagan Democrats and the country.
It was cynical politics, and it backfired, crippling the presidential candidacy of John McCain in the process.
But even before the disastrous immigration reform bill, Bush had become a zealot of NAFTA, GATT and most-favored-nation status for China. These have left his country with the worst trade deficits in history, put the United States $2 trillion in debt to Beijing and Tokyo, cost Middle America 3 million manufacturing jobs and arrested the income rise of the middle class, as our capitalist pigs and hedge-fund hogs have happily gorged themselves at the capital gains tax trough.
Bush's original idea of "compassionate conservatism" was a fine one. But under him and Rove, compassionate conservative turned out to be code for a cocktail of Great Society Liberalism and Big Government Conservatism. How could professed admirers of Ronald Reagan think that by doubling the budget of the Department of Education the tests scores of school kids would inexorably rise?
Even earlier in the Bush years, the president, after the trauma of 9-11, had a Damascene conversion to neoconservatism, a neo-Wilsonian ideology and secular religion. Among its tenets: that we are a providential nation whose mission on earth is to liberate mankind and democratize the planet; that we are in a world-historic struggle between good and evil; that our triumph is to be accomplished by the robust use of American military power—beginning with the benighted nations of the Islamic Middle East that represent an existential threat to America, democracy and Israel.
Sometime between Sept. 11 and his axis-of-evil address, Bush sat down and ate of the forbidden fruit of messianic globaloney. Consuming it, he got up and committed the greatest strategic blunder in American history by ordering the invasion of a country that had not attacked us, did not threaten us and did not want war with us.
The Bush-Rove rationale: For our survival, we had to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction that we now know it did not have.
The great political architects of the 20th century are FDR and Richard Nixon. After the three Republican landslides of the 1920s, FDR put together a New Deal coalition that controlled the White House for 36 years, with the exception of two terms for Gen. Eisenhower.
After the rout of the Republicans in 1964, Nixon pulled together a New Majority that held the White House for 20 of 24 years, racking up two 49-state landslides for Nixon and Reagan, even as FDR had won 46 states in 1936. In his re-election bid, Bush won 31 states.
In seeking a new GOP majority, Bush and Rove rejected the Nixon-Reagan model. Instead, they embraced the interventionism of Wilson, the free-trade globalism of FDR, the open-borders immigration ideas of LBJ and the budget priorities of the Great Society. It was a bridge too far for the party base.
Now, Rove walks away like some subprime borrower abandoning the house on which he can no longer make the payments. The Republican Party needs a new architect. The firm of Bush & Rove was not up to the job.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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Please allow a more theoretical turn:
I wonder if Buchanan (the Blue Paleocon/Tory), the Browns (Nationalists/Tribalists/Racialists), Rove ("Pinstripe" Neocon/Whig), and Red Billary are all working from what I shall call a "terrain premise": that politics is holding on to land (or expanding it) by a locality or a nation, preferably one that is a homoethnic, homoreligious, and homoglotic.
The alternative vision, and the one that is increasing becoming real, is what I shall call "The New Venetian Age premise": that land and the monopolist control of it simply is as useless as a horse and buggy; and even localities -- for reason of economic necessity and for cheap international infrastructure enabled by technology as Venice was by water -- are polyethnic, polyreligous, and polyglot. Put differently, Venice is not on the sea; Venice is IN the sea. And my locality, the NC Piedmont Triad, now has two centers, two fora: the airport and celular technology. So the NC Piedmont Triad is not bordered on the air; it is IN the air, and can move anywhere on earth in a few hours. Put yet another way, an Venetian Age where a person just doesn't care anymore about the ethnos and religion of his pharmacist, physician, or grocery store clerk; just as in 1830 most French didn't care what dynasty their king came from, or in 1871 whether they should have a king at all.
In this new Age, what role and contribution will Real Conservatism have to play? I welcome answers.
