Via Caroline Glick – US-commanded MFO in Sinai under attack”
Many more details here.
The Diplomad; – We Are Not at War . . . Just Under Attack
We are now paying for the stupidity of removing the nasty, desert drag queen who had long ago ceased being a threat to America and, in fact, was an ally (I have personal knowledge of this) in tracking down Al Qaeda terrorists. It was likewise an even bigger mistake, one on the scale of Carter and the Shah, to help push President Mubarak out of power, welcome the Muslim Brotherhood, and pressure the Egyptian military into accepting the MB. We can see the results on our TV sets, in the idiotic behavior of our diplomats in Cairo (and I know a lot of them, including the Ambassador)–and in the media’s never-ending quest to protect Obama and his foolishness, and give him a pass.
The reason we see deranged or at least nasty and unpleasant dictators in the Arab world is that Arab societies are deranged, nasty and unpleasant–thanks largely to the brand of Islam practiced in those societies which is particularly deranged, nasty, and unpleasant. In the Arab world you can have a brutal authoritarian who tries to restrain the even more brutal religious fanatics, or you can have religious fanatics who lash out at anyone who does not see the world as they do.
ET: “At any rate, the reason I disagree with you is because I am focusing only on the so-called ‘material energy’ of a society. Its capacity to support its population.”
Thanks. You’ve isolate precisely our difference. And yes, I agree with all the elements you identify as necessary to have a middle class. You are right about the material energy of a society as you’ve defined it. However there are two ways to deal with it.
1. Adopt a modernizing trend as the West did. Crush the political and economic power of aristocracies, sweep away the governing powers of monarchs through the combined forces of democracy and capitalism. OR,
2. Systematically chase out, dispose of or otherwise exile elements of the population surplus to what can be supported. Is it unreasonable to suggest that this hasn’t happened in the ME in part because whatever locus or centre of what we would call middle class development in the ME has in part emigrated to the West? With a handful of individual exceptions, it’s obvious that Muslims in the western world are far more classically liberal than those remaining in the original homeland.
In short, as long as ME Islam can continue to suppress or exile its modernizing influences, it will continue to remain a mediaeval, backward-looking society preoccupied with yesterday’s perceived insults. Case in point. Look at the liquidation of a nascent middle class that took place in Iran following the fall of the Shah.
To make it short, you are optimistic that in the long run the forces of modernization will win out because of demographics generating unstoppable pressures. I am pessimistic, because I perceive that the system of thinking may be so tyrannical that it is willing to and is capable of driving out all those forces and populations which it will not tolerate or cannot support.
Now, as evidence on your side, you can look at how the UAE is developing. And perhaps Malaysia or Singapore. I am suggesting that they may be the exceptions and not the rule for the near and medium term. I am suggesting that barbarism can be permanent if it’s prepared to be sufficiently ruthless and sufficiently brutal.
What we coming from Anglo-Saxon stock have forgotten is how much we owe to Oliver Cromwell and his willingness to put a bloody end to the British monarchy if it became truly oppressive.
knight99, no, the exponential increase has nothing to do with US aid.
It’s due to the enormous wealth creation from the one-industry mode of oil or Suez tolls (both created by the West for these nations), which is then redistributed to the population by the statist government. AND, by the urbanization of the population, moving them from sustenance horticulture to city dwellers living off those government subsidies.
For example, in the 18 year period from 1990 to 2008 the population in the MEMA more than doubled; the ratio was on average a 50% increase. China was, in comparison, 17% and Europe, 5%. And the US, about 10%. (statistics from OECD and US census).
The one-industry resource based economy simply can’t cope with this kind of rapid population growth. And, since it is now urban and removed from even local farming, it is a dependent population, dependent on that govt money. The unemployment rate of 25 to 30% and higher for youth is a major factor in radicalism.
Canadian friend, the four axioms I was outlining were part of the Bush Doctrine; they were taken straight from his book ‘Decision Points’ pp 396-397.
you have said multiple times that you agree with the Bush doctrine , thus you agree with what is in it
violence and war are in it
you agree with the use of violence and war just as I said I did yesterday
you made fun of me yesterday for saying the use of war and violence was necessary and today you turn around and say the use of violence and war are necessary
in your delusional mind you think we are your pupils and that we are blank slates devoid of any knowledge or capacity for reasoning, and you think you are the teacher of the class who will show us how to use our brains
and like a teacher in front of her pupils you think you are in a higher position , that is why you are condescending and act as if you are correcting our homework that poor little Johnny can not seem to ever do right
but the reality is that you are highly inconsistent,
you contradict yourself regularly,
you have a short memory,
you make fun of people one day for having said the same thing you then say the next day
after you make fun of people you pretend it is you who is the victim
and you are wrong at least as often as any of us
and when caught red handed, you do more of the above to try and justify your weird ways
last but not least, you annoy a lot of people here – I am not the first one who has complained about your attitude – and yet seem totally completely oblivious to it
you must have a personality disorder
might be narcissistic but comments on the internet are not enough to be sure
“Fourth, assist in the development of democratic institutions in these areas.”
