By Patrick J. Buchanan
About the first decade of what was to be the Second American Century, the pessimists have been proven right.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the United States began the century producing 32 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. We ended the decade producing 24 percent. No nation in modern history, save for the late Soviet Union, has seen so precipitous a decline in relative power in a single decade.
The United States began the century with a budget surplus. We ended with a deficit of 10 percent of gross domestic product, which will be repeated in 2010. Where the economy was at full employment in 2000, 10 percent of the labor force is out of work today and another 7 percent is underemployed or has given up looking for a job.
Between one-fourth and one-third of all U.S. manufacturing jobs have disappeared in 10 years, the fruits of a free-trade ideology that has proven anything but free for this country. Our future is being outsourced — to China.
While the median income of American families was stagnant, the national debt doubled.
The dollar lost half its value against the euro. Once the most self-sufficient republic in history, which produced 96 percent of all it consumed, the U.S.A. is almost as dependent on foreign nations today for manufactured goods, and the loans to pay for them, as we were in the early years of the republic.
What the British were to us then, China is today.
Beijing holds the mortgage and grows impatient as we endlessly borrow on equity and refuse to begin paying it down. The possibility exists of an eventual run on the dollar or even a U.S. debt default.
Who did this to us? We did it to ourselves.
We sold ourselves a lot of snake oil about the Global Economy, interdependence, free trade and “it doesn’t make any difference where goods are produced.” The George W. Bush Republicans ran up the deficit with tax cuts, two wars and a splurge in social spending to rival the guns-and-butter of the Great Society.
Abandoning its role as the fellow who comes and takes away the punch bowl when the party’s getting good, the Fed kept the money flowing fast and free, creating the tech bubble that burst in Y2K and the stock and housing bubble that burst at decade’s end.
To pull us back from the cliff’s edge, over which we were headed a year ago, the Fed doubled the money supply, while the administration ran up deficit spending to the highest level since World War II.
Unlike World War II, however, there is no end in sight to these deficits.
The stock market, which flat-lined over the decade, had to surge 50 percent in 2009 to retrieve the worst losses since the Depression.
Everyone, it seems, except for Washington bureaucrats and Wall Street, for whom the bonuses never seem to stop, has been hammered by the sinking home values and shrinking portfolios.
After Sept. 11, the nation was united behind a president as it had not been since Pearl Harbor. But instead of focusing on the enemies who did this to us, we took Osama bin Laden’s bait and plunged into a war in Iraq that bled and divided us, alienated Europe and the Arab world, and destroyed the Republican Party’s reputation as the reliable custodian of national security and foreign policy.
The party paid — with the loss of both houses in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 — but the nation has not stopped paying.
With nearly 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and another 30,000 more on the way, al-Qaida is now in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and North Africa, while the huge U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq serves as its recruiting poster.
Again, it is not a malevolent fate that has done this to us. We did it to ourselves. We believed all that hubristic blather about our being the “greatest empire since Rome,” the “indispensable nation” and “unipolar power” advancing to “benevolent global hegemony” in a series of “cakewalk” wars to “end tyranny in our world.”
After a decade of self-delusion and self-indulgence, we must stop deceiving ourselves. As Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, the “can-do” nation that won World War II in Europe and the Pacific in less than four years, that put a man on the moon in the same decade JFK said we would, is history.
We have a government that cannot balance its books, defend its borders or win its wars. And what is it now doing? Drafting another entitlement program as we are informed that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds have unfunded liabilities in the trillions.
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the question is not whether we will preside over the creation of a New World Order, but whether America’s decline is irreversible.
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Linda,
A powerful and very timely commentary written at the end of this tragic decade. And to think that during this decade the mindless free trade policies that Pat decried in his 1996 and 2000 bids for the White House (coupled with Washington’s mismanagement of both mortgages and the Wall Street bankers, that kept buyers from getting car loans) pulled down GM, the largest and most magnificent manufacturing company in the history of the world!
David L. Sponseller
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Globalization, the War in Iraq, Government Laxity and Wall Street Corruption were the four horseman of the Apocalypse. There is no way we can avoid the Grim Reaper unless the course of this country is dramatically changed.
