Copyright © 2004 Joseph George Caldwell. All rights reserved. Posted at Internet website http://www.foundationwebsite.org. May be copied or reposted for non-commercial use, with attribution to author and website. (7 November 2004, updated 20 November 2004, 5 December 2004, 11 December 2004)
Contents
Miscellany: Commentary on Recent Events and Reading. 1
Remembering Treviso, Italy. 41
Summary
This article discusses the likely future of the United States, Canada, and the industrialized world as global petroleum supplies exhaust. In particular, it examines the role that America’s policies of mass immigration, massive illegal immigration, open borders, and massive international trade will play. As global oil supplies exhaust, the high-population industrialized world will collapse, and global population will return to its historical low levels. The significant issue at hand is what steps will be taken over the next few years, prior to the collapse of the global industrialized world, to preserve the biosphere and prevent the extinction of mankind.
America’s Future under Mass Immigration
A week or so ago I wrote, in Miscellany7, a piece entitled, “Some Remarks on Immigration.” In it I expressed the view that it was too late to do anything about immigration in the US and Canada. Since 1950, the populations of both countries have doubled, mainly from immigration. Since 1965, when the US passed the Immigration Act of 1965, which promoted immigration from alien cultures around the world, the US population has almost doubled, and the racial/ethnic mix of the country has been substantially altered. What was once the dominant Northern European majority is no longer in control of the country.
So what is next? Now that the US has given its country away to mass immigration, what is likely to happen next? Well, it’s not very pretty. The America of the Second World War is gone. The only way that it would ever return is for the Europeans of America to expel most of the immigrants who have arrived since the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed, and that is not going to happen.
What will likely happen, however, is civil war. And it will happen as soon as Hubbert’s Peak passes. Industrial society runs on oil. As soon as global production starts to fall, global conflict will occur as the world’s nations start to compete for the remaining shrinking supply. (For new readers, Hubbert’s Curve is a curve showing total global production of oil, by year. Up to the present time, 2004, the curve shows actual annual production. From this point on, it shows estimated (predicted) annual production. It is approximately a bell-shaped curve that started rising rapidly about 1950, peaks sometime in the current decade, and, barring a global catastrophe, declines to near-zero by 2050. The high portion of the curve near the center is called Hubbert’s Peak. The curve is named after the geologist M. King Hubbert, who developed a reliable methodology for predicting the “future” part of the curve.)
In the United States and Canada, at some point, things will start to get very bad, economically. Both economies are now totally dependent on massive international trade and on a high, sustained population growth rate (which provides demand for all kinds of products and services). But the industrial activity of the US and Canada (and all other industrial nations) is heavily dependent on oil, and there is no comparable cheap-energy substitute. As global oil production starts to fall, ethnic strife will paralyze both countries.
How Did It Happen?
As long as the world was awash in cheap oil, few people complained too loudly about mass immigration. It was not stealing many people’s jobs, and those who were displaced either found different ones or were too weak politically to complain. In fact, mass immigration was a tremendous boost to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP, the total value of all goods and services produced domestically). There was some discomfort / dislocation, as certain kinds of jobs were taken over by immigrants. For example, all landscaping in Charlotte, North Carolina, (where I lived for a while) is now done by Mexicans, and the textile town of LaGrange, Georgia, is now 100 percent Mexican. The displaced people, part of a dynamic global economy, by and large moved on to other jobs, for better or worse. And the population, greatly expanded by mass immigration, generated massive demand for all kinds of products and services – homes, cars, furniture, appliances, restaurants, schools, hospitals, roads, electricity, agriculture – you name it.
Some people had their neighborhoods ruined when an extended immigrant family of twenty moved into the house next door (designed for a family of six), property values dropped, and they lost money on the sale of their house. But overall, most people were not harmed, or were actually better off economically, because of mass immigration. So they may have grumbled a little, but most people didn’t complain. A few prescient souls, like Arthur M. Schlesinger (The Disuniting of America), Georgie Anne Geyer (Americans No More) and Peter Brimelow (Alien Nation) wrote books warning that a massive influx of immigrants could not be assimilated, and would balkanize the country.
The oligarchs in charge of the country were much better off because of mass immigration. With a doubled population and increased industrial production, the wealthy owners of the country became rich beyond their wildest dreams. The number of billionaires exploded. Large numbers of instant millionaires were created, as the economic engine raced out of control, consuming everything in its path, converting more and more of nature to manmade waste. The oligarchs did not mind the fact that political power was slipping from the dominant Northern European ethnic group – it actually served their purposes. In the global economy, power is in the hands of the economic elite – plutocrats. They have little interest in sharing it with any political group, other than that founded on industrial production and material wealth. The dilution of political power based on ethnic or cultural cohesiveness suited their plans. That mass immigration would both fuel the economy and destroy the dominant Northern European culture was a double bonus. To them, culture-based nationalism is simply an obstacle to generation of wealth. The weaker it is, the more efficient the economic system can be. The thing that they never took into account, however, is that cultural and spiritual power do not need any oil to support them. When the oil is gone, the economic power disappears. At that time, cultural and spiritual power will return.
The wealthy profited handsomely from the economic and political weakening of America’s “middle class” – as mass immigration continued, the “gap” between the wealthy and the rest of the population widened. Owners and managers of companies now earn many more times what the workers do, than before. The quality of life for the “average” American has fallen dramatically. The environment in which Americans could once hunt and fish and commune with nature is now mainly in the hands of the wealthy and off-limits to most people – standing room only after a year’s wait is all that most Americans can now experience of nature in this once-grand land. In 1950, a middle-class American man could, on his own average income, afford a house and a car, and his wife could stay at home to be with the children, if she wished. Today, it is unlikely that an average young couple will ever own their own home, unless both work in the competitive labor market. Women had entered the workforce in large numbers temporarily in World War II, but they went back home after the War. As mass immigration depressed real wages subsequent to the Immigration Act of 1965, however, it became impossible for a man to provide a family with a traditional American lifestyle on his income alone. Mass immigration contributed significantly to the destruction of the nuclear single-family, on which America’s culture was founded (although a much more important factor was massive international “free” (low-tariff) trade, which forced US workers / families to compete with slave wages in third-world countries).
In recent times, mass immigration to the United States began with the Immigration Act of 1965, which promoted increased immigration from alien cultures. It evidently did not occur to many members of the dominant cultural group (Northern Europeans) at the time of the passing of the Immigration Act of 1965 that as immigration from foreign cultures soared, they would soon lose control of their country. Some people wrote books about it, and people like Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina warned that our culture would be destroyed by mass immigration from alien cultures. But everybody was making money, and no one wanted to hear this. The future generation could worry about that. Well, the future is now. The older generation of Americans carelessly tossed their – actually, your – cultural hegemony away. And the younger generation of Americans will now pay the price for their foolishness.
The Immigration Act of 1965 had two essential aspects to it. First, it allowed for more immigration. Second, it tremendously increased immigration from cultures other than the Northern European culture that dominated the United States at the time (and for the previous several decades). Had the Act allowed only for a continuation of immigration from Northern European cultures, the effects of the resulting mass immigration would have been simply more industrial activity, diminution of the quality of life from overcrowding, and more destruction of the environment. But because it provided for mass immigration from alien cultures – non-Northern-European cultures – one of the major effects of the Act was the weakening of the dominant culture in the US. This is what concerned Senator Sam Ervin and others so much. The country would move from having a strong, dominant culture to a hodge-podge of many different cultures. The culture that had made America strong and just would gradually fade away, as it was replaced by other cultures – cultures that were very different from American culture with respect to basic values, behavior, and performance. With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, America had begun the process of transforming itself from a strong, Northern-European culture, to a weak, third-world culture. As it turned out, this transformation would not take very long at all.
The dominant culture of a strong nation is highly homogeneous with respect to language, race, religion, ideology and cultural / ethnic heritage. The culture-destroying aspect of the Act would weaken the country and eventually destroy it. The effects of this would become very evident as the country began to exhibit political and social paralysis from the phenomenon known as “tyranny of the minority” – in a democracy, the inability of the dominant cultural group to have its way, because its desires can easily be thwarted by minorities or coalitions of minorities. As long as minority populations are disenfranchised, or very small in size, the dominant majority has its way, and the country is very stable socially and politically. As the dominant majority loses its position and power, the country becomes destabilized. Eventually, as what was once the dominant culture is overwhelmed, and the country is finished as a strong nation.
Each year, the population of the US and Canada increased by more than one percent. Now (2004), the US population is 294 million and the Canada population is about 32 million. In many places, people from alien cultures now outnumber those from European culture. The immigration invasion started with the Immigration Act of 1965, and now, after forty years, it is complete – the dominant Northern European culture that built America is no longer in charge.
Illegal Immigration – Out of Control
In addition to four decades of mass legal immigration, the United States has also experienced four decades of mass illegal immigration. The number of illegal aliens crossing the US border now exceeds the number of legal immigrants.
Mass illegal immigration has be going on for many years. Long ago, the US government made a conscious decision not to close our borders to illegal immigration. Why would they have done this? There are several reasons. Many businessmen liked having cheap labor, and all businessmen liked the increased business resulting from providing goods and services to immigrants of all kinds, legal or illegal. Immigration was good for business, mass immigration was even better, and the government did not concern itself with the fact that it would eventually destroy the existing dominant culture that had created the system in the first place. It seemed that most people were happy with the situation. The economy was growing, people had jobs, and lots of people were making lots of money. In addition, the plutocrats were pleased to see the political power of the dominant cultural majority being sapped. So were all of the cultural minorities, even though they were very well treated in contemporary America.
The situation is now totally out of control. Police in Atlanta, Georgia, for example, are forbidden to arrest illegal aliens, on the grounds that the local facilities can’t handle them. On a recent CNN television program about immigration (Immigrant Nation, Divided Country), Asa Hutchinson, Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security of the Department of Homeland Security, was asked why the government was not deporting all illegal aliens. His response, incredible as it may seem, was that it did not seem humane to deport a family whose two children were US citizens (under the US policy of granting birthright citizenship to all babies born on US soil, regardless of circumstances).