How is it so few seem to understand that the western concept of democracy is utterly incompatible with Islamic theocracy? You can’t bring democratic institutions to a region hell-bent on becomic Islamic states. Caliphates are not democracies, they’re feudal kingdoms. The Grand Caliphate of modern Islam is but a very ornate Star Chamber. Where Islam flourishes, democracy can only die, because it is written that it must. We are seeing the end of the beginning. The US can’t reverse the tide that is coming and Europe is too stupid to even know that it exists. There are now sufficient muslim populations in most western civilizations to make it impossible for most western democracies to go anywhere to stop a threat. The coming wars will be intense, and viscious beyond our remembrances. I wasn’t convinced of it before this week. But now, its clear that communications technology has out-stripped mass intellect. Its way to easy to incite and control mob behaviour, and the mob is without reason.
Tonight the Taliban has publically stated that they’re all-out mission for now in Af is to kill Prince Harry. If the Brits leave him there, they will succeed. The Islamists are now after trophies, everywhere – its the impetus they want to round up the mob and urge them on.
ET >
I agree, in that it’s the Liberal Progressive socialists that are truly declining the west.
But I suppose if we really must protect ourselves from Islamists, we need to continue supporting them with billions in aid and importing them wholesale into our own countries.
What we could do then is implement a no racial/ religious profiling “Patriot Act” to allow the government to spy on us, hey better yet let’s have a National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) so that the government can suspend habeas corpus and posse comitatus at will. Do away with due process and allow the military detain us indefinitely without warrant or trial.
Maybe we could set up random armed road blocks across the nation and search citizens for nukes & biological weapons, possibly have TSA agents humiliate citizens at airports, bus terminals, and train stations to make them know they are safe.
Illegal immigrants, including members of Al Qaeda that cross the wide open borders would be exempt of course because that would be racist.
Oh yea, we’ve already done that. So what can we do to protect ourselves more than we are already doing? I’m thinking, maybe just drop pallets of money over Mecca like confetti during Ramadan and covert the Whitehouse into a Mosque, that’s got to have some sort of socioeconomic benefit for the Muslim nations.
ET >
“It’s due to the enormous wealth creation from the one-industry mode of oil or Suez tolls…”
Must be my hearing, so why are we giving them billions of dollars per year in aid again?
cgh, again, thanks for your thoughtful analysis.
Your two points of, first, adopting a modernizing trend and/or removing a large proportion of the population to relieve the stress on the economy, are exactly what occurred in Europe in the 400 odd years between the 12th and 16th centuries.
The same problem was emerging in Europe. It is the richest biome on the planet, and was producing food to enable increased populations. But it was also trapped in a local sustenance agriculturalism, and within a rigid, anti-rational, anti-individual ideology, was unable to develop new technologies to support that increasing population.
Therefore, it would regularly decrease the population by ‘natural means’ of plagues, famines, diseases. And wars. These would reduce the populations to carrying capacity; then, in a generation, they’d increase again. Therefore, eventually, Europe had to change its ideology and its mindset and societal and political infrastructure to enable the growth of a market large scale production system, to enable the development of new technologies (water power, wind power, the deep plough, mariner’s compass, trade routes, printing press) and thus, a free thinking capitalist merchant middle class.
And, with the development of the sailing ship, compass, navigation, they could, as the MENA has done now, try to export their populations to the new lands to ease the economic pressures. But in Europe by the time this occurred, the middle class already existed; they developed these new technologies; they engaged in these new trade routes and a mercantile economy. This migration still isn’t enough for the MENA.
In Iran, one dictatorship was replaced by another, and currently, Obama turned his back on their attempt to yet again, try for freedom.
Yes, I remain optimistic about the development of a middle class economy in the MENA. It isn’t really due to optimism but simply to a rational and objective consideration of the realities.
They have a large and increasing population; they have to sustain that population. The old one-industry statist economy simply can’t generate enough wealth to do so. Therefore, they can repress their population by extreme military and theological dictatorships. They are doing this but my point is that this too reaches a critical threshold when it can’t be sustained. Indeed, I’ll maintain that it was only sustained as long as it was via the help of the US. To keep the ‘stability’ via those military dictatorships. I think that added to the causes of Islamic fascism.
So, I think it’s inevitable. The populations there are too large for a statist redistributionist economy. Period. But it’s going to take time, and in the vacuum, the various radical sects are vying for power.
Canadian friend, I’d suggest that you stop complaining. The Bush Doctrine, which I support, is not at all like your blanket ‘kill them’ proposal. He focuses only on attacking ‘the enemy’ overseas before they attack us (very different from your open proposal), and on a vast intelligence gathering to confront threats, and fourth, there’s his ‘democracy agenda’ which you ignore.
Islam cannot coexist with other cultures. Everywhere that there is a significant number of Islamists, there is strife. The Middle East, half of Africa, French cities, Indonesia, the Philippines, and now here in North America: Islam means conflict.
I’m not so ignorant of history that I would pretend that Christianity hasn’t been used as an excuse for plunder and pillage. The Inquisition, the Catholic-Protestant schism, even the Crusades – all may have started with religious reasons, but all degenerated into struggles for power and wealth. But Christians can and do co-exist with other cultures without bloodshed.