Peter Schiff ( Economist/Advisor to Ron Paul) is now running against Chris Dodd in Connecticut for a Senate seat and predicted the financial debacle. A win in Connecticut in 2010 may offer a new path for our “leaders”?? to follow. His website is http://www.youtube.com/peterschiff. Check out the video on GDP, Spending and Constitution.
Politically, the present administration is inept, weak, refuses to hear the majority of American concerns and is hell bent on the “transformation” of this country in every aspect of our lives. Again, Terrorism has been given the green light and we are stuck in the mud with more political correctness and additional restrictions for the flying public because of failure on several levels of homeland security and intelligence. What else is new? Oh Yes, a Happy New Year to All.
Pat is correct about the declining decade of 2000. Unfortunately, the Obama administration and Congress continue the path that caused this decline.
“We have a government that cannot balance its books, defend its borders or win its wars.”
Patrick J. Buchanan
We can balance the books by abolishing the Federal Reserve. The American people must hold the purse strings to their own bank account, lest they remain in eternal serfdom to usury.
We can win our wars by directing the U.S. military to seize the ill-gotten assets of the international bankers and returning them to the American people, as an act of restitution, and garnering the spoils of war.
We must send the United Nations headquarters packing, and end our involvement with that phony storefront of the international bankers.
We must destroy the Muslim religion, by incinerating Mecca, which is the wellspring of all Islamic fanaticism. Every mosque, minaret, and madrassa should be blasted to smithereens. All enemy aliens must now be put in detention camps, prior to deportation.
We can secure our borders, by dissolving America’s secret government, the Council on Foreign Relations, and placing David Rockefeller under arrest for high treason against the United States of America. He has flooded our nation with millions of “guest workers” who come in the name of “La Reconquista.”
Rockefeller and the Federal Reserve are a direct threat to the national security of the United States of America.
Finally, We the People, must demand that the United States military prosecute a coup against our communist government, and arrest the usurper, Resident Obama, for impersonating an American president.
Revolutionary,
I agree times are tougher than ever. It’s been a shitty decade. The middle class is an endangered species. Our leadership is running the country into the ground. There is no hope for our youth. The republic (or empire?) is in decline, etc., etc.
But as for your thoughtful commentary… Is it really revolutionary?
Let’s bomb more people. Let’s expel the evil doers.
Let’s have a revolution!
Build a Great Wall!
I think I read about all this in a high school history class. Or maybe I saw it in an old Twilight Zone re-run?
Thank you for your creative solutions.
In case you haven’t noticed the revolution began years ago. And it’s not being waged from a cushy armchair somewhere in Leisure World.
People are getting squashed beneath tank treads, blocked by internet censors, blasted to bits by IEDs, and immolated by flying robots by other people weened on Grand Theft Auto video games.
History is happening as we speak. Will killing and building provide the revolutionary intervention you seek? Or are you playing your historical role?
Solon 67,
It does not appear that you know anything about where Patrick Buchanan is coming from; I would urge you to pick up his books “A Republic not an Empire”, and Churchill, Hitler And an Unnecessary War”. The man has a real heart for people.
I read his book, “State of Emergency,” and it made me sick. It was as if he wrote a book in support of hate just to sell books and to give himself credit. If Pat Buchanan did not exist, I suppose that we would have to invent him. But to take anything he has to say serious, I think, is a serious mistake.
I haven’t read Buchanan’s “A Republic Not an Empire.” But I am a student of history. My interpretation: The U.S. has become an empire in all but name. Though many of us believe in a republic, the nation behaves as an empire. Neither have I read, “Churchill, Hitler And an Unnecessary War.” But I have studied the Treaty of Versailles. Just about all historical conflict since then till today is either a direct or indirect result of that so-called treaty. This includes the Viet Nam War, Mess ‘O Potamia, and even some the current sociopolitical situation in China. So I can see how many things going on today can be seen as totally unnecessary.
Have I missed the point? Buchanan’s point is that we are all to blame. But this is conventional wisdom. It would be so true if we were really a republic. My point is that the people cannot be held responsible when everything is twisted by authorities to support their own agenda. Media, science, government, business all work to persuade unemployed, underemployed, employed and overworked people to buy their product (whether it is climate change, the party line, war, or the better mousetrap). The idea of a republic is predicated on having a well-informed, educated citizenry. Living up to this ideal is nigh impossible in today’s world. (Could this is by why people cede their autonomy to pundits, imams, experts, and cult leaders?).
