An excerpt from my new VDARE.com column "The Axis of Amnesty’s Ideology of Cheap Labor:"
Senator Kennedy is echoing, oddly enough, the fatalistic conventional wisdom of Dickensian England—the doctrinaire assumption that cheap labor is essential, and that the inexorable grinding of the dismal laws of economic science determine wages as immutably as the orbit of Mercury is fixed by Newton's Law of Gravity.
The main difference: while Sen. Kennedy assumes the need for unskilled immigrant workers, the early Victorians were convinced of the necessity of uneducated child laborers.
We don't think of the British as being terribly ideological. But during the second quarter of the 19th Century, their justifiable national pride in developing economics for once overwhelmed the vaunted British common sense. A dogma based on a crude interpretation of the works of Malthus and Ricardo presumed that low wages were crucial to profits, much like the sophomoric economics of today's open borders crowd.
Back then, the ruling class didn't fulminate over plucking chickens but over sweeping chimneys.
Consider the fates of the little boys, from age four on up, who were widely employed by master chimney sweeps to clamber up inside long flues and knock down the soot, at horrific cost to their health. Paul Johnson writes in A History of the English People
(p.285), "often they were forced up by the use of long pricks, and by applying wisps of flaming straw to their feet. They suffered from a variety of occupational diseases and many died from suffocation."
The ruling ideology of the age assumed that, as regrettable as this might be, the laws of economics required it.
After all, how else would chimneys ever get swept?
The first bill banning the employment of children under eight from chimney sweeping passed Parliament in 1788. But, like many immigration laws in America today, it was ignored. So was the 1834 act.
Then, the greatest reformer of the Victorian Era, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, began his almost endless crusade to abolish child labor inside chimneys. Like William Wilberforce, the victor over the slave trade, Shaftesbury was a Tory, an evangelical Anglican, and a relentless parliamentarian.
In 1840, Shaftesbury carried a bill to regulate child chimney sweeps over “ resistance that can only be called fanatical", in Johnson's words.
It also was not enforced.
Three more of Shaftesbury's bills failed in Parliament in the 1850s. He succeeded in 1864, but the legislation proved ineffective "due to a general conspiracy of local authorities, magistrates, police, judges, juries, and the public to frustrate the law. Boys continued to die…" including a seven-year-old who suffocated in a flue in 1873.
Shaftesbury finally succeeded in passing effective legislation in 1875.
And, of course, that winter everyone in
Oh, wait … sorry, that was in Bizarro
In the real
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
45 comments:
My favorite example of how you don't need cheap labor to get stuff done but can instead make use of some of those new-fangled 'technological advances' out there is the sort of equipment that's used in forestry. Check out this machine that chops down a tree, strips its branches & cuts it up into logs in less than a minute -- driven by a single operator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swYE-OPX9sA
(This sort of equipment is enormously popular in Scandinavia where it costs a small fortune to pay anybody to do anything.)
'Jobs Americans won't do' are sometimes also jobs children won't do, even jobs sane people won't do, so why not get rid of them, and be more productive and cleaner for it?
excellent vdare column again sir! may the cheap labor scoundrels all get the kharmic payback they richly deserve.
hey steve isn't there some sort of law that prohibits govt funding of r&d innovation in the mechanized farm industry? some obscene law exists i believe that stymies the replacement of our aztec coolies.
previous poster thanks for the great link to the video of the forestry machine takin' care of buziness...less than a minute? looked like about 5 trees per minute. big trees too.
mechanization of crap jobs creates better jobs. let's do it.
Theresa,
Check out the latest timberjack.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2V8GFqk_Y
Machine evolution happens faster than human evolution, so after a while things get way, way better.
I've never had the impression that Kennedy is a deep thinker, certainly not anything quantitative about wages -- supply and demand in the labor market. To him this is a moral drama, a test, of the kind political correctness begets. (How else to explain why he insists on kicking American Blacks in the teeth by massively importing economic competition for them?) It's an extension of the Immigration Act of 1965. And if he hasn't yet seen anything wrong with the demographic overhaul of the US caused by that legislation, then what's the problem? His seeming simplemindedness perhaps explains why his buffoonish posturing on this, while it offends against the intellect, is less objectionable (IMO) than, say, some of what Graham and Lott have come out with, where they impugn the decency of opponents.
eh
Regarding innovation: turn the Japanese loose on the problem.
eh
As much as I abhor Communism and its legacy, it is practices like this that make its acceptance understandable to me. In my view, it isn't too extreme to say that people who cause children's deaths through this kind of abuse deserve to hang. Maybe that's because I have a little boy, but I don't think that discounts my opinion.