So can Buddhists, devotees of Shinto, and Zoroastrians. Only Islamists cause conflict wherever they exist. And since they are not above using war and terror to achieve their aims, war and terror will have to be used against them. ET’s ridiculous notion that this has only arisen in the last 100 years is laughable. There are 1300 years of Islamic history, and it is all punctuated by war and blood. We were only spared it because Western culture produced more technology and science than the primitive Islamists could ever achieve. (Is there a great Islamist computer scientist? Entrepeneur? Statesman? Can anyone point to the great technical advances in the last 100 years to come from an Islamist country? In anything?)
Then, after Arabs sat on oceans of oil for thousands of years, it took white men to develop technology that could extract it, transport it, and use it. For that, we’ve been paying their exorbitant rents for years, and by giving them money, allowed them to buy technology they could never develop, and technology they have turned against us.
People wonder why I’m so forceful in my defence of electric and hybrid vehicles. I know that gasoline will always be needed for certain applications; I also know it’s not needed for many. I want the West to reduce its need for oil (and yes, the Chinese and Indians who will be the largest consumers of oil in a few years) so we can make the Islamists poor again. Take away their money, deny them immigration to our country, and we won’t have to worry about them. Their primitive beliefs will return them to poverty and inconsequence.
ET >
“The Bush Doctrine, which I support, is not at all like your blanket ‘kill them’ proposal. He focuses only on attacking ‘the enemy’ overseas before they attack us…….., and on a vast intelligence gathering to confront threats….” – ET
Yes Canadian friend, Bush had plenty of vast intelligence on “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Today Iraq is a model of middle class democracy, ask the Iranians they check the polls and provide security.
Classic Bush intelligence gathering:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_tFKa2_YBQ
KevinB, if you would read my posts, you’d see that my claim of ‘the last 100 years’ focuses only on the development of Islamic fascism, which is not the same as Islam.
Furthermore, I’ve written clearly that in my view Islam emerged in the 7th century as a militant reaction to the increasing encroachment of a pastoral nomadic economy (read the Koran and you’ll see that it’s pure pastoral nomadism) by expanding Byzantine settled agricultural economies.
The expansion of Islam in the intervening years was due to the implosion of the Roman governing infrastructure (Byzantine) and a resultant vacuum power base where tribal economies (which were more tribal than Islamic) moved into the areas. Then, the rise of the West’s economic strength ended this era, and Islam retreated to a no-growth, no-change isolationism.
I disagree with your suggestion of ‘take away their oil’. I certainly think that we should develop our own oil and gas resources and not be so dependent on them. But, their oil revenues are not enough, even now, to sustain them. That’s why they are imploding into violence. Poverty doesn’t mean an inability to harm us; tell that to the millions of illegals coming into the US who drain the US economy of billions every year.
The answer, to my mind, is to enable them to develop their own market private middle class capitalist economy.
This is Obama’s Jimmy Carter moment. The parallels are astonishing, in so many ways.
[quote]I would suggest that whatever constitutions emerge will largely be written with bullet holes, subject to being re-written in the same manner.[/quote] cgh
[quote]I am suggesting that barbarism can be permanent if it’s prepared to be sufficiently ruthless and sufficiently brutal.[/quote] cgh
I would think those two quotes are more right than wrong. The ME attitudes have been imbedded by stupid policy wonks over years of indifference…
ET: you seem to believe in the magical role of “destiny” driven by a pure logical solution…That may be wishful thinking. Your logic seems good, but how does one make it all work if the folks in the ME don’t even know about the logic Index.
ET,
my “blanket kill them all proposal” only exists in your delusional mind.
another thing you pulled out of you a** is the following,
“his ‘democracy agenda’ which you ignore”
neither of the above were ever said or even alluded to by me. They do not exist!!
you are making up stuff about me which you then attack, make fun of and then you act as if you have accomplished something
you are delusional
I said you seem to have a narcissistic personality disorder, and you come back and do more of the same
yesterday I predicted you would make stuff up about me and you did
and after I post this comment you will make up more stuff about me again
this is ridiculous
but as a typical narcissistic you are not able to see what you are and what you do
more and more people here are saying you are weird
I may be the only one who has the guts to say it to your face but I am not alone
you are weird
I think you need help
ET, the inevitability depends in large part upon whether what happened in Europe was a necessary trend or a fortunate and unique accident. My reference to Cromwell was that great historical forces do not explain or move everything in history. That it depends in large part upon individuals, often leaders, in the right time and place to make a difference.
KevinB: “ET’s ridiculous notion that this has only arisen in the last 100 years is laughable.”
That’s not ET’s point. The point is that Europeans and Muslims were all a lot of bloody savages 1000 years ago. What happened was that Europe and the Middle East began to diverge significantly starting about the 16th century.
“We were only spared it because Western culture produced more technology and science than the primitive Islamists could ever achieve.”
Well not entirely. We were spared much worse in 1240 when the Mongols failed to conquer Europe. That failure was purely accidental based on two strokes of sheer circumstance. The Mongol invasions would keep the Islamic world preoccupied for the better part of two centuries.
1. The Kha Khan Ogotai died, halting the invasion which was never resumed while the Mongols argued over a successor. Notwithstanding that, the Mongols still succeeded in destroying the two largest kingdoms in Europe at the time in just six months, Poland and Hungary.
2. The Mongols were preoccupied for about a century dealing with various Moslem empires, particularly Persia and the Abbasid Caliphate.
