The Sad Tale of History

[PoliticalChic]

1. The period between the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War saw the American economic colossus take form, and momentum. Part of the Republican war effort, aimed to keep California, and California gold in the Union, was the underwriting of national railroads.

2. With the railroads, the consumer base for manufacturers went from local to national, and the United States became the largest national market on earth. And, at some point, the increased capacity of the manufacturing base outstripped the consumer base. The American economy could produce more than Americans needed, with the result that we saw an industrial recession. Agrarian economies generally saw the opposite: needs were greater than production. The experience of the 1890’s suggested a need for foreign markets and colonies. Thus, the Spanish-American War.

3. Since 1900, the fortunes of this nation has allowed the United States to got to war without first accounting for the costs of war. This may, in fact, have changed since 2008, and we may have seen the end of elective wars. But the American economy throughout the 20th century has never demonstrated an ability to thrive in the absence of high military spending, largely based on the need for global markets. In recent decades, the strategy used to co-opt foreign markets, an alternative to war, is ‘free trade. Of course, free trade ultimately results in weaker economies being brought up...but ours down, to some extent.

4. A significant historical anomaly is the period 1945 through 1965, a golden age in many ways. This was the period after the war, when any of our potential competitors were rebuilding from the devastation, making it impossible for the United States economy not to thrive. Beneficiaries included the unions and blue collar high school graduates…who were assured of high paying jobs. Hence the sense that we will always be pre-eminent, and success is a birthright.

That is no longer true, and probably won’t be again, short of a third World War. Yet, that mindset is resistant to change.

5. Without a national commitment to education, and a rededication to the values and work ethic that produced the ‘American colossus,’ and the understanding that there is no longer an entitlement to upward mobility, the glory days of the republic are over.

The ideas above are largely based on those of Professor H.W. Brands, his book “American Colossus: The Triumph of American Capitalism, 1865-1900.”

 

[Pepe]

When the next great Edward Gibbons comes along and writes "The Decline and Fall of the Amerikan Empire" these points in your post will be seen as prophetic.

 

[PoliticalChic]

When the next great Edward Gibbons comes along and writes "The Decline and Fall of the Amerikan Empire" these points in your post will be seen as prophetic.

Pepe, to paraphrase the great man, my heart tells me it isn't so, but my head says it is.

I've seen the degregation of ethics, and of the education system...

 

[william the wie]

I think you two are using the wrong section of the timeline in your analogy. Treating the first and second Punic Wars as WWI and WWII we could well be headed towards the wind up of the third Punic and fourth Macedonian wars but they ended in 146BC. Given that the Eastern, Byzantine, Empire died in 1453 we've got about 1600 years to go.

 

[Flopper]

1. The period between the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War saw the American economic colossus take form, and momentum. Part of the Republican war effort, aimed to keep California, and California gold in the Union, was the underwriting of national railroads.

2. With the railroads, the consumer base for manufacturers went from local to national, and the United States became the largest national market on earth. And, at some point, the increased capacity of the manufacturing base outstripped the consumer base. The American economy could produce more than Americans needed, with the result that we saw an industrial recession. Agrarian economies generally saw the opposite: needs were greater than production. The experience of the 1890’s suggested a need for foreign markets and colonies. Thus, the Spanish-American War.

3. Since 1900, the fortunes of this nation has allowed the United States to got to war without first accounting for the costs of war. This may, in fact, have changed since 2008, and we may have seen the end of elective wars. But the American economy throughout the 20th century has never demonstrated an ability to thrive in the absence of high military spending, largely based on the need for global markets. In recent decades, the strategy used to co-opt foreign markets, an alternative to war, is ‘free trade. Of course, free trade ultimately results in weaker economies being brought up...but ours down, to some extent.

4. A significant historical anomaly is the period 1945 through 1965, a golden age in many ways. This was the period after the war, when any of our potential competitors were rebuilding from the devastation, making it impossible for the United States economy not to thrive. Beneficiaries included the unions and blue collar high school graduates…who were assured of high paying jobs. Hence the sense that we will always be pre-eminent, and success is a birthright.

