Mitt Romney 2012 - 57,531,700
John McCain 2008 - 58,343,671
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Several ‘Ron Paul Republicans’ win closely contested House races
Via David Green
Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul will retire from Congress next year after serving for 12 terms, but several Republicans influenced by the iconic libertarian-leaning lawmaker will be arriving to take his place.
Thomas Massie won the race to replace retiring Kentucky Republican Rep. Geoff Davis, beating Democrat Bill Adkins by 20 percentage points. Massie, an ally of Paul’s son, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, raised nearly 10 times as much money as Adkins, according to the Lexington-Herald Leader.
Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash, who was already vying to be the House’s next “Dr. No” in his first term, was re-elected with 58 percent of the vote. Democrat Steve Pestka had hoped to win the votes of independents and moderate Republicans who might regard Amash as too extreme, but failed to gain traction against the 31-year-old congressman.
In a neighboring Michigan district, Ron Paul Republican Kerry Bentivolio was elected to the House seat formerly held by GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter. McCotter, who had failed to gather enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot, resigned from the House amid a petition scandal. Bentivolio beat Democrat Syed Taj.
Bentivolio spent four decades in the U.S. Army, but was painted by opponents as an eccentric. He raised reindeer and was an occasional Santa Claus. He was elected to Congress by a 7-point margin.
Many other candidates endorsed by Ron and Rand Paul, as well as Paul-influenced organizations like Campaign for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty, were on the ballot Tuesday, including Texas Sen.-elect Ted Cruz. But these three Republicans most self-consciously identified with the Pauls’ calls for deep spending cuts, auditing the Federal Reserve, and a more restrained foreign policy.
They all raised money from Paul’s vast national network of donors, which helped them remain competitive in their primaries and the general election.
Amash endorsed Ron Paul for president and was one of three Republican legislators — including the Texas congressman and fellow Paul endorser North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones — who did not formally back Mitt Romney for president.
Jones, who once crusaded for “freedom fries” to protest France’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq before becoming a fiery antiwar voice himself, was also re-elected. Rand Paul broke with his father and endorsed Romney for president.
“There is no next Ron Paul. He is one of a kind,” Amash told a Ron Paul rally before the Republican National Convention.
Follow Jim on Twitter
VERBATIM
Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul will retire from Congress next year after serving for 12 terms, but several Republicans influenced by the iconic libertarian-leaning lawmaker will be arriving to take his place.
Thomas Massie won the race to replace retiring Kentucky Republican Rep. Geoff Davis, beating Democrat Bill Adkins by 20 percentage points. Massie, an ally of Paul’s son, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, raised nearly 10 times as much money as Adkins, according to the Lexington-Herald Leader.
Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash, who was already vying to be the House’s next “Dr. No” in his first term, was re-elected with 58 percent of the vote. Democrat Steve Pestka had hoped to win the votes of independents and moderate Republicans who might regard Amash as too extreme, but failed to gain traction against the 31-year-old congressman.
In a neighboring Michigan district, Ron Paul Republican Kerry Bentivolio was elected to the House seat formerly held by GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter. McCotter, who had failed to gather enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot, resigned from the House amid a petition scandal. Bentivolio beat Democrat Syed Taj.
Bentivolio spent four decades in the U.S. Army, but was painted by opponents as an eccentric. He raised reindeer and was an occasional Santa Claus. He was elected to Congress by a 7-point margin.
Many other candidates endorsed by Ron and Rand Paul, as well as Paul-influenced organizations like Campaign for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty, were on the ballot Tuesday, including Texas Sen.-elect Ted Cruz. But these three Republicans most self-consciously identified with the Pauls’ calls for deep spending cuts, auditing the Federal Reserve, and a more restrained foreign policy.
They all raised money from Paul’s vast national network of donors, which helped them remain competitive in their primaries and the general election.
Amash endorsed Ron Paul for president and was one of three Republican legislators — including the Texas congressman and fellow Paul endorser North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones — who did not formally back Mitt Romney for president.
Jones, who once crusaded for “freedom fries” to protest France’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq before becoming a fiery antiwar voice himself, was also re-elected. Rand Paul broke with his father and endorsed Romney for president.