3. It wasn’t technology that staved off the Ottoman Empire in the 16th Century, it was logistics. Suleiman assembled more than a large enough army in the late 1500s to capture Vienna and the rest of the Austrian empire. They had better cannon, better small arms, and a better, more disciplined and far larger army. But the supply lines were simply too long to sustain the effort.
cgh, while we’re thinking of Cromwell, don’t forget the Magna Carta of 1215, which very clearly limited the powers of a sovereign Will and referred to the law of the land rather than the whim and will of a sovereign.
Phillip Shaw, it’s not magic or destiny. In the field of History there are two large schools of thought. The first is a rather obsolete one called the Great Man theory. It’s predicated on the notion of prominent individuals directing the course of human affairs.
The second school, where ET is coming from, is called Total History. It emerged in the latter half of the 20th C. Its central theme is that human affairs are primarily driven by large economic, social and environmental forces. It’s not to be sniffed at, because in the expert literature it tends to have a huge amount of data supporting it.
The kicker with both of these forms of historical analysis is that none of them has or pretends to have much predictive ability. The first depends ultimately on random chance throwing up talented individuals, and the second operates only on a scale of at least centuries.
cgh, yes, I’d agree about the role of chance in history.
I’m not a believer in determinism in history, ie, I don’t believe in a linear path of history..you know, the old Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age or whatever. Or Marx’s inevitable stages leading up to utopian communism.
What I’m talking about is less about historical events, which might indeed include the element of chance (Waterloo, D-Day when Rommel wasn’t there, etc)…than about almost an interdependent infrastructure.
What I’m talking about is the relation between two variables which are bonded to each other; one is the population size (the dependent variable), the other is the economy (the independent variable) which must sustain that population.
If the economy cannot sustain the population, then the population either implodes or migrates. If these two tactics fail, then, the independent variable, the economy, must change to support the population.
There is nothing historical about this; it’s simply an interdependent relation between two variables.
ET, “…don’t forget the Magna Carta of 1215.”
Heh. Tammany Hall in Chaimmail. A gang of armoured thugs sticks up King John at knifepoint.
True enough. I could quibble that that was just the aristocracy sticking it to one of their own. It certainly wasn’t intended to apply to mere merchants. But your point is well taken. The English Parliament in the 1630s would beat King Charles over the head with it. And when he proved unreasonable, Cromwell relieved him of any need to ever have to think about it again.
Now I agree with you about the variables of economy and population. And I agree with you that the oil economy is no longer large enough for statist redistribution to solve the problem. Our only point of difference is how the ME will respond. You and I both know what George Orwell’s answer would be. An ever greater and more brutal tyranny, punctuated by bloody revolts and renewed tyranny.
Michael Harkov, I think you are right; this is indeed Obama’s Jimmy Carter moment. The parallel is almost uncanny. And like Carter, Obama seems hapless in the face of it. This time, they’re not taking hostages; they’re just killing US diplomats. And it’s about as spontaneous as the “student” occupation of the US embassy was in 1979.
ET……..
While I agree 99 percent with what you say and debate here the one thing I would like your thoughts on, that I have not seen you acknowledge, is how technology might change the timeline.
The often used term social media, the great big thing called the internet, will it speed up the reform, change and eventual transformation of the greater middle east quicker, and more importantly for the better?
OK, disclaimer, I usually post when I have had a couple of drinks(like tonight) but the point I am making is……
Will change come in the ME faster because of it? Will the people be able to overcome with knowledge available to them?
Do they want it? Can they?
Sorry, probably no answer huh?
KevinB
Can’t disagree with your thoughts about Islam and the need to get other suckers to underwrite the Jihad (China, Europe) but electric vehicles – limited by dead-end battery technology. Natural gas is an easy conversion of existing automobiles, North America is awash in NG, burns relatively cleanly with long engine life. Electric vehicles are an indirect and inefficient use of mostly coal and gas fired electricity with some nuclear and hydro thrown in. The infrastructure required for NG is not that much more than electric charging stations.
I suggest a cause and effect solution. If an Islam-inspired violent event breaks out anywhere in the world, the following Friday, a mosque anywhere in the world is hit with a cruise missile.
Just pull out kill the ones who want to kill us and take in any and all refugees.
ET:
I disagree with your suggestion of ‘take away their oil’.
Are you completely devoid of reading comprehension? I have NEVER said anything about taking Arab oil. I have said, consistently, reduce our dependence on oil in general, and we won’t need Arab oil any more. Then they won’t have anything to trade with us, and they can fall back into poverty and meaninglessness.
Your belief that a ‘middle class’ can be established is so economically stupid, it defies belief. Middle classes are always the product of historical accident, temporary dislocations, and trade barriers. You call yourself a student of history, but you don’t realize that the huge, vast majority of human history has been a few rulers and many serfs?
If you were an engineer, you might understand the concept of diffusion. When there are barriers to trade, to education, and to mobility, diffusion is slow. That slow movement of ideas, goods, and information is what created the middle class.
But we now live in the 21st century. Ideas move at the speed of light. Trade barriers are falling everywhere. Transport is an increasingly small part of cost. The world will now be bifurcated between the very smart, the very wealthy, and the very connected, and everybody else. I suggest you try reading William Gibson’s novels if you need more assistance on this point.
I am not happy about this development. Concentration of wealth and power always means fascism. But to ignore the inevitable is to miss the meaning of Canute.
