Gathering at the Wake for Western Dominance - "Civilization"

[groovedaddy]

In his 2003 book, “Empire,” which was published here in the immediate wake of the United States-led invasion of Iraq, the popular British historian Niall Ferguson argued that the United States was “an empire in denial” and was “capable of playing an imperial role” in the world today, much the way Britain once did, in the 19th century.

Only eight years later Mr. Ferguson has written a tendentious new book, “Civilization,” which asserts, with similar certainty, that we are now living through “the end of 500 years of Western predominance,” that while China is on the rise, the question is not whether East and West will clash, but whether “the weaker” — that is, the United States and Europe — “will tip over from weakness to outright collapse.”

The financial crisis “that began in the summer of 2007,” Mr. Ferguson argues, should “be understood as an accelerator of an already well-established trend of relative Western decline,” coming on top of already serious debt problems.

“From 2001, in the space of just 10 years,” he goes on, “the U.S. federal debt in public hands doubled as a share of G.D.P. from 32 percent to a projected 66 percent in 2011”; when “unfunded liabilities of the Medicare and Social Security systems,” growing state deficits and public employees’ pension funds are added on to projections, he contends, “the fiscal position of the United States in 2009 was worse than that of Greece,” which is now teetering on the edge of default and desperate for a bailout from the European Union.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/books/niall-fergusons-empire-traces-wests-decline-review.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha28

[The Magistrate]

1. He Is A Tory Twit, Sir

A waste of oxygen that could be put to better use by a sponge....

[bemildred]

2. Thin and rather well-chewed gruel Sir.

I was looking at the book the other day while out foraging, though the review has some amusing bits:

"As usual, Mr. Ferguson, ..., uses his powerful narrative talents in these pages to give the reader a highly tactile sense of history."

[The Magistrate]

3. That, Sir, Sounds Vaguely Dirty....

[groovedaddy]

4. “the U.S. federal debt in public hands doubled as a share of G.D.P. from 32 percent to a projected"

Small wonder. Mutliple wars then economic melt-down resulting from rampant greed. I sense this is a set up for "austerity" measures. In other words, they've robbed the public treasury blind and now, we, the public, have to pay to clean up the mess!