THEY DON'T REALLY KNOW WHAT A STATE IS FOR

The Presidency...:

The Bush's, Texas, Florida.

The Clintons, Arkansas, New York.

As they were accused of, they were really carpetbaggers with respect to the states they represented. 

Their aspirations were always elsewhere.

They never looked back.

RE INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE THE PRESIDENCY NOT YOUR FRIEND INSTITUTION EG BILL CLINTON

The last presidential wrecking ball of the so called Democratic side.

The Presidency itself has been a political structural disaster for the average and lower class American, Democrat or Republican. 

This is based on how it was structured, military strategy, diplomacy, and trade, etc., and related to the other federal branches, and also on how it was related (not) to the states and to cities (not). 

Clinton: Rhodes Scholar. Post Milner Group.  Say no more.........

President Obama, merely a later footnote.  

They had never represented the actual working class here, or in any state or group of states or cities here anywhere, anyway, in spite of the rhetoric, but rather they represented, based on the office characteristics themselves, the global bourgeoisie.

Clinton had specifically claimed to represent all men. Very post Milner Group. Eisenhower, etc., same game, back then. 

Human rights, code term for "Americans' rights are not special to me, I am for global rights".

Wilson, FDR, Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Bill, Hillary, etc., ditto: 

Human rights, code term for:

"Average Americans', and lower class Americans', rights, are not special to me. I am for global rights, or for nothing".

W: "These principles are right for all people everywhere."

RE DK CURRENT POST

Can't really go along with much in B Wilder's comment. Lot of confusion there.

CHRISTIE HAS BEEN TRUMP'S SPOILER OF FRESH DUMB MARIONETTES

But, oddly, he told the truth on these freshmen idiots: Cruz and Rubio.

These guys have zero experience actually governing, whatever you take ' governing ' to mean here. 

Christie simply said the very, very, obvious.

The Republican Party seems to want fresh dumb marionettes.

RE DK POST INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE POLITICAL STRUCTURAL SUCCESS AND FAILURE

We are still living in the long shadow of assumptions, ideology, and institutions going back to the time of Cecil Rhodes.

We are living in the long shadow of the Milner group, in important senses.

RE institutional failure and its causes, I want to talk about this situation, both in positive and negative ways, since these are difficult to disentangle, both conceptually, ideologically, and over time, re post Milner Group Western Civilization. But, as I said, it has thrown a long shadow. Quigley had done so, positively and negatively, in his exposition, and it was an account that made sense.

RE MORTGAGE BACKED SECURITIES BUST

Back in 2000 and after, I had appraisers hand me appraisals, on which compensation and damages were to be based, where the projected annual return was set at, say, 7% into the indefinite future. This had become the rule rather than the exception.

One could always find appraisers who would so opine.... 

It must have been very easy for mortgage companies and banks in such an environment.

AMERICAN PRESIDENTS HAVE LONG BEEN SELECTED FOR THEIR MARIONETTE QUALITIES

They have not been selected based on old style statesmanship qualities, 
but rather on merely American, dumb, relative electability, criteria.

AMERICA AND BIG GOVERNMENT

Glaucon X:
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." -Ronald Reagan 1981

"the era of big government is over" -Bill Clinton 1996

Those marching orders, given to us by both corporate-owned parties, have yet to be countermanded. They crowned the untrammeled free market King and appointed our government as his servant. When he screwed up in 2008, of course the corporate parties agreed that nothing too fundamental was wrong, in fact, they continued to hail the King. The assumption that the untrammeled free market had the divine right of unquestioned rule over us had become so deeply embedded.

So now the people no longer believe that our political system serves the needs of the public. But with two corporate owned parties, and a corporate owned press, no one is there to explain to them that the untrammeled free market serves the needs of powerful corporate interests and doesn’t care at all about the needs of the people. The two parties they voted for created a plutocracy, a government of, by, and for the wealthy--why are most citizens so surprised that it doesn’t serve their needs?"

Great post by Glaucon X. DK site.

Unfortunately, In America, the era of big government was over, from the beginning, 1776, really.

The whole point of America was to put an end to what they considered big government, a ' Robinocracy '.

They did a great job.

RE DK CURRENT POST THE BIG SHORT

I encourage everyone with some minimal financial wherewithal, to read Liar's Poker. 

He thought young people of principle would turn away from the ways of Wall Street....

He made a stirring and poignant address at the Princeton Baccalaureate 2012. Must see.

