when did the crisis of Western Civilization begin

Around 1520, with the Reformation, even though the New World had just been discovered, might be a good temporal spot to point to. The Sultan still threatened eastern Europe though the Moors had been driven from Spain.

COMPLEXITY UNCERTAINTY DISCIPLINARY DISARRAY

COMPLEXITY UNCERTAINTY DISCIPLINARY DISARRAY

2010 post and DK reference, re crisis discussions. 

I don't go with either generational analysis or 80 year crisis cyclicality, however.

ROOSKIES HERE TO STAY today

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THE ROOSKIES LOVE ME AGAIN

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snapshot today audience

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SEE RANDALL COLLINS' CURRENT POST

CAN THE WAR BETWEEN COPS AND BLACKS BE DE-ESCALATED?

RE PLAGIARISM OBAMA TRUMP LAW EDUCATION

This is really a non issue, like Clinton's emails.

Plagiarism is one thing; it is different from copyright violation.

I sincerely doubt that M Obama's speech was copyrighted.

Mrs Trump was not in class.....

Few Americans can even sniff such broad, crude, but accurate distinctions.

RE FOURTH OF JULY DK

"It was the invention of the cotton gin and the rise of a new, postwar generation of southerners who regarding slavery as a  positive good that halted the momentum away from slavery and made the civil war inevitable." DK

I cannot agree with this view of causation of Civil War inevitability.  There really are a lot of other reasons for this.

TO SEE HOW CRIME AND POLITICS WORKED

aside from Dallas
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2016/07/re-us-state-local-government-law.html

See eg The Godfather. 

They had a relatively free hand until the Kennedy double cross, but they came back.

Terms search Ragano, DK

snapshot today audience Mauritius huge

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RE US STATE LOCAL GOVERNMENT LAW ENFORCEMENT RULE OF LAW TEXAS AND ELSEWHERE

Although lacking in credibility at times at the legal technical detail level, for the sake of plot line, it is hard to improve on the old Dallas episodes to show how the system really worked at the local and even state level, especially the dueling machinations of J. R. Ewing and Cliff Barnes. 

If anything, it probably understates the actual influence of the big players at the state and local level, in that Ewing and Barnes were merely small oil company independents.

It also entirely fails to address, because of ethnic white only plot limitations, the ubiquitous nature of racial bias in the systems at the local level.

RE DK CURRENT POST CRIME AND LAW ENFORCEMENT

Another aspect of the so called war on crime, etc., was that the largely liberal local and national press fanned this sensationalist flame for decades, mainly just to sell more papers, and to kowtow to the other local and national honchos, MNCs etc., who contributed, bi partisan, to free press (and also to NRA, incidentally) lobbies, so important to all sola scriptura, Constitution loving, Americans, but only really of benefit to the media, and to the honchos, themselves. Controlled local violence and law enforcement has always also been big business for media, politicians, prison companies, contractors, education, etc.

Terms search: Lorch, Drew Pearson Fallacy

GREAT STUFF

Randy:

www.facebook.com/rfertel/posts/10154321492419402

WHAT DO I MEAN BY VIRTUALLY UNCHANGEABLE

I mean not susceptible to substantial or even significant reform by existing internal constitutional means, and not susceptible to reform from outside them, yet from within our society, at this point.

You have to look at how it was created to understand why that should be. It was created by a constitutional convention that violated its mandate, and created a document in the name of the people. This ultra vires act was then nevertheless ratified eventually by all states.

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF EVIDENT

that all men are created equal, etc., etc. There are a lot of issues running around in these phrases, or statements.

Cf. DK current post: "...The universal principles of the Declaration are the only basis on which our society and government can continue to exist.  Our failure ever completely to live up to them is no excuse for proclaiming them a snare and a delusion, or for repudiating the most important parts of our legacy." DK

It is heretical to suggest reading isolated passages in Wittgenstein, but how about paragraphs 90 to 130, Philosophical Investigations,  on these themes. This reference is more for philosophical egg heads like, say, Bobbitt..who of course has no time for nonsense like this.

RE THE STRANGE HISTORY OF ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL

This statement has been discussed rather a lot.

Pauline Maier wrote an article with the above title. She does not mention Hobbes, or go far behind the revolutionary generation in the article it seems.