Good, impartial information is a rare commodity. There is just not enough time in the day to get the facts. There are facts galore to support both sides of a debate. While education – the kind that inculcates critical thinking and lifelong learning skills – is becoming more and more out of reach as institutions lay off educators and raise fees. In a republic, everybody would have access to information and education.
An empire, on the other hand, is fueled by perpetual war on frontiers full of hostiles and resources — be they Indians of the Black Hills or Communists in Viet Nam or Islamists in the Middle East — and the very people who have the power to end war, that is the middle class.
To say the middle class is shrinking is an understatement. It is being assaulted on multiple fronts from the living room television set to the Capital Building. It seems the middle class is a resource as well…
p.s. to Revolutionary…
For the record, I paid for college with the Montgomery G.I. Bill after serving in the Marine Corps infantry. My “Ivy League” education was paid for by a Navy scholarship just months before my cousin was killed by an IED in Iraq. My parents didn’t pay this. We all did.
My advice… attack the opinion – not the person.
Nothing is new, comments were made before, with no effect what so ever. You may lament all you want, the Union sovereign States of America (for common defense and mutual benefit) — for which Thomas Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence — has been dead and burried; and the Empire of the American century is collapsing.
“A small number of powerful men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at other times of the “People”. The title of good or bad citizen was no longer the reward of what he did for or against his country for all were equally corrupt; but the more anyone was rich, and in condition to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment the ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent and youth was to such a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it.” –Sallust(86-34 bc): Fragments, I. 12-13.
“The last century of the republic was characterised by the collapse of popular government, because of the wide extension of the citizenship, the considerable adulteration of the citizen body at Rome by the introduction of un-Romanized orientals, chiefly through the manumission of slaves, the growth in Rome of an unemployed proletariat, the rise of demagogues, and the complexity of the problems of government. The increasingly corrupt senate had lost control of the assemblies, the armies and the generals. The financiers as well as the governors, saw in the provinces only a field for exploitation.” –An Encyclopædia of World History, p. 100.
It’s sad that when people see what Pat describe all they think about is Obama or Neocons or free traders. It’s all of it and so much more. Our entire society is corrupt at every core. All political parties, government bureaucracies, corporations, labor unions, churches, media, food, free associations, and family are rotten. Who is president or controls Congress cannot change our society if it wanted to; there is a huge inertia of decay and fracture.
And with the exception of political affiliation, none of the fissures in our society run along physical boundaries. Usually when a society breaks apart, it can break apart into new smaller groups and form new nations that can rebuild solidarity. Our divisions have broken us along invisible psychological and economic boundaries. The only things holding us together are physical infrastructure, systemic bureaucracy, and love of the same corporate products and secretions.
We must destroy the Muslim religion, by incinerating Mecca, which is the wellspring of all Islamic fanaticism. Every mosque, minaret, and madrassa should be blasted to smithereens. All enemy aliens must now be put in detention camps, prior to deportation.
(quote)
Another arrogant statement. Islam is not the problem, our own godlessness is. Our own arrogance is. Our arrogance which believes the world needs to adopt our gangs, drugs, teen sex, and abortion. We need to stop this arrogant adventurism.
Pat
You have worked in the inner sanctums of Washington. I have one question I would like you to honestly address, please. “Who REALLY runs this country”? It beggars belief that in 2006 the American people voted to get out of Iraq and we are still there. They voted Obama for Change, but nothing has changed, the reforms necessary on Wall Street have been watered down to be meaningless, Barnie Frank is supposed to be a left liberal Democrat but he has as head of the House Committee voted against every measure. All the promises, the surveillance issues, the Patriot Act, how we dealt with the Muslim world, Israel, credit card reform, banks being given tax breaks that go back 5 years and on and on. So who REALLY runs the American Government. Because right now I see no difference between Bush and Obama. Please name names!!!
Cry politicians! see the folly and take action.