He urged the graduating class to practice noblesse oblige.
Call him Michael Pollyanna Lewis.
That was not a principle the founding fathers had followed here.

RE DONALD TRUMP ISN'T REAL DAVID BROOKS NYT

Neither is  Mr ' More Free Trade, Please ' David Brooks

Terms search: more free trade

CRUZ WALL STREET THE BIG SHORT AND YOU SEE DK POST DEEP DOWN IT IS REALLY STRUCTURAL POLITICAL INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE

Property rights wacko. I know them well.
Who bank rolls them?
Take a guess:

Big (Thurston called it ' big property rights ') corporations, not tiny residential property owners facing public projects. 

Guess what: Big property rights (better known as creditors' rights, banks, etc.) have been the biggest enemy of small property rights (those envisioned in the Constitution).

Big property rights got us the mortgage backed securities meltdown. How?

Because the big banks, the big property rights, created the mortgage backed securities market in the first place.

It was facilitated, of course, by Fannie and Freddie, but instigated by them.

KAI RYSSDAL

What a zero.

RE WILSON FDR DEMOCRATS COMMUNISM MCCARTHYISM DK POST ETC

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/05/re-jigged-when-we-should-have-jagged.html

IT MAKES AS LITTLE SENSE TO REMOVE LEE'S STATUE AS CECIL RHODES'

Quigley insisted, with some details and credibility, that Cecil Rhodes, and the Inner Circle of the Milner Group, were anything but racists. 

Otherwise, why have a project (delusional as it may have been), such as Rhodes', for lifting up all people regardless of race?

What about Jefferson? Mt Rushmore, even. Why leave the image of one who turned out to be a racial hypocrite standing, then? Nonsense.

See: Smithsonian Magazine, Henry Wiencek, "Unmasking Thomas Jefferson", October 2012, p. 40.

What about Washington? He freed them when he died.
Too late, for these zealots. Take him down!

IRONIC see dk time post mccarthy

That with almost no real socialists left in the country, Sanders, a socialist, his mere presence may give Cruz' anti communist rants traction! 

Incredible really. I would call it the tragedy of Sanders.

AWKWARD QUESTIONS

If one believed that combating globalist communism was a paramount concern of Western Civilization, since at least the mid nineteenth century, why then would one want to dismantle the Western Imperial System, which, in spite of Western liberalism's pretensions, had been the main bulwark against world communism, from the beginning?

Western liberalism, unfortunately, has posed an even greater threat to Western Civilization, as it turned out, than globalist communism. A really sad commentary.

RE DK POST TIME SENATOR MCCARTHY COMMUNISTS REALLY SADDER AND OLDER STORY THAN AMERICANS KNOW

Professor Kaiser is quite right, by the time of McCarthy, communists had gone, changed, or been outed.

See The Haunted Wood, which spells it out nicely.

Of course, by then the Soviets had already long gotten everything they had wanted, more or less, from us, by internal influence: 

they had gotten our support, over European objections, re Eastern Europe, (they had gotten Patton, through the OSS, if you tend to believe Target Patton, as I do; apparently Bill O'Reilly also did something which I haven't read; they had put a political short leash on Monty to intervene in Eastern Europe in 44 45, as he later complained...)

they had gotten the bomb through espionage, and even through our political cooperation, it seems (!)

they had gotten our help, and ideological support, in further dismantling the European empires (a real biggie, in my judgment), 

and they, a foreign civilization, had gotten Eastern Europe and much of mitteleuropa. 

They almost got an agrarianized Germany, thanks to FDR and Morgenthau and White, etc.

SHKRELI ACA HEALTH CARE COSTS ETC COMMENT ON DK SITE HOW ENTREPRENEURSHIP KEEPS COSTS DOWN

Professor
Echoing your ACA remarks, there is a useful summary re medical costs and policies, in the current Florida Bar Journal, of all places, by Steven I. Weissman. He has gathered a lot of media references in one place.All the best

Terms search: rail to rail, ACA.

Re ACA see especially Weissman, text and fn, at fn 9.

RE INUNDATION IMMIGRATION

Europe is as little able to stem the tide of Muslims, and, eventually, of black Africans, as Americans are at stemming the tidal wave of Mexican population movements into our heartland. 

Why did the Pope show up down there? Because they are all, nominally only, Catholics. In reality, they are native Indians masquerading as Catholics, not European Catholics, really.  You and the Pope can kid yourselves!

It is really symptomatic, if you will, of the continuing political crisis of will of Western Civilization.

You can call it what you want.

