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September 29, 2009

When the Left Runs Out of Lift

What I am curious to discover is
what happens when [Liberalism] runs out of lift. Because it will. Like Fannie and Freddie, it isn't too big to fail. There's no such thing. I think that one of the challenges of statecraft is to prepare for the Fall of the Inner Berlin Wall; what to do when the fantasy shatters. I think on the day after we'll be confronted with many shattered institutions, completely bankrupted, mere Potemkin shells; out of money, out of ideas, and out of excuses. I am not optimistic about society's ability to handle it because even conservatives, I think, will have difficulty anticipating the thoroughness of it and its probable shocking suddenness. - Belmont Club -- The nine trillion

Posted by Vanderleun at September 29, 2009 10:31 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

I'm anticipating... and it isn't the fall of liberalism I'm expecting. It's the fall of America. I fully acknowledge our greatest fears are seldom realized - very few of us die in airplane crashes - but I think this is where liberals have false "hope". America is not too big to fail.

However, even if we conservatives have some insight that liberals lack, it still doesn't give us a clue how to prepare. I'm reading The Black Swan on Taleb's theory of high impact improbable events. I see a Black Swan coming. All I know to do is pray for mercy.

Posted by: Western Chauvinist at September 29, 2009 12:14 PM

We are lucky to have Richard Fernandez with us. His analysis of contemporary Zeitgeist are spot on. Is there anyone on the left doing any kind of comparable thinking?

Posted by: Das at September 29, 2009 12:27 PM

For better or worse, "liberalism" isn't going anywhere. No matter what happens there will still be true believers. How many times do you have to discredit socialism as an economic model? When the Republicans were booted out of control of congress almost 3 years ago it could have been a great thing for the country. Instead, what did we get? Not a breath of fresh air and novel ideas, but the same old Democrats that had been around for donkey's years espousing the same tired ideas. I thought they had finally learned something in the 80's and 90's but sadly, no they didn't.

P.S. ...as for "collapse" I wouldn't count on it...much more likely we get 10 years of stagnation.

Posted by: Barnabus at September 29, 2009 12:43 PM

A human being is born a tabula rasa; perpetually repeating the same mistakes is a feature, not a bug.

Posted by: ahem at September 30, 2009 6:21 AM

That is correct, ahem. Socialism has the advantage of representing our very instincts, literally. It requires no study and no understanding; like copulation, we just do it. Unlike copulation, you don't have to get lucky to get some.

It's a miracle we got this far. Let's give some love to Adam Smith.

Posted by: james wilson at September 30, 2009 9:32 AM

Liberals are a self-selecting group of people totally immune from experience and history. In fact, all of the reality they ever need is wallowing inside their emotion generator, where other people have a mind. If liberalism is this active after all the myriad failures of the last several decades, why would anyone think the ideology would soon be leaving us.

Liberals will just become more and more shrill and heap more and more punishment on their enemies for smaller and smaller offenses. The more likely outcome isn't that liberalism will evaporate but that we will be "disappeared" by the liberals because we were about to have a counter-revolutionary thought, or one of our children were on the verge of same.

Posted by: Scott M at October 2, 2009 3:47 AM

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