Feb 16, 2005
Frank Chodorov & the Cycle of Freedom/Empire
In rereading Chodorov's"United We Fall," kindly provided as a link below by Ken Gregg in his celebration of the former's birthday, I was struck by the depth of his philosophical historical determinism with respect to the cycles of civilizations; Spengler and Toynbee, with an overtone of Freedom, Are those of us attempting to say something in behalf of Freedom during what appears as an era of its decline caught in an historical cycle about which we can do very little?
It is for this reason that I admire the work of the historian Carroll Quigley, especially his The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis (1961, 1979) and suggested that Liberty Fund publish that latter edition to which I contributed a Bibliographical Note.
His concept of developing a new"instrument of expansion" suggests a way out of the determinism of these other writers, including Chodorov. How might this work out in today's historical era?
In a striking passage written before the Vietnam War, Quigley saw that the confrontation between the then two super powers was not the most important struggle of our age, but rather that the technology of weaponry (he also did a book on that subject) was changing, with decentralized, guerrilla insurgencies coming to the fore, especially in the Third World.
The overall solution for breaking the cycle moving toward Empire, or Universal Empire, lay in developing a new instrument of expansion that would get entrepreneurial economic development growing again, instead of its being overwhelmed by Corporate Mercantilism such as has occurred. His solution involved developing new sources of energy to replace both nuclear and fossil fuels with all of their attendant problems, In short, developing the energy offered us by the sun, which is estimated to be available for the next 6-8 billion years, give or take a few million.
After one has listed all of the forces pushing for a welfare-warfare state and even global hegemony; the politicians, the military, the business interests, the intellectuals, the media, and all of the huge bureaucracies there to attending (evident also in other Empires such as Rome), control of energy remains the central factor of the modern epoch, as well as in American foreign policy.
Controlling nuclear energy has been a problem since 1945. In my view the most important document of the Cold War was one of its first, retiring Secretary of War Henry Stimson's letter to President Harry Truman, September 13, 1945. First he pointed out that the bomb was not a secret, but a process that could be reproduced by any advanced, industrial nation within a period of 4 to 20 years. That being the case, the conservative Stimson radically suggested we share it with our Allies, the British, French and Russians, rather than brandishing it as a threatening weapon that he predicted would lead to a long period of confrontation.
He was, of course, absolutely correct as to what happened later.
In 1919 Senator William E. Borah predicted the Have-Powers would attempt to use the League of Nations to protect their empires and put down revolutions around the world. Since 1945 that task has fallen to the United Nations, with the US stepping in with make-shift coalitions, or even unilaterally whenever the UN would not do its bidding.
All of which brings us to North Korea and Iran today, as the impossible dream of controlling nuclear energy continues.
I feel certain that terrorists understand that you do not need to detonate a bomb to damage America in the nuclear area. More than two decades ago, Alice Tepper Marlin, the environmental economist of the Council on Economic Priorities pointed out that trucks loaded with nuclear wastes routinely drove up and down our highways, as well as train loads hauled out into the desert. Imagine an"accident," arranged or otherwise, that scatters this contaminated waste in a populated area.
In an economic sense, once you strip government subsidies away, several studies have shown that nuclear power is no more cost efficient than scrubbed coal.
Which leaves us with oil.
Even before 1948, when Israel also became a factor in American foreign policy in the Middle East, oil was the priority. The documents show that by 1944 the Cold War was emerging there as the US began to warn the Russians to stay out, as the British had done earlier, while at the same time beginning to push the British out of Iran.
We are now building permanent bases in Iraq, and urging the UN to help us put down Iranian nuclear development, with the ultimate aim of again controlling her oil. From articles in the Financial Times, it appears whatever kind of political solution emerges in Iraq, the US is about to privatize the oil fields in a move reminiscent of the Crony Capitalism inflicted on Russia over a decade ago, and which Vladimir Putin is now attempting to reverse.
How many trillions of dollars of the wealth of the American people have been spent on this imperial thrust of over half a century by the web of financial agencies, military resources and corporations to sustain this Empire, even a portion of which might have gone into research on solar energy?
Perhaps the most important facet of John Perkin's recent book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man are not the revelations about his role in this endeavor, but his description of the environmental degradation that has accompanied this mad quest for black gold!
And, last week, the data revealed that the heavy truck has displaced the SUV as the weapon of choice among macho American drivers on the highways!
Actually, there has been a revolution going on in the development of decentralized, appropriate technology alternatives in housing, food production for families, utilization of former wastes, etc., which there is not space to detail here now, except to say that I think Chodorov and Quigley would have loved them for the opportunities for Freedom which they open up, especially in the less developed world. Use of the energy of the sun is as yet a modest, but important, part of that effort.