According to the CNN program, there are now an estimated 7-20 million illegal aliens in the country. If you add in those who were granted amnesty a few years ago (about three million), plus their dependents and offspring, plus immigrants whom they sponsored after receiving citizenship, the number of illegal and amnestied aliens and their progeny and sponsoreds is closer to 10-30 million. That is, about one-in-twenty to one-in-ten people in the US are illegal aliens, or amnestied illegal aliens, or their progeny and sponsoreds. Illegal aliens are now in many parts of the country, and in many local areas they outnumber or have altogether replaced the native-born European-culture population.
The CNN program interviewed employers who spoke highly of their illegal-alien employees. A few years ago, employers who hired illegal aliens were subject to stiff penalties. Today, they flaunt violation of the law with impunity, on national television. No hidden cameras needed for this documentary.
All over the country, the federal, state, and local governments are turning a blind
eye to illegal immigration. The country is no longer enforcing its laws with
respect to illegal immigration. If you call the police to report an illegal
alien, nothing will be done about it. When an illegal alien is discovered by
the police, they do nothing about it. In fact, parts of our government are
busily working to extend citizenship to illegal aliens, and state and local
governments are proving free social services to them.
The country has now been invaded by tens of millions of illegal aliens, and the government has chosen to do nothing about it (“ignore” is not the right word here – the government, by its inaction and its actions, such as providing free social services, such as education, to illegal aliens, is actually motivating, encouraging and promoting illegal migration). But if you, as a US citizen, take steps to repel this invasion by force, you risk prison and execution. It does not even matter if you are a farmer in Arizona, and illegal aliens are invading your property. You are not entitled to defend your property by shooting them, or even by incarcerating them and transporting them back to Mexico.
The Future of an America with a Bloated, Ethnically Diverse Population, as Global Oil Exhausts
When a government does not enforce its own laws, it has abandoned the rule of law. At that point, if these laws are significant, people lose respect for it. But when it even goes so far as to prohibit law-abiding citizens from enforcing the laws, and people want those laws enforced, then it is begging for civil strife. If it does not change, the result is coup d’état, civil war or revolution.
So what will likely happen next? Well, as long as the global oil flows, things will continue as in the past. Each year, another million legal aliens and 2-3 million illegal aliens will cross our borders. Each year, our country will become more crowded, and the former dominant cultural group will become weaker. Each year, the environment will be degraded further, from the presence of more people and more industrial activity (each new immigrant results in the paving of at least an additional acre of land). Each year, we will move farther away from supporting ourselves on solar agriculture (thereby making our fall all the harder, when fossil fuels exhaust). Each year, the oligarchs / plutocrats will become wealthier, as the global population of people living in abject poverty swells and the biosphere is destroyed. Each year, the quality of life for the average US citizen will degrade. Each year, mass immigration will continue, and illegal aliens will remain on our soil, and nothing will be done about it. Until global oil production starts to fall. Until the oil starts to run out.
When Hubbert’s Peak is passed, and global oil production starts to decrease, the world will encounter serious economic difficulties. Since the US is so dependent on international trade, things will get bad in the US – and in Canada and every other industrialized country of the world. Had the US retained a homogeneous dominant (Northern European) culture, things could have worked out. At the very least, the country would have had a chance at a graceful decline, as global petroleum supplies exhausted. With a common culture and a much smaller population, we would have stuck together, focused our attention on the problem, and, as a homogeneous group, emerged as an intact culture. We could have remained strong against other countries of the world during the global decline in oil production. With closed borders (zero immigration, no tourists, no trade) and a stable, homogeneous culture, we would certainly have remained secure against individual terrorists or small bands of terrorists, such as those who attacked the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
After forty years of mass immigration (both legal and illegal) from alien cultures, this will not happen. Instead, as global oil production starts to fall, ethnic strife will explode in the US and in Canada, and in every other country that is culturally heterogeneous and highly dependent on oil. There is now no turning back to basic (solar-energy-based) agriculture, since the population has soared to levels that can no longer be supported by solar agriculture. People will become desperate for jobs (or land), and they will turn, in frustration, against those of different ethnic backgrounds. When resources no longer support the population in an area, someone has to go, and it is always those who are “different” from you (with respect to anything – language, race, religion, ideology, ethnicity).
So what is the likely course of events? Eventually, as global oil production starts to decline, the industrial world will collapse, and this collapse will be catastrophic. Initially, as global oil production peaks, we will see strains and “cracks” in the system. At first, sporadic violence will occur. People will become very sensitized to the immigration issue, as it becomes apparent how mass immigration in general, and mass immigration from alien cultures in particular, have weakened the country and made it so vulnerable to attack and to catastrophic collapse. At that time, some illegal aliens will return to their home countries. Increasingly, law-abiding US and Canadian citizens will request their governments to enforce their own laws, stop aiding and abetting illegal aliens, and repel the alien invasion. Local governments will complain that they are powerless to do anything – they don’t have the staff or facilities, and cannot risk being charged with “racial profiling” to investigate reports of illegal aliens or conduct dragnets for them. People will attempt to exercise their right to make citizen’s arrests of aliens. Because local police departments cannot possibly handle the problem, people will ask to be deputized to round up and deport illegal aliens. The situation will get very messy, after the people making citizen’s arrests of illegal aliens are accused of “taking the law into their own hands.” They – the people who were trying to defend their own property and jobs from alien invaders when the government would not – will be prosecuted and incarcerated or executed. Citizens will be arrested and be sent to jail for trying to repel the alien invasion. Native-born citizens will become enraged at what is happening. The government’s total abrogation of its Constitutional responsibility to provide for the national defense will be tolerated no longer.
Because our government acquiesced to the alien invasion, first by condoning it and then by encouraging and sponsoring it, it will be reluctant to admit that it failed and, at this late date, take any positive steps to repel it. Otherwise it would be admitting to willful, premeditated treason. Instead, it will try to justify it and legalize it, provide amnesty for it, and exonerate those who participated in it. In fact, it has already taken one massive step to cover it up – the previous general amnesty of illegal aliens. How could it admit that it was so wrong? How could it admit that Senator Edward Kennedy was so wrong in sponsoring the Immigration Act of 1965, and that Senator Sam Ervin was so right, that this bill would destroy American culture? How could it admit that it had given the country away to aliens? It will not admit that it was wrong. It will not try to reverse the flow of immigrants, to restore a dominant Northern European culture. Instead, it will focus all of its efforts into trying to assimilate the aliens into the previous dominant culture.
The US has passed the point of no return. The US government now believes the lies and foolishness that it has been repeating over and over, that a collection of culturally diverse peoples can form a strong, cohesive nation. Simply being followers of Mammon – money, capitalism, the good life, materialism – is not a sufficient bond. As long as oil continues to flow, and everyone is relatively well off, the illusion of strength and cohesiveness will continue. As soon as oil supplies start to shrink, the United States will disintegrate into the various cultural groups that comprise it.
As long as global oil production remains high, our government will continue to solicit and accept large numbers of immigrants, ostensibly on humanitarian grounds such as family reunification and political asylum (by this time the foolishness of encouraging mass immigration to promote ethnic diversity will be apparent to everyone). In fact, it will continue to encourage mass immigration because it means increased economic growth and wealth for the plutocrats, and because our voracious engine of economic activity, addicted to cancerous growth, craves and demands it (both to generate demand for goods and services for a growth-based economy, and to provide labor for it). The fundamental reason for encouraging and continuing mass immigration is continued and expanded economic activity and growth. But in today’s world, global economic activity and growth are crucially dependent on oil. As long as global oil production remains high, the US will continue to cling to the policies of mass immigration and massive international trade. As soon as it starts to fall, the engine of economic activity will grind to a halt, and the consequences of mass immigration, radical cultural diversity, and bloated populations will become manifest.
The most serious blunder the government made was allowing immigrants in such numbers that they could not be assimilated into our culture (our language, our religion, our existing racial/ethnic groups, our cultural heritage). In an attempt to mitigate the situation, our government will launch a campaign of forced assimilation (if such a thing is possible). Aliens will be given fast-track citizenship. They will be given free classes in citizenship and language and jobs to facilitate this. The government will pass special laws to protect aliens, like the laws against so-called “hate crimes” – saying that you cannot take individual action against illegal aliens. It will set up programs in schools to indoctrinate / brainwash our children in accepting the alien invasion and accommodating alien culture. It will justify this by appealing to humanitarian principles that are irrelevant in the context of an invasion. Just as employers now force employees to attend courses in “gender sensitivity,” citizens who express concern over the aliens or exhibit defensive acts against them will be sent to “cultural sensitivity” or “ethnic sensitivity” courses, for reprogramming. Have you read George Orwell’s 1984 recently?
When they see that individuals are prohibited from taking actions against illegal aliens, people will move to exercise their Constitutional right of an organized militia to bear arms. But the government will not tolerate this. The first groups – public militias – to take action to round up and deport illegal Mexicans will be arrested. The US government, against its very Constitution, will ban organized militias from taking any action against illegal aliens, even the action of repelling a massive invasion of foreigners. These groups, like Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys in the Revolutionary War, will be branded as terrorists. They will be charged with conspiracy, disarmed, dispersed, outlawed, and persecuted. At this point, the government will take further steps to prevent actions against illegal immigrants. It may try to pass another general amnesty of illegal immigrants (in the name of national security), so that it can then charge anti-immigrant forces with attacks against US citizens. If it cannot cram another general amnesty down the throats of the native-born electorate, it will move instead to establish a “guest worker” program. It will instantly convert millions of foreign invaders to legal residents, by issuing them “temporary worker permits.” At that time, anyone who takes any action against an illegal alien will be charged with a serious crime, because the illegal immigrant will have been suddenly declared legal! But just because something is legal does not make it right. The government will even move to restrict free speech against the alien invaders. People who speak out against amnestied or permitted aliens will be charged with inciting violence and racial/ethnic hatred. In the US, as is already the case in Canada, free speech will be banned (e.g., Jewish holocaust denial).