That is no longer true, and probably won’t be again, short of a third World War. Yet, that mindset is resistant to change.

5. Without a national commitment to education, and a rededication to the values and work ethic that produced the ‘American colossus,’ and the understanding that there is no longer an entitlement to upward mobility, the glory days of the republic are over.

The ideas above are largely based on those of Professor H.W. Brands, his book “American Colossus: The Triumph of American Capitalism, 1865-1900.”

People don't just change their values and work ethics because of politically movements or government programs. These types of changes come out of personal experiences. The toughing of the national fiber that resulted from the Great Depression and WWII was responsible for much of the growth in the last half of the 20th century. Work ethics are not something you learn out of a book. It comes from the experiences of you and your family. I really don't know where that is going to come from today.

 

[PoliticalChic]

.”

People don't just change their values and work ethics because of politically movements or government programs. These types of changes come out of personal experiences. The toughing of the national fiber that resulted from the Great Depression and WWII was responsible for much of the growth in the last half of the 20th century. Work ethics are not something you learn out of a book. It comes from the experiences of you and your family. I really don't know where that is going to come from today.

I think you are taking far too superficial view of the last 50 years...

"The breakup of this 300-year-old consensus on the work ethic began with the cultural protests of the 1960s, which questioned and discarded many traditional American virtues. The roots of this breakup lay in what Daniel Bell described in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism as the rejection of traditional bourgeois qualities by late-nineteenth-century European artists and intellectuals who sought “to substitute for religion or morality an aesthetic justification of life.” By the 1960s, that modernist tendency had evolved into a credo of self-fulfillment in which “nothing is forbidden, all is to be explored,” Bell wrote. Out went the Protestant ethic’s prudence, thrift, temperance, self-discipline, and deferral of gratification. Weakened along with all these virtues that made up the American work ethic was Americans’ belief in the value of work itself. Along with “turning on” and “tuning in,” the sixties protesters also “dropped out.” As the editor of the 1973 American Work Ethic noted, “affluence, hedonism and radicalism” were turning many Americans away from work and the pursuit of career advancement…

Attitudes toward businessmen changed, too. While film and television had formerly offered a balanced portrait of work and employers, notes film critic Michael Medved in Hollywood vs. America, from the mid-1960s onward, movies and TV portrayed business executives almost exclusively as villains or buffoons…portrayals both reflected and strengthened the baby-boom generation’s attitudes. One 1969 Fortune poll, for instance, found that 92 percent of college students thought business executives were too profit-minded…in the mid-1960s, [many] abandoned the notion of rewarding traditional bourgeois virtues like completing an education or marrying…[instead] political correctness: in the new version, recycling trash and contributing to save an endangered species were virtuous actions…[and] tolerance and sensitivity, expanded like a gas to fill the vacuum where the Protestant ethic used to be.

The cultural upheavals of the era spurred deep changes in institutions that traditionally transmitted the work ethic—especially the schools. University education departments began to tell future grammar school teachers that they should replace the traditional teacher-centered curriculum, aimed at producing educated citizens who embraced a common American ethic, with a new, child-centered approach that treats every pupil’s “personal development” as different and special. During the 1960s, when intellectuals and college students dismissed traditional American values as oppressive barriers to fulfillment, grammar schools generally jettisoned the traditional curriculum. “Education professors eagerly joined New Left professors to promote the idea that any top-down imposition of any curriculum would be a right-wing plot designed to perpetuate the dominant white, male, bourgeois power structure,” writes education reformer E. D. Hirsch, Jr., in his forthcoming The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools."
Whatever Happened to the Work Ethic? by Steven Malanga, City Journal Summer 2009

 

[saveliberty]

At this point, "progress" without a corresponding responsibility on the consumer and producer to pay the real costs means social and economic collapse.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I think you two are using the wrong section of the timeline in your analogy. Treating the first and second Punic Wars as WWI and WWII we could well be headed towards the wind up of the third Punic and fourth Macedonian wars but they ended in 146BC. Given that the Eastern, Byzantine, Empire died in 1453 we've got about 1600 years to go.

