Back in August I had an interesting talk with Richard Maybury, an economist of the Austrian school and editor of the financial newsletter Early Warning Report. He is the author of a big idea, actually a model with which to help predict long term trends in global politics and finance. It’s called Chaostan, and basically it means that enlighenment ideas of liberty and property never made it past Marx in Germany in their natural spread eastward, that the former Soviet Union is ready to break into many more pieces, and most importantly that the US government ought to leave those people the hell alone, as creating a global empire there will destroy the great limited constitutional republic Americans created back when they believed in enlightenment ideals of liberty and property.
The American War Party has decided not to follow his advice.
A few days back I saw on TV a cheesy re-creation of a firefight in Afghanistan interspersed with interviews of the men involved in the actual event. One of them made the comment, “This is Injun Country,” in reference to their firebase out in the middle of Afghanistan somewhere.
Eh, so what?
Well, just now I went to take a look at A Tiny Revolution, where Jonathan Schwarz quotes George Bush from February 2003 as saying, “If we must use force, the United States and our coalition stand ready to help the citizens of a liberated Iraq,” and then brings up the record regarding American’s promises to “help people” in the past.
“It might have been useful if we’d remembered the first Great Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was part of the charter granted to British settlers in 1629 by Charles I. This was where America began
