The history of the 20th Century paints a very clear picture of how liberal orders collapse into authoritarian ones. Contrary to popular belief, liberal orders do not gradually evolve into authoritarian ones by the accumulation of state power. Instead, liberal orders fail suddenly when they cease to provide basic physical and economic security. The functional power of the state decays until conditions reach a degree of disorder that triggers a sudden collapse into an authoritarian order. Ineffectiveness kills the liberal state, not excessive powers.There's a lot more at that post and it's worth reading and absorbing every word of it.
Her thesis clarifies so much. All of the fussing that we're doing about ObamaCare taking over a huge part of the economy shouldn't be around the fact that the government is going to sieze power, but that it will do so and is doomed to fail, just as it has failed with welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and every other monstrous government transfer payment program. Our fiscal doom approaches, not because the government is gorging itself, but because of what it is eating.
The US Dollar is still the currency of commerce across the globe and we trade on that fact every day as we borrow, borrow, borrow. For the US, the cataclysm may come when the Dollar is replaced, even partially, by another currency and we fall into Peronist hyperinflation. At that point, American Exceptionalism will be a thing of the past and we'll discover we're just the same as everyone else when our money becomes worthless.
Conservatives like Doug Hoffman and organizations like the Tea Party movement are more important than you might think. By fighting against government expansion, expansion that is doomed to ineffectiveness, we're preventing the onset of an authoritarian regime.
Wow. How's that for a paradigm change?
Not sure I agree. She is shaving off too many of history's rough edges in order to arrive at a simple thesis.
ReplyDeleteCounterexamples?
ReplyDeleteIt's a kind of silly sub-group, but I've observed something similar in guild organization in Warcraft.
ReplyDeleteThis will be TL;DR unless you're really curious, and there's nothing after it, so feel free to skip to the next comment.
Starts with someone putting the money in to make a "guild," which is basically a bowling club inside of the game.
You get a uniform-shirt, and generally group up with other members of the guild to fight in "dungeons" (4 other people) or raids. (nine and twenty-three other people, use to be thirty-nine other people)
The more people a fight takes, the better treasure you have a chance at getting-- one to three items will be awarded after each "boss."
The person who paid to start the guild, and got the base population recruited, will eventually get tired of organizing everything and dealing with the problems that always show up. (Often, said problems show up in the form of people complaining about how the founder runs the guild.)
So the founder will say something to the effect of "if you're so smart, you run it" and step aside; someone who complained the loudest will get in charge.
Sometimes they grow into the position, in which case it cycles through the founder problem; sometimes, they just do what the loudest complainers and/or their friends say, in which case the guild slowly falls apart because what's the point of working to be prepared if the results of your work will just go to the loudest whiner, anyways?
At the falling-apart point, people either leave for new guilds, or the "give to the loud guys" person gets removed from leadership for someone who has a list of rules five miles long, targeted at stopping all the annoying stuff that destroyed the guild.
Slowly, either the rules relax to reasonable levels after reforming/driving out the whiners and leaches, or the rules are too stupid and/or unevenly enforced and the guild dies altogether.
Sometimes, the founder/official leader will be basically a figure-head, and the entire "change of command" thing will be behind the scenes.
I have, I kid you not honest to God I swear, even seen figure-head guilds that have propaganda officers. Every time stuff gets bad, they pick someone that isn't useful to them, and claim that they're causing trouble-- usually with "whisper campaigns," and generally never saying who they're whispering to-- and kick that person out.