RE THE CLINTONS AND THE MILNER GROUP

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2016/01/ppp-cartels-not-market-states-dk.html

RE MULTICULTURALISM IN AMERICA

When the Spanish, English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese, conquered various native people in the New World, the Spanish, who came first, had just literally driven the Muslims from Western Europe in 1492. 

The Muslims still heavily infested central, east, and southern Europe, and would do so for hundreds of years more. 

No Western colonial power, then or later, wanted to see any free Muslims or Muslim colonies whatsoever in the New World, for very obvious reasons. Some Muslims were brought here, of course, but they were brought as slaves.

RE WILSON AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN CASE YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/10/kennan-re-wilson-re-russian-revolution.html

RE CHINA MILITARIZING SOUTH CHINA SEA VIETNAM JAPAN KOREA ETC DEJA VU

See Huntington's hypothetical scenario, published way way way back, in 1996, for the start of an inter civilizational war, toward the end of The Clash.........

ANOTHER PARIAH STATE PRESIDENT FDR

apparently inherited the disastrous British antagonism to Germany, even prior to the beginning of WWI. See, for example, Beschloss, The Conquerors. 

terms search: pariah

REAL ECON TV ON PRESIDENT OBAMA CAMPAIGN ORIGINS

"He was a total nobody.

In 2005, he became a US Senator. In 2008
he became president of the US.

No one in US history ever pulled off anything
like this.

The answer can be found in the early
support of a crooked Chicago banking
family.

Video:"

RE ANGLO AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT ACTUALLY ANGLO AMERICAN ANTAGONISM

It really goes back to before the colonial rebellion.

We were the first pariah state in modern Western Civilization.

That is why Wilson, a pariah state President and his secretary of state, much later, a century plus later, initially looked with glee at the anti imperialist Russian Revolution.....during WWI!

What a long standing Western Civilizational disaster it has been.

AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC CHECKS AND BALANCES SPOILS SYSTEM

Why not follow up the last post with a brief discussion of choices open to American Presidents and State Department officials, based on American universal values and principles, on selections of ambassadors and heads of missions?

Americans would like to see more women, black, and LGBT choices, of all different religious denominations, especially if a Democrat is elected: 

"In her concession speech Tuesday night, 

Clinton claimed the mantle of the representative of oppressed 

Americans, including minorities, women, and LGBTs." DK

How about this, these are just some possible combinations:

For Ambassadors to Middle Eastern countries, here are some possible helpful orientations, assigned to no particular posts yet unless noted:

A gay white female
A transgender bisexual
A black Evangelical Christian gay male
A Jewish gay black female for Muslim posts
A Muslim gay female for Israel
A bisexual American male or female, white or black for Saudi Arabia

For Asian countries, how about: 
A gay female Vietnamese American for ambassador to China?

Similarly, a gay black Evangelical Christian female for Japan?
Or, say, a gay Chinese Muslim American female for Japan?
And vice versa for China?

Tough choices!

For Europe, how about
gay black Muslim female for Germany
for England, Court of St James, Chinese American gay black male,
or, say, a Radical Imam American,
stuff like that...

For Russia, say,
gay female Muslim, or Jewess, 

Send a gay white female racist as ambassador (spoils system) to South Africa, just for good measure.

And so on.......

Why not diplomatically 'buy the farm' on American universalist CFR, Party of Davos, 'values' ?

RE DK CURRENT POST DIPLOMATIC FEMINISM LGBT MINORITIES

This is an issue in his post he stays away from (maybe he doesn't see it, but I doubt it); public figures can't go there, here, anyway; I can:

Nothing in American history demonstrates its diplomatic tone deafness better than its appointing women representatives, such as Albright or Clinton,  to important posts at missions to core states in other civilizations, especially where women there are not public figures.

LIONEL CURTIS WAS A LONG WAY FROM CECIL RHODES

He and the Milner Group were moving closer to a tragic Wilsonian blind globalization, globalization for globalization's sake, paradigm.

Terms search: Wilson, Howard, Rhodes, CFR, Kennan.

RE US POLITICAL STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS

Re Scalia, the Supreme Court, etc.

Just a quick note to point out a long standing political structural problem here. This is one of many issues, everywhere one looks, that Americans have never really been taught to understand at all. Why? Because it was seldom in the personal or party interests of politicians, legislative, judicial, or executive, state or federal, to discuss with them, really.