From this point, the situation will degrade rapidly. Civil disturbances will grow in frequency and magnitude, and the government will respond in force. What remains of the dominant Northern European culture in the US will see that the government – the corporate-business plutocracy – is totally opposed to fighting the alien invasion. In fact, it will be patently obvious that the government (the plutocracy) has sided with the aliens. Native-born Americans will see clearly that it is the plutocrats who are controlling the government, and that they mean to crush the dominant Northern European culture. The Northern European culture will finally realize – too late – that the government is no longer a republican democracy “of the people,” but a fascist dictatorship of corporate business interests. [See my article, Is America Fascist? for more discussion of fascism in America.]
At this point, seeing that the government will not enforce its own laws, and will not do anything to stem or turn back the tide of illegal aliens, people will start, on a grand scale, to take matters into their own hands. At one point, there will be renewed interest in the Ku Klux Klan. There will be a brief revival, but because it was so discredited and infiltrated, it is a spent force. Instead, new secret societies will arise. They will operate under various names, such as the white shirts, or the brown shirts, or the black shirts. Just as in the movie, Men in Black, secret societies will be hunting down aliens and destroying them.
They will attack with the vengeance, viciousness, determination and moral authority of a cornered animal that is protecting its own invaded territory. They will assert their right of primacy. The time for talking will have finished, and the time for killing will begin. The time for warning is past. The time for writing books and articles is past. The time for preaching is past. As Willie Nelson sings, in The Red-Headed Stranger, now the preaching is over, the lesson is over, and the killing’s begun. After years of the government’s flaunting its own laws, the government will be condemned as the perpetrator of this terrible social catastrophe. At this point, the fury of the anti-immigration forces will focus not just on the illegal immigrants, but on the government and oligarchs who promoted them. The anti-immigration forces will attack the government plutocrats / oligarchs. The government, through its pro-mass-immigration policies, will have spawned an all-out war of terror, with US citizens against the government. Just as American-Revolution patriots fought against the tyranny of King George the Third’s England, the new American revolutionaries will fight against the fascist dictatorship / corporate plutocracy that has taken over and now runs America. The government will then unleash its full force against its own citizens. In most cases, it will not even need to pass new laws to authorize this – it will use existing legislation, such the Patriot Act, anti-racketeering / anticonspiracy acts, various acts against discrimination on the basis of national origin, amnesty laws, and the Immigration Act of 1965, which initiated the downfall of America.
At some point, the illegal aliens who can leave, will leave. There will be a mass exodus of illegal Mexican aliens to Mexico. Illegal aliens who have no way to flee will be killed. But, at this stage, the problem will not be solved by reducing the number of illegal aliens to zero. The economy will not get better, because global oil production will continue to fall. At this point, rage will focus on all recent-immigrant ethnic groups, not just on illegal immigrants. Everyone who immigrated to the US since 1965 will be targeted. But, since mass immigration has been going on for forty years, this battle will not be easy to win. The new-immigrant populations will have their own young men – many of them now born here – who are not afraid to kill and to die. At that point, the country will erupt in civil war. The Europeans who formed the once-strong nation, enraged at the government that deliberately destroyed it, will vent their rage at the government, and destroy it. They will destroy the greedy, materialistic elite who willingly traded their culture, national security and environment for material gain. The nation will disintegrate. The United States of America, as we have known it, will cease to exist. Canada, as we have known it, will cease to exist. Mexico, flooded by thirty million very unhappy refugees, will follow. As discussed by Joel Garreau in his prophetic 1982 book, The Nine Nations of North America, the region (North America – the US, Canada, and Mexico) will balkanize, with warlords taking charge of local fiefdoms. The Northern European culture that had made America great will be one of these, but, in terms of economic and political power, it will be a shadow of its former self.
What Will Happen in Other Countries, as Global Oil Runs Out?
As global oil production starts to fall, the process that I have described will be taking place all over the world, in any country that has allowed mass immigration from alien cultures over an extended period of time, to the point where its former dominant culture is now seriously weakened. Countries that have maintained the cultural / ethnic integrity will not erupt in civil war, but will wage war against other countries as global oil production falls. The “tipping point” varies, depending on the nature of the cultures involved, but once the proportion of the dominant culture falls below 95-99 percent, the difficulty in operating as a strong, cohesive nation becomes noticeably manifest. The world’s cultural and ethnic diversity is a wonderful thing – it is just not possible for all of these different cultures to exist side-by-side in large numbers within a single nation, and for such a nation to continue for very long – and certainly not under adverse conditions such as those that are just around the corner. A nation can exhibit some cultural diversity, but not to the extreme, radical extent now reflected in the United States and Canada in a low-energy context. A strong nation is a group of people with common language, race, religion, culture, ideology and geography – a people. A group of people that is very heterogeneous with respect to these characteristics may be a country in some sense, but it is not a strong nation. It can stick together for a while, as long as there is abundant commercial energy. Once that is gone, it must disintegrate.
Note that the arguments that I have presented above have nothing to do with a view that Northern European culture is better than any other, overall. For running a modern industrial (financial / commercial) world, Northern European culture (Teutonic, Scandinavian, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon-Norman – “Nordic,” to use a single word) is demonstrably the best (among the recent available alternatives). You cannot operate an efficient economic system without trust, and Northern European culture is strong on personal moral characteristics such as trust, honesty, work ethic, and dependability. For running an empire or an industrial world, there is a difference. The Spanish and Portuguese left a legacy of corruption everywhere they settled. It was not so with the English, Dutch, and Germans, who left traditions of honesty, rule of law, justice, organization and hard work wherever they extended their empires. But, as I said, my arguments have little to do with the particular culture in the United States or Canada (or any other country). What is important for a nation, if it is to endure, is to have a common culture – a homogeneous, dominant cultural group, consisting of the vast majority of the population. The dominant cultural group has a common language, race, religion and heritage. A France comprised of ethnic (native-born, not naturalized, French-speaking, Christian/Catholic) Frenchmen, a Germany comprised of Germans (German-blooded, German-speaking, Christian/Protestants), an England comprised of Englishmen (English-speaking, English-blooded, Christian/Protestant), and an Iran comprised of Iranians (Persian / Aryan / Indo-Iranian, Farsi-speaking, Moslem). That is what America and Canada had, to a strong degree, at the end of World War II, and that is what has now been lost. America and Canada are not being held together today by any of the ties that bind a nation together. All that is binding them together is cheap commercial energy. And as soon as that starts to disappear, these countries will quickly self-destruct.
What Has Been Lost
America was a grand experiment in democracy. It promoted tolerance of diversity. It enforced all kinds of civil rights, not just for the members of the dominant culture, but for minorities as well. All sorts of discrimination were outlawed and actively prosecuted. It was a land of many wonderful things. Land of the free and the brave. English common law. Rule of law and justice. The land of opportunity – restricted free-market capitalism, in a liberal democracy. But what is ignored – suppressed in modern history and social studies books – is that this cornucopia of benefits is the product of Northern European culture, and not of other cultures. There have been many cultures and civilizations on the face of the Earth – Egyptian, Greek, Roman, British, Chinese, Indian, Arabic, and Hispanic, to name just a few. As a rule, they served the interests of the ruling class. They were not terribly concerned with rights of the individual or promoting his welfare. In many cases, they were riddled with corruption. The one that emerged as a strong champion for the individual was the Northern European culture, particularly as manifested in North America. The process of evolution of this system took thousands of years and involved much struggle, such as the struggle for the Magna Carta in England, the Declaration of the Rights of Man in France, and the Declaration of Independence in America. What our Northern European culture took hundreds of years to accomplish, the older (1965-2004) generation of the US carelessly and thoughtlessly tossed away. What our forefathers fought and died for, the generation in charge in 1965-2004 considered to be of no value.
Many people rail against the arrogance of American culture. It is unfortunate that attention focuses on the arrogance, when America has stood for so many other good things. If you had lived, as I have, in third-world countries around the world, you would know the special value of America. There has never been a culture like it, so dedicated to the rights and development of individuals. In many of the other places that I have lived, corruption is rampant. Squalor, disease and death are everywhere. Human life is practically worthless. For most people, life is hopeless. It is, as Hobbes once observed of primitive culture, “nasty, brutish and short.” These are the cultures that the Immigration Act of 1965 has brought to our shores, and these are the cultures that will destroy it.
For the people of alien cultures that have flooded to America and displaced the former dominant Northern European culture, I have sympathy. It is a shame that you came in such great numbers, so fast. Had you come in small numbers over an extended period of time, you would have been assimilated, as many were in the past, into the Northern European culture of North America, and America’s great experiment in democracy and individual freedom would have continued for a while longer. It was smothered by your love. By your massive numbers, you killed the goose that laid the golden egg. But how can you be blamed for wanting to come to the Emerald City in the Land of Oz, if no one was standing in your way? It was up to us to regulate immigration, to maintain our successful culture and our security, and we failed to do so. Is the man who leaves his wallet unguarded not responsible in part for the crime of the thief who takes it? The result of slow migration can be evolutionary change. The result of mass migration is revolutionary change. America opted for the latter. The immigrant’s dream of America began to fade as the large numbers of immigrants swamped it. Now that America is culturally heterogeneous to an extreme degree, that dream will soon disappear altogether, as global oil production starts to fall and the nation, now a culturally diverse collection of peoples rather than a strong, cohesive nation, disintegrates.
Our Northern European culture, that stood strong for the individual man, is quickly passing. It is being destroyed by its own arrogance – the thought that it could replace itself with alien cultures that did not share its values, and still retain those values. The strong America of yesteryear is no more, because its leaders did not take steps to protect and maintain it. In fact, with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 and the subsequent mass immigration from alien cultures, they did just the opposite.
America’s Vulnerability to Terrorism under Mass Immigration
With our open, porous borders, we will continue to be vulnerable to attack by terrorist groups of any size. At one point, it was only powerful nations that we had to worry about. Now, with open borders, with the country flooded with aliens, and with gross intermingling of the population, we are completely vulnerable. Before, we could instantly spot an alien – the population was low, homogeneous, and stable (not highly mobile). Strangers were noticed right away. They looked different and they spoke differently. Loitering was not allowed. In the Second World War, with a common dominant culture and stable population, it was an easy matter to round up all Japanese and incarcerate them. Military units could use ‘lollapalooza’ as a shibboleth.