The priority is getting people to feel the emotional urgency in turning around
the abomidable things done to the planet. Stop the apathy and lathery now. We are faced with threats on all fronts, dominating controller aim to annilate the mass majority of people and continue convincing authority figures to sacrifice there values and beliefs in the onslaught of killing off the population on earth because they twisted feeble minds into believing it will be sustainable, there are holes in the ozone, oil addiction that chokes the atmoshere of orgone energy, and others who blame for everything, as-not-to change from convoluted habits. We are accountable to reverse the damage to planet. We may not know excately humanities orgins but we have reverse the damage we cause or we will detroy the planet with our laziness and wastefulness. For survival sake change as much as possible in your life. Whatever you believe will result in satifying others needs. The only way out of the mess is to invest our way into the future. People naturally would feel strong emotions when wrong-doings are commited and thats what I expect. You can stand up for what you need to do now, be well and crusade for wellness. Only you know excately what you need to do. All that some people are feeling right now is excrucating pain and they are connected to us and if they die in vain becaue we pass up real life adventures for being entairtained til we are old and have nothing left then that will be the finalily. Isiah said blow your trumpet loudly. The challenges we face today mean we live or die depends changing and who turns the situation around. Restoring order requires agressively joining the challenge of organizing an alliance to end all alliances. I pray you all have the resiliance, tenacity, fortitude, vigiliance, bravery, courage, and will to do what you must in bringing truth and reconcilliation to all the nations of earth and peace will be there. Everyone believes they are decieved and believe it is in there best interest to not take command of this mass deluded population. But who really knows the history of human origins and this world isn’t meant to be depleted of resources for getting sick off junk food, exploiting helpless people. Resources are reneewable if they are used judically. This is abuse what’s happening and together we abused the planet, and we cause people to despair. I am a citizen of earth and child of God. To God be the glory, the power, and strength forever, Amen
In Answer To Our Solon of the Senate:
“History is happening as we speak. Will killing and building provide the revolutionary intervention you seek? Or are you playing your historical role?”
Solon 67
Your question is incoherent…fool! Why don’t you watch the video of a woman being murdered by Chechnyan Muslims, and then ask your own arrogant, stupid question again? By the way, I find it significant that your handle is “Solon.” You belong with the other jackals in the United States Senate, asking the “hard questions” of the day.
http://www.truthtube.tv/play.php?vid=2133
Muslim Television Channel Founder Charged With Beheading His Wife …
Feb 16, 2009 … Muslim Television Channel Founder Charged With Beheading His Wife, The estranged wife of a Muslim television executive feared for her life …
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,493645,00.html – Cached – Similar
As for “playing a historical role;” any religion based on sawing-off the head of a human being, or blowing up an airliner, should be targeted for termination.
The concentration camps of the Nazi regime were not liberated with logic, or reasonable discourse, but with massive doses of killing those perpetrators of genocide.
The Muslim ideology, is the most fanatical belief system ever known to world history, as its brand is to kill Englishmen, pulverize English gravestones, and bulldoze British churchyards, to lay the foundation for a new generation of mosques. All on a guest worker pass. Is this what you meant by “killing and building?”
I’m struggling to decipher your meaning, Mr. Numb Nuts. Maybe Mommy and Daddy are wasting their money sending you to those fancy ivy-covered bastions of “higher learning”–called universities– as you appear to have been educated into the higher stupidity!
Only Muslims kill their own family members. Nazi werewolves and Japanese Kamikaze pilots never quite went that far as fanatics, in order to qualify for being fire-bombed into common sense.
These pedants–such as my unworthy opponent– reek unduly of burning the midnight oil!
BTW: “Thank you, for YOUR creative solutions.”
Wow, you sound really smart, did “your mommy and daddy” send you to school also, or were you just too smart for that?
You’re very good at identifying the problems associated with our decline as a nation, and at complaining about it all, you are very confused and wrong about its true causes. Pat, you’re not living in Kansas anymore — that went bye-bye at Diehle Plaza in 1963. Things are NOT as they seem, or as the corporate media purports them to be. False history continues to be written. It is not about right-left. It is about our freedoms being taxed out of existance. What do you think all that money pays for, for heavens sake?
“I think I read about all this in a high school history class. Or maybe I saw it in an old Twilight Zone re-run?
Thank you for your creative solutions.”
How very patronizing of you.
“People are getting squashed beneath tank treads, blocked by internet censors, blasted to bits by IEDs, and immolated by flying robots by other people weened on Grand Theft Auto video games.”
You sound like George W. Bush, preaching to Americans that they are “addicted to oil.”
Your service in the Marine Corps is very commendable, and the fact you paid your own way merits respect. I stand corrected.
“My advice… attack the opinion – not the person.”
Take your own advice.