Sounds like another city in the sky? I don't believe the Venice analogy holds up. I'd say I don't 'think' the Venice analogy holds up, but only an historian like say Fleming could come in and comment, or at least not myself. You seem to suggest this 'new age' you describe is here and a given. Perhaps it is? But Venice was at the beginning of something, wasn't it? And I'm not sure what you describe isn't merely the tail end of something, prior to a fall or collapse?
And here I thought SC had gone off to sulk. Why not add a few licks of "proposition nationism" and go over to the neo-cons for real Sid? I won't fault your eurdition but I will fault your premise that a nation is not dependent on a specific people, language and geography. To cut to the chase, if wanting to live among ones people in ones own land puts me among the Browns, "The Filth" or whatever swear word you prefer so be it.
What holds Americans together, and has from the beginning, is the opportunity to prosper from one's own toil Bush/Rove/Cheney and Clinton before him have ended all that. The self-righteous Anglo-Saxon Americans I keep reading about in these comments position themselves to jump ship economically while looking down on those who are unable to do so as they rewrite the history of themselves on these shores.
I say, Patrick Buchanan for President, if he has the stomach to run again.
Sid:
"homoethnic, homoreligious, and homoglotic..."
?!?!?
T. French:
"Why not add a few licks of “proposition nationism” and go over to the neo-cons for real Sid?"
Seconded.
On Rove
Pat says, "four words: tactical brilliance, strategic blindness."
Paleo translation : "Pragmatic awareness, intellectual ignorance."
Marxist translation : "useful idot."
Historical importance ? Insignificant.
Criminal Record ? Accomplice not charged in Scooter Libby scandal.
Joe Six Pack opinion ? A pompous ass !!
Cheers
Paleo translation : “Pragmatic awareness, intellectual ignorance.” -rr
brilliant. the Ultimate pragmatists who bring nada to the table, though leave with the turkey... and damn you if they're not invited to the next 'thanksgiving.'
I at least bring the six pack. cheers!
_____
"pragmatists who bring nada to the table, though leave with the turkey… and damn you if they’re not invited to the next ‘thanksgiving.’"
Yes, I understand. I recently asked one of our US Senators during a town hall visit why the dissenters of the fiasco in Iraq were ignored and then dismissed ---- both literally and figuratively. Zinni, Wilkerson, Shinseky, Garner etc. etc..
Response : " Well, you were a former Marine. You understand the chain of command. If you are not on board ,then you should get out.
What nonsense !! Honor still meant something when I was serving and most commanders knew there were thousands of ways to be a coward and only a few opportunities to be courageous such as honesty and integrity under stress---keeping your head when everyone else was losing theirs. The police state is much further advanced than anyone will admit. Dissent is not an option. Even on a small blog such as this practically everyone is scared to post under anything but an assumed name. And on and on. It is like reading the Gulag except it is intellectual torture--- character assasination, calumny, defamaton, the glorification of ignorance and weakness in exchange for power and the ability to manipulate. Thank God for a few like the " Chronicles crowd."
T. French: "I will fault your premise that a nation is not dependent on a specific people, language and geography."
I NEVER said it was my premise. A nation is indeed "a specific people, language, and geography "(by which definition, Switzerland, Canada France, Italy, Spain, Germany, The USA, and Belgium would not be not nations). Nation is also a 19th C invention. I'm AM asking, Is the nation-state, or the nation or the state, is passing into history because of technological and economic forces? In short, are specific geography, language, people becoming meaningless?
"ones people in ones own land". But who, pray tell, are my own people? And who decides just who my people are? And who coerces me to live with them? As I think about, "my own people" -- and thus the people with whom I associate -- are people who like Mozart's _Grand Partita_, the Bellini's "Assumption", the Crashaw's poem on the Holy name, Spanish Cava wine, and Eastern Style (and thus African) North Carolina BBQ ; and thus "my own people" dwell all over the globe. And "my own land" is thus called "The Earth".
Go over to the Neocons for real? Not an option, if the "New Venetian Age" is what is really "real". For then the Neocons would be almost as outdated as you fellows -- almost, in the sense that Orleanists were almost as outdated as Legitimists in the 3rd Republic.