The Federal Court system, especially its bench, does not want either a particularly strong federal  legislative or executive branch (they got their wish, from the beginning, really, but only capitalized on it in stages), nor does it really want strong state legislative, executive, or judicial branches (again, they got their wish from the beginning).

What it has long wanted most, and gotten long ago, is a strong federal judicial branch, and especially the Supreme Court.

MILNER GROUP IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS PERHAPS

One might call the utopianism of the Milner Group a late blooming manifestation of the radicalism of the real Whigs, which had infested the American colonies, as well as here and there in Britain and elsewhere, back in the early 18th century.  See Bailyn's chapter "The Contagion Of Liberty", Ideological Origins.

It was a universalist radicalism born partly of fragmentation, a schismatic fragmentation, following in the train of the political and religious disasters of the Reformation and its aftermath, really. 

"We hold these truths to be self evident..." Many radical schismatics, besides the colonists, were also universalists, Luther for example.

Jesus, oddly enough, although a radical Jewish schismatic, was not himself a universalist: he had no mission to the gentiles whatsoever. See: The New Testament Bible, and E P Sanders, The Historical Figure Of Jesus, Index, 'gentiles'.

Someone who knows more can correct me I am sure.

RE US VERSUS BRITAIN THE US PILED ON AFTER MILNER GROUP HAD DECIDED ON CRUCIFIXION

The coup de grace was 1945:

"...The citizens of the United States had not joined in the Second World War to prop up a system of imperial domination against which they had been the first people to revolt...." Sir Michael Howard

I would just add (2015 repost and this edit), for emphasis, they had not joined in the First World War to prop up a system of imperial domination against which they had been the first people to revolt, either. 

That had, after all, been why Wilson, and his staff, including especially his Secretary of State, were at first so thrilled with the Russian Revolution......

The universal empire of Western Civilization was, in Quigley's terminology, the British Empire, after 1763, not the Napoleonic, briefly, thereafter.

I CAN NOW ANSWER QUIGLEY'S QUESTION DEFINITIVELY P 134

Curtis and his Milner Group associates assisted heavily at the crucifixion of the British Empire. 

There has been, and never will be, a resurrection......

It did not die 'to be born again'. It died to die.

Of course, everyone who knows anything has known this answer since Quigley asked it. Before, actually........

re why the US continued to foster this decline BLIND GLOBALIZATION

We embarked after WWII on what I can only call Blind Globalization. 

This had, by then become the party line also of the CFR and other US institutions, for the obvious reasons.

It was rationalized as fighting the Cold War, but, of course, there were the other mainly economic and commercial agendas, especially for us..............

WHY THE US IS CONTINUING TO FOSTER THIS DECLINE

Very important elements in this country continue to function along these same lines, still actuated by the Milner Group ideal, although somewhat modified to substitute American cultural and political hegemony and political and economic ideals in place of those of British Imperial Civilization, and still connected to long existing relationships and institutions all over the world. CFR and IISS are only the most obvious.

As Wikipedia notes, The CFR promotes globalization, free trade, reducing financial regulations on MNCs (not on anybody else of course), and economic consolidation into regional blocs (and beyond, I would add), and develops policy recommendations that reflect these goals.

It is filled with what Huntington had derided in The Clash, and Faux discussed, as Party of Davos types.

Smell the coffee, game over.

Now there is a great irony here, re the US versus Britain, hardly a real Anglo American Establishment, and I will go into that shortly. 

Happy Valentine's Day...'Pakistan's president has denounced St Valentine's Day, saying the festival has no connection with Pakistani culture and should be avoided.'

He is so right!

WHY THE WEST DECLINED

Lionel Curtis believed that Western Civilization virtues and culture could be permanently fostered only within an integrated global political (and economic) system around the British Empire, and involving Britain in a program of generosity, trust, and freedom toward the Dominions, colonies, and all other countries. In a word, he considered Western Civilization (and more especially British Civilization) the only one, really. See Quigley, The A-A Estab., p 64.

Even France and Germany did not qualify for this Civilizational club of one. Quigley, p.133.

GREAT POINT LOST ON MOST DEMOCRATIC PARTY AMERICAN CITIZENS

"In her concession speech Tuesday night, Clinton claimed the mantle of the representative of oppressed Americans, including minorities, women, and LGBTs.  That is how both the feminist movement and two generations of civil rights activists have trained us all to see the problem of oppression and injustice.  In my opinion that has not worked--least of all for those groups themselves.  That approach, let us face it, has also driven significant numbers of poor white voters--men and women--into the arms of Donald Trump." DK

(Just a side note 'trained us all' : I never saw the so called problems of oppression or injustice in this way at all. So, then, we weren't all so trained....)

re economic nationalism national socialism

RE my comment on DK's site, I want to point out that Hitler's party was long called national socialist; although they were nationalists, they were not socialists, either nationalist or internationalist socialists, at all, really, but rather capitalists, and monopoly capitalists at that.

