The West’S Remorseless Suicide? How You Can Improve Your Credit Score Here ph
No one wants to face the apocalypse. Least of all those who have most to lose. But there comes a point when naivety should give way to realism as the best guarantor for salvaging something from the burning wreck. A world where the West is no longer dominant would not be a world with a new order. Rather it would be a world without order: a resurgent and empire-building Russia, a rising and empire-building China and a mix of mini-empires in South America, the Gulf and Middle East, overseeing a nuclearising developing world, where poverty, corruption and disease remain endemic. Professor Niall Ferguson of Harvard University and LSE makes the point that the West had certain “killed apps”, such as competition and science. According to Ferguson, that China has finally “downloaded” at least some of these is not the concern. Rather it is that the West seems hell-bent on deleting them. In Europe and the U.S., too much has been promised by too few to too many. 1940s-era welfare states worked well with the fertility rates and life expectancy of the time. But as life expectancy has shot up and fertility fallen, welfare has not adjusted accordingly. In the democratic West, how to wean people off government lollipops is becoming increasing hard for politicians to contemplate.
The cultural revolution of the 1960s has also blown apart the social mores of days gone by. Of course some things had to change: it was right that homosexuality was recognised as legal by the state, that abortion was made available and taken out of the hands of back-street clinics, and that African Americans were accorded equal rights with their white counterparts. But the fallout from the 1960s, including the almost total annihilation of Christianity (which is wrongly still perceived by many of its opponents as a Western religion) in public discourse and the concomitant rise in individualism not seen anywhere else but the West, has led to a curious nihilism which sees freedom as having no boundaries and where churches are transformed into rave clubs: a form of sacrilege which would never be countenanced in India, Africa or the Middle East. White people are not better for having ditched their culture. As the West’s spiritual heart has been hollowed out almost everywhere but among minorities, or in the American Deep South and Canadian prairies, so too in the West governments have over-extended their remit. Is it really the role of the state to do everything it now attempts? At the same time of course, the West freely ignores the democratic wishes of its people as and
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when it chooses. When the West does this, it makes a mockery of its claim to represent the “developed” world. But what is most alarming is the almost total failure to recognise the problems: the almost racist arrogance that only the West could ever develop or at the very least, only countries like Japan which are perceived as being “Westernised”. Are we really so in denial that we think Italy is more dynamic than China? Come on, that’s absurd! The Chinese are more committed to capitalism than the West is, albeit of the state-directed kind. But I tell you what, the Chinese are still getting rich. They can still be entrepreneurs and contrary to what some commentators claim, a stroll through Shanghai does not feel like Pyongyang or any other totalitarian city. The West must face up to its myriad problems: Europe cannot be economically prosperous with declining populations (it has never happened yet in history and history will not be suspended for Europe), and the U.S. and others cannot max out another credit card to hopefully boost their earnings to pay for all the other maxed out credit cards, plus the new credit card. At some point, faith will be lost in America if its debt continues to rise at its current rate (Washington’s Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2027, the U.S. economy will shut down on the current debt trajectory, claims Chair of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan). Faith will also be lost in a demographically declining Europe and Japan, both of which lack the kind of diaspora which China has to call upon (and is calling upon). Unless of course Europeans are naïve enough to believe that Australians, Canadians and Americans of European descent are all going to swap their quarter-acres for flats and row houses in Europe. Europe had America to cushion its decline, not least by guaranteeing the continent’s security so that European countries could spend more of their cash on big government welfare. But as America runs out of cash, a) who will guard the demographically dying and welfarist Europeans, b) how will America fund itself both militarily and in terms of welfare (within 15 years, almost all U.S. tax revenue could be spent on healthcare, social security and debt interest) and who, most importantly, will cushion America should it decline? We should have replacement-level fertility, we should balance the books and live within our means, a government’s first priority should be national defence, and it is not any government’s job to micro-manage civil society or the economy. Finally any society which forgets its roots or disrespects them, is liable to suffer from a collective amnesia about what it is or, worse still, to actively despise itself. If the West commits suicide, it is the rest that will be laughing. Many Westerners have voted for a form of social welfare that they are not willing to pay for. For those who claim that they paid into big government schemes and deserve their rights, they should have realised that it was an unsustainable Ponzi scheme to begin with. For those who want their welfare even if it means destroying their children’s and their grandchildren’s future, not to mention their nations… grow up! What do you think? Please comment below to tell me and I'll send you a free gift.
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