Really Steve, this is an upsetting example. My grandpa had to work in Hearst's mines when he was a kid in Nevada, and I hate to think about it. Ironically, his mother was a Kennedy, straight from the Celtic fringe town of Dingle, Co. Kerry.
Ted's a fool. I'd like to look him in the eyes and tell him what I think, but he's too far gone for it to make any difference.
I think eh is right-what really motivates this simpleton is probably the idea that historically white nations have no right to keep impoverished non-whites from overrunning their countries. i doubt if he spends any time thinking about the negative consequences for the lowly peasants of all races who make up the bulk of the US citizenry.
I've been watching the price of pears ever since the "we need illegals to pick the pears or they'll rot in the fields" hysteria last year, and I didn't really notice a change. Does anybody know where to go to get real figures for this? The people who made a big deal about pears rotting in the field should be called on their BS. So should people who think we lack chicken pluckers a year or so in the future, when the price of chickens will be about the same as it is now.
c23
eh: To him this is a moral drama, a test, of the kind political correctness begets.
the wily marmot: I think eh is right-what really motivates this simpleton is probably the idea that historically white nations have no right to keep impoverished non-whites from overrunning their countries.
Oh come on, you people don't actually believe any of this drivel, do you?
Ted Kennedy wants decriminalization because it will mean at least 20M new votes for the Dems [and possibly 40M, 60M, or even 100M, depending on how family reunification plays out].
As things stand right now, the DEM's are losing the fertility wars, 2.08 to 1.47:
The Political Fertility Gap
abcnews.go.com
The Fertility Gap
opinionjournal.com
Republicans' fertile future
sfgate.com
Conservatives ahead of liberals in fertility gap
dailynebraskan.com
With decriminalization, they gain at least one or two generations of utter dominance at the polls - it would be 2050 [or even 2100, or later] before the GOP might be able to catch up again [and that would require evangelical TFR's that would be un-heard-of in modern times - numbers like 4.0, or even 5.0].
In the meantime, it would be much more likely that the GOP would simply cease to exist, and that the USA would quickly devolve into just another third world banana republic.
Or else the whole thing might end in a very ugly, very bloody race war.
Or a series of race wars - many people believe that the first race war has already begun in Southern California:
Gang mayhem grips LA
A bloody conflict between Hispanic and black gangs is spreading across Los Angeles. Hundreds are dying as whole districts face the threat of ethnic cleansing.
observer.guardian.co.uk
I occasionally hear people say that Henry Ford benefited from paying his employees more because then they could afford to buy his cars. You didn't outright say that, but I just wanted to note that the idea is simply nonsense. If his employees spent 100% of the extra money he gave them on his cars, he still wouldn't come out ahead (the price wasn't pure profit) and it is laughable to think that they did spend 100% of their extra money on his cars. The reason he did it was because of the high-turnover rate and the cost of training new employees to replace those that left. The real reason people (not just his employees) could afford Ford's cars was because they were cheap.
The long term demographic survival of European Americans in the United States requires all non-white illegal and non-white legal immigration to be completly shut down.
The economic issue is secondary. If an economy organized around neoclasical/free market principles requires an immigration policy that over time causes the racial dispossession of Eruopean Americans, Europeans Amerians would be justified in flushing down neoclassical/free market economics down the toilet.
And now for some economic history.
Historically labor scarcities have always made European Americans better off economically. European Americans have never been harmed by sevvere labor scarcities at any time in US history. The greedy rich class has always been terrified of labor scarcities.
The era after WWII to 1973 is known to economists as the Golden Era of American economic growth. After 1973, it has been all downhill for the economy and White American workers.
