Is Max Hastings right? Will America shut down for REAL?

A very interesting article by Max Hastings in today's Mail which I would urge my American e-pals to read and comment upon.  In essence, Hastings suggests that America is reaching a break-point after which it will simply cease to be governable.  And he lays the blame for this forthoming catastrophe fair and square upon the shoulders of the Republican party and their ginger group, the so-called 'Tea Party':

The scariest part is that, even if somehow America struggles out of this crisis without precipitating a global financial disaster — which we should not take for granted — we are getting a preview of the likely pattern of American politics.

So sclerotic is the system, so mountainous the obstacles to reform, that the greatest democracy on earth looks set to shuffle and stumble towards the future, rather than march boldly as its allies hope and need.

The shutdown crisis shows that democratic freedoms, when brutishly abused, can produce consequences almost as scary as those of tyranny.

The United States of America looks frighteningly close to being ungovernable.  [My emphasis]

To be fair, he does lay some of the blame onto President Obama whom he describes, accurately according to everything I read about him, as being a cold, detached president unable and unwilling to indulge in the very necessary business of mixing and schmoozing with political friend and foe alike in order to get deals done.  That said, Hastings turns his fire on the Republicans, in effect, accusing them of being unsophisticated 'hayseeds' completely out of touch with the modern world who "believe they have the right, duty and even power to roll back the 21st century".  He reminds us of the far-flung nature of American politics in which Congressmen spend considerable amounts of time flying back to their home States to keep well in touch with their supportive (they hope!) electorate.  In yet another example of that creepy coincidence thing which seems to be pursuing me, only yesterday I read this in Richard Holmes's superb single-volume biography of Churchill:

What he [Churchill] did not fully appreciate was that the dominance of the East Coast oligarchy represented by FDR was tenuous.  The USA of the 1940s was stil 48 rather introspective states lightly overseen by a small Federal government.  Washington was a small southern town that came awake for half the year, wherreas London was the largest metropolis inthe world and had been an imperial capital for centuries.  Winston did not make sufficient allowance for the limitations on FDR's power, nor his for his need to mobilise public opinion in order to obtain what he wanted from Congress.  [In the Footsteps of Churchill, Ch.9, p.302]

The main difference I can see from 'over here' is that today the government is dominated by both the East Coast and now the West Coast and it is the vast but relatively empty hinterlands that are now feeling the squeeze of firm, not to say, dictatorial, government.  And today, Washington is anything but "a small southern town"!  I hesitate to criticise Max Hastings, a distinguished historian, reporter and commentator who I much admire but his piece has the feel of a two week trip 'over there', probably paid for by The Mail in order to facilitate an Op-Ed piece.  Reading it, I gain the distinct impression that most of his time was spent at various dinner tables at the homes of some of the 'movers and shakers' in Washington.  Somehow, I don't think he ever bothered to go down to, say, Arkansas and attend a country hoedown organised by a local TeaParty in order to gain some idea of the view from the bottom looking up!  And he fails, it seems to me, to acknowledge that though some of the Republican pols might be less than sophisticated metropolitans, er, like Max Hastings, they are actually representing the views of their electors - and that is called democracy!

Not, mind you, that I think he is wrong to excoriate the GOP leadership (or lack of it) for tactics which are beyond stupid.  However, he is entirely wrong in failing to draw our attention to the malevolent Marxist-imbued ideology that the Democrat party are determined to stuff down the throats of American people whether or not they gag on it.  As the old saying has it, it takes two to tango!

 

Comments

[dearieme]

When their Constitution broke down so badly that they had a murderous Civil War, it would have been sensible to sit down and write a better one. But that might have needed a Pericles whereas all they had was Lincoln, and soon not even him.

[David Duff]

Which is why, on the whole, I prefer our system which lacks a written constitution although the buggers in Westminster and/or Brussels are keen to write one!