Sanders is a nationalist, economic socialist. The British trade unionists were the closest thing in the English speaking world.

Sadly, the American labor force is so fragmented, dumbed down, hollowed out, and dispossessed of meaningful well paying work and benefits anymore, that someone like Sanders has little broad based organized political support among an informed  politically powerful professional work force.

RE HOLLOWING OUT OF US ECONOMY YOU ONLY DIE TWICE

Japan 1950: "They are fools. Tell you what: let's hollow them out!"

China 1980: "They are real, permanent, fools. Japan already fattened herself up by hollowing them out for 30 years now! Tell you what: let's finish hollowing them out now!"

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/search?q=you+only+die+twice

Terms search: fattening things up, Nixon shock

THE OTHER IMPORTANT RELATED TOPIC TRANSFORMATION WITHIN CECIL BLOC RHODES SOCIETY THEN MILNER GROUP THEN AFTER

RE CONFLICT WITHIN THE SO CALLED ANGLO AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT FROM 1870 TO DATE

RE CONFLICT WITHIN THE SO CALLED ANGLO AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT FROM 1870 TO DATE

This is a very important topic, on the periphery of Quigley's account up to 1949 or so, only touched on in passing at certain places.

I would, for various important reasons, like to bring it to center stage, but I am not the person to do this: not only am I an outsider, but an ignorant outsider.

Maybe DK can suggest an existing source for such a frank discussion, not that he is an insider but at least he might know of some source for this topic.

RE TED CRUZ

He might as well advocate blanket bombing of the entire Middle East.

That might get him elected here.

THE CLASH RE CARROT AND STICK

"The evidence simply does not support the liberal internationalist assumption that commerce promotes peace." Huntington, p. 67

Great passage...

Nevertheless, he advocates carrot and stick diplomacy at many points throughout The Clash. 

In practice, during the Cold War, this most often meant subsidies to our market = carrot, withdrawal of prior subsidies to our market = stick (i.e. not a real ' stick ', a faux stick).

Although he obviously does not see this as an inconsistency, except fitfully when he lamely suggests restricting technology transfers to retard relative civilizational decline (ie not carrot or stick restrictions, but rather restrictions without regard for strategic or diplomatic objectives and so called carrot stick tools), I do. 

It is views like this, of the appropriate tools of diplomacy, and of the willing, even eager, subordination of trade, commerce, and finance regarding domestic economic and commercial interests, to so called ostensible higher strategic and political foreign affairs goals, that got us here, over the last 100 years, really, since Wilson (a great universalist), after all, and especially after WWII, and then for 45 years during the Cold War.

Terms search: trading American interests, Trading Places, carats shtick.

THE CLASH STAKE IN THE HEART OF GLOBALIST COBDENISM

"The evidence simply does not support the liberal internationalist assumption that commerce promotes peace." Huntington, p. 67

Great passage...

BUSH AND RUBIO WERE CROWING ABOUT CRUSHING EMINENT DOMAIN ABUSES IN FLORIDA

Cruz I am sure would have done the same last night had he been given an opening.

It goes to show how well funded these so called grass roots private constitutional property rights groups are, and how ignorant their acolytes are.

Florida has long been the most liberal state of them all regarding protecting rights and compensating owners, and paying all their most outlandish litigation expenses to boot.

Many viewers must have thought Trump was wildly exaggerating when he lambasted his ignorant and bought off opponents and characterized an eminent domain case as a veritable bonanza for the condemnee. That is exactly how it is in Florida. I should know, I represented state government. With respect to Florida, if anything, Trump did not go far enough.

RE REPUBLICAN DEBATE

I do not want to comment generally on the debate.

I would just say that Christie played a great role, savaging both Cruz and Rubio as novices, and bought off. 

He left Trump free to then utterly stomp them on their views (in my judgment, but maybe the average person does not realize it), and that of Bush too (bought off too, he had crowed about protecting Florida from eminent domain abuses...), I might add, on eminent domain.

Trump then quite rightly then turned on the audience, pointing out its preponderant composition of campaign donors such as those who financially have supported the property rights and eminent domain positions of Cruz, Rubio, and Bush. 