And let's be honest, a large number of immigration enthusiasts-post 1965 immigrants and their offspring-are fanatically in favor off continuing post-1965 immigration policy for demographic/racial reasons.
This is why it is silly for immigration reformers to debate the immigration issue exclusively in terms economics.
European Americans will either politically organize their legitimate racial interests or face complete racial(and economic)dispossession in the US.
Nonwhite legal and illegal immigration should be opposed for racial reasons.
European America is quite capable ofproducing its own doctors,engineers,scientists and computer programmers.
The gap between the greedy rich and the rest of America was narrowest during the time period when there was for the most part no legal immigration into the US. I'll let all figure out when this time period was. I'll give you all a hint. It was a time period in American History when the gap between the greedy rich and the American working class was at its narrowest. Here is a hint:economic historians refer to this era of American economic history as the Geat Compression.
An unintended and beneficial consequence of the Comprehensive Kill America bill is that it has inspired Steve to do his best writing to date.
His piece on Frum last week was devastating. The rhetorical ability to take down a man with Frum's intellect indicates that Steve has moved into the upper echelon of the commentariat.
This column about child labor in 19th century Britan is equally cogent. By demonstrating that the arguments made today for mass immigration by uneducated foreigners were also made in the 19th century to justify child labor, Steve may have hit a theme that will persuade some on the left to join the immigration reform camp. This piece is high end rhetoric.
Great article, Steve. It inspired me to make a few more phone calls to wayward senators.
It also inspired me to google William Blake.
from Songs of Innocence - The Chimney Sweep
"When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep."
My father was a proofreader in NYC, a well paid, highly unionized trade, that prompted his unhappy employers to develop the original "computer proofreader." And the trade became obsolete. I believe that the program, originally developed for use on a main frame, eventually found its way into MS Word as Spell checker.
All this happened in the early 1960's. I wrote a school paper on it in 1963.
I have no doubt that, if cheap labor is not available, a substitute will be.
All of anon's links on "the political fertility gap" cite one bogus-seeming study. I'm skeptical because nearly half of the children under 5 in the US turn out to be minorities:
here
Excellent piece Steve. In fact, last week I wrote to my Senators on a similar theme. Hadn't thought to reference Victorian chimney sweeps. :-) Here's what I wrote:
Dear Senator,
[snip]
As for the merits of the bill, it is an ironic travesty that the people most
in support of this bill claim they have the best interests of immigrants at
heart. It is unconscienable for us to import foreign nationals to do our dirty
work. No thought is given to the immigrants themselves. That they must leave their homes and families bothers no one? That as long as they remit millions of their meager earnings back to their home countries the corrupt undemocratic leaderships in those countries can stay in power bothers no one? That Americans are aiding and abetting all this to have cheap produce and landscaping is a national shame. America is not Saudi Arabia!
Further, I flatly disagree that this great nation needs to import a sub-class
of laborers to pick our fruit and wash our dishes at minimum wages to stay
globally competitive. It is ridiculous on the face of it. Beyond that, if Americans will not do that work for minimum wage let the employers pay a fair living-wage and let consumers pay more for their goods and services. If Americans still will not do the work, or consumers will not pay more, then we Americans simply ought to do without.
Senator I ask you to not be part of this disgraceful exploitation. For
Latin America's and the United States' own good, please stop the exploitation
of unskilled labor that this immigration provides. For even if legalized, its exploitative nature will persist.
the wily marmot: All of anon's links on "the political fertility gap" cite one bogus-seeming study. I'm skeptical because nearly half of the children under 5 in the US turn out to be minorities
Exactly - that's what the entire debate is about.
And we've got a massive constitutional showdown looming here [demographically, on the order of Dred Scott, or Plessy -v- Ferguson] which no one seems to want to talk about - namely, the question of whether or not the anchor babies of illegals are actually American citizens.
There is ample precedent to indicate that a child born in the USA is not necessarily covered by the 14th Amendment; for instance, the children of diplomats are [by law] not considered to be covered by the 14th Amendment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plyler_v._Doe
The key here is the "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" clause.
It is very easy to argue that, since their parents are "subject to the jurisdiction" of Mexico [or Guatemala, or Honduras, or wherever], then so are the children.