I'm going to make believe that you are serious about this, Willie...so let's consider some alterations that history has provided.

1. War is a human enterprise; the essence of war is human nature.

2. The “West” is the culture that originated in Greece, spread to Rome, permeated Northern Europe, was incorporated by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, spread through British expansionism, and is associated today primarily with Europe, the United States, and the former commonwealth countries of Britain- as well as, to some extent, nations like Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, which have incorporated some Western ideas.

3. Let us consider some changes that have occured to Western thinking since the wars to which you refer: a commitment to constitutional or limited government, freedom of the individual, religious freedom in a sense that precluded religious tyranny, respect for property rights, faith in free markets, capitalism, and an openness to rationalism or to the explanation of natural phenomena through reason. Combined in various ways, these ideas, and the resultant system creates more prosperity and affluence than any other.

a. Applying reason, and capitalism to the battlefield, powerful innovations come about, from flints, to rifle barrels to mini balls, etc. The application of capitalism to military affairs, the marriage of private self-interest and patriotism, provide armies with food, supplies, and munitions in a manner far more efficient than state-run command-and-control alternatives.

4. But, in comparison to similarly matched armies meeting on an hypothetical battlefield, today we see a new factor or condition of warfare: "asymmetry." Western culture creates citizens who are affluent, leisured, free, and protected. Human nature being what it is, we citizens of the West often want to enjoy our bounty and retreat into private lives—to go home, eat pizza, and watch television. This is nothing new. I would refer you to Petronius's Satyricon, a banquet scene written around 60 A.D. about affluent Romans who make fun of the soldiers who are up on the Rhine protecting them. This is what Rome had become. And it's not easy to convince someone who has the good life to fight against someone who doesn't, and, in fact, someone who yearns for death rather than life.

The newest weapon is the so-difficult-to-detect, 'homicide bomber.'
The last time these two combatants faced each other, King John Sobieski didn't face same.

See Victor Davis Hanson @https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2009&month=11

 

[william the wie]

All true PC but the key component is a lack of ME food production. The Gulf has nothing Russia needs so there is likely to be less of a problem with Muslim fundamentalists in the near future.

 

[saveliberty]

The essence of war is pain, suffering, loss and waste.

 

[PoliticalChic]

All true PC but the key component is a lack of ME food production. The Gulf has nothing Russia needs so there is likely to be less of a problem with Muslim fundamentalists in the near future.

Willie...did you just finish a book by Thomas Malthus???

"...less of a problem with Muslim fundamentalists in the near future..."
Did you get a chance to see my thread on "The Clock Ticks: Offensive Jihad"?

 

[PoliticalChic]

The essence of war is pain, suffering, loss and waste.

I'm certain that you are not saying that there is never a reason for war, are you?

I'm sure you've seen this quote of John Stuart Mill's:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.


Assuming that you agree with the above quotation, you might find this, from Beck and Balfe, "Broke," p. 323, a reasonable approach to a national policy:

a. We will not deal with other nations beyond the manner with which they deal with us.

b. We will not prop up corrupt and dangerous governments simply because they have enemies that are also our enemies.

c. We behave in accordance with our values rather than the need for commodities that a nation has.

d. If we must fight, we will fight to win, rather than ‘humanely,’ or in some ‘symmetrical’ manner: minimizing damage is not a consideration of war.

e. We will not rebuild nations that we have been forced to go to war with.

I would be interested in your appraisal.

 

[Wry Catcher]

1. The period between the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War saw the American economic colossus take form, and momentum. Part of the Republican war effort, aimed to keep California, and California gold in the Union, was the underwriting of national railroads.