By its insane, suicidal immigration policies, the United States has made itself totally vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The Arab terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, were able to move freely in the US, because the US has flooded itself with Arabs. (It was US firms that willingly, for money, provided training in flying of large aircraft to the World Trade Center terrorists.) Any other ethnic group could do the same, because we have flooded the country with all ethnic groups. In this morning’s paper (Sunday Times of Zambia, November 7, 2004) appeared an article entitled, “Al-Qaeda group warns US of “unbearable hell” after Bush re-election.” The article goes on to state the “Bush and Kerry are two sides of the same coin. Both have a dark history that will never be erased. It is the American people who will take the consequences of the politics of its president over the next four years.” There is little doubt that the Arab terrorists will attack Americans again, and inflict serious damage. By our policies of open borders, mass international trade, and gross intermingling, we are inviting the attacks.
Terrorist groups can (and will) attack us at ease because we have (or, more correctly, our government has), through mass immigration, flooded our population with Arabs (as well as any other ethnic group you care to name). In addition, we have given up control of our borders, not only to mass illegal immigration, but to mass legal immigration, mass international tourism, and massive international trade. This fact will not be lost on the members of the Northern European culture remaining in the US. It will be very clear that we are now a weak nation, vulnerable to terrorist attacks, because of mass immigration, open borders, and massive international trade. After the next terrorist attacks, anti-immigration sentiment will explode. People will see that, as long as we allow mass immigration (legal or illegal), mass international tourism, open borders and mass international trade, we can never be secure. Moreover, they will see that as long as we are not a homogeneous culture, we can never be secure. They will see that as long as all of the aliens who have flooded the country since 1965 remain here, we can never be secure.
As global oil exhausts, industrial countries will compete ever more vigorously, and then fight, over the diminishing supply. As this happens, conditions will become intolerable in the less-developed countries of the world. With the advent of fossil fuels and industrial technology, world population soared to the limits that could be supported by industrialized agriculture based on that energy source and technology. There is no going back gracefully. When global oil dries up, the unsustainable system that has developed will crash catastrophically. Most of the world’s six billion people will face starvation. For most people, the choice will be death by starvation or death by war. The only issue facing most of the world’s people will be whether they die alone, or take the remaining part of the industrialized world with them.
As a result, terrorism will increase dramatically. As global oil production starts to decline, the rest of the world will see clearly that the industrialized world runs on oil, and that oil is running out, and that things will never get any better. The lies of the United Nations, the World Bank, and all world political leaders will be exposed – “sustainable development” is an oxymoron, and, in a world based on economics and global industrialization, human squalor and misery are only going to get worse. The “politics of envy” will prevail – the rest of the world will set itself to destroy the industrialized world, even though they will not improve their own situation by doing so.
The next step for international terrorists is to launch a concerted campaign of destruction against oil and other energy sources (oil, gas and coal fields; hydroelectric dams; nuclear power facilities). This will cripple the industrial world and bring on a violent and much-expanded reaction against terrorism. But, even through this stage, the US will remain strong. As the world’s strongest nation, it will retain control over all the world’s oil. (The absolute end will not arrive for the US until there is not even enough oil left even to supply its energy needs.) As the countries of the rest of the world have access to less and less oil, they will “wither on the vine.” As they see that the US continues to maintain its high-energy, high-population lifestyle as the primary consumer of the world’s diminishing oil supply, terrorism will increase to the extreme. The final phase will be the detonation of nuclear “suitcase bombs” on US cities. At that time, global war will erupt, as the US strives, no-holds-barred, to destroy all potential sources of terrorism. It will not opt for “surgical urban warfare,” as in the recent attack on Fallujah, but on mass bombing of cities, as was done in the Second World War in Japan, Germany, and Italy. The likely result will be a global nuclear war, in which all nuclear powers release their destructive stores against their enemies, viz., the other industrialized nations of the world.
If America is to be secure, all recent immigrants (since 1965) and their progeny, will have to leave. Will America do this – a forced repatriation of all immigrants since 1965? (Other countries concerned for their security have conducted population relocations in the past.) No, as currently constituted, it will not, and that is why it will continue to remain vulnerable to terrorism. It will spend a larger and larger amount of its GDP on security. But security, in this absurd situation of a country flooded by aliens, is impossible. America will lose the war on terrorism, in the sense of preventing the destruction of property and the killing of Americans by terrorists. As I have pointed out in other articles, however, the government and the oligarchs will view it as a winning situation, since all of the (new) economic activity required to counter terrorist attacks (whether effective or not) and all of the economic activity to rebuild after they occur increases the gross national product (GNP). As the War on Terrorism proceeds, the wealthy, who profit handsomely supplying it and rebuilding from it, will become wealthier. As with most wars, it is the average citizen who gets killed, not the nation’s leaders.
By its mass immigration, mass international trade and open-border policies, our country has been made totally vulnerable to terrorist attacks. As terrorists mount more and more attacks against our now-defenseless country, the government will be loath to admit that it stimulated these attacks by its insane immigration, trade, and open-border policies. It will not admit that its actions in providing free social services to illegal aliens encouraged more to come. It will not admit to any malfeasance in destroying the country’s security and its population and ethnic stability. It will focus all of the attention on the terrorists, blaming them for the problem, just as it blamed them alone for the September 11 attacks, absolving us from all responsibility. But it is our own government that flooded the country with aliens, and opened our borders. Most other countries, if it is within their control, have not done this. Most strong nations try to maintain the cultural integrity and stability that makes them strong, not destroy them. It is our own government that has destroyed the cultural homogeneity and border integrity of our country.
The End Game
Given its current extreme multiethnic / multicultural, pluralistic society, it seems very unlikely that America will ever return to being a culturally homogeneous society. As soon as global oil production starts to decline, it will break apart into the separate cultures that now comprise it in large proportions. As global oil production falls, it will not emerge as a single strong nation, since, with its bloated population, it can no longer support itself by solar-based agriculture. As global oil production starts to fall, America will start to fall apart. It started to self-destruct many years ago (with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965) – the breaking apart is simply the last step in a process that was started long ago.
What the government does not seem to realize is that, without a common culture and a stable, homogeneous population, national security is impossible. There is no possible way to protect against terrorism when millions of tons of goods are crossing our borders every day, and when hundreds of thousands of visitors and immigrants are crossing our borders every day. It can’t be done. The only way to have defended our country from terrorists was to make it very difficult for them to move among us. Our government, with its economically-driven immigration and trade policies, has done just the opposite. It is now impossible to defend against terrorism. The war against terrorism could be won, but the US, with open borders, mass immigration, and massive international trade, cannot possibly win it.
With twenty million illegal aliens in our midst, with open / porous borders, with an economy heavily dependent on international trade, and with the unimpeded flow of goods and people across our borders, we cannot possibly defend ourselves. The alien invasion has already taken place, and the invaders, with the complicity and support of our own government, have won. Our government refuses to even try to repel the invasion. Rather than expel illegal aliens, it has instead passed an amnesty allowing them to stay, and rewarded their illegal actions. It provides free social services, such as education, to them. It has no plan to deport the new twenty million aliens – just plans to give them work permits or another general amnesty.
The Immigration Act of 1965 signaled the end of the dominance of Northern European culture in the United States. It sounded the death knell for the America of the Second World War and the 1950s. Since America was, at the time, the most successful country in the world, it was incredibly stupid to destabilize the country by allowing mass immigration from alien cultures (read: failed cultures – why else would immigrants be flooding from them to America?) in such high numbers that they could not be easily assimilated. The obvious result of this would be, as emphasized by Senator Sam Ervin, that the dominant American culture would be diluted and destroyed. But that culture was the one that had made America great, and, through continued, concerted efforts in civil rights, it treated minority cultures with dignity, respect and fairness. What sense was there in jeopardizing it and destroying it? For the dominant cultural group, there was no reason. It was the politics of envy at work. (I have written on this in other places, and will not repeat here.)
Reaping the Fruits of Foolishness
We are now seeing, after forty years, the full fruit of the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. With the country flooded with people from alien cultures, the political system has now been paralyzed by the tyranny of the minority. With the country flooded with people from alien cultures, many people now do not see the harm in allowing illegal aliens to invade our country and remain here. With the country flooded with people from alien cultures where the rule of law is weak, many people are not concerned that the government is no longer enforcing its own laws. Recall that, in 1965, America was a successful culture, and that we just were opening up the immigration floodgates to the failed cultures (poor, corrupt, inefficient) of the world. Now that those cultures are about to overwhelm us, it should not be surprising that it is their cultural values that are now prevailing in the United States. In 1965, most Americans would have been offended at the prospect of a Mexican whore crossing the border, having a child, and then gaining her own US citizenship based on “family reunification” with her US-birthright-citizen child. Not any more. Now that many Americans are in fact illegal immigrants or amnestied illegal immigrants or their progeny, many people are not shocked by that at all. In fact, Asa Hutchinson, our Under Secretary for Borders and Transportation of the Department of Homeland Security, thinks that it is perfectly understandable.
Why Did It Happen? Why Is It Happening?
Who killed cock robin? Who is responsible for the destruction of America’s strong dominant culture, and the injection of large numbers of people from other cultures in the United States? Consider the following:
John Kennedy, who wrote the book, Nation of Immigrants
Edward Kennedy, who sponsored the Immigration Act of 1965
Lyndon Johnson, who served as president during the passage of the Act
Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, William Clinton, and George W. Bush, all of whom condoned or encouraged mass immigration to the US, and who did nothing as tens of millions of illegal immigrants crossed our borders – and remain here today.
The preceding “Gang of Ten” were your leaders, America, as they invited millions of immigrants from alien cultures to our shores, and allowed the entry and residence of millions of illegal aliens. These men have betrayed you, they have sold you down the river. They worked to destroy America’s dominant culture, and to destroy our security and our environment. They stood idly by and they stand idly by, as millions of aliens have invaded and continue to invade our land. They point to terrorists in faraway lands as the problem, when it is they themselves that have caused the destruction and downfall of our nation. They point to September 11, and claim that it is not their fault. But they are the ones who flooded our culture with aliens, and refuse to deport the twenty million illegal aliens now on our soil. It is their fault. They have exposed the US to all comers, they have weakened it beyond repair, and it is now completely vulnerable. They have betrayed you, America. They are responsible, and they should be held accountable.