Which of course gets back to ol' Chappaquiddick Kennedy and his motivations in all of this: He & his ilk know that almost all of those minority children [in that famous Washington Post piece which you linked to] will grow up to be DEM voters, if only the DEM's [and the RINO country clubbers] can first decriminalize them and secure [for all time] their right to vote in the first place.
Could it be that the "political fertility gap" only refers to whites? That white conservatives are more fertile than their liberal counterparts?
Isn't black fertility also in decline?
I think the two fertility gaps may be able to be reconciled if you assume that the study showing conservatives have more kids was one which looked mainly at older adults whose "kids" could be in their 40s now. Whereas the study showing that 45% of the under-5 population is nonwhite is only showing a very recent trend that the other study wouldn't pick up on. Also there's the possibility that the study's definitions of liberal and conservative may be based on self-identification. I've met plenty of religious conservatives who reliably vote Democrat in the interest of maintaining their welfare payments and other assorted government programs that they rely on because they are poor. These people are very bad for the Republicans.
Wily --
That is no joke. Middle and upper class white women chase high-status A List men until their fertility window is almost closed. Result: one designer baby.
Something like this: NYT Magazine link is probably an extreme for the wealthy, upper class white urbanites, but with less extreme cases fairly descriptive of middle class white women as a whole.
Of course, as women's incomes have risen around the globe, their fertility rate has dropped as they've put off, delayed, etc. having kids to pursue a higher-status guy (of whom there are only a few). See the beauty arms race and spending for cosmetics.
One implication is that Hispanic fertility rates drop when the income level rises and the same thing happens to Hispanics as to other peoples.
You can go to the CIA World Factbook, choose a country and see the fertility rate. For nations such as Algeria, Iran, Tunisia, Turkey the rate is below replacement i.e. 2.1. So it's hardly a post-Christian "decline of the West" or feminist thing as people might suggest.
Which to circle back to the main point, would mean just another bigger population bust, as Hispanic women respond to rising incomes and chase after high-status men just like Algerian, Tunisian, Turkish women do. Open borders just delays the inevitable and raises the cost of taking care of the elderly.
Without btw the cultural cohesion and high-trust networks required for technical innovation.
Ted Kennedy will be able to pat himself on the back for real someday. If this act passes, he's been a part of the two acts of legislation that were the death knell for the United States.
Ted Kennedy has never had to hold a real job, has had servants all his life, and has never been beholden to any market because his father was such a good criminal and got so fantastically wealthy.
If the people of Massachusetts would elect anyone else, they'd be shocked how much more popular they'd be with the other 49 states. People really hate that arrogant, vainglorious, remedially intelligent man. What on earth does he thinks he really knows about economics, and why would he be sticking it to his black constituents so hard?
Has anyone heard of a cheap labor angle concerning the Chinese? I mean, business elites need cheap labor to compete w/Chinese cheap labor especially concerning manufacturing?
Or are America's businesses bypassing that by just outsourcing?
"And we've got a massive constitutional showdown looming here [demographically, on the order of Dred Scott, or Plessy -v- Ferguson] which no one seems to want to talk about - namely, the question of whether or not the anchor babies of illegals are actually American citizens."
Somebody needs to file a lawsuit in court with the intent of sending a challenge to birth right citizenship to the Roberts Court.
If it weren't for the anchor babies, around 62-64% of children under 5 in the US would be white when you subtract the 500,000* anchor babies that are born each year.
* I am confident that there are about 500,000 anchor babies being born a year because in 2004 MediCal estimated that there were 107,000 kids being born to illegal alien moms on Medical and California has around 20% of all illegals in the US.
Old Right
"Isn't black fertility also in decline?"
Yes, black fertility has been down in both absolute numbers and in terms of the overall total fertility rate (Now below replacement at 2.02).
The white birth rate is down in absolute numbers but has been stable in the 1.8 - 1.9 range for a while.
Old Right
About the liberal/conservative baby gap: I think a lot of people here are making the usual mistake whites (both liberals and conservatives) make, which is to try to classify minorities as conservatives or liberals, and identify minority Democrats as liberals.
