AMERICA IN DECLINE?

For many years I have pondered the question of American decline. Numerous books and essays have been written over the last few decades about the possibility that the American Empire will follow the path previously taken by the British Empire, the Spanish Empire and the Roman Empire. Essentially, these Western global superpowers of history all overextended themselves financially by spending too much money on military adventures abroad and domestic programs at home. The Romans and Spaniards exacerbated the problem by allowing themselves to be governed by too many foolish emperors, and the British people, who governed themselves, became foolishly overconfident in their own power. So, are we Americans on the same path?

Andrew McCarthy, in writing this piece about the debt ceiling debate, argues that we have already reached our Day of Reckoning. We are adding so much to our national debt so quickly that we are already on an unsustainable and ruinous path. Therefore, he argues that we ought to have the crisis now, and he has faith that the American people voted for fiscal sanity in 2010 and will back the Tea Party Republicans in their efforts to restore that sanity.

I disagree. There is no such thing, when voting is concerned, as "the American people". There are millions of individual American voters, all of whom have an image of the world as they think it is, which is oftentimes completely different than the world as it really exists. Those voters coalesce into voting blocs based on conditions at the time of the election. Some are ideologically hard-wired to vote a certain way and maintain that voting pattern almost irrespective of all other conditions. Others are more impulsive and emotional. Others vote based on their assessment of the personalities and qualifications of the individuals on the ballot. If one understands that this is, in fact, the case when it comes to how our people govern themselves, then one can only conclude that "the American people" did not vote for fiscal sanity in 2010, but a coalition of people came together with different motivations and, more importantly, different visions of the state of the country and the problems facing the country, and voted for GOP candidates more than for Democratic candidates.

In a few days, unless some compromise is reached, the U.S. government will be unable to spend above the debt ceiling. Unless I miss my guess, events will unfold pretty much as Megan McArdle describes them here. Interest on the debt will continue to be paid, along with military salaries and other monies for ongoing military operations, Social Security checks and Medicare/Medicaid payments will still go out, and bills for services already rendered will be paid (all of which to reassure the markets that the government will still meet its basic obligations). Everything else will be on the chopping block. Most of the rest of federal operations will have to be put on hold. This will create a crisis atmosphere, no doubt fully exploited by the media (ratings and revenues, my friends, ratings and revenues). Markets will drop even with the aforementioned assurances. It will be bad news all around.

Someone once said that "the people" are a sovereign who can say only two words...yes or no.

Make no mistake. "The people" didn't vote for anything in the last election. A coalition came together that helped elect a Republican House in 2010. A new coalition may come together and give it back to the Democrats in 2012. The sovereign who rules America with only two words and has an unreal vision of the world is just as dangerous as any dissolute, half-mad Roman or Spanish emperor ever was, with consequences just as dire for this country as it was for those lost empires.