This is Obama’s Jimmy Carter moment. The parallels are astonishing, in so many ways.
Posted by: Michael Harkov
TRue but you still had people of integrity with honesty left in the Media. They where not all Democratic shills. Noe TV just a vehicle for Marxism , mixed with Islamaphilia.
Because they are no more for Democracy or civilization then the Jimmy Carters or Obama’s of the World.
The Media hide things like Kennedy’s romps. Important facts though where still discussed. It all started to change around the late 80s. Now its become a Religion in homage to a democratic President to lie , mislead their own public & generally cover up his messes with a pen like a popper scooper.
ET, I have to disagree with your one sided analysis of islamic states. Your view is one of local environments shaping populations whereas, IMHO, it is humans who shape themselves and adjust local environments to fit their needs.
This was accomplished by European populations in the enlightenment and the development of the western intellectual tradition, especially the scientific method. This memeplex has been highly successful and gave us the greatest progress that the world has ever seen.
Our brains are consumers of memes and, like genes, memes compete with another for survival. Right now the memeplex of the enlightenment is under attack by the post-modernist memeplex and that of islamofascism. A potentially fatal error has been the excessive encroachment of relativism in liberal western societies. When a liberal society loses its capacity to distinguish good from evil, it is on its way to extinction.
Throughout human history, religious memeplexes have spread like infections in human populations. The islamic memeplex allows no tolerance for anything outside its 7th century, incredibly narrow reality tunnel and proscribes death for all those that stand in its way or question the rantings of an exalted epileptic pedophile. From the enlightenment standpoint, the islamic memeplex is evil and thus eradication is the only solution to the problem.
We don’t have means to inoculate human brains against pathologic memes yet, but islam is best viewed as population mass psychosis. Islamic countries have not produced a single advancement in scientific or mathematical knowledge (and the widely touted invention of the zero placeholder was borrowed from India).
The solution to the problem is to totally prohibit immigration from islamic countries to N. America and to give the same religious rights to this death cult as Christians have in Saudi Arabia. Self-sufficiency in oil will do much to cut off the flow of funds to these countries and they should be left to slaughter each other with abandon as they fight over issues that are most like disagreements between armed schizophrenics. It might be necessary to toss in a nuke or two to deal with potential exports of this mass psychosis to western countries.
Jeff K, yes, I agree with you. The information technology, which allows information to move without reference to space or time, will speed up the infrastructural changes in the ME. It took the West 400 plus years to move from a two to three class infrastructure. It will take, I suggest, a few decades for the ME to do so. BUT, just as in the West, the transformation is not slick and easy but violent and traumatic.
Kevin B, You wrote: “Middle classes are always the product of historical accident, temporary dislocations, and trade barriers. You call yourself a student of history, but you don’t realize that the huge, vast majority of human history has been a few rulers and many serfs? ”
I disagree, totally, with your outline of the middle class. [You haven’t defined it]. Such a class is most certainly not accidental, temporary and has nothing to do with trade barriers. The middle class, by definition, is a class of independent private small businesses, engaging in private production and free market trade. It emerges only when a population becomes large enough to require and support a market economy and can support free individual thought and action.
You wrote: “If you were an engineer, you might understand the concept of diffusion. When there are barriers to trade, to education, and to mobility, diffusion is slow. That slow movement of ideas, goods, and information is what created the middle class.”
I’m well aware of the concept of diffusion (it’s an informational, societal, biological concept as well). The middle class is not produced by intellect but by economics.
For most of history, the world was indeed functioning with tribalism (two class) but the world population is too large for that and a three class economy emerged in the West in the 15th century.
Loki, sorry, but I don’t agree with your outline for you ignore the realities of not merely the ecological environment but also economics and population. Your reduction of human history to ‘memes’ (an unfortunate if popular term in my view) ignores all these vital variables.
For example, no idea or thought can ignore that in most of Africa, there are no animals capable of domestication nor are there plants capable of large scale domestication. You ignore the necessity of water (from mountains, rivers, rainfall? regular or seasonal or scarce?). You ignore the nature of the soil (fertile or shallow) and so on. That is, you ignore the capacity to support a population. No intellect can make water or food.
The West, the richest biome on the planet operated within a rainfall agriculture with a plethora of domesticated plants and animals. It wasn’t the ideas that caused this natural wealth.
The intellectual freedom to invent, which is indeed found within the West, developed when the economic mode required more wealth production to sustain its growing population. It took hundreds of years of fighting to free the intellectual freezer of the West, and allow people to think freely, to doubt, to dissent, to explore and invent.
This necessity to free the ‘mind of the society’ hasn’t arisen in the ME. Until the last generation, and, like the West, their first reaction has been to dig down and try to prevent change.
I also disagree with your suggestion of solving the problem by isolation (preventing migration). I certainly totally reject multiculturalism; any immigrant must abide by our laws and culture. And I don’t agree with your solution of ‘to toss in a nuke or two’.
QOTY:
“she is never done, there is no end to this”
ET >
“I certainly totally reject multiculturalism; any immigrant must abide by our laws and culture.’
You better get started lecturing them; they don’t seem to be listening to anyone else.
But it’s a good idea anyway, what’s the economic formula to get Muslims to abide by our laws and culture, cause the current theory hasn’t gone very well so far. Do we need more welfare consideration above collecting for all four wives along with increased special status and protections for their freedom of speech and less for us maybe?