John Q. Public: obviously all analogy is imperfect. I am more interested in the concept of "terrain culture" and "post-terrain", and I use Venice (as opposed to, say, a Lincolnian nationalist's USA) only to make the concept more vivid.
P. Stewart "What holds Americans together, and has from the beginning, is the opportunity to prosper from one’s own toil."
Good, P. Steward. Some wisdom. And you are right, historically. Yet NOW do most of us proper from our own toil by tending our own gardens, building our own houses, and doctoring our own ills? And if not, do I need just America or just Americans anymore to prosper?
Further thoughts.
1, The war of the future (and the present) seems to be 4th Generation War. And it doesn't need terrain.
2. If we talk to people on the Net, who "live" all over the globe and really live in Cyberspace, more than our terrain neighbor, then what consequence ought we to draw?
Just questions, folks. And my main question remains: what role should Real Conservatism now play?
"Go over to the Neocons for real? Not an option, if the “New Venetian Age” is what is really “real”. For then the Neocons would be almost as outdated as you fellows — almost, in the sense that Orleanists were almost as outdated as Legitimists in the 3rd Republic." -Sid
Come on, sid... don't get ahead of everyone (possibly even yourself, you don't KNOW this.) Give it a rest. What you're saying (and I like you) as sweetness & light - is that you need to go off - not to the loathsome neo-convicts, but to form your own new abe-like reality (biblical.) That's myth. I hear you. Chill. You ARE a part of the group... it's not a part of you. No?
Have a beer? We're here for the duration, buddy. Just for the record even if I chose to hope "the new venetian age" is 'really real' ... i'm being honest - i intuit NO. But regardless chill. Maybe we ought to drop a shot into your beer-mug - make it a boilermaker? Maybe you're right. So?
Sid,
My observations are
1) The growth of the Mega-church within the protestant community.
2) the growth of Traditionalists within the Catholic community.
3) The growth of privately owned Mexican restaurants in small towns.
4) The growth of poverty among the middle class .
5) The growth of homeschooling among families.
6) The shrinking of meaningful distances in travel and communications. (this may be changing with regards to higher travel costs )
7) The ever increasing influence of neo-conservativism in both democrat and republican national politics. A one party duopoly.
9) A loss of cultivated intelligence in the college graduate.
Those are trends that I observe. It may not be accurate but it is honest testimony from observation. Does that help you in answering your question ? Or do I not understand the question ? cheers rr
Sid,
I'm so happy that you like what you like and like others with similar likes. However, if floating around like a balloon (aka "The New Venitian Age") is the future, precious little conservatism real or otherwise will be found there. Count me out. Or is this one of those inevitabilites that may not be refused?
That Rove cared not for the party base and the base returned the favor is a fact. People are rooted in the main. Those seeking to uproot them are disliked. Deporting me to another country to further a political party is the act of a hollow man. All the cell phones, jet travel and BBQ in the world won't change that.
As an avid reader- seldom poster- I simply must now "speak"- Sid- ever since you said you were done with Paleo sites-9Just a few days ago)- as not being "pure" enough for you - and your thinly veiled references to anti-Semitism amongst the paleos- you have done nothing but spout off half-baked ideas (both numerous and voluminous) that indicate you really do not have a firm grasp of reality- but instead have a pseudo-intellectual grasp of "-isms" which as every "true" paleo knows is false from the basic premises! Please do not humor this humor-less ideologue anymore! How Juvenile Sidney sounds!
Thanks for the offer of a beer, Publius. Alas, too many carbs for my dr's satisfaction.
T. French: "if floating around like a balloon (aka 'The New Venetian Age') is the future, precious little conservatism real or otherwise will be found there." I fear you might be right UNLESS Real Conservative provides some centripetal balance to fait accompli centrifugal forces. What those centripetal forces are, of course, would be the next question for Real Conservatism. To ask the question differently, how do I function economically and politically and socially with polyethnics and polyreligious in my own town (many of whom are just passing, or flying, through) or in celular/cyberspace communication AND not become absorbed into homogenized Mass Culture, the intellectual and spiritual depth of which is equavalent to a pizza pie pan's. _Brave New World would be an even portentous alternative. I've said before, it's Huxley, not Orwell, who was the lesser artist and the better prophet.