“There is no next Ron Paul. He is one of a kind,” Amash told a Ron Paul rally before the Republican National Convention.
Follow Jim on Twitter
The Dismal Future
VERBATIM
It’s midnight, and Mittens has just come out to start his ‘throw in the towel’ speech. At last, the long, horrible campaign season is over, and Barack Obama has been reelected as President of the United States of America.
The moochers and looters have triumphed, and now we get four more years! So, what can we expect from Obama II—The Sequel?
We can expect our energy policy to continue to be happy thoughts, unicorn farts, and green energy boondoggles. Obama and his allies will continue to push us down the same path that Spain has been on for the past decade, and just as that green path has destroyed Spain’s economy, we can expect much the same thing here. It may not be obvious as the Spanish failure, or as quick to come—the sheer size differential gives America a bit more inertia than Spain enjoyed before the disaster becomes apparent—but it will inevitably come.
Adding insult to energy injury, we can expect full-blown cap and trade, and more and more coal-crippling regulations from Obama II’s EPA. Coupled with their anti-fracking sentiment, our energy prices will skyrocket, with completely predictable consequences on the rest of the economy. Prices will rise, growth will slow, unemployment will go nowhere but up, and a new recession dip is probably the best we can hope for.
Our fiscal policy will continue to be print-and-spend, and if you were hoping to actually get a real budget passed, you’re going to be disappointed. Obama II will have no reason to bring Harry Reid to heel; quite the opposite, in fact. Reid will feel even less inclined to defer to a lame-duck Obama than he has in Term I, and we know from Woodward’s The Price of Politics that Dingy Harry hasn’t exactly been Barry’s biggest fan thus far. Rather than any kind of fiscal discipline, we can expect another round of ‘stimulus’ bills that will do exactly what the last one did—create a handful of jobs at hideously outrageous costs ($700,000-plus per job), line the pockets of Democratic campaign donors, prop up failing state programs for another year or so, and in general disappoint the rest of us.
Baring a miracle in which the Republican leadership in the House wakes up tomorrow with actual spinal bones and testes, the Benghazi debacle will simmer on for a few more months until the internal investigation finally reports its findings. Oddly enough, these findings will *cough*whitewash*cough* corroborate the White House’s timeline and ‘prove’ that there was nothing that the President or any of his top advisors could have done to save the Ambassador and the other three Americans, even if they had known about it, which they didn’t until much later. Like Fast and Furious, Benghazi will quickly be forgotten, and some new ‘crisis’ will be media-blitzed to distract the attention of the populace.
In repayment for his faithful service, Ben Bernanke will be re-appointed to his current place at the Federal Reserve. The quid pro quo for this will be the continuation of QE3 until sometime after the 2014 elections, at the very least. The money supply will continue to expand by some 80 billion dollars a month, interest rates will continue to be artificially depressed, and the budgetary cracks will continue to be papered over—until the dollar collapses, hyperinflation begins to bite, and we begin speaking fondly of Jimmy Carter’s days in the White House. The Carter-era ‘misery index’ will come back with a vengeance, made worse by the dissolving dollar. The United States’ credit rating will be cut again (and probably several times), until the only place the government can borrow money is directly from the Federal Reserve. At that point, the country will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the international banks, who will begin cannibalizing what’s left of the Republic to pay off China. The Fed will have no choice but to raise interest rates, which will in turn accelerate the budgetary destruction of pretty much everything, from Medicare and Social Security to EBT cards and Obama phones. Our foreign wars will end, not with success, but with despair and infamy as we will no longer be able to afford to maintain them. The troops will come home, and the Armed Forces will be decimated, which will only add fuel to the fires of unemployment.
When the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) decide that it’s time, the dollar will be completely abandoned as the world’s reserve currency. Emboldened by the financially-mandated downsizing of America’s military, they will move to fill the vacuum left by a retreating America. America’s influence will vanish like a snowflake in the sun, as Barack Obama’s anticolonial dreams are realized. With the continued encouragement of President Obama, the influence and reach of the Muslim Brotherhood will spread to still more countries, providing ever more fertile ground for radical Islam to grow and flourish.