There’s got to be something written down somewhere that tells us how to do this, just got to be.
Interesting lectures,ET,and we didn’t have to pay tuition!
I think the development of democracy in the ME is simply not possible,and believe that democracy is tenuous at best in many of the most developed/civilized Countries on the planet, the USA, for instance.Obama sure ain’t pro-democracy.
In place of democracy,we are witnessing the rule of an elite class,who hold elections every four years,and make slight changes in policy to satisfy their acolytes.
But the mode of ruling never changes. A large percentage of our population crave the comfort of the “nanny state”,and are quite happy to vote every four years,while handing control of their existence to the governing class.
Real democracy started to fade with the realization that Party politics could be a reasonable,and salable substitute, and the political Parties have never looked back.
Now, we are discussing the development of democracy in a less sophisticated society in the Middle East,while our own democracy has been usurped by a ruling class.
Yes,I’m sure among the educated classes of the ME,there ARE many who believe in the theory of democracy,but what percentage of the population do they represent, 10%,or even less?
I suggest that if any mode of governing comes out of the current unrest in the ME,it will be a dictatorship, hopefully,for the sake of the people,it’s a relatively benevolent dictatorship, with the facade of democratic elections every few years.
But,as here,the ruling class will maintain their grip on the Nations,and we can all sit back and congratulate ourselves on how “democracy” has spread to another region of the world.
In the meantime,back at El Rancho North America, HRC’s and other invasive government bureaucracies will keep us peasants in our place,but we’ll have those elections every four years,and we can tell ourselves we’re living in a democracy.
As our Rights are removed,one by one over a period of time,with good reasons for each one removed, (it’s for the children,planet, good of greater society,etc.), we will slip into the cliched Orwellian nightmare.
We’re living in a delicate shell of democracy here in Canada right now,but the socialists are at the gates,and what we will end up with after a few terms of those SOB’s sure isn’t a democracy.
Call me a pessimist,a doomsayer,and then please provide me with some evidence that all the things we discuss here at SDA every day,are really just a figment of someone’s imagination.
Please.
dmorris, yes, democracy is always very fragile.
It’s human nature, psychologically, to compete, to want to dominate others; it’s even human nature to mock and put down others! It requires mature restraint to refrain from those activities.
It’s human nature to move into comfortable group identity blocs and sneer at and denigrate other groups. It’s also human nature to collaborate and work with others. So, both activities compete with each other!
Yes, I agree with you. The ‘progressivism’ of the left, the welfare nanny state which deprives individuals of freedom, is a deep concern and must always be fought against. I don’t think the desire for ‘being looked after’ will ever go away. But the desire to be free is also a natural expression. Again, there’s that competition between two basic needs: security and freedom.
But, because we must fight, always, to retain freedom doesn’t mean that it ought to be abandoned as ‘too hard’.
The reason I suggest that democracy is inevitable in the MENA is economic. Democracy is not an ideology that stands alone as a ‘great idea’. You won’t find it and won’t need it in small tribes, in pre-industrial horticultural economies. There, stability is ensured by hereditary political authority and democracy would destabilize this format (as it did when the colonists made the natives elect their chiefs).
A political mode is always directly linked to an economic mode. Democracy emerges only when the population becomes too large for a no-growth distributive two-class economy, and requires a growth economy. A growth economy is one which releases a large ratio of the population from steady-state peasant agricultural production and puts them to work on privately owned small business production and trade of goods in a market economy.
These people, who produces goods for a market rather than for themselves AND who own and create and develop these businesses, are the middle class. This must grow to be the largest class in the nation; it generates a great deal of wealth.
ALL societies must give political power to the group or class which controls and brings in the wealth of the nation. When wealth was produced from the land (lords and peasants), the lords, wo were hereditary (enables stability) had the political power.
In the MENA, the wealth is produced from the state owned oil, tolls etc. The military dictatorships have the political power.
But this statist economy is collapsing. There are too many people. They need these people to move into private small businesses and generate their own wealth. When this group becomes economically large enough, political power MUST devolve to them. And that’s democracy.
Democracy is a political mode that empowers the majority. It is a political mode that gives a society that capacity for rapid, flexible decisions. A stable ruler/serf mode is much more inflexible. BUT, it must be a constitutional democracy, with a rule of law, an election process, limited terms, and so on.
The middle class, by definition, is a class of independent private small businesses, engaging in private production and free market trade. It emerges only when a population becomes large enough to require and support a market economy and can support free individual thought and action.
Uh, no. My father sold chemicals for a big corporation. He made enough money to buy a small home, have three kids, and let his wife stay at home. He couldn’t do that today, even though Canada’s population has doubled (and the GTA’s has more than quadrupled). The size of an economy is irrelevant; where are the middle classes of Russia or China?
Since there will always be some continuum of income and wealth, one can always define a ‘middle’ class, but the definition becomes useless when the top is so far removed from the rest. Apparently, you are unaware that the average CEO, who made maybe ten times what his average employee made in 1950, now makes more than a hundred times as much. This results in a disparity so great that it makes the idea of middle class an artifact. The guy making $100k in Toronto today, after paying his $40k in taxes, and his $2k/month mortgage, and his $1k/month for a car (that’s an all in cost of lease, gas, and insurance, and it’s typical) has $24k in disposable income. That’s not a whole lot more, in qualitative terms, than the schmuck working for $12/hr, living in a cheap apartment and taking the TTC, who has roughly $8k in annual disposable income. Sure, it’s 3x as much, but really what can the 100k guy do with it?