For the sake of definition, Real Conservatism says people are held together by history, habit, custom, tradition, prescription, ceremony, and consecration. Take these away, and folks become simian. Will the New Venetian Age be a the monkey house at the zoo?
"Count me out." This is indeed a choice (if Leviathan lets us). The Amish counted themselves out of the world on the internal combustion engine and the electrical dynamo. (Ah, Henry Adams!) Do you wish to take a similar path with respect to the New Venetian Age (assuming that this is what is going to happen)?
Thanks for your observations.
robert reavis
"1) The growth of the Mega-church within the protestant community." -- accurate, and from what I can tell, membership is polyethnic in McChurches.
2) "the growth of Traditionalists within the Catholic community." ditto #1
"3) The growth of privately owned Mexican restaurants in small towns.", the clients of which have names like Smith, Schmidt, Suzuki, etc.
"4) The growth of poverty among the middle class" . The middle-middle (white collar workers in statist and corporate bureaucracies) is declining even in numbers, except maybe the statist. And the statist are not declining in pay. Is the real class divide now, I would ask, not between the pink collar petty bourgeois lower middle and the professional upper middle, between (1) the computer literate who have email and spend time on the Net or reading a book, (ii) the computer illiterate who watch TV and talk on the phone or use (rarely) snail-mail, and (iii) the Lumpenproletariat on the streets? Is #i getting richer, and are the others not?
"5) The growth of homeschooling among families." Yep, and this is because that institution that invented "the Nation", the State, is in decline, no where more visible than in the public fool system. Lincoln's Bismarcks, Cavour's, the 1688ers' work is now coming apart.
"6) The shrinking of meaningful distances in travel and communications. (this may be changing with regards to higher travel costs)" Yes, and in countries with good mass transit -- and this means trains -- the costs may not be prohibitive. And if I can have a conference on the Net, is the travel of my body all that important?
"7) The ever increasing influence of neo-conservativism in both democrat and republican national politics. A one party duopoly." I don't know about one party, but as I said in my main post, both parties (and other groupings) are working from a "terrain premise". Both parties are about war and welfare on their terrain, just for different paymasters ("contributions").
"8) a decrease in local cultural influences and the consequent nationalism that results i.e. you are either with 'it' or without ‘it' in terms of public policy." Are local culture AND national culture yielding to an international culture? Or asked differently, is local culture a polyethnic culture, as your Mexican restaurant example suggests? Here in Winston-Salem, the local Greek Orthodox Church has a "Greek Festival every Orthodox Easter out on the church lawn. Most folk there are also named Smith, Schmidt, and Suarez.
"9) A loss of cultivated intelligence in the college graduate. " Yep, and same answer as to #5.
Thanks for your contribution. Let's have more!
JSW:
Glad you mad as hell, aren't going to take it any more, got your feelings off your chest, and had the chance to grind your ax. We all need to do this on occasion. And it's the easiest way to have ideas and opinions anyway, because one doesn't have to think about them -- or defend them.
Now, let's count off the fallacies: not answering the question (or even exploring it), changing the topic (popular with hireling lawyers and othe pettyfogs when they've lost the argument), name-calling, red herring, non sequitur, begged question, appeal to authority, ad hominem, false definition, post hoc, even a suggestion of bandwagon. Some of my other responders have done better. You can too!
Sid's "neo-Venetian" notion is flat wrong. There are alway sirens singing out the wonders of a "new age" and time and again they're proven to be wrong. The Tofflers and their "next wave" hooey came crashing down in the internet bubble.