Obamacare will remain in place, and will be phased in over the next four years. As more patients are added to an already-overburdened health care system, costs will continue to rise and the level of care delivered, along with outcomes, will decline. At the same time, more and more employers will abandon their own health care plans, leaving more and more workers dependent on Obamacare. When doctors and other health care personnel become frustrated and leave their professions, the disintegration of America’s health care system will accelerate.
Taxes will increase, not just on ‘the rich’, but on everyone in the country. Rather than increasing revenue (as we will all be told, as the reason for the increases), revenues will stagnate, then fall as the sum of Obama’s policies send the country into a full-blown depression. The ‘D’ word won’t be used by the mainstream media until long after the reality is crushingly obvious to every one of the 51 million plus people who did NOT vote for Barack Obama today. By the time some brave CBS reporter says ‘depression’, it may be too late for it to matter. At some point, a combination of debt, hyperinflation, regulation, dependency and failed ideology masquerading as policy will crush the social order.
When the EBT cards aren’t worth having because what food there is can’t be had at a decent price…when your eternal unemployment check isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on…when your Obamaphone stops working because the government can’t pay the bill…and when there aren’t any doctors to be found when you have your emergency…remember this night.
Tonight, the moochers and looters reigned triumphant. Are you ready to shrug yet?
The moochers and looters have triumphed, and now we get four more years! So, what can we expect from Obama II—The Sequel?
We can expect our energy policy to continue to be happy thoughts, unicorn farts, and green energy boondoggles. Obama and his allies will continue to push us down the same path that Spain has been on for the past decade, and just as that green path has destroyed Spain’s economy, we can expect much the same thing here. It may not be obvious as the Spanish failure, or as quick to come—the sheer size differential gives America a bit more inertia than Spain enjoyed before the disaster becomes apparent—but it will inevitably come.
Adding insult to energy injury, we can expect full-blown cap and trade, and more and more coal-crippling regulations from Obama II’s EPA. Coupled with their anti-fracking sentiment, our energy prices will skyrocket, with completely predictable consequences on the rest of the economy. Prices will rise, growth will slow, unemployment will go nowhere but up, and a new recession dip is probably the best we can hope for.
Our fiscal policy will continue to be print-and-spend, and if you were hoping to actually get a real budget passed, you’re going to be disappointed. Obama II will have no reason to bring Harry Reid to heel; quite the opposite, in fact. Reid will feel even less inclined to defer to a lame-duck Obama than he has in Term I, and we know from Woodward’s The Price of Politics that Dingy Harry hasn’t exactly been Barry’s biggest fan thus far. Rather than any kind of fiscal discipline, we can expect another round of ‘stimulus’ bills that will do exactly what the last one did—create a handful of jobs at hideously outrageous costs ($700,000-plus per job), line the pockets of Democratic campaign donors, prop up failing state programs for another year or so, and in general disappoint the rest of us.
Baring a miracle in which the Republican leadership in the House wakes up tomorrow with actual spinal bones and testes, the Benghazi debacle will simmer on for a few more months until the internal investigation finally reports its findings. Oddly enough, these findings will *cough*whitewash*cough* corroborate the White House’s timeline and ‘prove’ that there was nothing that the President or any of his top advisors could have done to save the Ambassador and the other three Americans, even if they had known about it, which they didn’t until much later. Like Fast and Furious, Benghazi will quickly be forgotten, and some new ‘crisis’ will be media-blitzed to distract the attention of the populace.
In repayment for his faithful service, Ben Bernanke will be re-appointed to his current place at the Federal Reserve. The quid pro quo for this will be the continuation of QE3 until sometime after the 2014 elections, at the very least. The money supply will continue to expand by some 80 billion dollars a month, interest rates will continue to be artificially depressed, and the budgetary cracks will continue to be papered over—until the dollar collapses, hyperinflation begins to bite, and we begin speaking fondly of Jimmy Carter’s days in the White House. The Carter-era ‘misery index’ will come back with a vengeance, made worse by the dissolving dollar. The United States’ credit rating will be cut again (and probably several times), until the only place the government can borrow money is directly from the Federal Reserve. At that point, the country will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the international banks, who will begin cannibalizing what’s left of the Republic to pay off China. The Fed will have no choice but to raise interest rates, which will in turn accelerate the budgetary destruction of pretty much everything, from Medicare and Social Security to EBT cards and Obama phones. Our foreign wars will end, not with success, but with despair and infamy as we will no longer be able to afford to maintain them. The troops will come home, and the Armed Forces will be decimated, which will only add fuel to the fires of unemployment.
