10-02-2020, 04:44 PM
If one is to compare the United States to all the empires of the past, then the United States is now impressive influence, power, stability, and prosperity. The United States may not have be an empire in the sense of having a monarch claiming to be more than a king. Call it (at best) an Empire of Liberty. Its territorial expansion effectively ended about 120 years ago. It has a high win-loss record. Aggressive powers that have thought the Unite States soft and decadent find themselves facing an exhaust-and-kill strategy. If it finds its own weakness it tends to self-correct.
The President of the United States is rarely around long enough to become a doddering old man or to develop the madness of absolute power. Competitve elections prove the right way to deal with politicians becoming too big for their breeches.
So you have read Toynbee's A Study in Civilization? Good. So have I , and I have sought analogs in the civilizations of the past. I am tempted to see the era 1914-1989 as the Time of Troubles of Western Christian Civilization, beginning with Gavrilo Princip assassinating the Archduke and ending on Christmas Day, 1989 with Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu being "ventilated" in the effective end of the Cold War. (OK, Sarajevo is on the fringe between Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as well as the extreme northwestern extension of Islam, and Romania seems a hybrid of Western Christian and Eastern Christian societies. History is not a neat study). There might be several Times of Trouble before the civilization succumbs to the Universal State, a political entity that encompasses practically the whole of a civilization, with the dominant society centralizing all political and economic power and setting rigid standards of conformity for all in an attempt to suppress insurrection and stave off 'barbarian' threats. Cultural life ossifies, becoming uncreative and unimaginative... and further reform is nearly impossible. Novel solutions become unthinkable because such offend the sensibilities of people (typically bureaucracies, bloat of which becomes inevitable). The rest of the world catches up while the Universal State becomes 'rotten' and 'brittle' even though the facade is impressive. People chafing under centralized rule from afar that determines everything welcome liberation by a new set of empire-builders.
The West has had several potential Universal States. Spain at its peak seemed set on transforming England into a satellite state and restoring its domination of the Netherlands while Austria might become the dominant power in Germany. Napoleon held the whole of western Europe except Britain in his hands before his mad invasion of Russia. Wilhelm II's Germany was one decisive victory in 1918 from smashing France and becoming the dominant power in the West . Then came the Third Reich. Finally the Soviet Union suggested a willingness to break through the Fulda Gap and the Alps to sweep all the way to Gibraltar.
The President of the United States is rarely around long enough to become a doddering old man or to develop the madness of absolute power. Competitve elections prove the right way to deal with politicians becoming too big for their breeches.
So you have read Toynbee's A Study in Civilization? Good. So have I , and I have sought analogs in the civilizations of the past. I am tempted to see the era 1914-1989 as the Time of Troubles of Western Christian Civilization, beginning with Gavrilo Princip assassinating the Archduke and ending on Christmas Day, 1989 with Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu being "ventilated" in the effective end of the Cold War. (OK, Sarajevo is on the fringe between Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as well as the extreme northwestern extension of Islam, and Romania seems a hybrid of Western Christian and Eastern Christian societies. History is not a neat study). There might be several Times of Trouble before the civilization succumbs to the Universal State, a political entity that encompasses practically the whole of a civilization, with the dominant society centralizing all political and economic power and setting rigid standards of conformity for all in an attempt to suppress insurrection and stave off 'barbarian' threats. Cultural life ossifies, becoming uncreative and unimaginative... and further reform is nearly impossible. Novel solutions become unthinkable because such offend the sensibilities of people (typically bureaucracies, bloat of which becomes inevitable). The rest of the world catches up while the Universal State becomes 'rotten' and 'brittle' even though the facade is impressive. People chafing under centralized rule from afar that determines everything welcome liberation by a new set of empire-builders.
The West has had several potential Universal States. Spain at its peak seemed set on transforming England into a satellite state and restoring its domination of the Netherlands while Austria might become the dominant power in Germany. Napoleon held the whole of western Europe except Britain in his hands before his mad invasion of Russia. Wilhelm II's Germany was one decisive victory in 1918 from smashing France and becoming the dominant power in the West . Then came the Third Reich. Finally the Soviet Union suggested a willingness to break through the Fulda Gap and the Alps to sweep all the way to Gibraltar.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