Nation, land, etc. will never become irrelevant because that's what people live on (pardon this dumb lawyer's evasion of a question that I can't decipher). And, BTW, two of the nations that are seen as those of the future (China and India) very much have cultures rooted to place, land, and people. Indeed, the Chinese are probably the most nationalist people on earth. One of the biggest fallacies of the Tom Friedman/Globalists (and I think Friedman would be the poster boy of Sid's "New Venice"), is that they believe economic prosperity is an end in itself. It may be for individuals, but not for peoples. If anyone thinks the Chinese are developing their economy for any reason other than to restore the prestige and greatness of their nation as the leading power in Asia, then I have a bridge in Arizona to sell you.
Ever since the Enlightenment, very smart people have been telling us how all the old notions are becoming irrelevant. But, the funny thing is, it's the Enlightenment/New Age/Next Wave people who keep dying and the old notions keep going.
Sorry, Sid, not interested in the "dialogue" because your premise is utterly fallacious.
Mr. Wilder,
"And, BTW, two of the nations that are seen as those of the future (China and India) very much have cultures rooted to place, land, and people. Indeed, the Chinese are probably the most nationalist people on earth."
Yes indeed. "Breaths there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said ....
This is my own, my native land ?
"One of the biggest fallacies of the Tom Friedman/Globalists (and I think Friedman would be the poster boy of Sid’s “New Venice”), is that they believe economic prosperity is an end in itself. "
Yes, but these types have high rates of divorce, suicide, and drug induced euphoria to escape the clear results of their modern experiment ----or as their music masters once warned, "money can't buy you love." Cheers rr
It seems that the argument is that we Paleocons don't have to worry about The New Venetian Age, because it isn't going to happen. Well, maybe not. But let's look at the arguments as they've been crafted.
1. "The Tofflers and their “next wave” hooey came crashing down in the internet bubble."
I'm not playing the prophet. I'm asking questions. And the fallacy of comparison to the Tofflers is called false analogy. True there are some who have cried "wolf!" Then the wolf came. The sky may not be falling; the stock markets sure are.
2. "Nation, land, etc. will never become irrelevant because that’s what people live on" And will they be living on lands that resemble high tech versions of Venice or the Hanseatic League: a myriad of statelets? I'm not a member of the League of the South for nothing. Ditto the Vermont Secessionists. We're on to something. Further: Is the loyalty and attachment of Venetian Man to a particular land and a particular people waining? Will Venetian Man-- if one nation, state, or statelet charges too much -- move easily to another that charges less (it's already happening: MA and NY vs TX)?
3. "two of the nations that are seen as those of the future (China and India) very much have cultures rooted to place, land, and people." But what if ALL social orders so rooted are not going to make money in the New Venetian Age? I'm told that I am a bad prophet. Well, remember 20 years ago when we were told that the 21st C was going to be the "Japanese Century"? In 1520, the Habsburgia (Spain and elsewhere) of Charles V look like the ultimate hegemon. So in 1648 Louis the Great's France. Two small countries (small at the time), England and the Netherlands ate their lunch. Just as Venice ate Genoa's and Florence ate Pisa's. Some folks know how to make money when the economic facts change, and others don't. And it looks like the Japanese aesthetic -- light, thin, short, small, nimble, turn-on-a-dime, down-sized, and smart -- beats out big and clumsy, and always has (The Ottoman Empire and Czarist Russia also come time mind -- pretty big states, very rooted in land and people, indeed weren't they?)
What is more: China LOOKS pretty good in macrostructure (material manufacturing). How are they in microstructure? Not as good. And what if another country, say one in Latin American, can beat China's price? India is the exact opposite, the Micro better than the Macro -- including that big Micro: knowing English. What is more, what appears to be a monolithic state to old-fashioned nationist-statists may in fact be subservient to cash-cow statelets, much as in the old Holy Roman Empire. I mean Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bombay. Also, if the technological and fiscal elite can just haul up and go elsewhere, then maybe THEY have the handle of the whip, not the Nation-State's goons. Or what's a Switzerland for? I'd like to turn Dixie into a Switzerland. And both India and China have a huge and poor peasant class that might retard the Nation-State, while the defacto statelets move ahead.
