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| What comes next after the United States? |
| 2019-06-15 |
| [AmericanThinker] "A republic, if you can keep it" was Ben Franklin's famous reply to the breathless folks waiting outside Independence Hall in 1787 who had asked him, "Well, doctor, what have we got ‐ a republic or a monarchy?" If you can keep it? Let's just say it's not looking good. And that isn't good. For America ‐ or the world at large. The Left never gives in, never tires, never wavers, always presses on. ...When a society loses faith in itself, something must fill the void. Bizarrely, we have lost faith in what demonstrably works and brings the most freedom, prosperity, and happiness to the largest number of people‐ a mix of free-market capitalism and Judeo-Christian values ‐ and are now supplanting that faith with "faith" in what demonstrably doesn't work ‐ socialism, an economic and governing philosophy that has brought only death, tyranny, poverty, and despair to all who have lived under it. The federal government has usurped states' roles and rights. And now Democrats want to dispense with the Electoral College. ...Sadly, Dr. Franklin, it does not appear that we will be able to keep the republic you and your contemporaries bequeathed to us after all. Thanks for trying. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #13 I suspect group size is a scaling problem that comes from the fact that we spent most of our history as roving bands of hunter-gatherers. (Scaling is *one* reason why socialism doesn't work. Don't get me started on the others) One of the greatest accomplishment of the American Experiment is that we managed to unite people from all over the world under one idea - America. Not blood, not soil, but the set of beliefs laid out in our Constitution. E Pluribus Unum, baby! I fear the current obsession with identity politics is shattering the whole idea of America. Whether it can be put back together remains to be seen. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2019-06-15 21:25 |
| #12 Entropy is at work, and the more complex and unequal the perception of government behavior, the faster it fractures the system...we have tipped I fear, and the coming societal velocity to violence is visible now. |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2019-06-15 20:38 |
| #11 The un-United States |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2019-06-15 20:37 |
| #10 We'll find out after the Franco-Pinochet interim. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2019-06-15 18:00 |
| #9 Do humans, homo sapiens that is, have a hard-wired tendency to break down into smaller, more stable social groups? Certainly, consider all of the popular Zombie survivor group stories. The allegory is all about 'us few against the remainder'. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2019-06-15 16:45 |
| #8 ^^Large social groups only work as long as their is a general 'Trust' that the 'Rules' are being adhered to. Once this breaks down it is a down hill rush for each petty group to establish and defend their turf against all comers. |
| Posted by: magpie 2019-06-15 16:37 |
| #7 Do humans, homo sapiens that is, have a hard-wired tendency to break down into smaller, more stable social groups? This makes far larger social groups such as "Republics" or "Empires" inherently unstable. Look at the USSR, for example, it was supposedly communist when in reality it quickly converted into a bureaucratic swamp of oligarchies fighting over the spoils. Dunbar's Number: In 1992,[1] Dunbar used the correlation observed for non-human primates to predict a social group size for humans. Using a regression equation on data for 38 primate genera, Dunbar predicted a human "mean group size" of 148 (casually rounded to 150), a result he considered exploratory due to the large error measure (a 95% confidence interval of 100 to 230).[1] |
| Posted by: magpie 2019-06-15 16:34 |
| #6 Well, deTocqueville said that the "American experiment" would last only up to the point that the citizens discovered they could vote themselves largess from the public treasure. With the kleptocracy in full flower we may be there..... |
| Posted by: Mercutio 2019-06-15 16:18 |
| #5 If they can't fund it, they can't do it |
| Posted by: Frank G 2019-06-15 16:14 |
| #4 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ... or until it's crushed flat. |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2019-06-15 13:59 |
#3 The Left never gives in, never tires, never wavers, always presses on."It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. And it absolutely will. Not. Stop. Until you are dead !" - Terminator (1984) |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2019-06-15 13:40 |
| #2 Republic -> oligarchy -> democracy -> anarchy ->dictorship. Isn't that the way it usually works? |
| Posted by: Fred 2019-06-15 12:46 |
| #1 A long spell of bad luck. |
| Posted by: Matt 2019-06-15 12:16 |