I had thought perhaps it originated with Hobbes' state of nature. That makes sense.

RE FOUNDING FATHERS ACHIEVEMENT

was to create a system that was unworkable, and to make it virtually unchangeable.

ROBERT PALMER RE THE MOST LIGHTLY TAXED GROUP IN THE WORLD

"One suspects that 'no taxation without representation' meant no taxation with representation, either."

JULY 4 1776

It's a great moment for Americans, English speaking people, and Western Europeans, to stop and reflect on:

how far they have sunk, as a whole civilization; 

who are poised, now, to dominate them; 

and how it all might have happened?

RE DECLINE OF THE WEST A FOURTH OF JULY NOTE

It was nevertheless poignant, and heartwarming, to see the Queen, at 90, opening the Scottish Parliament the other day.

RE DK CURRENT POST DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

"...And like the first of those crises, it comes, more than anything else, from a complete breakdown of understanding between the elites and the masses of the people." DK

The crises of Western Civilization, beginning in 1763, rather than the date he mentions, were not the results of breakdowns of understanding between elites and the masses. On the contrary.

The crisis dates he cites, sadly, conceal more than they reveal about the general trend from 1763, which itself ignored these crisis high points, in its march to decline. 

One can give plenty of citations for this view.  They are known to all who have studied it.

If one looks at WWI too, which he does not mention, oddly enough, and adverts to The Anglo-American Establishment thesis, one can argue, much more credibly, that it, WWI and WWII and their aftermath, was a failure and a continuing general decline, rather than several more isolated crises, strictly caused by, and within, Western elites, not between elites and the masses.

RE DK CURRENT POST LEADERSHIP

"Such crises, of course, are opportunities as well, and in the past they have produced Washington Hamilton and Jefferson; Abraham Lincoln; FDR and the leading figures of his administration; Benjamin Disraeli, Otto von Bismarck, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle.  They have also produced Napoleon, Hitler, and Lenin.  Yet in the western world there is not a single leader of remotely comparable stature on the horizon." DK

The colonial and American leaders he mentions, unfortunately, were not, in my view, in the same class with the others he names: Disraeli, Bismarck, Churchill, de Gaulle, Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin.

You might want to ask why?

What about Xi, Abe, Putin? 

Versus Cameron, Obama, Merkel, etc., etc.?

Think about it.

FOR LA GAMAGA

Honey:

Let the Pope take care of this merdre. 

He gets paid for it. 

PS Stick to Catholicism, going forward, little apostate that you are.

Kindness is the absolute cheapest thing. Cheaper even than money.

Why needlessly stir up the Chinks?

RE 1763

It seems R R Palmer had decided on 1763, too. 

I just bought his book...

RE DK CURRENT POST

"No one, now, can deny that the western world is in a political crisis comparable to those of 1789-1815, 1859-71, and 1929-45.  It is, and will almost surely remain, less violent, but it may be just as consequential.  And like the first of those crises, it comes, more than anything else, from a complete breakdown of understanding between the elites and the masses of the people." DK

Thought provoking....

These are some of my thoughts on the above:

Western Civilization has been in a political crisis, more or less continually, since around 1763, the end of the Seven Years War. 

Its religious crisis, which he does not discuss, but which actually partially underlies the political crisis, goes back to before Luther, and was violent throughout Europe until the mid 17th Century.

RE HOW THINGS FELL APART FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION THE CONTAGION OF LIBERALISM

"Perhaps in another twenty years more people will discover the keys to understanding how things fell apart, and how--for better or for worse--something new was put in their place." DK

He is talking here about how things fell apart in recent history, not in the longer term, for Western Civilization, as I normally am. 

The Milner Group view of civilization, was of civilization singular, and the only one they recognized was the British, really. That was plain in about 1900 to 1915 and after.  See for example The Anglo-American Establishment, pb, p. 133. They didn't even acknowledge France or Germany as being fully civilized.

Their big delusion was thinking that British Civilization could be generalized, globalized, could die to be born again.

Let's call it ' The Contagion Of Liberalism '.

BILL CUNNINGHAM

An ' aristocratic ' proletarian.

Only someone like that could say money is the cheapest thing and mean it.