Trump reminded me then more of FDR than of anyone else.

The property rights lobby, and their creatures Rubio, Cruz, and Bush, certainly take us back to before the Civil War, to a time and place where states' rights, and secession, were not only rightly viewed (then and now in my judgment) as reasonable and constitutional positions,  but also as necessary positions. The Civil War accomplished nothing in this regard, in my judgment.

I may mention eminent domain again in another post because it seems to play such a central role in this primary race.

THE CLASH

P 86, the 200 year blip of Western hegemony almost over.

When you look around for causes, he acts at some points like it was Western decline merely as a dumb, blind, natural result or process of Asian resurgence. 

At other points, he equivocates, saying we should still try weakly to limit transfer of technology and know how, but admits that globalization has already made that effort largely passee, back in 1996, or 1993, when the article came out.

People who knew anything knew that this was going on since WWII really, and had started even before that, as his passage at p 86 shows.

HOW CAN YOU HAVE A DEALBOOK STATE SYSTEM

When you are really not quite in that hypothetical state system, either, but rather in what Steingart very aptly called The War For Wealth?

THE CLASH

Great passage, pb p. 233.

After he talks about China having declared the US its main enemy, he describes our record playing a secondary balancing role. The US has had not much interest or ability at this, since the founding, really. 

Nothing has changed. There are a lot of different kinds of reasons for this.

Another point, the US China relationship as it has developed, and his discussion of the US' balancing role weaknesses, are related, although he does not make any connection directly there.

Why would you promote development of your main adversary as both your main factory and your main creditor, and then, almost immediately, have to talk about playing a balancing role against it?

You're out on the flat ice of globalization.

DK CURRENT POST I LOVE THIS

"...Nor, given the surprising strength of the Sanders campaign, am I quite willing to give up yet...." Professor Pollyanna Kaiser.

THE FOUNDING FATHERS COULD GILD A LILY

I will give you another picture, an analogy, of the founding:

Say a colonial smuggler ship, out of Rhode Island, in 1776, is being overhauled by a British frigate.

The smuggler captain wants to give the ship up for search.

13 smugglers aboard disagree, and mutiny, rather than be captured by the British.

After these 13 take over the ship and kill the officers and crew, what sort of government will they form for themselves?

Without all the frills, linguistic flourishes, and disingenuous political and philosophical justifications, take a look at the Declaration Of Independence. 

Think of it, behind all the smoke screen of rhetoric, as a compact for a group first of smugglers, then of mutineers, and now, of pirates.

THE MENU

From Randy's facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/rfertel/videos/10153889404854402/

PPP CARTELS NOT MARKET STATES DK THE DEALBOOK STATE HOW THE WORLD NOW WORKS

What has emerged, from what most people over here still like to characterize as a more or less free and open system of liberal, free market, post Milner Group, CFR, nation states,  is something more like what one might call the Dealbook State, or, say, the Public Private Partnership Cartel State, and less like what Bobbitt and others hailed as the emergence of the Market State. One might even call the new thing the Unmarket State.

"In the climactic scene of the indispensable book and film, Primary Colors, the composite figure Libby Holden berates Jack and Susan Stanton (Bill and Hillary Clinton) for betraying the ideals they all shared when they helped nominate McGovern in 1972.  We were young then, Susan replies. We didn't understand "how the world works."   As Hillary's record of speaking engagements and public positions makes all too clear, she understands only too well how today's world works.  One can cast one's self as a fighter for the middle class and a crusader on social issues, so long as one takes care not to offend powerful economic interests and disturb the distribution of income.  I can't help but wonder whether Chait, Vennochi, Cohen, Millbank, and even Krugman also can't help but trust a system which, for whatever reason, has found a very nice place within itself for them. Yet whether that strategy can get her the nomination and the White House in 2016 depends on whether the world has passed her by." DK

Regarding my remark above, this passage is the most telling: "...One can cast one's self as a fighter for the middle class and a crusader on social issues, so long as one takes care not to offend powerful economic interests and disturb the distribution of income...." DK

One must add, "one doesn't want to offend or disturb, if possible, powerful foreign interests, agreed or de facto cartellized distributions of global markets and deals, and existing foreign alliances and other relations."

This is not the world of the small player in Smithian free trade markets. 

"We were young then, Susan replies. We didn't understand "how the world works." " DK
"As Hillary's record of speaking engagements and public positions makes all too clear, she understands only too well how today's world works." DK 

To Susan / Hillary's disingenuous remark, I would just point out, agreeing with Professor Kaiser directly above, that Bill Clinton had been a Rhodes Scholar before he became a politician. He also had been a student of Quigley...  
Say no more. Nuf said.