When the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) decide that it’s time, the dollar will be completely abandoned as the world’s reserve currency. Emboldened by the financially-mandated downsizing of America’s military, they will move to fill the vacuum left by a retreating America. America’s influence will vanish like a snowflake in the sun, as Barack Obama’s anticolonial dreams are realized. With the continued encouragement of President Obama, the influence and reach of the Muslim Brotherhood will spread to still more countries, providing ever more fertile ground for radical Islam to grow and flourish.
Obamacare will remain in place, and will be phased in over the next four years. As more patients are added to an already-overburdened health care system, costs will continue to rise and the level of care delivered, along with outcomes, will decline. At the same time, more and more employers will abandon their own health care plans, leaving more and more workers dependent on Obamacare. When doctors and other health care personnel become frustrated and leave their professions, the disintegration of America’s health care system will accelerate.
Taxes will increase, not just on ‘the rich’, but on everyone in the country. Rather than increasing revenue (as we will all be told, as the reason for the increases), revenues will stagnate, then fall as the sum of Obama’s policies send the country into a full-blown depression. The ‘D’ word won’t be used by the mainstream media until long after the reality is crushingly obvious to every one of the 51 million plus people who did NOT vote for Barack Obama today. By the time some brave CBS reporter says ‘depression’, it may be too late for it to matter. At some point, a combination of debt, hyperinflation, regulation, dependency and failed ideology masquerading as policy will crush the social order.
When the EBT cards aren’t worth having because what food there is can’t be had at a decent price…when your eternal unemployment check isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on…when your Obamaphone stops working because the government can’t pay the bill…and when there aren’t any doctors to be found when you have your emergency…remember this night.
Tonight, the moochers and looters reigned triumphant. Are you ready to shrug yet?
GOP to Hold Most Governor Offices Since 2000 With 4 Wins
Republicans won the North Carolina governor’s office from Democrats to take control of 30 U.S. statehouses, the most in more than a decade.
The party also held off re-election challenges in Utah and North Dakota, and retained the corner office in Indiana, where Republican Mitch Daniels stepped down because of term limits. Democrats previously controlled the governor’s offices in eight of the 11 states voting for their chief executives today.
The Republican victories build on gains made two years ago, when the party’s candidates rode a wave of economic discontent to capture 11 governor’s offices from Democrats and reclaim a majority it lost in 2006. Its winners this year pledged to cut taxes and spur economic growth. There were 29 Republicans in governors’ seats heading into yesterday’s election, compared with 20 held by Democrats and one filled by an independent.
“The story is Republicans did well elsewhere, so it wasn’t a wholesale repudiation of the party,” even with a loss by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor with the Cook Political Report in Washington. “It provides them with plenty of bragging rights.”
30 Seats
More @ Newsmax
Report: Ole Miss students protest Obama's re-election, shout 'racial epithets'
Via Billy
VERBATIM
Media outlets are reporting students at Ole Miss held a protest of
President Barack Obama's re-election late Tuesday night. Initial reports
indicated there was a riot, but those were reports were quickly
refuted.
The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports "students were heard shouting racial epithets about Obama and African Americans in general."
The Daily Mississipian also reported racial epithets were exchanged, and the protest started in one place and ended in The Grove.
Police were called to the scene, according to the Clarion-Ledger, and the crowd broke up around 12:30 a.m.
The report also cited Twitter user @CaMeshaLaShay, who shared a photo showing males burning an Obama/Biden 2012 sign. The paper pointed out, however, it was unclear if this photo was taken on the Ole Miss campus.
WMCTV Channel 5 quoted Ole Miss journalism student Margaret Ann Morgan's twitter account. "Onlookers say people- black, white, etc- throwing rocks at cars. Students of all races yelling on rebel drive. Lots of racial slurs."