[JK]

Long comment (excerpt) ... just the conclusion though - some of it anyway:

"An obvious alternative path for the Republican Party in expanding its electoral base leads from the South to the rest of America, i.e. from the Republicans being the white party in the South to the Republicans being the white party in America as a whole. In the 2012 presidential election Romney got 60 percent of the white vote, while Obama received only 38 percent. Of course the Republican establishment knows how dangerous and destructive it would be to have an American party system defined and divided along racial lines, even if not explicitly or overtly so. However, if the Party grows more desperate to gather voters in hard times, its younger political entrepreneurs might calculate that a racial path for the Party might well be the best path to advance their own ambitions, and themselves.

These speculations lead to a prospective realignment—or rather a sharpening of the current alignment—of the American party system along the following lines: The core voting groups for the progressive coalition and the Democratic Party are (1) blacks, (2) Hispanics, and (3) workers in the public sector. Conversely, the core voting groups for the conservative coalition and the Republican Party are (1) economic and fiscal conservatives; (2) Evangelical or Bible-believing Protestants; and (3) white male workers in the private sector.[14]

The potential role of gender identity. Of course, in this alignment there remains one immense independent or swing group, and that is white women. A substantial majority of these now vote for Democratic candidates, with economic issues being primary for working-class women and social issues being primary for middle-class women. If these women continue to vote for the Democratic Party in the future, the prospects for the Republican Party to win most presidential and senatorial elections will remain bleak.

In our long review of the history of American conservatism, we have seen it appeal over the decades and in successive versions to a wide array of different groups and interests. But neither traditional conservatism or reinvented conservatism ever had much to appeal to women, if they saw their principal identity to be as women. The same is true of the weakened movement that now passes for American conservatism and of the Republican Party that is its institutional expression. It will only be if the conservatives and the Republicans can convince large numbers of American women that their principal concern must be about conserving something important to them that American conservatism will have a future."

http://www.fpri.org/articles/2012/12/crisis-american-conservatism-inherent-contradictions-and-end-road

[David Duff]

Fascinating stuff, JK, and I have saved the entire essay for later reading. His comments on the white women vote are pertinent but it was interesting that one post-2012 election analysis found that it was the votes of elderly black women which clinched it for Obama. Normally they would not bother but for him they struggled to the polls and voted. (And plus, of course, a fair amount of jiggery-pokery with the voting procedures!)

[JK]

Main reason I posted that David, was so you could have something you'd know absolutely, was not based on "a two weeks vacation."

[Lawrence Duff]

Economics is what will bring it all down, imho.

The fault lines of race, class, and gender have only appeared because of the inexorable expansion of the executive, that seems to defy any constitution, written or unwritten, to contain it. Tax, borrow and print is past the point of no return, and still the executive wants more; as Lincoln said, "There are too many pigs for the teets".

Race, class, gender, written and unwritten constitutions, they're all symptoms, not causes. But they'll still be used as scapegoats for the inevitable violent conclusion to all this.

SoD

[i]

The T Party Republicans are as daft as the Islamists. It is like letting the inmates of Carstairs and Broadmoor on the loose amongst the population. There must be some kind of innoculation to cure them.

[Michael Adams]

The first thing that Hastings does not appear to know is that there is no such thing as "The Tea Party." A TEA party is an anti-tax, and therefore, reduced spending, demonstration. Taxed Enough Already, the initials form the acronym. The Left media have tried to make us, a)an organization, and b) violent and c)racist, and, lest I forget, d) Astroturf, paid for by the brothers Koch. I have participated in a very small way in organizing the TEA parties in Austin, and the people who showed up were middle aged, bringing their lawn chairs, and of all races. BTW, I am still waiting for my check. His ignorance of all these matters is prima facie evidence that his sole source of information was Lefty establishment types. The Lefty media never mention that we always bring plastic garbage bags, and leave the open space cleaner than we found it. We are not violent. The only violence at any demonstration was a group of union thugs beating up a Black man, Kenneth Gladney.

Hastings further refers to efforts to "roll back the 21st century", as if it is a foregone conclusion that the twenty first century will be characterized by a government fifteen hundred miles away, that is just what I must have, without fail, to tell me how to wipe my rear. This is crazy, and is definitely not future oriented. Invention and innovation do not, as a rule, come from government.