ENLIGHTENMENT FALLACIES

I mentioned that the Enlightenment began in anti clericalism.

Most Americans won't know even what that meant.

It meant anti Catholicism.

RE CHINA BREXIT AND GLOBALIZATION

BBC China warns over reversal of globalization, bad for the world and bad for China.

China is the world now, really. 

You can see what they mean.

EU

Terms search eu

WHO REALLY MADE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ON THE GROUND

Most all historians think first of bourgeois capitalists.

Most civil libertarians here would think first perhaps of rural anti urban, anti aristocratic, farmers.

Many liberals and leftists here would think of urban proletariats.

Actually, there were almost none of those, as representatives in the Estates General for the Third Estate.

So who were they, overwhelmingly?

Lawyers.

RE MERITOCRACY HE TOLD THEM MAINLY THEY WERE JUST LUCKY

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/06/michael-lewis-princeton-baccalaureate.html

RE DK POST RE MASS MURDERERS

"She argued that childhood could produce mass murderers in at least two ways.... " 
"I have no doubt, myself, that stories of tragic childhoods in one way or another lie behind every mass killing about which we read today." DK

Unfortunately, mass murderers can be produced in many other ways than this.  

Asperger's Syndrome is just one main source...

See, for example, Randall Collins' post here:

http://sociological-eye.blogspot.com/2015/10/even-without-gun-control-warning-signs.html

"...In both cases, the shooter lived alone with his mother, who was devoted to caring for him. Both shooters had Asperger's syndrome, and both mothers strongly indulged their strange behavior...." Randall Collins 

Terms search: Lowry

RE THE BELL CURVE MERITOCRACY POST MILNER GROUP GLOBALIST FOIBLES

Maybe Brooks (a conservative) was looking at Reich's (a liberal)  work, The Work Of Nations, globalist meritocratic symbolic analysts staying on shore for that moment, nonsense like that.  

Smart cheap symbolic analysts, of course, are a dime a dozen in the global economy....

Take a look at Seymour Itzkoff, an acquaintance of mine from a while back. I read one of his books, not on intelligence, but rather on Feuermann.  He very kindly autographed it for me. Feuermann's cello was a b piccolo. I think Isserlis still plays it...

I have a variation on that, but with full length form b f holes, and shorter more rounded c's than the typical Strad b piccolo; it is actually more beautiful, aesthetically, than either the Strad b piccolo or form b. The upper belly wood, on the base side, is on the blog front page.

He, Itzkoff, has even more of a jaded slant on intelligence in America.

These are not my views, but they are there, and have influenced people, perhaps the likes of David Brooks, re so called meritocracy, and its shadow, dumbocracy.

RE MERITOCRACY BELL CURVE DAVID BROOKS

Where did Brooks get his wild ass idea that we had become a meritocracy in, say, 1980 or so?

I don't know, but I am prepared to speculate....

One of the authors of The Bell Curve, Herrnstein,  had written a book, prior to that one, in which he had claimed that the US had become or was becoming a meritocracy.

BINGO!

RE ENLIGHTENMENT FALLACIES MERITOCRACY

David Brooks said, a while back, that we have had a meritocracy here since about 1980.

What nonsense. 

Randall Collins debunked that delusion of our educational and professional system rather well, I thought, with The Credential Society, long ago.

RE EQUALITY MERITOCRACY AND RACE

Let's say a few words about these vexed questions taken together.

The Bell Curve of course set off a fire storm.

 I never read it. I reviewed the executive summary on wikipedia.

The criticisms of The Bell Curve methodology, Graves', at the end of the article, seem to me to sound well founded.

I want to talk briefly about something else along these lines.  It is very obvious to me that certain races have various advantages and disadvantages, of undetermined magnitude, as far as I can see. 

Let me give just one glaring example of a kind of meritocracy not normally alluded to.

IF you study history, you will see that the history of survival of laborers, under various conditions, varies by race.

The most well documented example of the relative survival merits of the negro race over white or Indian races is in connection with the history of slavery in tropical conditions, in Africa, the West Indies, South America, and the Southeastern Seaboard of the United States.

This racial advantage of blacks was recognized fairly early on, and resulted in the relative value of negro, Indian, and white slaves or indentured servants, for work in tropical conditions.  Slaves and indentured servants were valued differently based on their race.