Terms search: trading American interests

SMUGGLER NATION

Cf Allison's talk "The Rebellion of 1689", and the one on smugglers, also the one on Captain Kidd.

The colonists were as unlikely to come together into a workable union then as later, or now.

By workable union, one definition might be low risk of secession of territory, low risk of civil war or revolution. 

As David Kaiser's comments here and there clearly demonstrate as well, the US has failed and still fails to meet either of these criteria. 

I would add that it has failed to do so either before the Civil War or after, although he refers to "preserving the union", in reference to Sherman and others, it is the same flawed union now as back then or before.

One can advert to Katrina, Bobbitt's passages in Terror essential reading, to understand why New Orleans was actually hindered, both before and after Katrina, by being part of an unworkable union.

FLAT ICE GLOBALIZATION

Guess what?

Under modern globalization, Thomas Friedman's flat earth, under ice, there is no rough ground left.

What emerges from under the ice will not be his idea of solid ground.

Flat ice earth diplomacy cannot even get traction, much less leverage.

What then is the point in using the Poppins to set down on ice, here or there, anyway?

YOU'RE OUT ON THE THIN ICE OF GLOBALIZATION NO LEVERAGE

Back to the rough ground.

RE BIG PICTURE TERROR AND CONSENT

Very demoralizing, and to me misguided, interpretation he has, p 539 to 545. Bobbitt, Terror And Consent

RE DK POST JAN 8 2016 THE CLASH

Re my prior comment, 

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2016/01/dk-post.html

I would add that I can think of no better explanation of my comment than Huntington's The Clash Chapter 10.

RE SHERMAN BOBBITT MOYAR RANDALL KENNAN CIVIL WAR DK

Terror And Consent has a nice quote from Kennan, re the Civil War, p 196, amid Bobbitt's misguided liberal, universalist, globalist, market state, rant, at that point.

As I said, I go with them, Bobbitt's many, unfortunate, post Milner Group, CFR, foibles aside, here, for the moment.

Where Bobbitt and Howard disagree, in print, I go with Howard, usually. Sorry, but not sorry, Phil.

COMPARE MY COMMENTS ON THE CIVIL WAR PRESERVING THE UNION WITH FOR EXAMPLE HURRICANE KATRINA

Regarding preserving a union, we have a so called system of federal, state, and local governments as little able to competently handle larger political and social problems in an ordered and systematic way as we did before the Civil War.

On what caused Katrina, see for example Bobbitt, Terror And Consent, p. 216, 217. I believe the material on Katrina as a man made disaster, analogous in many ways to Sherman's campaign, and to Reconstruction, is voluminous.

From what I have read, Sherman was neither chasing an army, nor retreating from one, nor guarding against one, on his march to the sea.  He was neither chasing an army nor retreating from one, nor guarding against one, on his march up the Atlantic Seaboard.

The Emancipation Proclamation is but another blatant example.

RE NATION STATES OF TERROR DK POST SHERMAN BOBBITT RE MY COMMENT

See Shield p 217, citing his Democracy And Deterrence, p 20.

Although I have read very little on the Civil War, I tend to side with Randall, Moyar, and Bobbitt.  

If wrong, at least I am in relatively good, and variegated, company.

RE FIRST BANK OF THE UNITED STATES

What was so bad about this?

Historians, including DK, praise Jackson for fighting against so called big banking interests , but private banks, (later The private Fed, etc.), which Jackson advocated, as against a public federal bank which Hamilton had favored, have been more responsible for trouble long term, not just in the last forty years, than Hamilton's original idea.

the menu

Haggis coming up.

CLASSIC PAST BLAST POPULAR NOW FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/09/re-david-kaisers-current-post_29.html

weekly audience

Entry	Pageviews
Russia	46
United States	30
France	2
Germany	1
Poland	1
Thailand	1
Vietnam	1

THEY WILL CALL IT

The Obamacrash, just to round out the fantasy.

audience today snapshot

Entry	Pageviews
Russia	26
United States	10

TO PARAPHRASE KENNAN RE AMBASSADORS

They don't really know what an economy is for.

If you think it is for business as usual carrot and stick economic diplomacy, as even Huntington, sadly, did, as well, eg The Clash, pb p.206, you have another thought coming.

RE DK CURRENT POST

What does civilization really mean?