2. With the railroads, the consumer base for manufacturers went from local to national, and the United States became the largest national market on earth. And, at some point, the increased capacity of the manufacturing base outstripped the consumer base. The American economy could produce more than Americans needed, with the result that we saw an industrial recession. Agrarian economies generally saw the opposite: needs were greater than production. The experience of the 1890’s suggested a need for foreign markets and colonies. Thus, the Spanish-American War.

3. Since 1900, the fortunes of this nation has allowed the United States to got to war without first accounting for the costs of war. This may, in fact, have changed since 2008, and we may have seen the end of elective wars. But the American economy throughout the 20th century has never demonstrated an ability to thrive in the absence of high military spending, largely based on the need for global markets. In recent decades, the strategy used to co-opt foreign markets, an alternative to war, is ‘free trade. Of course, free trade ultimately results in weaker economies being brought up...but ours down, to some extent.

4. A significant historical anomaly is the period 1945 through 1965, a golden age in many ways. This was the period after the war, when any of our potential competitors were rebuilding from the devastation, making it impossible for the United States economy not to thrive. Beneficiaries included the unions and blue collar high school graduates…who were assured of high paying jobs. Hence the sense that we will always be pre-eminent, and success is a birthright.

That is no longer true, and probably won’t be again, short of a third World War. Yet, that mindset is resistant to change.

5. Without a national commitment to education, and a rededication to the values and work ethic that produced the ‘American colossus,’ and the understanding that there is no longer an entitlement to upward mobility, the glory days of the republic are over.

The ideas above are largely based on those of Professor H.W. Brands, his book “American Colossus: The Triumph of American Capitalism, 1865-1900.”

See the link to the Gilded Age, below:

The Gilded Age

 

[PoliticalChic]

1. The period between the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War saw the American economic colossus take form, and momentum. Part of the Republican war effort, aimed to keep California, and California gold in the Union, was the underwriting of national railroads.

2. With the railroads, the consumer base for manufacturers went from local to national, and the United States became the largest national market on earth. And, at some point, the increased capacity of the manufacturing base outstripped the consumer base. The American economy could produce more than Americans needed, with the result that we saw an industrial recession. Agrarian economies generally saw the opposite: needs were greater than production. The experience of the 1890’s suggested a need for foreign markets and colonies. Thus, the Spanish-American War.

3. Since 1900, the fortunes of this nation has allowed the United States to got to war without first accounting for the costs of war. This may, in fact, have changed since 2008, and we may have seen the end of elective wars. But the American economy throughout the 20th century has never demonstrated an ability to thrive in the absence of high military spending, largely based on the need for global markets. In recent decades, the strategy used to co-opt foreign markets, an alternative to war, is ‘free trade. Of course, free trade ultimately results in weaker economies being brought up...but ours down, to some extent.

4. A significant historical anomaly is the period 1945 through 1965, a golden age in many ways. This was the period after the war, when any of our potential competitors were rebuilding from the devastation, making it impossible for the United States economy not to thrive. Beneficiaries included the unions and blue collar high school graduates…who were assured of high paying jobs. Hence the sense that we will always be pre-eminent, and success is a birthright.

That is no longer true, and probably won’t be again, short of a third World War. Yet, that mindset is resistant to change.

5. Without a national commitment to education, and a rededication to the values and work ethic that produced the ‘American colossus,’ and the understanding that there is no longer an entitlement to upward mobility, the glory days of the republic are over.

The ideas above are largely based on those of Professor H.W. Brands, his book “American Colossus: The Triumph of American Capitalism, 1865-1900.”

See the link to the Gilded Age, below:

The Gilded Age

Yes, interesting link...I'm familiar with the period.

Brands' work covers the period between the end of the Civil War, to the turn of the century, but I thought the part that I included in the OP was more applicable to our situation.

If you have an interest in the period, here are some additional notes:

1. The period from the end of the Civil War to the Spanish-American War saw dramatic changes in the industrialization of the American economy. The period was unusual in several ways, including that it was the single longest stretch in American history without an organized, official war.