(Response to a reader. On a couple of occasions, readers have questioned why I place much of the responsibility for America’s suicidal immigration policies on its leaders, such as the Kennedy brothers and other recent American presidents. I do this because they were the men elected to lead the country, and they took oaths to protect and defend the country from invasion. They were responsible, they willingly accepted this responsibility, and I hold them accountable. Recently, a reader referred me to Kevin MacDonald’s trilogy, A People that Shall Dwell Alone, Separation and Its Discontents, and The Culture of Critique, in which MacDonald discusses the efforts of the American Jewish community to effect passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. While MacDonald presents much interesting and relevant historical material, I cannot seriously fault any particular minority group (e.g., Jews, Arabs, Mexicans, Filipinos, Chinese, Indians) for wanting to weaken the cultural and political hegemony of a dominant cultural / political group, and promote the passage of laws that would allow more of its own to migrate to America. As I have noted before, if you leave your wallet untended, how can you seriously fault a thief for stealing it? I am not so concerned with who instigated, promoted, or took advantage of America’s suicidal immigration (and other) policies. It is America’s leaders who must accept the major portion of the blame, not those who opportunistically took advantage of our foolishness. There will always be others desirous of taking control of your country if you are foolish enough to let them. The fault is not with them for trying, but with those who would allow it to happen. A nation must depend on itself for its security, and not on the goodwill or altruism of others.
(In the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah, who was at fault for Samson’s demise? Almost no one would blame the Philistines – they were his enemies. A child would blame the seductive, treacherous Delilah. But an adult perceives the moral of the story, that it is Samson himself who is at fault, and must bear ultimate responsibility for his fall. It was Samson’s hubris that brought him to his end. And it is America’s hubris that will bring it to its end. It accepted the foolish notion that it could establish a multicultural, pluralistic society and still retain the strength of the unique culture on which it was founded. Like Samson, it deliberately tempted fate and exposed itself to risk of destruction, and like Samson it will lose its privileged status and suffer complete destruction. As the world’s single superpower, America seems invincible. It is instructive to recall the words of Robert Browning, “Jove strikes the Titans down, not when they set about their mountain piling, but when another rock would crown their work.” Pride goeth before the fall.)
A Charge of Treason
The decision by the government to allow tens of millions of illegal aliens into the country and to remain in it, is unconscionable. It is gross dereliction of duty at least, and high treason at most. The government is refusing to obey and enforce its own laws. If a soldier refuses to do his duty and obey his orders, he can be shot.
I have some questions for the President of the United States. Mr. Bush, why do you continue to let illegal aliens enter the United States? Why do you continue to allow tens of millions of them to remain here? Why are we continuing to provide free social services to many of them? You, sir, took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and this requires you to defend the country from invasion. Why are you doing nothing? Why do you not act? If aiding and abetting of foreign invaders is not treason, what is?
Why do you not deport – or kill – the alien invaders? Why do you not punish the people who harbor them and give them employment? Why do you refuse to repel the alien invasion, and wage war on illegal immigration? Why do you aid and abet illegal aliens, when you took an oath as President to defend the country from invasion?
Our borders are not secure – from illegal aliens and anyone else. If you cannot keep tens of millions of illegal aliens out of our country, how can you hope to keep out small bands of terrorists? Why do you refuse to fight the war on terrorism, by closing our borders to illegal entry?
You have had four years as President to consider this problem, and yet you continue to aid and abet the invaders, rather than expel them. You have appointed men such as Asa Hutchinson, who does not see that illegal aliens should be deported. By your actions, are you not guilty of willful, premeditated treason? Have you taken an oath of allegiance to the plutocracy that takes precedence over your oath as President?
Your predecessor, President Ronald Reagan, also faced an alien invasion. His response was to sponsor a general amnesty that granted US citizenship to millions of illegal aliens – criminal invaders. Recently, you proclaimed your intention to legalize the current invasion by means of a “guest-worker” program. Simply declaring invaders to be citizens or “guest workers” is not what the Constitution intended by the phrases “repel invasion” and “protect from invasion.” It intends that you repel the invasion, not harbor the invaders, provide social services to them, and grant them amnesty, citizenship, or work permits.
The path that President Ronald Reagan took, and that you are now taking, is leading the United States down a path to balkanization and civil war. It is your duty to defend the country against invasion. You, sir, and other officials of your government, are in gross dereliction of duty. Please reflect on the oath that you have taken, and the invasion that is taking place, and reconsider your position.
It is not too late to turn back. All it takes to repel this alien invasion is will.
Your predecessors, Mr. Bush, committed the unpardonable act of declaring millions of foreign invaders to be citizens. It is remarkable that this could have happened. Just as remarkably, there is now talk of granting “temporary work permits” to another ten million foreign invaders. But times have changed. The Northern European cultures that founded this country will no longer tolerate the granting of citizenship, or residency, or any other special privilege, to any foreign invaders, ever again. Or will they? – How far have the mighty fallen? Alea jacta est – the die is cast. The Rubicon crossed. The “tipping point” has been reached. Treachery will no longer be condoned – or it will prevail! Repel the foreign invasion now, Mr. Bush, or invite chaos and the country’s early and untimely demise. You must now choose whom you will represent, defend, and fight for – the plutocrats, the oligarchs, the corporate-business fascist dictatorship, the alien invaders … or the US Constitution, the environment / biosphere, and the survival of mankind. You cannot do both. You must decide; you must choose. Do your job, or, impeached and convicted of complicity in the alien invasion, you will quickly lose it.
An Alternative Future
As global oil production starts to fall, the high-population industrial world will begin to disintegrate and disappear. Countries that have relatively low populations, internal sources of energy, and a high degree of cultural homogeneity have a much better chance of lasting longer than those that are overpopulated, culturally diverse, and without internal energy sources. The demise may come very quickly, or it may take some time. “Hubbert’s Peak” could easily last for a decade. If America remains overpopulated and culturally diverse, it will disintegrate quickly. But, if it were to dramatically lower its population and cultural diversity, it could be one of the strong nations lasting until near the end of the industrial age. This can be done by expulsion of illegal aliens and repatriation of amnestied illegal aliens and their progeny. By decisive action, you, Mr. Bush, sir, could maintain the stability of our nation for a few years longer – time enough for America, or some part of it, to help prepare the planet for a new post-industrial age. But to do this, you must act now. All illegal aliens – including those amnestied a few years ago, and their progeny – must leave, now, before global oil production starts to fall, or the country will slide into oblivion well before its time, without having participated in the design of the planet’s future, and without having realized a meaningful destiny. What is America’s destiny? Is it civil war and dissolution? Or war, as a strong nation, to save the planet? Is it America’s destiny to be the cause of the destruction of the biosphere, or its salvation? You, sir, are in a position to decide. What will be your legacy? What world will you fight for? Those who prophesy say that the future of the world belongs to Russia. Is that your choice?
Mr. Bush, the path of continued mass immigration and forced assimilation of illegal immigrants will lead to civil war and the early breakup of the United States. It leads to a future of American fighting American. It does not help save the biosphere from destruction and mankind from extinction. Do you want to spend your next term leading the country down the path toward civil war, or waging civil war, fighting American terrorists, and presiding over a dying planet? Or working together to build a better future for the planet and mankind? The country’s current path leads to destruction and death – to a ruined planet and the extinction of mankind. This does not have to happen. The future does not have to be this way. The Arab terrorists are not a serious threat to the biosphere and mankind’s future. What is killing the biosphere is global industrialization – global pollution, global warming, global destruction of nature, mass extinction. That is the real enemy, the real terrorism, and the only significant threat to mankind’s future existence. Walt Kelley’s Pogo once observed, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.” America and the global industrialized world are destined to end, soon, as global oil supplies exhaust. The only significant issue to address is what we do with our industrial capacity in the short time that remains before the catastrophic collapse of the industrialized world occurs. Will we spend the remaining time playing video games, going on cruises, and continuing mass consumerism? Or in trying to preserve the biosphere’s remaining biological diversity, so that all future generations of mankind, if they exist at all, may continue to live in a Garden-of-Eden paradise? Please contemplate what is happening to the planet, and consider alternative courses of action to bring about a better future for America, mankind, and the world. May you choose well.
Other countries: take heed. If you allow immigration from alien cultures to the point where it dilutes your dominant culture, your fate will be that of the United States. Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands: take heed. In 1965 the arguments against mass immigration were philosophical. Now they are firmly based in experience.
What Are the Odds That America Will Move to Save the Biosphere?
As I have written before, democracy is fine for running things that don’t matter, such as a contract bridge club. It is a woefully inadequate system for running anything that matters, such as a boat, a ship, an airplane, a nation or a world. Plato wrote 2500 years ago of the fatal flaw of democracy – its inability to select good leaders, and their temptation to pander to the masses. America is a good case in point. America embraced democracy, and it elected leaders who presided over mass immigration and destroyed it.
In his book, Revolt Against the Modern World, Julius Evola writes an interesting footnote: “We may here consider A. J. Toynbee’s thesis (A Study of History [London, 1934]) according to which, a few exceptions notwithstanding, there have never been civilizations that have been killed, but only civilizations that have committed suicide. Wherever the inner strength exists and does not abdicate, then difficulties, dangers, an adverse environment, attacks from the outside, and even invasions may become a stimulus or a challenge that induces that inner strength to react in a creative way. Toynbee saw in these external elements the conditions for the advent and for the development of civilizations.” True to form, America was not defeated by external enemies, but by its own arrogant, suicidal actions.