In fact, Mexicans tend to be conservative in a lot of ways. The typical Mexican probably thinks more like a typical white working-class conservative than typical Dailykos member. They just don't want to vote for candidates from the white people's party, or candidates who would cut social services that they use. But they aren't in favor of gay marriage, for example, and I don't think they give a rat's ass about the spotted owl.
White conservatives are outbreeding white liberals, but the way things are going, they'll both be irrelevant in several decades.
c6
I wouldn't want to live in a country where a large majority of the people were white protestant fundamentalists, and I'm a white nationalist.
"That is no joke. Middle and upper class white women chase high-status A List men until their fertility window is almost closed. Result: one designer baby."
Anon 6/25 @ 1:13
I've been puzzled by similar postings before. Do you mean that such women (I've pictured the cast of Sex in the City) chase unsuspecting stockbrokers and lawyers until the 2nd snooze alarm goes off on their biological clocks? Then they make an all out effort to entrap one in a marriage of procreation?
Anyway, what I really came here to say was the old Kennedy homestead still exists in Ireland. Let's deport Ted Kennedy who is no Irish tenor, btw. It may stave off future attempts at blanket amnesty for a generation.
The same pattern can be seen in Europe where Muslims-if anything more "conservative" than Mexicans-generally vote for left-wing parties. This is presumably because those parties-like the Dems in the US- are more pro-welfare and more anti-white than the conservative parties. The conservative-liberal paradigm doesn't work when your society is host to large numbers of racial or cultural aliens who are numerous enough to create their own parallel societies.
The mistake that is made here is considering conservatism to be a universal ideology(or an ideology at all); the Anglo-Saxon conservatism of an Edmund Burke has nothing in common with the conservatism of caudillos or imams.
You can go to the CIA World Factbook, choose a country and see the fertility rate. For nations such as Algeria, Iran, Tunisia, Turkey the rate is below replacement i.e. 2.1. So it's hardly a post-Christian "decline of the West" or feminist thing as people might suggest.
I'll be darned, I looked it up and it's true. Thanks.
I'd say it's one of the most enlightening contributions in the immigration debate from Steve. Cheap labor discourages innovation; soon enough, the public begins to think that, regardless of its human costs, cheap labor is absolutely indispensable to economic growth. It is only when the well of cheap labor dries up that the average Economist subscriber discovers that someone, somewhere, has been working on a collapsible-handle chimney brush that, with a bit of extra investment, should be available in a matter of months. This is why sometimes it makes sense to artificially limit the supply of labor.
The same pattern can be seen in Europe where Muslims-if anything more "conservative" than Mexicans-generally vote for left-wing parties. This is presumably because those parties-like the Dems in the US- are more pro-welfare and more anti-white than the conservative parties.
The conservatism issue is resolved by reference to the concept of dual morality. Mexicans or European Muslims may be conservative in regard to ingroup relations, but as an aggressor in another nation's territory they will support the party that best facilitates aggression against the host society. That is, by definition, the leftmost party.
I think eh is right-what really motivates this simpleton [Ted Kennedy] is probably the idea that historically white nations have no right to keep impoverished non-whites from overrunning their countries.
But why would he think that? Surely he doesn't believe that a human has no right to keep impoverished bacteria and other organisms from overrunning his body, so such a belief can't be a matter of principle. How would he wind up with the idea that it is somehow wrong to engage in self-defense only when the "self" is a race or nation?
The answer should be (but perhaps is not) obvious: the idea has been cultivated in him by a competing nation/race.
Ted Kennedy wants decriminalization because it will mean at least 20M new votes for the Dems....
Flooding the country with non-Whites would not seem to be to Mr. Kennedy's evolutionarily advantage. Why would he put the interests of an abstraction like the Democratic Party ahead of his own interests as a living being?
All of anon's links on "the political fertility gap" cite one bogus-seeming study. I'm skeptical because nearly half of the children under 5 in the US turn out to be minorities:
This use of "minority" as a synonym for "non-white" has got to stop. It's an offensive trivialization of the losses already suffered by whites, and it fosters continued complacency among whites.