2. A major player during this era, Teddy Roosevelt was the only President who actually valued war! He viewed it as a test of an individual’s character, and of a nation’s soul. Unlike Presidents who explained war as some sort of necessary evil, Teddy glorified war! In a 1897 speech to the Naval War College, Roosevelt said “All the triumphs of peace pale besides the triumphs of war!”

a. By explanation, Teddy idolized his father as “the greatest man I have ever known.” But Teddy saw one glaring flaw: he hadn’t served in the military during the Civil War. Actually, he was an Allotment Commission, tasked to speak to soldiers and get them to allot part of their pay to their wives and children; in very fact, this might have supported the war efforts more than being some staff officer. But Teddy’s younger sister, Corinne, said that the youthful Theodore felt that this one factor kept his father from being the ‘perfect man.’ And he, Teddy, strove to correct this ‘failure’ of his father: he would be part of a war!

3. Teddy Roosevelt quit his Washington, D.C. as assistant secretary of the navy to join a volunteer troop to fight in Cuba. Many thought this foolhardy, and a career-ender, but he needed his ‘test of his manhood.’ His feats at the Battle of San Juan Hill proved his mettle to himself, he described it as his ‘crowded hour.’ No longer was he driven by this need, and, in fact, could almost be considered a pacifist after this. His greatest pride was his Nobel Peace Prize. In Norway, on May 5, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for is mediation of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the first to go to an American President, TR suggested that a world organization be created to prevent war, “a League of Peace.” Chace, “1912,” p. 20. Unlike Wilson’s idea, it would be predicated on an armed force.

4. “Brands’ First Law of History: Sooner of later, every nation gets the foreign policy that it can afford.” Early in our history, wars were smaller, somewhat ‘frontier wars:’ the Revolution, 1812, the Mexican War…the Civil War may be considered an exception. Even the Spanish-American began as a Caribbean skirmish, and expanded into across the Pacific.

a. The 20th century saw two great, international wars, and then wars more frequent than generational wars, instead more in step with the nation’s economic fortunes: by 1900, the United States was the most powerful economic force in the world- yet with a relatively unambitious foreign policy vis-à-vis other powers. We retained a 19th century mindset.

b. From 1941 onward, we have never wavered from the belief that everything that happens in the world is our concern.

5. At the time of the Civil War, we were only marginally industrialized. But there is a synergy between war and industrialization…we accelerated economically. An often overlooked factor that was associated with the start of the war was critical for the industrialization of American: when the South seceded, the Democratic Party abdicated its role in national politics leaving- for the first time- a party in complete control that was overtly friendly to business interest. The federal government aided business as follows:

a. “…the Republican-dominated Congress ratcheted up tariff rates throughout the war, beginning in 1862 with the Morill Tariff Act, which reversed the downward trend instituted by the … Subsequent tariff legislation, especially the 1864 act, raised rates further. Protective tariffs were politically popular among manufacturers, northern laborers, and even some commercial farmers.” 1861-1865: The Civil War

b. National banking and national currency. National Bank Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

c. Authorization of transcontinental rail roads, aimed at keeping California in the union. The gold from California was essential to the war effort, and there was sentiment in California to secede after the South did, not to join the South, but to form an independent republic. Of five railroads built, only the last was done entirely with private funds. Thus the tenuous links to California became solid and fixed: instead of four weeks or months, the trip took four days! A great boon to business!

6. While the Republicans owned the presidency from 1860 to 1932, with the exception of Cleveland and Wilson, as well as the Senate, the period between 1874 and 1894, saw a Democratic House. Even so, with the presidency and the Senate, the Republicans controlled Supreme Court nominations, and so had the majority of business oriented decisions. It should be recalled that prior to the 1924 election of Coolidge, and partially until LBJ in the 60’s, both parties had conservative and liberal wings. Since then, both parties have been ‘cleansed’ of opposition ideas.