Blacks were worth twice that of whites, and one and a half times the value of Indians, of comparable physical condition at time of purchase. Professor Allison, of Suffolk University in Boston,  makes this point quite well in his video lectures for the Teaching Company, Before 1776.

ENLIGHTENMENT FALLACIES AMONG THESE LIFE LIBERTY PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Apparently, reading the Declaration, these are not the only inalienable rights.... 

There are still others, of undetermined number, possibly hundreds, apparently. 

How would you ever know how many unenumerated inalienable rights there are?

ENLIGHTENMENT FALLACIES CAN'T SHAKE A STICK AT ALL OF THEM

How about ' self evident truths '?

ENLIGHTENMENT FALLACIES

Unfortunately, inalienable rights is yet another.....

RE KENNY G COURTESY RANDY FERTEL SITE

https://youtu.be/c0E6a8SMYGc

RE ENLIGHTENMENT FALLACIES EQUALITY BUT MERITOCRACY BUT ALSO RACE

"The overemphasis of demographic characteristics works against an emphasis on ability, because ability is indeed distributed relatively equally among races and genders...." DK

These are difficult related topics to address briefly....

Just for a start:
Not only were or are all men not, ever, created equal,
but not even one man  was ever created equal to any other single one.

SOLITARY POOR NASTY BRUTISH AND SHORT

This is Hobbes' description of his imagined state of nature, where all men are created equal at the start, in that each one can theoretically kill any other one. Leviathan

Hobbes' state of nature is as purely hypothetical, in its way, and as unrealistic as a starting point for anything, as is Rawl's 
' original position '.

It may be better to think of them as utopian counterfactual worlds, and as a starting point for fallacies in reasoning.

RE ENLIGHTENMENT FALLACIES FOUNDING FATHERS CATCH PHRASES ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL

"The overemphasis of demographic characteristics works against an emphasis on ability, because ability is indeed distributed relatively equally among races and genders...." DK

"The emphasis on race and gender as sources of prejudice and obstacles in the workplace in recent decades has been somewhat misleading.  Far too many minority and female Americans seem to feel that white males simply never have problems rising to the top of their field of endeavor by virtue of their "white male privilege." This is, frankly, silly.  Since the founding of the republic, simply being a white male has never been a guarantee of anything...." DK 

I just want to take a short look back, down memory lane, at what phrases like this may have meant, both before  1776, and then.

Most people, including most scholars, believe that this phrase came originally from Locke, and comments made by his contemporaries in New England and elsewhere.

That is not correct. It came from Hobbes. See: state of nature. If you look at Wikipedia only on Locke, or Jefferson, you won't actually see this point.

IT'S BEEN THIS REALLY SINCE LONG BEFORE 1776

"...to bring our long, bitter, useless political crisis to an end and move us into an era of consensus." DK, Feminism and politics

It was always political, structural, and ideological problems both sacred and secular, and inherent problems for a very loose bunch of disparate colonies that then went into wrongful rebellion.

Bostonian Congregationalists were executing Quakers, merely for being Quakers, in the 17th Century, eg Mary Dyer. 

ENLIGHTENMENT FALLACIES

Another installment in this continuing series.

European monarchs and emperors, ' enlightened ' or not, 

' despots ' or not, contrary to popular scholarly belief, did not want to expand, or to reform, the state itself, or the established social order, for the sake of doing so, or for themselves. 

They wanted, at most, to keep the state at its current size, and to preserve the established order, the ancien regime, rather than change it, and even to reverse changes, if anything.

They did want to expand their military, and defend their state, and their dynastic rights, as they saw the need; but for them, at least, this did not necessarily entail anything more regarding reforming or expanding the state for its own sake.

MEDIAN GLOBAL PER CAPITA INCOME THE DOOMSDAY DISCIPLINE

Gallup: $2,920.  Almost certainly, in my judgment, a gross exaggeration.

Almost half, say 40 %,  of all people actually probably live on $1.25 or less a day, per capita.  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17312819

 Re economists' globalist economic average income convergence, their greatest good for the greatest numbers, be careful what you wish for.

ENLIGHTENED DESPOT AND ABSOLUTISM FALLACIES

Sorry. ' Enlightened despot '.  Era of absolutism, etc, etc.