Nicholas Carr told the TV station there were no rocks thrown.
"I was there the whole time. No rocks were thrown. There was one sign lit on fire. For about 45 seconds," Carr said.
According to WREG News Channel 3 in Memphis, Alexander Pipes tweeted, “Not trying to be flippant, but if you consider “riot” to be a really long line at Subway OKAY it looks like that around Ole Miss. That’s it.”
"I was there the whole time. No rocks were thrown. There was one sign lit on fire. For about 45 seconds," Carr said.
According to WREG News Channel 3 in Memphis, Alexander Pipes tweeted, “Not trying to be flippant, but if you consider “riot” to be a really long line at Subway OKAY it looks like that around Ole Miss. That’s it.”
The Morning After The Election:
Early
last evening, mainstream media reporter Tom Brokaw noted how fractured
the political landscape in America is, and that whoever won the
presidential election had to cope with healing the stark 50-50 division
of political ideologies and actually govern effectively. The popular
vote truly indicates how large that fracture is, and it is very clear
that we live in a territorial political construct inhabited by people
with little resemblance to the America of 1950.
As
one looks at the Electoral College map results, it is evident where the
stark ideological divisions are between Americans – slightly more who
are comfortable with a Democrat Party platform little different than
that of the 1936 Communist Party USA, and slightly less who support the
party of big business, incessant war and corporate bailouts. Neither
represents the letter or intent of the United States Constitution, nor
does either intend to end the imperial wars bleeding us into bankruptcy.
The
problem is not so much with a sitting president who came out of nowhere
and refuses to address simple questions regarding his citizenship; the
people, Americans, who would vote for a confirmed Marxist to be
president of the United States and represent them as a leader, is a
clear sign that we no longer live in the country of the Founders. If we
did not realize this before, we must realize this now. If we did
nothing to correct this in the past year, we must begin to correct it in
the next.
That
Electoral College map also let us know where the strength of this
Marxist vote is, centered in New England, spilling into Florida, the
Midwest and the Left Coast. Even Virginia, overrun by the vast
magnitude of federal agencies, departments and war munitions
representatives, has become saturated with those voting for the federal
status quo.
Brokaw’s fractured America comment forces us to confront not only the
50-50 ideological split, but also the Balkanized multicultural hell that
America has become. The national election landscape is dominated by the
squabbling interests of Mexicans, radical feminists, Muslims, gay
rights advocates, and environmental Marxists taking center stage to any
discussion of federal adherence to the Constitution and the sovereignty
of the States. Do we want to live another minute in this territorial
concoction of bizarre and widely-disparate political ideologies and
interests? And are not both parties responsible for the floodgates
against unrestricted immigration being cast wide open – and which
resulted in this bizarre concoction?
We
know too that the so-called presidential debates are farcical at best,
and see the irony that Americans had to visit the Russian www.rt.com
website to see and hear the presidential debate between legitimate
third-party candidates for president, who the corporate media in this
country suppressed. What sort of free country has candidates for office
voter information suppressed?
Many
may feel distressed that a Marxist president won a second term,
reelected by those who cannot understand the structure of the
Constitution and the strictly limited powers delegated to the three
branches of government. This is what we of the League must come face to
face with and work hard to resolve: many North Carolinians voted to
reelect Obama, only slightly less than who voted for Romney.
Re-calibrating those misguided North Carolinians must be our top
priority.
Romney
represented the usual corporate interests of the big business,
surveillance state, perpetual warfare Republican party. What would be
different in North Carolina had Romney won? What tremendous changes were
North Carolina Republicans expecting to occur in our State if Romney
was president-elect? Lesser federal mandates? Less dependence on federal
dollars? Less interference in our children’s education? Did they
believe that Romney would immediately direct the federal agent to
observe the Tenth Amendment? So why would anyone fret that Romney didn’t
win the election, since the result would be little different than a
continuance of Obama’s reign? Reform is not possible with these two
parties.