Let us consider the Post Office, and health care management. The Post Office, although much maligned here, and always in deficit, nevertheless, delivers the mail. A hundred years ago, they did so, too, and slightly better, with two deliveries a day, now only one. So, what if we had health care that was equally innovative? You have chest pains. Your Beloved Spousal Unit drives you, in the Ferrari, to the doors of a hospital. An orderly, in a crisp white uniform, meets you out front, and plops you into a wheel chair, pushing you inside, and up the ramps to the fourth floor. (Remember, 1913, most hospitals did not have elevators.) There, Sister Mary George and Sister Margaret put you to bed, give you a bed bath and an enema. Sister Mary George says, "As me mither always said, back in County Cork, if clean bowels and clean sheets won't cure ya, ye'll be needin' the Better Physician." (Points Heavenward.) "And that remoinds me, Sister, would ye pop down to the chapel and see if Father Alec has finished sayin' Mass, and tell him to come and see this patient." She strokes either side of her chest, where Father Alec will put the stole, to give you the Last Rites.

Remember, a majority of the country self-identify as Conservative, in the American sense, which is really liberal. There are numerous polls showing the dissatisfaction with Congress greater than with Soetero. But, Wait! They never break down that number to the people who think that the Congress should be stronger in resisting the president, and those who think they should just roll over and play dead.

We came close to winning the last election. We know for certain that there was a large amount of voting fraud in Ohio, Pennsylvania,, Virginia, and Florida. We do not know whether there was enough to swing the election, because, with crooks in charge, no one can fully investigate. It is absolutely certain that Romney drew huge crowds in Ohio, where Soetero could not fill a small hall. Somehow, he won in Ohio? Some people believe that a huge central government was necessary in the age of heavy industry, but that the information age will require a more nimble economy, which would absolutely have to be governed by a smaller, less heavy-handed government.

Have I provided some idea, as is possible, in this small space, why I think Max Hastings's eyes are brown? Hint:Because he is so full of it.)

[JK]

Just generally of the opinion "I" methinks (finally! somebody with a screen-name forces me to type Arkie 'n not ...)

Anywise, methinks at least in America's South & some of the mid-section, the Tea Party'll be around for some time.

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/rand-paul-barry-goldwater-2-0/

Might want to bookmark this site:

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/

[Michael Adams]

"i", it does seem quantitatively different to want to take the US government back to spending levels of seven years ago versus taking all of society back thirteen hundred years. My longer comment on this was swallowed up in spam, even though I closed my browser just after posting, as Arkie recommended.

[Dom]

The tea party had very unfortunate origins (the Koch brothers), but I don't find them daft. Mia Love and Milton Wolfe are two candidates. You can look them up.

[Michael Adams]

No! The Koch brothers did not start the TEA parties. They gave some money to facilitate things about a year and a half after we started. There is no such thing as "the tea party". A TEA party is an anti tax, anti spending demonstration with the slogan Taxed Enough Already. I was helping, in a very small way, a year before the Koch brothers came on the scene.

[JK]

I'm quite familiar with Wichita Kansas Dom.

If you know how to look up a site's "security system" look up who designed the Wichita system.

You give amoebae guff for starving in Arkansas Dom, which comments I fully recognize who the aim is.

Which I suppose is okay but not so ... anyways, my "Bringing It In Under Budget 1994" bonus was a mere $116K. (Admittedly, I had a Missouri project too, but that turnkey didn't happen til '98.

A "younger self" of me Dom did a AFB in both OK and KS, I did a "Chem Warfare" upgrade [electrical/detect/security] at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

You Dom, I'm "pretty sure" can handle as I expect. If I can't I'll simply ignore. You'll not be I think, feeding amoeba anything sustaining either. (Well maybe, I haven't - what is referred to in the US - a "spare tire") and I can still see my dick [Willy in the UK].

The Koch Brothers are actually pretty fine guys. The problem is the system.

[David Duff]

Michael, apologies, after several days in which TypePad was kind to you it then suddenly turned nasty! Never mind, the US cavalry, er, well, me, actually, arrived in the nick of time to rescue you from the spam box.

(And this apology, too, was sent to the spam box!)

[Michael Adams]

And I was such a good boy!