DK:
"The question of how the United States and the other nations of the world should respond is, in my opinion, a very challenging one to which there is no simple answer.  It is easy enough to argue that ISIS represents a great evil and thus must be destroyed.  Some are already willing to argue that to destroy its leadership, we should even ignore the human rights of the population of Raqqa and other ISIS strongholds, just as we did the populations of German and Japanese cities during the Second World War.  Even President Obama has identified ISIS as a threat to world civilization that must be "degraded and defeated"--but he insists that the United States can play only an auxiliary role in that process, and his own military steps have been relatively cautious.  The recapture of Ramadi by Iraqi government-supported forces, assisted by American air power, suggests things are moving in the right direction--but very slowly.

"ISIS does undoubtedly represent a threat to civilized values as serious in character--if not in scale--to those posed by Germany and Japan in the Second World War, or by Communism under Stalin and Mao.  Two of those four regimes were destroyed by allied coalitions; the other two survived for decades and collapsed, or changed, mostly because of internal pressures. Other at least equally serious threats to western civilization in earlier periods include the Mongol and Ottoman Empires.   History does not, in short, support the idea that we must attempt to destroy certain regimes simply because of their evil nature.--or that we can do so.  We need a broader kind of test  for action." 

"...The real challenge for the governments of the West is in many ways an intellectual one: to accept that their values have not, and will  not, prevail in large parts of the world for some time to come....."   DK

I will let you guess what he thinks the term civilization means.

RE DK SITE

To follow up on my comment elsewhere, the problem for Islam is not radical Christianity (how, by the way, the New England colonies got started), but rather liberal universalist mainstream Christianity.

DK post

"Although the media still avoids talking about this very much, ISIS descended directly from Al Queda in Iraq, which did not exist until George W. Bush, with very little idea of what he was getting into, decided to invade that country in 2003."

In my judgment, Desert Storm had been just as misguided, civilizationally, and in a sense had set the stage for the invasion of 2003, and for many other bad things in between.

portugal today is wild

Maybe it's a hotbed of spooks!

EntryPageviews

Portugal

10

United States

4

France

1

SAUDI ARABIA IRAN ETC

amid "The Graveyard Of Empires", the Middle East.

VERY ILLUMINATING

to see the 6 books Bill Gates likes best.......

Brooks' book is there, a book I haven't read, but readers of this blog will guess my suppositions about its meritoriousness.

Terms search this blog: brooks

RE E P SANDERS THE HISTORICAL FIGURE

He seems to me to get the answer to the question, re reform or alternative society, wrong. 

He leaves the question, of alternative sects, untouched.

I HAVE SOME BONES TO PICK WITH HIS ACCOUNT BUT THAT IS ANOTHER STORY

"One can read, for example, E P Sanders' book, The Historical Figure Of Jesus, to get some details on why I suggest this." 

RE CIVILIZATIONS

We in the West (the US is not really deeply in the West though) will pay an enormous price for not having kept industrial growth mainly within the West, to the extent possible, and for as long as possible. 

For me, still one of the best, though very late in the game, treatments, of how this process rolled out with respect to US Japan trade history, was Trading Places.

Development has created enormous civilizational rivals, and a race to the bottom of available resources amid uncontrollable population growth. Population growth itself is a great militarizer.

RE GREAT IMPROVISERS A TASTE FOR CHAOS

I have been reading Randy's book. 

It has started me thinking along these lines myself.

Accordingly, although I am certainly not the first person to suggest this, I just want to say it here now.

Among great improvisers, even with the limited knowledge we have of details of his life and ministry, one can put Jesus' Ministry more or less at or near the top of a list of talented improvisers.  

There are a lot of reasons for saying this. I don't want to go into a long list of them here. 

Jesus was sort of a Luther of late Temple Judaism. He was dealt with by Caiaphas more or less in the way Luther would have been dealt, had the Vatican been able to lay hands on him without opposition.

One can read, for example, E P Sanders' book, The Historical Figure Of Jesus, to get some details on why I suggest this. 

RE MULTICULTURALISM AMID CIVILIZATIONS

The US has always been based on utopian universalism, transcending cultures and civilizations as well as nation states including the US itself.

In this sense, it has had, at best, an ambiguous relationship to Western Civ. Huntington's discussions makes this apparent. 

This has had, and will continue to have, tragic consequences.

In effect, we became the first Pariah State of Modern Western Civ. Revolutionary France became the second.

We have continued to play that role, and I see no indication that that will change.