How Quickly the End Comes
It is amazing how quickly a dominant culture can pass into oblivion. A nation is an idea, a concept, a will, and little else. Once the will is gone, all is lost. The April 19, 2004, issue of Time magazine contains an article by Simon Robinson (with reporting by Peter Hawthorne), entitled, “South Africa, Ten Years After.” It discusses the changes in South Africa following the end of rule by whites, and the establishment of a black democracy. “It’s not just black South Africans who are grappling with change. At the height of apartheid’s power in the 1970s, the ruling Afrikaners seemed invincible. Africa’s white tribe controlled the most potent military machine and economy on the continent; an Afrikaner surgeon had performed the world’s first heart transplant; Afrikaner scientists were building nuclear weapons. Today, Afrikaners are out of office, out of favor and still searching for their place in the new South Africa. As the rest of the country celebrates a decade of freedom, apartheid’s architects seem lost and besieged. Younger Afrikaners and businessmen have made peace and found places for themselves in the life of the country, but many of their elders have not. The Afrikaans language has almost disappeared from public life, and Afrikaner workers must now compete with the growing black middle class and affirmative-action policies that work against them. Most are still privileged compared with [sic] the black majority, but “the psychological devastation is remarkable,” says Danie Goosen, spokesman for the group of 63, a collective of Afrikaner academics and intellectuals. “It’s amazing to see the extent to which the community has collapsed.” America: take note. What has happened to South Africa is happening to you. You established a strong, vibrant society based on Nordic culture, and you nurtured and maintained that culture for two centuries. Then, you harbored and embraced third-world culture, and you are now ruled by it.
In Revolt Against the Modern World, Julius Evola writes, “When at the center, however, there is only a shallow function or when the titles of the representatives of the spiritual and regal authority are only nominal, then the pinnacle dissolves and the support crumbles. A highly significant legend in this regard is that of the people of Gog and Magog, who symbolize chaotic and demonic forces that are held back by traditional structures. According to this legend, these people attack when they realize that there is no longer anybody blowing the trumpets on that wall upon which an imperial type had previously arrested their siege, and that it was only the wind that produced the sounds they were hearing. Rites, institutions, laws, and customs may still continue to exist for a certain time; but when their meaning is lost and their “virtue” paralyzed they are nothing but empty shells. Once they are abandoned to themselves and have become secularized, they crumble like parched clay and become increasingly disfigured and altered, despite all attempts to retain from the outside, whether through violence or imposition, the lost inner unity. As long as a shadow of the action of the superior element remains, however, and an echo of it exists in the blood, the structure remains standing, the body still appears endowed with a soul, and the corpse – to use an image employed by de Gobineau – walks and is still capable of knocking down obstacles in its path. When the last residue of the force from above and of the race of the spirit is exhausted, in the new generations nothing else remains; there is no longer a riverbed to channel the current that is now dispersed in every direction. What emerges at this point is individualism, chaos, anarchy, a humanist hubris, and degeneration in every domain. The dam is broken. Although a semblance of ancient grandeur still remains, the smallest impact is enough to make an empire or state collapse and be replaced with a demonic inversion, namely, with the modern, omnipotent Leviathan, which is a mechanized and “totalitarian: collective system.” After forty years of mass immigration and affirmative action, the Northern European culture that founded and built America has been severely weakened. Does anything remain of its will to continue? Is it a spent force, a footnote of history? Time will soon tell.
In my previous writings, I have predicted the catastrophic collapse of the modern industrial world as global oil production declines. Any nation that is overpopulated and dependent on massive amounts of cheap commercial energy (oil in particular) will soon cease to exist. In my view, there is nothing that can be done to avoid this catastrophic collapse, now that the world has pushed its population to high levels that cannot be supported on current solar-based energy. Although the end of global industrialization is certain, the state of the world after the demise of the industrial world is very uncertain. Depending on what happens over the next few years, the biosphere may or may not be destroyed, millions of species may or may not be made extinct, and mankind may or may not become extinct. The future is up to us – up to you! After the fall of the global industrial world, control of the planet will fall to others, who are more able in rational planetary management. Otherwise, the biosphere as we know it and mankind will cease to exist. You are living in the most exciting time in the history of the world. You can play a role in determining the future of the world – a dead planet, a ruined planet, or a Garden-of-Eden planet with mankind in an exciting future. Which future do you choose?
Americans, wake up! You have a choice! You have a decision to make! You have a stand to take! Regardless of what George Bush decides, you must make your own decision, and take a stand. Between now and 2050, global population will drop to a few hundred million – a small fraction of its current level – because that is all that can be supported by solar-energy-based agriculture. Most people on the planet will die from starvation, disease or war. You cannot stop the demise of the industrialized world, and all industrialized countries, as global oil depletes. But you can play a role in determining what takes place over the next few years, before and as the industrial world collapses. The issue at hand is what will be the condition of the rest of the biosphere at that time. You have a choice in determining the planet’s future, its destiny. You may die gloriously on the field of battle (this is metaphor), waging war against the forces of global industrialization that would destroy the biosphere and make mankind extinct or doomed to eternity on a ruined planet. Or, you may die fighting to continue the destruction of the planet, on the side of the destroyers, a piece or a pawn of the plutocratic oligarchy. Or, you may try to remain neutral, to stay out of the fight, in which case you will die ignominiously of starvation and disease, as a despised, craven coward, a miserable wretch, begging for food and starving to death, clinging to life at any cost, leaving behind a legacy of shame.
You have it in your hands to choose life or death for the planet – for the future generations of mankind and its companion species on the planet. Constructor or destructor, creator or destroyer; which will you be? Or nothing at all, an “also ran” in the game of life? What will you stand for? You will surely die, as all of us will. The issues that you must face are how, and for what purpose, and to what end. Will you stand for something good, or for something evil, or for nothing at all? You cannot avoid making this choice. If you choose denial, indecision and inaction, you have by default chosen to side with the destroyers. Will your death make a difference (for good or ill) and be definitive, meaningful and purposeful; or irrelevant, meaningless and purposeless. Are you Mr. Cellophane? Will your name be praised, or damned, or simply unremembered? Will you rise to be a “Citizen of the World,” fighting for the survival of the biosphere and mankind, or merely a citizen of the industrial superpower that destroyed it?
The industrial world will soon collapse. But I am very optimistic about the future of the world after that collapse. Out of the ashes of the industrial world will arise a New World Order, not based on economics, materialism, greed, agriculture, urban civilization, and global industrialization, but on spirituality and harmony of man as part of nature. The decision that you must make is whether you choose to work toward this future, or against it.
I read recently a headline that Kofi Annan has proposed an overhaul of the United Nations. Unfortunately, I did not read the article, and that newspaper has been thrown away. He was addressing, I suppose, the fact that the UN is increasingly viewed as impotent, and largely irrelevant in serious world crises.
In my view, the United Nations is irrelevant. It is little more than a toothless sounding-board for third-world countries. The “sovereign” nations of the world do not want for it have any real power, and the economic powers of the world (corporations, more than countries, in these times), certainly don’t. As global oil production starts to shrink, global war will ensue. The United Nations will have no role to play in this chaotic time. As things fall apart, the liberal democracy that has spread over the world (because of cheap commercial energy) will quickly disappear.
When things get really bad, and people are dying in the tens and hundreds of millions each year, things will change very quickly. People are willing to trade almost anything for their security. I will quote here a passage from the booklet, The Future Foretold, by Michael Roy.
“The stage is rapidly being set for the world to accept global leadership. Famed British historian Arnold Toynbee (1899-1975) was correct when he said, ‘The nations are ready to give the kingdoms of the world to any one man who will offer us a solution to our world’s problems.’ The first president of the United Nations General Assembly, Paul-Henri Spaak, who was also a prime minister of Belgium and one of the early planners of the European Common Market, as well as a secretary-general of NATO, affirmed, ‘We do not want another committee, we have too many already. What we want is a man of sufficient stature to hold the alliance of all the people and to lift us out of the economic morass into which we are sinking. Send us such a man, and whether he be God or devil, we will receive him.’
A few weeks ago, my wife and I visited friends who live in West Sussex, England. The couple took us to Salisbury Cathedral, the largest cathedral in England. On the wall of the cathedral, next to a very ancient clock, is a commemoration of the Burma Campaign. It reads,
In memory
of all who took part in
The Burma Campaign
1941-1945
“When you go home
tell them of us and say
for your tomorrow
we gave our today.”
I encountered an acquaintance in the parking lot of the Zambian Ministry of Education as I was leaving the office the other day. We talked for a few minutes about the US presidential election (Bush had just won), and the imminent offensive against Fallujah, Iraq.
On the election of Bush, my friend observed that, although most people in the world did not like what Bush was doing, they preferred him over Kerry since “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” While they may not agree with Bush, they know where he stands. After thirty years in the US Senate, having taken many different positions on issues, they did not know where Kerry stood, or how he would be likely to act in future situations.
I agreed with my friend, pointing out that neither candidate differed with respect to issues that mattered to me (stopping the destruction of the biosphere). I observed that both men were candidates of the oligarchy, and did not really differ very much on anything (not just anything that was important to me, but anything at all). They were both for more industrial development and, it follows, more destruction of the environment and more species extinction. It seemed to me that the positions of the candidates were, in fact, very similar. Kerry was in favor of most of the same things that Bush was (e.g., the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, the War on Terrorism, more jobs, more industrial activity, more immigration) – he just would “do them better.” As I saw written somewhere recently, he tried to “out-Bush” Bush, and that strategy just didn’t work.
It would appear that, although many people around the world were not in favor of Bush, they were not in favor of Kerry, either. There was no real choice, on the substantive issues. In my view, this explains the paradox why so many people – both in the US and worldwide – stated that they didn’t want to reelect Bush, but he was reelected anyway. They didn’t want Bush, but they didn’t want Kerry, either.
If two candidates are offering essentially the same platform / program, why would you choose someone who may not hold to that platform? Why choose someone who you don’t know where he stands – or more properly in the case of Kerry, where he will stand tomorrow – and who simply asserts that he will just “do things better”? Kerry would still, as Bush, fight the war in Iraq – he would just fight “a more sensitive war.” Big deal. What’s different about this? What is the advantage in this, the benefit of this? Neither candidate differed at all on the economy (they are both in favor of more industrial activity). So you are getting the same basic program with either man, but one is more likely to hold to it and is a lot easier to read than the other. You know where George Bush will stand on most issues – about the same way he stood on them thirty years ago. You may not like him very much, or his programs very much, but at least you can tell where he stands – you know what you are dealing with. You don’t know where Kerry will stand on an issue next week, even if he gave a speech on it last week. Issues are too complicated for him. Throw a few more facts at him, and he may change his position. George Bush’s worldview is simpler, more robust, more stable, more consistent over time. It isn’t likely to change very much, as new details come along. With Kerry, you don’t know what you are buying, or buying into. What will he do with your country? God knows, when he starts thinking about it.