This, enlightenment despotism,  turns out to be yet another enlightenment fallacy.

It is not only that they did not have absolute power...the Czars did, to a great extent; the Sultan was an absolute despot, no doubt.

CLASSIC ECONO POST

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/10/re-krugman-on-friedman-on-japan.html?showComment=1288342076034#c2893555660923881042

THE DOOMSDAY DISCIPLINE I HAVE SAID THIS BEFORE BUT WHY NOT SAY IT AGAIN INCOME CONVERGENCE

is a phenomenon created and promoted by almost all economists, because they all support the concept of economic globalization and integration.

That is why I have called economics The Doomsday Discipline.

They abhor wealth and income divergence, and ignore the 800 pound convergence gorilla in the room.

Piketty, Rodrik, etc., included.

Steingart, I think, is an exception  (The War For Wealth), but, of course, he is not, as I recall, technically, an economist but rather a ' pundit ', a reverse Thomas Friedman, so to speak.

RE DK CURRENT POST

"But Trump could still win, and the United States will still face huge problems even if he loses, because of the almost complete disconnect between our leading economic and intellectual classes on the one hand, and the mass of the American people on the other.  The divide can't help but remind me of France in 1789 or Russia in 1917, and it is up to our leaders to start to close it."

We don't have any real classes here, economic or otherwise, and certainly no intellectual classes to speak of, and frankly never have. They, Trump etc., and certain intellectuals, can kid themselves......  

Sadly, all that was left behind by the rebellion against Britain in 1776.

WHY DO I HAVE SO MANY NEW GUESTS

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Who knows.

RE YELLIN INTEREST RATES

Why raise rates, when you are in a permanent globalization trap?

Terms search: inflation deflation, red herrings, convergence.

RE WHY THE ECONOMIC PAYOFF FROM TECHNOLOGY IS SO ELUSIVE THINK PEACE DIVIDEND

Because it never existed.

Just the latest fad that was designed to enrich only some people,  IT execs, etc., and poor manufacturers and assemblers, many of them elsewhere.

Reminds me of what used to be called a peace dividend. 
What a dream world.

As chimerical as a ' war dividend ' for most US wars, really....
The Romans had apparently asked, first, "what is there there worth having?"

ENLIGHTENMENT VERSUS RELIGION

At the dawn of the Enlightenment, popular religion, both Western Europe and Orthodoxy, were still very much based on omens, miracles, and witchcraft, even in Protestant areas of the book.

However, enlightened persons began to call all religion superstition. 

Yet, on the other hand, they also wanted popular religious observance to continue to serve the interests of the state in keeping order and obedience in society, and of those in rewarding clerical positions in church hierarchies. 

THE BOURGEOISIE enlightenment fallacies

It turns out that this so called class (an anachronism in itself) had more to do with the disastrous Reformation than with the, later, problematic Enlightenment. Wuthnow p 566, 567.

Amen

RE ENLIGHTENMENT FALLACIES BOURGEOIS INITIATIVE

...the first people who tried to translate the enlightenment ideas into practice were members of the government, all of whom, apart from Necker, were nobles.

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/06/re-wuthnows-discussion-of-cultural.html

THE ENLIGHTENMENT BEGAN IT SEEMS

in anti clericalism. 

Even this statement is not very revealing, by itself.

RE ENLIGHTENMENT

It is hundreds of years past time to get a little clarity on this most slippery of intellectual, historical, and political ideas.

Professor Kaiser has discussed the term, as set out in his posts below.

It is a very difficult term to begin to get clear about.

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/search?q=enlightenment

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2014/02/new-worlds-emerging.html

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2011/06/kindred-spirit.html

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2013/01/what-is-happening-to-israel.html

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-emerging-new-world.html

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2013/05/peace-at-last.html

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2011/10/what-chancellor-said.html

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2012/05/bad-news-good-news.html

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-new-world-disorder.html

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2016/02/institutional-failure.html

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-hegelian-president.html

RANDALL COLLINS' CURRENT POST WELL WORTH IT

What Has Micro - Sociology Accomplished?

NPR RE GORILLA VERSUS CHILD ANIMAL RIGHTS DREW PEARSON LIBERAL FALLACY

Say no more.