 

[Toro]

Three in the OP is a fallacy. Free trade has not brought this nation down. In fact it is quite the opposite. Since WWII the growth of trade has outstripped economic growth meaning that trade has become more important, not less.

As for war, GDP has risen pretty much continuously for the past 65 years even as military spending has declined relatively. In fact the economy has grown at pretty much the same pace for at least the past 140 years regardless of the level of military spending.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Three in the OP is a fallacy. Free trade has not brought this nation down. In fact it is quite the opposite. Since WWII the growth of trade has outstripped economic growth meaning that trade has become more important, not less.

As for war, GDP has risen pretty much continuously for the past 65 years even as military spending has declined relatively. In fact the economy has grown at pretty much the same pace for at least the past 140 years regardless of the level of military spending.

"Free trade has not brought this nation down."

Neither the OP nor Brands state that it has done so.

 

[william the wie]

All true PC but the key component is a lack of ME food production. The Gulf has nothing Russia needs so there is likely to be less of a problem with Muslim fundamentalists in the near future.

Willie...did you just finish a book by Thomas Malthus???

Nope, read him decades ago history proved his thesis false.

"...less of a problem with Muslim fundamentalists in the near future..."
Did you get a chance to see my thread on "The Clock Ticks: Offensive Jihad"?

I'm just looking at the costs of food imports and who the possible exporters are.

 

[Toro]

Three in the OP is a fallacy. Free trade has not brought this nation down. In fact it is quite the opposite. Since WWII the growth of trade has outstripped economic growth meaning that trade has become more important, not less.

As for war, GDP has risen pretty much continuously for the past 65 years even as military spending has declined relatively. In fact the economy has grown at pretty much the same pace for at least the past 140 years regardless of the level of military spending.

"Free trade has not brought this nation down."

Neither the OP nor Brands state that it has done so.

yes it does. Read it again. It says it brings weaker economies up and ours down.

 

[saveliberty]

The essence of war is pain, suffering, loss and waste.

I'm certain that you are not saying that there is never a reason for war, are you?

I'm sure you've seen this quote of John Stuart Mill's:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.


Assuming that you agree with the above quotation, you might find this, from Beck and Balfe, "Broke," p. 323, a reasonable approach to a national policy:

a. We will not deal with other nations beyond the manner with which they deal with us.

b. We will not prop up corrupt and dangerous governments simply because they have enemies that are also our enemies.

c. We behave in accordance with our values rather than the need for commodities that a nation has.

d. If we must fight, we will fight to win, rather than ‘humanely,’ or in some ‘symmetrical’ manner: minimizing damage is not a consideration of war.

e. We will not rebuild nations that we have been forced to go to war with.

I would be interested in your appraisal.

I agree wholeheartedly with c,d and e. To a lesser degree a as I see it in conflict with d. While I would like to be able to support b at every turn, politically it does have advantages on many ocassions.

 

[Toro]

The essence of war is pain, suffering, loss and waste.

I'm certain that you are not saying that there is never a reason for war, are you?

I'm sure you've seen this quote of John Stuart Mill's:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.


Assuming that you agree with the above quotation, you might find this, from Beck and Balfe, "Broke," p. 323, a reasonable approach to a national policy:

a. We will not deal with other nations beyond the manner with which they deal with us.

b. We will not prop up corrupt and dangerous governments simply because they have enemies that are also our enemies.

c. We behave in accordance with our values rather than the need for commodities that a nation has.

d. If we must fight, we will fight to win, rather than ‘humanely,’ or in some ‘symmetrical’ manner: minimizing damage is not a consideration of war.

e. We will not rebuild nations that we have been forced to go to war with.

I would be interested in your appraisal.

I agree wholeheartedly with c,d and e. To a lesser degree a as I see it in conflict with d. While I would like to be able to support b at every turn, politically it does have advantages on many ocassions.

We do not fight to win wars outright. We could wipe out any nation on earth in five seconds if we so choose. But we don't. We use restraint.