Both Bush and Kerry had serious flaws, but they were quite different in nature. It is a question of which flaws bothered the electorate more. In my view, a perceived lack of consistency over time was viewed as a more serious flaw. As Joe Klein observed in his article, “All You Have to Do Is Believe” (Time, 20 September 2004), “George Bush seems to believe what he says and Kerry doesn’t quite.” It is not that Kerry is not sincere. In my view, he is. It’s just that what he believes in is not simple, basic principles. The public perception is that everything is just too complicated for him. In leaders – political as well as religious – people are more attracted to people of blind faith than to philosophers. Life is complicated and complex. Most serious issues are far too complex to be figured out by the average person – or even by a not-so-average person. In times of great crisis, it is the leaders having the best intuition, creativity, charisma, and inspiration who will get their way. Hitler did not win the hearts of the German people by logical analysis, but by emotional appeal to things that meant a lot to them.
George Bush does not have to figure things out. He can use his faith, his belief, and his intuition to guide him. He sees what to do, he knows what to do. Like Ronald Reagan, he doesn’t need the details to confuse him – all he needs is the main facts, the big picture, the main alternatives, and then he will see, intuitively, what to do and he will proceed to do it. No anxiety, no second thoughts, no recriminations, no apologies. If you follow your heart, you can always say, no matter how things turn out, that I did what I felt was best at the time. People can trust him because they have seen how his intuition has guided him throughout his life, and it’s OK. Kerry, it seems, does not rely on intuition, but on logical reasoning. The problem with that is that people do not know where this will lead them. Not because they don’t believe in logical reasoning, but because they don’t see, in looking at his 30-year record in the Senate, that it has offered any particular advantage to Kerry, or would enhance his ability to lead them. They don’t have any sense that where he may decide to lead them is where they really want to go. Bush may not be all that logical or articulate, but they know who he is and what he wants out of life, and it is not too far from what they want. People sense that, however things turn out in this very uncertain world, he will be fighting for about the same things that they would, in about the same way that they would. His record and his performance and his platform were not major factors in the election. His personality – his intuition and his judgment – was. Sure, he made mistakes, but they were the same kind of mistakes that they would have made, and for the same reasons.
Americans are more concerned with their jobs and income than anything else (they will live to regret that!), and both men are in favor of more and better jobs. So why vote for more uncertainty, when, other things being equal, you can have less of it? (In finance, the only reason for accepting a higher level of risk is a higher expected return – this is just common sense.) Bush is a slugger, a fighter. (You would want him on your team, if you were going to war. Maybe Americans may sense that they will soon be going to war.) Kerry started out that way in Vietnam (he served bravely), but then he started to think about what he and America were doing, and changed his mind about whether the war was good and worth killing for and dying for. Bush’s view of the world is simpler, less complicated, and many people can relate to that. Until their sons started being killed in large numbers, most Americans didn’t much care about the war in Vietnam either way. Kerry looked at what was going on, and started worrying about morality, the philosophical perspective, the big picture. Great attributes for a senator (advise and consent), but, absent a stable, consistent vision, a potentially fatal flaw in a country’s leader. Kerry is in favor of more jobs and industrial activity right now, but suppose he starts thinking about the fact that more jobs and more industrial activity is destroying the biosphere? George Bush won’t give a damn. Kerry just might.
A number of people have asked me how, with as many mistakes as Bush has made, could he possibly win reelection? Well, as long as his mistakes don’t affect them personally, his mistakes don’t bother them a whole lot. They know that the president has relatively little control over the economy, and so they don’t blame him for the recession, or the loss of jobs, or even the loss of jobs to India and Mexico by outsourcing and NAFTA (both of which began before Bush became President). And, to date, only 1,000 families have lost sons or daughters to the Iraq war. But Bush clearly did make some mistakes (whether he admits it or not). It is a real indictment of the Democratic Party, and the political process in America, that they, or some other party, could not have nominated someone much more impressive, with far greater appeal to the electorate. Bush’s record was not very good, and he could have been beaten on his record / performance. But he could only be beaten by someone with whom the electorate was comfortable. Despite his mistakes, they were generally comfortable with Bush’s values, intuition and judgment. They were not comfortable with Kerry, so they stayed with Bush.
It is common knowledge that, if Europeans had voted in the US election, they would have elected Kerry. Why do they differ so from Americans in this choice? Is it because Americans and Europeans are very different in their outlooks? Not really. The thing to keep in mind is that they would have preferred Kerry as President of the United States – not as president of their own countries. It is my belief that Americans believe that Bush will fight for their interests over those of other countries, and even over those of the world, and that he would do this with greater conviction (belief) and desire than would Kerry. Overall, Europeans believe that Kerry would better serve their interests. The fact that Europeans preferred Kerry was just one more piece of evidence to US voters that Bush had their interests more to heart than Kerry did. America has always maintained a certain degree of independence (even isolation, at times) from Europe and the rest of the world. To many Americans, Bush embodied this spirit more so than Kerry. (It is important to note that I am presenting generalizations here and, as is the case with all generalizations, they fail in many particular instances. A German friend pointed out that although she preferred Kerry personally, she hoped, as a German, that Bush would get reelected. Her reason for this position was that Kerry emphasized that, as president, he would work hard to obtain the participation of other countries in the war in Iraq. Her concern was that if Kerry got elected, Germany might be dragged into the war, and she did not want German sons to be slaughtered in Iraq.)
In summary, I have some explanations for why Bush won the election. It is not all “Monday-morning quarterbacking” – some of my reasons I have stated (in writing) earlier.
With respect to Fallujah, my friend asked, why don’t they just get on with it? The Iraqi terrorists are assassinating US servicemen and contractors, and beheading innocent US citizens. Why is the US pussyfooting around? Why does George Bush not get on with it, and destroy Fallujah?
My friend was a young boy growing up in Treviso, Italy, a small town lying about 20 kilometers north of Venice. On the night of 7 April 1944, the allies bombed Treviso. The bombing flattened the city. It destroyed eighty percent of the buildings and killed 2,000 inhabitants. My friend will never forget the day that his home town was destroyed by Allied bombs.
In today’s world, even though the human population has exploded to obscene levels, people are very squeamish about killing. Terrorists have murdered many US citizens, and the US has demonstrated nothing more than a very tepid response. A week or so ago, on television (probably the History channel), there was a very interesting program describing how, after the war in Germany had essentially been won, the US continued to bomb city after city in Germany, killing thousands of German civilians – men, women and children. Unfortunately, I didn’t tape the program, and I don’t recall the name of it, so my facts may not be very accurate. As I recall, the US bombed about 130 (?) cities at that point in the war. One of them was Dresden, a medieval city that had been spared by the Allies throughout the rest of the war. The Allies dropped tons of incendiary bombs on Dresden, to start a firestorm. In the massive fire that ensued, an estimated 35,000 civilians were incinerated (perhaps as many as 200,000). It was speculated that the US destroyed all of these cities gratuitously, simply to punish the German people for starting the war. The war was winding down, and the US had massive amounts of pilots, airplanes and ordnance left over. Why let them go to waste?
The November 2, 2004, issue of the International Express (African Edition, London, http://www.theinternationalexpress.com ) carried an article, “The Queen refuses to say sorry for the war.” German is raising the pressure for England to apologize for Allied saturation bombing of German cities in the Second World War. The Queen, who experienced the Blitz – German bombing of London in the War – is not particularly interesting in apologizing. Ask later, when her son, William, is king.
Ask my Uncle Bob, who spent four years as a Japanese prisoner of war, if he is interested in apologizing for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki (cities that were bombed late in the war with Japan, after it was clear (even to Japan) that Japan had lost). I think not – he still will not enter a Japanese restaurant or buy a Japanese car. He was on his last legs, being starved to death by the Japs, when, right after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he saw the US planes overhead. The Japs had already issued orders to execute all prisoners of war, so that they would not tell of their mistreatment. Had the atomic bombs not fallen when they did, my Uncle Bob, and my late Uncle Frank, would surely have been executed. As me if I am sorry for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I attended a coding theory conference in Royan, France, in 1965. That city had been totally destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II (it lay on the banks of the Gironde River, near a German submarine base).
The point that I am making here is that when people go to war – to real war of survival, not simply political wars such as Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq – they slaughter as many of the enemy population as they can.
The survival of the US as a nation is not the essential issue in the War in Iraq, and so that is why the US is pussyfooting around (see my article, “It’s the Oil, Stupid!” for more discussion of why we are fighting in Iraq). The people who lived in Treviso, Italy, and a hundred other German, French and Italian cities know what real war is about. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki know what real war is about. The older generation of Americans knows what real war is about. The younger generation of America do not know what real war is about. The War on Terrorism and the War in Iraq are not real wars (no-holds-barred, life-and-death struggles for survival of a nation, people, or culture). They are political wars that help support the US military-industrial complex and, it was hoped, access to Iraqi oil. To most Americans alive today, war is discretionary, and it is fought in other places. But, as the petroleum age draws to an end and the world becomes embroiled in war, the younger generations of America will soon find out what real war is.
Roy Clarke is a weekly columnist who writes a satirical column, “The Spectator,” in The Post of Zambia. His articles are very humorous. At times, he steps over the line of what is considered polite – even though he is married to a Zambian, he was almost deported from Zambia a few months ago, for writing an article that parodied foolish African leaders as monkeys.
Following is a sample of his writing. It is an article entitled “First Place.” It appeared in the Thursday, October 28, 2004 issue of The Post. Transparency International had just published its annual list, Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2004, which lists Zambia in the eleventh-worst group of countries (see the complete list, published on October 20, at Transparency Intenational’s website, http://www.transparency.org/pressreleases_archive/2004/2004.10.20.cpi.en.html (or a .pdf version at http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2004/dnld/media_pack_en.pdf ). Clarke writes:
‘Did you manage to get a drink at State House on Sunday?’ I asked Amock, as I poured a round of brandy.