3. "But, the funny thing is, it’s the Enlightenment/New Age/Next Wave people who keep dying and the old notions keep going." Old notions like the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian Empire, Feudalism, the Chivalric class, even the old proletariat, the divine right of kings, Absolutism, rule by a dynasty, high tariffs, keeping dying industries going (textile mills) etc? And just how "old" is the nation-state? At the most, 150 years.
4. "One of the biggest fallacies of the Tom Friedman/Globalists [...] is that they believe economic prosperity is an end in itself." It's a fallacy? But whole social orders have pursued this end, and with some effect: Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, Venice, Flanders, Netherlands, England for the sea-powers; Milan, Siena, Florence, the Hanseatic League, and Switzerland for the land. The other problem with Mr. Wilder's argument is that he is confusing what is or might be with what ought to be. I am not endorsing the New Venetian Age. I am not endorsing a social order with its economic prosperty as its telos (though it sure beats destitution).
5. And the new Venice actually exists: Singapore, the gulf states.
6. "Sorry, Sid, not interested in the “dialogue” because your premise is utterly fallacious." Not proven. Is this the best that readers on this page can do?
I have not advanced a premise at all; I've asked a question, and I ask it now more abstractly: Are human beings more motivated by soil and blood or by having a decent income? I suspect the latter. I suspect also a new way to have a decent income, a new economic order, is coming into being, and one that has little attachment to blood and soil. Maybe making money never had much of an attachment to blood and soil. And IF these developments are happening, Paleoconservatism will need to rethink things, or yield to classical liberalism (liberalism as Europeans understand the term). By the way Social Democracy and "Leftest" ideologies are probably unable to rethink things, and will die once the tax base can either hide its money or move to low tax statelets. Probably, given how it sucks capital out of the market, and given how its expenses will only increase, social welfare states will go bankrupt.
So: rather than pining for blood and soil (and thus unintentionally supporting economic decline and the propping up of a latter-day Spanish or Ottoman Empires), would it not be wiser for Paleoconservatism to start emphasizing what baleful consequences will come about if all were interested in is making money off each other? Mr. Reavis' remarks are an embryonic start. Don't expect the Paleolibertarians of the Mengerian School to be doing this, however wise they may be otherwise with respect to the New Venetian Age (an age they can't wait to happen). Hannah Arendt's _The Human Condition_ anticipated the problems of Homo Faber, however un-paleocon she may have been. Indeed, I suspect this will be the book of hers that the future will remember.
Pat's right the GOP needs a new architecht but even the greatest architects can't create anything unless they know and understand what their clients want.
I'm sure Rove and Bush II circa 1998-99 felt at that time the GOP needed to stop the Clinton-hatred, accpet the welfare state and make it more GOP firendly and try to accomodate all the new immigranst coming into the country. That agenda by itself alone would have and has died for the most part. If not for 9-11, Bush II may have very well been a one-term President and even despite was barely re-elected against an awful opponent.
But now that the Bush II-Rove model has crashed and burned, what replaces it? At this point nobody really knows. Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson seem to be offering more of the same. Rudy Guliani and John McCain are neocon central. Mike Huckabee is basically an extension of Rick Warren's mega-church. Tancredo and Hunter are merely charicatures. Ron Paul could easily transform and infuse a dying (literally) political party with new blood and fresh energy. There's always that hope. But these are Republicans we're talking about. Lying to themselves has always come more naturally.
Who is the GOP's "clients?" The GOP seems to think their clients are the groups that give them money, but their real clients are the people they want to vote for them.
Above should be "Who are the GOP's clients?"
