These United States: Too Big to Fail?
Or too big to survive?
by
Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo
 Speaking
at one of many "tea
party" anti-Washington protests held throughout the country
on April 15, Texas Gov. Rick Perry touched on a theme that could,
I believe, prefigure a growing trend in American politics – and,
indeed, throughout the world. He hit all the partisan talking points
that are so familiar to my readers that I won't bother reiterating
them, and then remarked that Texas is doing relatively better than
some other states, in spite of the "federal budget mess." According
to the Dallas Morning News, at this point "some in
his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, 'Secede!'" The Governor took
up this theme in remarks to reporters afterward:
"There's
a lot of different scenarios. We've got a great union. There's
absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues
to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows
what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place,
and we're a pretty independent lot to boot.
I can just
hear the Obamaites railing on about the "extremism" and "paranoia"
of the "wingnuts" – it's the characteristic way these people deal
with ideas, in
spite
of the pretensions to transcendence of Obama's beyond-red-state-and-blue-state
credo.
In spite of the fact that "right" and "left" are about as relevant
to the current situation as the seating arrangements of the French
parliament in the 1800's – from whence the terminology derives –
if it comes from the "right," the "left" is honor-bound to take
up position on the other side of the barricades. That's too bad,
because a major
public figure like Perry raising such an idea is more than just
a partisan ploy: it's a harbinger of things to come.
 Regardless
of whether one endorses or disdains the Governor's particular complaints
against the federal government, the point is that bigness – in the
world of nation-states, as well as finance – is out, and smallness
is in.
It's no accident
that the world's biggest financial
combines, along with the giant producers
like GM, are in trouble: like the dinosaurs, their bigness – once
an advantage
– evolved into a fatal
gigantism. In the economic realm, this condition distanced management
from the market it was supposedly serving and set up these companies
for the big crash. They are now claiming that they're "too big to
fail," and therefore deserve government bailouts – yet their very
size (and the hubris that went with it) is what caused them to fail
in the first place.
A similar
trend is evident in the realm of nation-states. Remember
when no one imagined that the mighty Soviet Union was about to fall
flat on its face and shatter into several
dozen pieces? A few years before the Berlin Wall was toppled,
the USSR, to all outward appearances, was a colossus firmly rooted
in Eurasian soil, an empire that was all but unchallengeable given
its formidable nuclear arsenal and world-spanning apparatus. Even
as the Communist regime was rapidly rotting from within, the sense
that history was on its side – that inexorable forces were pushing
it forward – was reflected in the rhetoric not only of Communist
officials, but in the mindset of their Western adversaries.
Read
the rest of the article
April
18, 2009
Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com
and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright
© 2009 Antiwar.com
Justin
Raimondo Archives
|