‘Of course!’ laughed Amock. ‘We know these MMD functions from long experience! [MMD: Movement for a Multiparty Democracy, the ruling party in Zambia.] So Jennifer had her usual bottle in her handbag, and I carried the sandwiches. We’re too old to fight the party cadres for a miserable chicken wing.’
‘But why are these functions always complete chaos?’ I wondered. ‘I mean, if he can’t organize a party in his own garden, how’s he going to organize the whole country?’
‘That wasn’t chaos,’ said Sara. ‘That was a theatrical representation of the capitalist paradigm. First the rich fat ministers come along and hoover [to hoover means to vacuum] all the food and drink, and then the hordes of lackeys and bootlickers descend on the tables to fight over the remaining crumbs and dregs. It was really a cleverly staged enactment of unrestricted competition for scarce resources, revealing the operation of a free market.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Jennifer with a frown, ‘I think you have a tendency to over-theorize. But we didn’t see either of you there. Were you invited?’
‘Not exactly,’ I sniffed. ‘But Sara got in as the Nordian ambassador, and I was one of the Nyau dancers.’
‘That’s it!’ Jennifer screeched. ‘You’re the one who fell into the Independence Cake!’
‘You know how he is.’ Sara sighed. ‘Anything for a laugh!’
‘But I wouldn’t call it chaos or capitalism,’ said Jennifer. ‘It was just plain corruption. The people appointed to distribute public resources are the same ones found consuming the very resources they are supposed to be distributing. And they do it in public! The row of snouts at the trough was even shown on television!’
‘It’s just protocol,’ I laughed, pouring another round of brandy. ‘Because of our great respect for our leaders, we ask them to take first place in the queue.’
‘Protocol is just ritualized corruption,’ snapped Jennifer.
‘Talking about corruption,’ said Sara, ‘did you read this morning’s paper? The president is terribly disappointed that Transparency International says that public perception still has us eleventh in the table of the most corrupt, just the same as in 2000.’
‘Good gracious,’ said Amock, ‘then we’re not making any progress at all. I mean, since then we have had the Third Team debacle, and a court petition that the election was rigged. This should have put us up to number two or three!’
‘Two or three!’ shouted Jennifer. ‘We should be number one! Back in 2000 we had a president denying massive corruption at the top of government, but now we have a president admitting it was all true! And the culprits are still at large! We deserve first place!’
‘But what’s the importance of getting to number one?’ I asked.
‘What’s the importance?’ sputtered Jennifer. ‘Don’t you realize that, after forty years of independence, this was our chance to have something really big to celebrate! [Last month, Zambia celebrated its fortieth year since independence from Britain. The country has fallen so far in these forty years that many people, even locals, ask, “What is there to celebrate?”] And the investors, they love corruption! And then there’s the tourists!’
‘Tourists?’
‘Of course,’ said Jennifer. ‘Nowadays we have adventure tourism, which really brings in the money. People who normally live peaceful lives will come from all over the world to experience something exciting, and to battle against impossible hurdles and obstacles. In 2002 we won the World Roadblock Championship for having 231 roadblocks between Lusaka and Livingstone [site of Victoria Falls]. And in 2003 we won the International Prize for the Most Imaginative Roadblock Offense.’ [Cars are stopped all of the time in Zambia, for inspection. If there is something not right with your vehicle, you are fined. There is something wrong with most Zambian cars. If you pay the fine then and there, you may proceed. Receipts are not issued for the fines.]
‘What was that?’ asked Sara.
‘We won first, second and third prizes after a German tourist attempted to drive through Mazabuka [a town south of Lusaka, on the way to Livingstone] in the latest model BMW station wagon. She was fined $500 for having only one reverse gear, and another $500 for not having four-wheel drive on her spare wheel, and another $500 for being an unaccompanied female. She has since written a best-seller about her travels in Zambia, and now she’s a millionaire.’
‘But corruption is not just on the roads.’
‘We’ve made good progress in other areas,’ said Jennifer. ‘In 1996 we won the Nuremburg Prize for the Most Corrupted Constitution, and the government is working hard to carry off the same prize in 2006 [Zambia has appointed a commission to review the national constitution]. This will attract millions more from donors, all keen to reverse the situation by funding our Good Governance Projects.’
‘So why are we still stuck at number eleven, after so much effort?’
‘That’s the very question the government is asking,’ said Jennifer. ‘They suspect that Transparency International must have made a typographical error. It is thought that the typist’s finger must have hit the keyboard twice instead of once, giving us the number 11 instead of 1.
‘Very likely,’ said Sara. ;Even the Electoral Commission can now amend the figures for the past election, to show that the president got 92 per cent, and not 29 per cent.’
‘That should do it!’ Jennifer hooted. ‘Then Transparency International will have to give us First Place!’ [End of Clarke article.]
For the Zambian government’s reaction to the TI publication, I quote from the October 27 issue of the Times of Zambia (first portion of article follows):
Levy rejects TIZ corruption index
President [Levy Patrick] Mwanawasa yesterday expressed shock at the ranking by Transparency International Zambia (TIZ) Corruption Index that Zambia is still the 11th most corrupt country in the world.
And Anti-Corruption Commission director general Nickson Banda also disagreed with the results of TIZ index, saying the results were questionable.
Mr. Mwanawasa said that the TIZ 2004 Corruption Perception Index report which was announced last week was a distortion of facts and a complete lie.
Speaking at the launch of the national government baseline survey report at the Hotel Intercontinental, he said the TIZ index should not be accepted because it was misleading.
“I am extremely shocked to hear that the TIZ index report says Zambia is still ranked the 11th most corrupt country in the world. That is a complete distortion of fact. Does it mean that all the effort we have made meant nothing?” he asked.
Mr. Mwanawasa also disagreed with the Netherlands ambassador Peter Schonherr who seemed to agree with the TIZ corruption index.
Many evenings I play the guitar and sing songs – mostly American country songs, some folk songs, some rock-and-roll. I have a collection of lyrics for about a thousand songs that I “work through.”
The other night I was playing the song, YMCA, which includes the line, “No man can do it alone,” During the early morning of the next day, as I lay in bed thinking about nothing in particular, that phrase caught my attention, and I mulled it over.
In a sense, the phrase seems to apply to a lot in life. Certainly, you cannot participate in the essential and fundamental aspects of life – having a mate and raising a family – by yourself. And most of life’s activities in which a person engages have no relevance except for other people. Unless you are stranded on a desert island, you do much of your daily work for other people, regardless of what your occupation might be. If you are an author or architect or painter or musician, you do your work for other people. If you are a businessman, politician, scientist, engineer, or religious leader, your work is always oriented toward effects on other people. Although Newton, Maxwell, Edison and Einstein may have worked mainly alone, their work was always made relevant and meaningful by the existence of other human beings. None of these people, I imagine, would have bothered to ponder the questions they did, if they had been the single person on the planet, and no one would ever have known or shared or made use of their discoveries. The Universal Consciousness that created the universe already knows all of these theories – the only point in a human being’s discovering them is for the purposes of human beings (excitement of discovery, application to assist achievement of goals).
My thoughts turned to things spiritual. A few things, such as meditation and prayer, are done alone. But even in the areas of spirituality and mentality, many activities involve more than one person. Stanislav Grof’s holotropic breathwork is intended as a group activity. Hypnosis (autohypnosis and autosuggestion notwithstanding) are essentially two-person activities. Most physical and spiritual philosophies stress the importance of having a teacher. Reiki is intended to be practiced by two people, rather than one. Napoleon Hill’s personal philosophy for achieving success stresses the importance of the Master-Mind concept, which involves other people.
Even Jesus Christ observed, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” He had some great ideas, but without the work of St. Paul and others to bring those ideas to others, they would have died with him.
Meditation and prayer may be practiced either alone or in a group setting. But even alone, these are “dual” activities. The universe is a unitary entity, and meditation involves achieving harmony with oneself and with the rest of the universe, to promote reception of information (knowledge, intuition, hunches, “messages”) and energy (inspiration, desire, physical energy) from other sources. Prayer is another means of communicating with the Universal Consciousness, but of a more restricted paradigm (more focus on sending messages of supplication to other entities than on achievement of harmony).
The most interesting games involve those with two or more players. Games against nature (statistical decision problems) can be very exciting, but they are not nearly as exciting as a game involving an intelligent opponent. Voodoo would not exist if there were no other spirits or human beings involved. Two heads are better than one. While a single individual may be inspired by great ideas, it invariably requires the action of a group to accomplish anything significant. It takes two to tango. Seducing someone is always much more exciting than sexual self-gratification.
Some time ago, my wife and I visited our friends in Pretoria, South Africa. Pasted to the back of the guest bathroom door was the following prayer.
Pray for the World
Eph. 6:18. Prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray long and hard. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.
Monday: Family Life
Pray for
Relationships between family members / love
The home, that it will be a refuge
Times of fellowship and worship
Financial needs
Health
“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another” – John 13:35.
Tuesday: cultural adaptation
Pray for
Knowledge, understanding, respect and growth in culture
Quick recovery from culture shock
Learn language easily and quickly
Wednesday: the mission
Pray for
Love for the people
God’s heart for the people
A revival
To know and to have faith to work God’s God-sized plans
Thursday: the country
Pray for
The rules and governors of the country
The people
The economy
Friday: spiritual growth
Pray for
Time for fellowship with God
Falling more in love with Christ
Knowing the ways of the Holy Spirit – growth
Saturday: prayer support
Faithful prayer supporters
More missionaries to go
Sunday: the local church
Unity and support
Worship in spirit and truth
Growth
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FndDescription(Miscellany8: Men in Black; Overhaul the UN; The Burma Campaign; Remembering Treviso, Italy; Roy Clarke on Corruption; No Man Can Do It Alone; An Africaner Prayer)
FndKeywords(men in black; UN overhaul; Burma campaign; Treviso, Italy; Roy Clarke of Zambia; Africaner prayer)