Great post! As Americans our initial reaction is to recoil against the notion that "free enterprise" is not really practiced or that it is not necessarily a good idea. Yeah, but where has "free enterprise" actually existed? Governments and monopolies have always nosed in. So who can say?
That said, there is no doubt a great chasm between the globalist view that economics should be under international control and carried out via international NGOs, central banks, and corporations vs. the idea that economics should serve national interests which in turn should serve the interests of national citizens. We are seeing the tension between those views play out before our eyes in BRICS vs. the "rules based order." Now that the US and UK are going against the very organizations they established to ensure "rules based" international control, what will happen? Get your popcorn out.
By the way, is there really a "North Atlantic" dialect (a la W.F. Buckley) or a "North Atlantic" national interest? OMG! I thought we declared our independence long ago. Can't we leverage "the pond" to our advantage?
The process goes back centuries, as I keep saying, to the breakdown of Christian philosophy in the late middle ages into nominalism, which is the foundation of all modern ideologies. In the Anglosphere, the first major inflection point was the institution of the first totalitarian government under H8 and the property grab euphemistically referred to as a reformation. It was, in fact, not only a massive redistribution of property upward to the elite rulers but also an arrogation of authority from the spiritual custodians to the temporal--truly totalitarian.
In the US there was an attempted reaction against that development, as also in England. That reaction was thwarted in England and the American experiment came a cropper in the Progressive era and rule of experts.
I've been wondering lately if Thomas Cromwell was perhaps an early tool of sneaky globalists. He seems to fit the mould that we're familiar with in recent times and he spent a lot of time on the Continent before becoming Henry VIII's fixer.
If you guess that, you'll be guessing wrong and simply adopting the narrative of the enrichers. It was far more cynical than that.
For short essays,
The English Reformation Revisited
For a long scholarly study,
The Stripping of the Altars
The "Reformers" replaced popular and beneficial institutions--or many times simply destroyed without replacing--in a madly cynical grab of power, land, wealth. The monasteries were largely kind landlords and most hospitals were run by religious orders. Destruction of the societal patrimony led to the immiseration of the rural population as a prelude to their dispossession as well as the alienation of the ruling from the subject classes. Trust was broken.
The same pattern was followed throughout most of Europe. This is not a defense of Church abuses, but an indictment of the destructive power grab of the corrupt ruling classes that led us into the "modern" age.
During the late middle ages the Church, unfortunately, took on the model of governance of a typical Renaissance prince--which is what many of them were. During the that period the papacy was also captured by the new great European national powers.
Luther, in addition to being a psychologically troubled man, was very much a part of the coming age--a professor of nominalist philosophy who espoused individual interpretation when it suited him but teamed up with the princely powers when it didn't. Purely destructive, not to be compared with the great theologians of the age--Bellarmine (feast today) and the like.
I admit to having had a superficial (layperson's) view of Kissinger as I have never really studied him. But to the extent I have thought about him I always viewed him as a modern-day Machiavelli. How so? In the sense that he seemed to be a student of power and believed that international relations consisted in diplomacy and intrigue devoted to balancing power between states in a way that would advantage his country. Classic 15th-16th century nation-state point of view. The reference to his 2014 writings is not contrary to this view. The difference (IMO) is that Machiavelli also was a student of the human heart and human motivations. I never got that sense with Kissinger. He was a cold-blooded realpolitik pragmatist through and through.
Great post! As Americans our initial reaction is to recoil against the notion that "free enterprise" is not really practiced or that it is not necessarily a good idea. Yeah, but where has "free enterprise" actually existed? Governments and monopolies have always nosed in. So who can say?
That said, there is no doubt a great chasm between the globalist view that economics should be under international control and carried out via international NGOs, central banks, and corporations vs. the idea that economics should serve national interests which in turn should serve the interests of national citizens. We are seeing the tension between those views play out before our eyes in BRICS vs. the "rules based order." Now that the US and UK are going against the very organizations they established to ensure "rules based" international control, what will happen? Get your popcorn out.
By the way, is there really a "North Atlantic" dialect (a la W.F. Buckley) or a "North Atlantic" national interest? OMG! I thought we declared our independence long ago. Can't we leverage "the pond" to our advantage?
The process goes back centuries, as I keep saying, to the breakdown of Christian philosophy in the late middle ages into nominalism, which is the foundation of all modern ideologies. In the Anglosphere, the first major inflection point was the institution of the first totalitarian government under H8 and the property grab euphemistically referred to as a reformation. It was, in fact, not only a massive redistribution of property upward to the elite rulers but also an arrogation of authority from the spiritual custodians to the temporal--truly totalitarian.
In the US there was an attempted reaction against that development, as also in England. That reaction was thwarted in England and the American experiment came a cropper in the Progressive era and rule of experts.
I've been wondering lately if Thomas Cromwell was perhaps an early tool of sneaky globalists. He seems to fit the mould that we're familiar with in recent times and he spent a lot of time on the Continent before becoming Henry VIII's fixer.
If you guess that, you'll be guessing wrong and simply adopting the narrative of the enrichers. It was far more cynical than that.
For short essays,
The English Reformation Revisited
For a long scholarly study,
The Stripping of the Altars
The "Reformers" replaced popular and beneficial institutions--or many times simply destroyed without replacing--in a madly cynical grab of power, land, wealth. The monasteries were largely kind landlords and most hospitals were run by religious orders. Destruction of the societal patrimony led to the immiseration of the rural population as a prelude to their dispossession as well as the alienation of the ruling from the subject classes. Trust was broken.
The same pattern was followed throughout most of Europe. This is not a defense of Church abuses, but an indictment of the destructive power grab of the corrupt ruling classes that led us into the "modern" age.
During the late middle ages the Church, unfortunately, took on the model of governance of a typical Renaissance prince--which is what many of them were. During the that period the papacy was also captured by the new great European national powers.
Luther, in addition to being a psychologically troubled man, was very much a part of the coming age--a professor of nominalist philosophy who espoused individual interpretation when it suited him but teamed up with the princely powers when it didn't. Purely destructive, not to be compared with the great theologians of the age--Bellarmine (feast today) and the like.
Will the real Henry Kissinger please stand up? Who was he really? Was he really graspable?
I admit to having had a superficial (layperson's) view of Kissinger as I have never really studied him. But to the extent I have thought about him I always viewed him as a modern-day Machiavelli. How so? In the sense that he seemed to be a student of power and believed that international relations consisted in diplomacy and intrigue devoted to balancing power between states in a way that would advantage his country. Classic 15th-16th century nation-state point of view. The reference to his 2014 writings is not contrary to this view. The difference (IMO) is that Machiavelli also was a student of the human heart and human motivations. I never got that sense with Kissinger. He was a cold-blooded realpolitik pragmatist through and through.