Whites are 12% of the world's population. Whites are a racial minority in the two most populous states of the USA, the two most populous cities in the USA, the political capital of the USA, the financial capital of the USA, the two media capitals of the USA, etc., and it's getting worse every day.
You guys [especially those of you who aren't familiar with demographics] need to read Spengler, at the Asia Times.
Start with his signature essay:
They made a democracy and called it peace
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GC08Aa02.html
Here's another classic:
Power and the evangelical womb
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FK09Aa02.html
The answer should be (but perhaps is not) obvious: the idea has been cultivated in him by a competing nation/race.
Obvious, but difficult to discuss-even in objective language- without generating hysteria- at least among whites. Mexicans and blacks don't have this problem. For a rather offensive example see this: http://www.codoh.com/index.shtml
Power and the evangelical womb
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FK09Aa02.html
Ex-LaRouchie Spengler is very stupid here;the US is being absorbed into the alien civilization of mestizo Latin America.
"I've been puzzled by similar postings before. Do you mean that such women (I've pictured the cast of Sex in the City) chase unsuspecting stockbrokers and lawyers until the 2nd snooze alarm goes off on their biological clocks? Then they make an all out effort to entrap one in a marriage of procreation?"
-------
No. Very likely they have one kid single, as in the NYT Magazine link, often through IVF or other means (sperm donors, in other words) with no bothersome marriage and compromise with a non A-Lister, or they don't have kids at all and remain single. Those who do get married, get married too late to have more than one kid if that (often needing reproductive assistance), and naturally have to compromise a great deal in their preferences.
Since this happened in places like Algeria, Tunisia, and Iran, where Westernized Anglo women are in very short supply, it's not an unreasonable assumption to think it won't happen with Hispanic women who would also like, with expanding incomes and economic independence, the highest status man available, even if that means deferring childbirth.
the wily marmot: Ex-LaRouchie Spengler is very stupid here;the US is being absorbed into the alien civilization of mestizo Latin America.
No, my point [and Spengler's] was that the GOP had been winning the fertility war over the DEM's [and winning it rather dramatically].
The DEM's response was to say, "Oh yeah? Well watch us decriminalize 20M new DEM voters. Moo ha ha ha!!!"
PS: What evidence do you have that Spengler was ever a "LaRouchie"?
As I wrote last October:
"I won't explain the persuasive evidence for his long-ago Lyndon LaRouche connection, since that would necessitate revealing his real name, which might hurt him in his day job. But I'm 95% persuaded of a reader's suggestion that many years ago the individual who is now the extremely self-confident columnist "Spengler" of the Asia Times was a close colleague of the crackpot perennial Presidential candidate."
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/10/so-who-is-ex-larouchie-foreign-policy.html
That's not to say that there's no value in Spengler's columns, just that, while he's obviously very smart, he has a track record of taking his ideas too far. He is injudicious.
No, my point [and Spengler's] was that the GOP had been winning the fertility war over the DEM's [and winning it rather dramatically].
The DEM's response was to say, "Oh yeah? Well watch us decriminalize 20M new DEM voters. Moo ha ha ha!!!"
The illegals have had their anchor babies and-barring a radical shift in the zeitgeist- the die is already cast. Half the children under 5 in the US are non-white. Hoping for a Supreme Court decision that reinteprets the 14th Amendment and strips the anchor babies of their citizenship is a real long shot.
Well, it's probably getting a little too far off topic to pursue the LaRouche angle right now, although I'd say that
1) Having known absolutely nothing at all about LaRouche a priori, but having now google'd and read some articles about him, I'd have to say that I'm a little worried about anyone who would know anything about the guy in the first place.
2) There are certainly some striking similarities between the post-1970's LaRouchies & some of Spengler's professed interests: German poetry [the Schiller Institute], classical music [Fidelio magazine and the movement for Verdi-tempering - now that one is REALLY weird - apparently they wanted to outlaw A-440/A-444 tuning forks, in favor of A-432 tuning forks, and fine and imprison state-sponsored musicians who didn't use A-432], American strategic intelligence in the 1980's [LaRouche's flirtation with the Strategic Defense Initiative], etc.