The notion that letting in a bunch of illegal immigrants from Mexico would give them (Bush or anyone else) the Hispanic vote is ludicrous. It was done purely for fat cat Republicans to provide cheap labor. In the first place Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal refer to themselves as Mexicans not Hispanics which is an Anglo term. Mexicans see themselves as distinct and separate from Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and even all other Central Americans and South Americans. Second, with working experience at a plant where 97% of the laborers were Mexicans with a couple Cubans and El Salvadorans, the legal Mexicans were very upset with the illegal immigration. They claimed that the worst of the worst came in illegally AND that the illegals held down their wages. They also all objected to all forms of income taxes, especially the Federal ones because they were so high. When you see "Hispanic" in any media blurb, your are being had!
My reaction (the reactionary imperative), and besides it's more fun to be a reactinary, and fun lasts - is bill wilder nails it: (quote)
"One of the biggest fallacies of the Tom Friedman/Globalists (and I think Friedman would be the poster boy of Sid’s “New Venice”), is that they believe economic prosperity is an end in itself. It may be for individuals, but not for peoples. If anyone thinks the Chinese are developing their economy for any reason other than to restore the prestige and greatness of their nation as the leading power in Asia, then I have a bridge in Arizona to sell you.
Ever since the Enlightenment, very smart people have been telling us how all the old notions are becoming irrelevant. But, the funny thing is, it’s the Enlightenment/New Age/Next Wave people who keep dying and the old notions keep going." (end quote)
China is older. China already has gone through the phase (and is still there really) of wishing the rest of the world would just go Away. The great wall and all of that - the closing down of china etc. - and the ONLY reason it didn't work for them completely, is by chance it the gave the West (the barbarians as far as the Chinese were concerned) the chance and the break the West needed and at a time in history which deposited the West on the doorstep of that 10 letter (curse?) word t e c h n o l o g y. So the West went forward in THAT technological regard, while inevitably a closed-China fell behind. The West got Lucky... IF it's 'luck.' The Chinese curse being - "May YOU live in interesting times."
In my opinion everything China does now, since in effect the West subsequently pryed open her doors again, is done with one eye toward 'when will all of this nonsense end and we can forget about it all.' ... (She's sort of like us paleos, really.)
China has had no lengthy experience yet with Both industrialization and the corresponding immediate NEED for conservation (just like it took the U.S. time to catch up with itself on that front, and still we're not there.) Right now parts of China are polluted to the point of being sewers where once were pristine rivers. And the peasants who live along them and yet subsist relatively happily as they have for thousands of years are today instead beginning to live in a befuddled misery - coming down in greater and greater numbers with CANCER due to their severely compromised organic environment, where before the disease was almost unheard of.
In order to compete with the West and to pander to the new state-capitalist class while still keeping hold of the reins of power the regime has booted the peasants and thus the "lower" laboring half of the country off of most state supported social programs so as to force them into the almost slave labor pool both the new state-capitalist class in China requires, and now the rest of the world like the U.S. explpoits. The twin problems within China of both the declining environment and the fact that the vast majority of its people are NOT benefiting from the new state-capitalist reality are problems that have begun to simmer and won't go away but will rather only get worse until they inevitably erupt.
If in accumulating our u.s. debt and hoarding our dollars the chinese regime notices it can deal the u.s. and the west a blow econimically simply 'playing by the rules' of the decadent west, that will in effect allow china a breather from this new direction it's taken NOT merely for 'economic' reasons. Since they-especially the regime-could care less in reality about 'keeping up with the joneses economically' china WILL take that opportunity and it may not be too far in the future.
Sid - it sounds to me like your heart so to speak may be with the paleos. But at the same time you are bemoaning the Fate - that a poster child like Tom Friedman & Co. at the New York Times [i.e. of Iraq will be a cakewalk fame] and the globalists for whom they are the mouthpieces - have engendered. And then you are adding your own take - 'well let's be realistic if that's what they've done, and it's reality, and we can't beat them - what else can we do but join them...' Isn't that correct? It's not all about what works 'financially' and in the short-term at that. China for example knows that, so does Rome in my opinion. See, I think all of that fancy footwork which if you don't find it endearing you nonetheless perceive of its necessity, is at this point in history coming to an End. Regardless, us tough guys, us paleos don't dance. Just ask Norman Mailer.