An Emperor You'd Want to Have a Beer With

Gibbon referring to the Roman Emperor Gallienus (r. 260-268)

"he was master of several curious but useless sciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a skillful gardener, an excellent cook, and a most contemptible prince."

Conservatism in Crisis

One debate among Conservatives who saw this economic crisis coming over the last 2 years(there were not many, but a few) or so has been whether the crisis would lead to, in general, more support for Conservative economic policies, whatever shambles they are left in after W Bush, or less support.
The answer appears to be more and more obvious that the slow train wreck of economic disaster that is unfolding is being blamed on "Bush's Conservative economic policies." Conservatives are going over the cliff because they have never fully detached themselves from Bush like they did from his father. After that detachment they won the Congress in a landslide in 1994. In this decade they made the opposite decision and hitched to an ineffectual, incompetent failure who was not even a Conservative anyway. Its quite inexplicable.

The horrible truth however, is that in general it is conservative economic policies, in the traditional sense, that are needed to get us out of the crisis, not Bush's policies. Purging debt through spending cuts, finding alternatives to the income tax and decentralizing banking are what is needed. This will not avoid the disaster, that is already happening. But they are the only way to perhaps avert a collapse of the entire economy.

I say that with the knowledge that the problems we are experiencing now will accelerate the demographic crisis that is approaching and the mix will collapse the economy. Therefore, if the current crisis is prolonged through bad policies, we could be facing an economic meltdown as the horrible problems of the present meet the calamitous problems of the near future.

Any way you look at it, Conservatism is in crisis, and for any thoughtful Liberals that is also a crisis because a healthy Conservative movement is needed to keep in check the radical Left.

John.

Hart Crane

Mine is a world foregone though not yet ended,-
An imagined garden grey with sundered boughs
And broken branches, wistful and unmended,
And mist that is more constant than all vows.

The Fallacy of Historical Determinism

We know that history moves in a certain direction, thus guiding humanity's actions down certain paths. We know that we live in the great age of democracy in which every nation, more or less, is being moved toward trade liberalization and individual liberty. We know that technology is one of the great driving forces toward this end.

We know all these things therefore they are false. The moment when we know that history is moving in a certain direction is when we lose the impetus to take direct, individual action to continue events moving in that direction. Therefore, history will begin to move in a contradictory direction to what we thought. There are always others in the world who disagree with us, who are pushing or pulling in the opposite direction. The moment that we believe history is moving in our direction we are lulled into inaction in the mistaken belief that action is no longer necessary to achieve the desired result. Humans will never choose to act if they believe they can gain the same result while remaining inactive. Those who disagree with us will then begin to move history in their direction. Ultimately, they too will become paralyzed by their own ideology and if we keep fighting events will turn in our favor again.

One who says he wants to change the world often forgets that the world might want to have a say in that. There are others in other parts of the world saying they want to change it and they are referring to us. Do we not want a say in the matter, in the question of whether and in what direction??

Historical forces are conceived and created by individuals. "Democracy", "Socialism", "Capitalism", all of these were sets of ideas that began in the minds of individuals. It is when these individuals begin to believe they have discovered the direction history is moving that they stop wanting to move it themselves and stagnation and decadence set in.

John.