Although I suppose I should point out that if it were true that Spengler once was involved with a LaRouche outfit [even tangentially], then I don't think it would be entirely fair to accuse him of [simultaneously] being both a "LaRouchie" and an "ex-LaRouchie".
Anyway, I've been reading Spengler's work - both in his essays, and at his forum - for several years now, and the guy strikes me as being pretty well-grounded in reality, and, off the top of my head, I can think of no more than a handful of issues upon which I've ever disagreed with him.
But back to his Iranian thesis, [which is largely the same as his French thesis, in re France's approach to the looming disaster of WWI, and the subsequent rush to war] - Spengler believes [if I may be allowed to put words in his mouth] that once-powerful nations, when facing demographic collapse, are like wounded animals, and are prone to lashing out violently when they perceive that they are nearing the final point at which lashing out violently could have any possible chance of success.
Which is where he perceives Iran to be today [and that's just his raw demographic & economic analysis of Iran - entirely independent of his analysis of the underlying nature of Islam, and why that nature might further fuel the descent into madness].
Of course, in strategic terms, the Muslims [barring some breakthrough in genetic engineering] pose almost no long-term military threat to us whatsover - but if Spengler's thesis is correct, then the nation we really need to keep an eye on is China.
Almost three decades of 1-Child have so hopelessly screwed up China's demographics that the USA could very well surpass China in absolute population within our lifetimes [at least for some of the younger & healthier & luckier readers at iSteve], and within mere decades, China could be facing a social & economic collapse that will make our own FICA Ponzi-scheme debacle look like a day at the beach.
Which, of course, makes the internal tensions in Chinese politics - between Derbyshire's Sino-Fascists [who, presumably, would be the most likely to yield to Spengler's maxim], and Aikman's Sino-Evangelicals [who, let us hope, would be the most likely to resist & oppose a recourse to Spengler's maxim] - all the more important for our own future.
But getting back to the good ol' USofA: More than three decades of Roe have denuded our population of tens of millions of children who might otherwise have been our cleaning ladies and nannies and cooks and busboys and gardeners and painters and roofers - and, dare I say it, OUR CHIMNEY SWEEPS! - working in part-time jobs in high school, or to help pay their way through college, so it's certainly correct when the RINO Country Clubbers, at the US Chamber of Commerce, scream out to us, "We need warm bodies!"
And, at the same time, while GOP-ers were largely doing their duty, and breeding enough progeny to keep their half of the country running, the DEM's were off murdering their babies in abortuaries [or indulging their proclivities for sodomy, and never making any babies in the first place], so it's equally correct when the Democratic Party screams out to us, "We need warm bodies!" [at least to the extent that they can't gather enough cold bodies from the cemeteries to put them over the top at the polls].
Ergo a large portion of The Powers That Be in the USA - those who require "low-skilled" [really low-IQ] manual labor in their private-sector businesses, or who depend upon the votes of "low-skilled" [low-IQ] manual labor to ensure their fiefdoms in the public sector - that portion of our nation is a badly wounded animal, and, as Spengler's maxim would predict, a wounded animal which is lashing out in what would otherwise seem to be an irrational - even maniacal - fashion.
I.e. that wounded animal is willing to decriminalize [at least] 20 million very low-IQ, very violence-prone Central American Aboriginals, in the hopes that decriminalizing those Aboriginals will ensure that the wounded animal's perch as the Alpha-Male, at the head of the pack, will not be threatened [at least for the immediately foreseeable future] by any would-be, Johnny-come-lately, Horatio Alger poseurs.
the wily marmot: The illegals have had their anchor babies and-barring a radical shift in the zeitgeist- the die is already cast. Half the children under 5 in the US are non-white. Hoping for a Supreme Court decision that reinteprets the 14th Amendment and strips the anchor babies of their citizenship is a real long shot.
But that's the entire point of the great "debate" this week - possibly the greatest political event of our lifetimes.
This is our last-ditch stand to try to turn back the illegals, or at least prolong [as far off into the future as possible] the point at which they become full-fledged, card-carrying DEM's, and doom the GOP to irrelevance for at least the next two or three generations.
And if amnesty [i.e. decriminalization] succeeds, then yes: Any hope of a constitutionally-correct reading of the "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" clause is lost forever.
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