The so-called Modern World may be caught in the institutionalization discussed by Quigley, and described by the historian L.S. Stavrianos as the"Law of the Retarding Lead."
It is for this reason that I admire the work of the historian Carroll Quigley, especially his The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis (1961, 1979) and suggested that Liberty Fund publish that latter edition to which I contributed a Bibliographical Note.
His concept of developing a new"instrument of expansion" suggests a way out of the determinism of these other writers, including Chodorov. How might this work out in today's historical era?
In a striking passage written before the Vietnam War, Quigley saw that the confrontation between the then two super powers was not the most important struggle of our age, but rather that the technology of weaponry (he also did a book on that subject) was changing, with decentralized, guerrilla insurgencies coming to the fore, especially in the Third World.
The overall solution for breaking the cycle moving toward Empire, or Universal Empire, lay in developing a new instrument of expansion that would get entrepreneurial economic development growing again, instead of its being overwhelmed by Corporate Mercantilism such as has occurred. His solution involved developing new sources of energy to replace both nuclear and fossil fuels with all of their attendant problems, In short, developing the energy offered us by the sun, which is estimated to be available for the next 6-8 billion years, give or take a few million.
After one has listed all of the forces pushing for a welfare-warfare state and even global hegemony; the politicians, the military, the business interests, the intellectuals, the media, and all of the huge bureaucracies there to attending (evident also in other Empires such as Rome), control of energy remains the central factor of the modern epoch, as well as in American foreign policy.
Controlling nuclear energy has been a problem since 1945. In my view the most important document of the Cold War was one of its first, retiring Secretary of War Henry Stimson's letter to President Harry Truman, September 13, 1945. First he pointed out that the bomb was not a secret, but a process that could be reproduced by any advanced, industrial nation within a period of 4 to 20 years. That being the case, the conservative Stimson radically suggested we share it with our Allies, the British, French and Russians, rather than brandishing it as a threatening weapon that he predicted would lead to a long period of confrontation.
He was, of course, absolutely correct as to what happened later.
In 1919 Senator William E. Borah predicted the Have-Powers would attempt to use the League of Nations to protect their empires and put down revolutions around the world. Since 1945 that task has fallen to the United Nations, with the US stepping in with make-shift coalitions, or even unilaterally whenever the UN would not do its bidding.
All of which brings us to North Korea and Iran today, as the impossible dream of controlling nuclear energy continues.
I feel certain that terrorists understand that you do not need to detonate a bomb to damage America in the nuclear area. More than two decades ago, Alice Tepper Marlin, the environmental economist of the Council on Economic Priorities pointed out that trucks loaded with nuclear wastes routinely drove up and down our highways, as well as train loads hauled out into the desert. Imagine an"accident," arranged or otherwise, that scatters this contaminated waste in a populated area.
In an economic sense, once you strip government subsidies away, several studies have shown that nuclear power is no more cost efficient than scrubbed coal.
Which leaves us with oil.
Even before 1948, when Israel also became a factor in American foreign policy in the Middle East, oil was the priority. The documents show that by 1944 the Cold War was emerging there as the US began to warn the Russians to stay out, as the British had done earlier, while at the same time beginning to push the British out of Iran.
We are now building permanent bases in Iraq, and urging the UN to help us put down Iranian nuclear development, with the ultimate aim of again controlling her oil. From articles in the Financial Times, it appears whatever kind of political solution emerges in Iraq, the US is about to privatize the oil fields in a move reminiscent of the Crony Capitalism inflicted on Russia over a decade ago, and which Vladimir Putin is now attempting to reverse.
How many trillions of dollars of the wealth of the American people have been spent on this imperial thrust of over half a century by the web of financial agencies, military resources and corporations to sustain this Empire, even a portion of which might have gone into research on solar energy?
Perhaps the most important facet of John Perkin's recent book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man are not the revelations about his role in this endeavor, but his description of the environmental degradation that has accompanied this mad quest for black gold!
And, last week, the data revealed that the heavy truck has displaced the SUV as the weapon of choice among macho American drivers on the highways!
Actually, there has been a revolution going on in the development of decentralized, appropriate technology alternatives in housing, food production for families, utilization of former wastes, etc., which there is not space to detail here now, except to say that I think Chodorov and Quigley would have loved them for the opportunities for Freedom which they open up, especially in the less developed world. Use of the energy of the sun is as yet a modest, but important, part of that effort.
The so-called Modern World may be caught in the institutionalization discussed by Quigley, and described by the historian L.S. Stavrianos as the"Law of the Retarding Lead."