Can he fly first class to Hong Kong? No. Can he buy a yacht? No. Can he even put away enough for his retirement? RRSP statistics say no, and ZIRP isn’t helping one bit. Sure, the 100k guy will say he’s middle class; it’s good for his ego. But how is his life significantly better than $12/hr guy?
Compare that to the top 10%. As has been stated repeatedly, they do pay most of the taxes, but their incomes are so far above most, they live in a different world. Skiing in Gstaad? Scuba on the Great Barrier Reef? Buying your own little island? These are lifestyle choices for them, much as you and I decide on BK or McD’s for dinner. They live in a different world.
The enormous rise in the ‘middle class’ since the mid-19th century came from technology. Quite stupid people, in charge of sophisticated machines, became magically productive. Since it was mostly white people who had developed these machines, this productivity was concentrated in North America and Western Europe. The Europeans, through two wars, and many forms of fascism, have attempted to destroy this edge; the Euro may be the final death knell.
Why wouldn’t Ford move a plant to Thailand in the 1950’s? It didn’t make sense – transportation and communication costs were much higher, and the labour savings were minor. What’s to stop Ford moving its Oakville plant to Thailand today? Public outrage and political backlash; there are no economic or logistical reasons against it.
That is what I mean by diffusion. When ideas move slowly, or are closely held by a small group of people – you might want to do some reading about Middle Age guilds – there is a very high barrier of permeability. This allows those in possession of these ideas to extract economic rents. The concentration of information allowed for wealth.
Drop a bit of red food colouring in a glass of water. If you drop it in slowly, and don’t do anything, it will take quite some time for all the water to become pink. Stir it with a spoon for two seconds, and you have instant pinkness.
The development of fibre optics, advanced telecoms, and cheap computing are the equivalent of that spoon. As information spreads more rapidly, the ability to make money from it decreases. Look at real estate – no one in my father’s time would have ever thought of selling their home on their own. Now, it’s a growth industry, as people realize that the information real estate brokers have is readily available on the net. The dispersion of information flattens incomes.
I’ll digress for a moment to say that certain professions – doctors, lawyers, accountants – spend years in rigorous training learning the minute elements of their craft, and that even spending hours on the net won’t make you qualified to transplant a kidney, or correctly structure Warren Buffet’s tax avoidance plans. But, just like the guilds, they control admittance to their professions, and use arcane language to prevent the lay person from understanding them. (For example, friend Loki might tell us why the two pieces of tissue connecting the upper and lower bones of the human leg are called “anterior and posterior cruciate” ligaments, instead of the “front and back knee” ligaments. Obfuscation is an excellent way to slow diffusion.)
People who argue against globalization are just trying to keep the drop of food colouring together. Once information and technology spread, that task is hopeless. Anything we build in North America can probably be built cheaper in China or India (whether it’s safer or environmentally sound are different questions, which I’m not going to discuss here).
Sturgeon’s Law applies to people. There is nothing that the average Canadian high school graduate can do that can’t be done by a young person in Argentina or Andorra. After all, the average Canadian high school graduate is barely literate or numerate; what special abilities does he or she possess that would make him or her more productive or better than anyone else?
That doesn’t mean that the exceptional kid won’t succeed, but that kid would probably succeed anywhere. As I said, the world is going to divide into the very smart, the very wealthy, and the very well connected, and everybody else. Why anyone believes that North America has some special dispensation against the laws of economics and information is beyond me. And why anyone believes that middle classes will spring up in tribal cultures is beyond the pale.
I spent 30 minutes crafting a detailed response to ET’s nonsense, and once again, though devoid of any profanity or other inappropriate terms, it is ‘being reviewed’. By whom, I don’t know.
It’s annoying to spend so much time creating a post, and then having it withheld for no apparent reason. If there are rules, PLEASE POST THEM. Otherwise, it’s just a waste of my time trying to have a discussion when roughly a quarter of my posts don’t make it through. If you want to lose people who actually contribute ideas, this is a great way to do it.
Are you completely devoid of reading comprehension? I have NEVER said anything about taking Arab oil.
KevinB
join the club!
she does that to me all the time
ET, by your theory of civilization, there should have been no way for the Germanic tribes living in the woods north of the Rhine to have ever been a match for the Roman empire. The difference in agricultural output and natural resources would have greatly favored the Romans in the south.
One interesting thing about humans is that they can settle just about any environment and those settlers that survived in the harsh German winters (or even worse Scandanavian winters) would have to plan far further ahead than people living in a temperate clime. This would mean accumulating food and fuel for the winter and then living off this during the months that nothing could be grown. Such an environment would result in selection for intelligence and creativity much more than a tropical environment where one doesn’t need to plan ahead if there are sufficient natural sources of food.
Also, WRT Africa, you ignore the domestication of elephants which was done by the Romans and Carthaginians, but for some reason never by the southern Africans. Elephants are far more useful in many applications than horses.
