So much for the end of history…
Indispensable men and indispensable nations…
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Dear Reader,
This past Thursday marked the 24th anniversary of the infamous day — Sept. 11, 2001.
I was then resident in New York City, though miles north of the downtown hellscape.
It was a day I wish to forget. Yet it was a day I can never forget.
Not 10 years earlier had the academic Francis Fukuyama — Harvard man — declared the “end of history.”
In his telling, humanity had attained:
Not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
The United States bestrode the world like an overtowering colossus… and placed all potential rivals in its shade.
Its armies safeguarded the four corners of the globe. Its fleets commanded the Seven Seas.
American capitalism, American democracy represented civilization’s apex, its zenith, its perfection.
It was the Pax Americana.
The Avenging Gods
Yet the gods are a jealous lot. Hubris they will not abide.
On Sept. 11, 2001, they decided history would begin anew… and the Pax Americana would yield to the Bellum Americana.
24 years later the United States’ mission civilisatrice to spread democracy the world over is reduced to a grotesque jest.
It proved a bankrupt currency.
The nation gutters along, swaybacked, under $104 trillion of total debt.
One-half of its residents despise the other half.
The divide separates not blue from gray — but blue from red.
Yet it should not surprise you one whit.
The one constant in this world of men… is change.
Today’s first violin is tomorrow’s second fiddle. Today’s top dog is tomorrow’s second banana.
And vice versa.
So it is with business. So it is with nations… and empires.
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Obituaries of Empire
Ancient Athens attained high noon in the fifth century B.C. — “the Golden Age of Athens.”
Athens had led a coalition of Greek city-states that defeated Persian invaders.
It emerged king of the Hellenic world — the United States is not the first power in history to export democracy.
Yet in time Athens began to heave its formidable weight around. Its former allies began seeking a balancing counterweight.
They tied themselves up to the city-state of Sparta.
The 27-year Peloponnesian War that followed ultimately took Athens to its knees… and the Golden Age was no more.
What of Rome?
Rome attained zenith in the second century A.D., under the emperor Trajan.
Rome’s shadow covered Britain in the northwest, Mesopotamia in the east, North Africa in the south — and all points between them.
To what city did all roads lead? That is correct.
Yet the civilizational sinews ultimately weakened… a corrupting rot seeped into the marrows… and Rome began losing its purchase upon power.
Barbarians ultimately breached the walls. Rome fell in 476.
Modern Empires
Now come forward a bit…
The British Empire, on which the sun never set — and on which the blood never dried — reached high noon in 1914, before the Great War.
It would never reclaim it.
The Soviet Empire saw its market cap peak in the 1970s — then collapse to zero on Christmas Day, 1991.
Turn now to these United States.
America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” said Adams (John Quincy).
Yet the once modest American Republic took up the hunt at the end of the 19th century.
It found its first monster in fiendish Spain.
Americans remembered the Maine… and forgot their Adams.
They have been forgetting their Adams ever since.
The United States has gone buccaneering around the globe, chasing down monsters during WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan.
For every one it scotched, another rose in its place. Hitler took over from the Kaiser. Stalin from Hitler. Osama bin Laden from Stalin.
Putin from bin Laden.
There is always another monster. And another.
Regardless: I hazard the United States attained its zenith during the 1990s.
Indispensable Nations
I cited Rome.
It is fashionable in some quarters to compare the present United States to ancient Rome.
The comparisons are often overwrought. Often — but perhaps not always.
From The Empire of Debt, co-written by authors Addison Wiggin and Bill Bonner:
In Rome, the institutions evolved and degraded faster than people’s ideas about them. Romans remembered their Old Republic with its rules and customs. They still thought that was the way the system was supposed to work long after a new system of consuetudo fraudium — habitual cheating — had taken hold…
As time went on, the empire came to resemble less and less the Old Republic that gave it birth. The old virtues were replaced with new vices.
I cannot help but think of these United States as I reflect upon these lines.
I believe our nation shows many of the same telltales, in ways large and small.
Perhaps I am mistaken. I hope I am mistaken.
It is true, many label the United States the “indispensable nation.”
Yet as has been said, the graveyard is full of indispensable men.
I might add that history’s graveyard is full of indispensable nations.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
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