The point where we agree is that European society was, during the dark ages, a static society in which no change was allowed and anything new was rejected. The enlightenment eventually resulted in the creation of the most dynamic society that has thus far existed, the US. Dynamic societies profit from human ingenuity and there is no limit to what that can produce or accomplish.
What we’ve found out with dynamic societies is that there are concepts which are deadly to such a society such as “political correctness”, HRC’s, “hate speech”, “hate crimes”, “post-modernism”, “sustainability”, “social justice” and “affirmative action” to give just a brief sampling of the poisoners of progress that have arisen in what were formerly very dynamic societies. There seems to be a drive in some people to convert dynamic societies into static ones.
Islam is the ultimate static society where nothing new is allowed unless it allows “martyrs” to kill Jews more effectively. Rather than seeking to wall themselves off from the dynamic societies around them, such as various primitive agricultural religious groups do, islam seeks to dominate the world. It won’t be satisfied until the whole world is a static theocracy.
Islam is in this for the long term and the primary weapon it uses is to create martyrs for the cause as fast as they can pop out of the perennially pregnant tented female baby factories which are a low tech way of producing cannon fodder and suicide bombers. Mark Steyn has written on this topic and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that outbreeding a population that has better things to do with it’s time than turning women into baby factories is very easy if one takes the long term view. For a static society, centuries are no big deal since nothing changes. For a dynamic society, ideas get stale in hours and the Achilles heel of dynamic societies is their preoccupation with the here and now as one simply cannot predict what will happen even a year from now in the realms of scientific progress which is occurring exponentially.
The other thing your theories neglect is human nature and the inherently tribal/feudal structure that seems to be inherent in some human brains. To create a dynamic society like the US in many ways goes against human nature as it makes all people equal before the law. It requires far more tolerance than people innately have. As long as the vast majority of the population in such societies subscribe to certain minimal absolute standards of behavior, then a dynamic society will work. Libertarians have no difficulty surviving in a dynamic society and require one for their existence.
Islam inserts a primitive static feudal society into a dynamic society and capitalizes on the tolerance of a dynamic society to destroy it. Thus islam should be viewed in the same manner that one views any enemy invading ones country and the only solution is to either keep it out or destroy whatever portions happen to get into the country.
While I happen to think that George Bush was a disaster for the US, his appreciation of what was good and what was evil in the world was correct. We’re coming up to a war which will decide if the future of the world will be one of infinite progress or a static hell hole.
Loki, thanks for your thoughtful reply.
The decimation of Roman power wasn’t due to the ‘rise of the Germanic tribes’ but to the overreach of the Roman infrastructure to maintain stability and security in these outpost regions whose populations were growing and to the internal corruption of Roman governance. Furthermore, it wasn’t the far north that emerged as the technological giant of Europe but the middle areas – England, France, Germany, Italy.
Yes, humans can settle any environment, but they are still dependent on the ability of that environment to sustain their population. The far north of Europe didn’t sustain the larger populations of the mid areas. These large populations outgrew the economy and so, they had to change their technology, which also required an ideological change to favour innovation.
The Romans domesticated the Asian not African elephant; the latter is not domesticated. There are no animals native to most of Africa that can be domesticated to support a large population – no milk cows, beef cows, horses, etc. The same with plants, which meant that plough agriculture is impossible in most of Africa.
Furthermore, there is the problem not only of soil, which is thin; but the problem of heat and sun; the lack of water or only seasonal rains or too much in the rainforests – Europe has deep fertile soil, a regular rainfall, a mild climate, all of which led to what is knowns as a Rainfall Deep Plough Three Field agriculture capable of producing food all year round – and Africa has none of this.
I don’t agree with your theory of intellectual evolution or ‘selection for creativity’. Certainly, we increase our knowledge base but I don’t agree with different IQs around the world. Creativity is rejected in societies that require stability and no-change.
You say nothing about the causes of the enlightenment. It wasn’t accidental; it developed, over 400 years, as a necessary response to the crisis of stability, where the economoic mode of local agriculture simply couldn’t support the increasing population.
I agree with your rejection of the whole plethora of political correctness and multiculturalism. And also, with your note that there is always a drive to maintain stability and reject change. I think we have the tendency for both innovation and stability, and these two conflict with each other.
What you ignore is that for most of world history, societies were organized into a tribal or two-class mode and thus, required stability rather than a dynamic growth ideology. It was the biomic richness of Europe (not any ‘white-man’s intellect) that led to its rise in population and a concomitant requirement for a movement into a dynamic ideology, or, a middle class growth economy.
I agree that Islam is a static, no change and militant ideology. So was Europe until population pressures forced it to change.
I also agree with you that the desire for no-growth and stability is basic to human nature. But, I add that the desire to know (Aristotle), the desire for innovation, is also basic. These are two contrary forces, and our societies have stressed the former for most of world history, but the population pressures of the West required the latter. Societies must balance these two, and I consider the US Constitution a key example of such a balance.
As for your solution of keeping Islam out or destroying it, I don’t think that either is feasible. I don’t see how, operationally, you can keep Muslims out of other nations, nor how you can destroy them all.
I happen to support Bush’s Doctrine as the best method of dealing with Islamism, which I agree, absolutely must change. The world population is too large for a tribal no-growth ideology.
Again, thanks for your very thoughtful post.