Perhaps
the Republicans lost once again because the best they could produce as a
presidential candidate was another John McCain, both posing as
“conservatives” and hoping voters like us would fall for it. As the
late Sam Francis would tell us, they are indeed the “Stupid Party” and
we should expect another McCain or Romney paraded out for 2016.
As
recently said by LS President Dr. Michael Hill, we can expect increased
interest in the League after an Obama win, primarily due to the
“conservative” Republicans inability to confront the Marxists in power.
We must be ready for this dissatisfaction with the Republican party and
become even more active politically in our own communities. Order
copies of The Free Magnolia from the LS office, distribute them locally,
use them to engage people in conversation and gently urge attendance at
an upcoming League Conference to hear practical, realistic political
discussion and solutions. Make this an opportunity to bring several
guests with you to our 17 November Fall Conference in Burlington.
Remember,
Romney would have been little different than Obama, it was only
Republican campaign ads that wanted us to believe he was a
“conservative” ready to lead us back to a glorious Constitutional
republic. We are much smarter than that.
Bernhard Thuersam, State Chair
North Carolina League of the South
bernhard1848@att.net
It’s time to prepare for the worst – economically, militarily, socially, culturally.
Via Cousin John
America has decisively turned the corner away from the constitutional principles of limited government and self-government with the re-election of Barack Obama.
There may be no way home for us.
For those of us who fundamentally reject Obama’s policies, things are going to get very rough for the next four years. We have allowed our fellow Americans to pronounce judgment on the nation.
That’s what Obama represents to me – God’s judgment on a people who have turned away from Him and His ways and from everything for which our founders sacrificed their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.
The nation is divided like never before – intentionally so. That has been Obama’s game plan from the beginning – to build a constituency of special-interest groups that truly believe their salvation is found in bigger government, more programs, irresponsible spending and unconstitutional policies.
This election could very well represent the beginning of the end of the American Dream, American exceptionalism, the American way.
But it’s no time to give up – to throw up our hands in disgust and walk away from politics. Neither is it time to surrender to the radical social agenda Obama has championed to win his victory.
It’s time to change tactics.
It’s time to double-down and fight harder.
America has decisively turned the corner away from the constitutional principles of limited government and self-government with the re-election of Barack Obama.
For those of us who fundamentally reject Obama’s policies, things are going to get very rough for the next four years. We have allowed our fellow Americans to pronounce judgment on the nation.
That’s what Obama represents to me – God’s judgment on a people who have turned away from Him and His ways and from everything for which our founders sacrificed their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.
The nation is divided like never before – intentionally so. That has been Obama’s game plan from the beginning – to build a constituency of special-interest groups that truly believe their salvation is found in bigger government, more programs, irresponsible spending and unconstitutional policies.
This election could very well represent the beginning of the end of the American Dream, American exceptionalism, the American way.
But it’s no time to give up – to throw up our hands in disgust and walk away from politics. Neither is it time to surrender to the radical social agenda Obama has championed to win his victory.
It’s time to change tactics.
It’s time to double-down and fight harder.
More @ WND
"Most Electable"
VERBATIM
Money Quote: "Barack Obama ran on beating up Mitt Romney and Mitt Romney ran on running away from himself. He stood for nothing and everything at the same time. At least Barack Obama campaigned on the consistent message of hating Mitt Romney."
I find it rather amusing that Mr. Erickson now comments that "in four years let’s not go with the “he’s the most electable” argument. The most electable usually aren’t." Especially since Erick's main argument against Ron Paul was that he wasn't electable.
In the final analysis, neither was Mittens...just like some of us said from the beginning of the primary season. Told you so.
The Sun Sets on American Empire
Via Ryan
Throughout the campaign season, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama alike
insisted that the 21st century must be another American century—that the
U.S. should continue to be the world’s predominant military, economic,
and political power for generations to come. After ten years of
shattered hegemonic dreams, leaders of both parties still feel compelled
to declare their loyalty to the vision that inspired the follies of the
Bush era. Foreign-policy debate continues to turn on the question of
how to preserve American hegemony, rather than how to secure U.S.
interests once America is no longer so dominant. What nobody in
Washington can acknowledge is the subject that this book addresses: the
American Century, to the extent that it ever was real, is now definitely
at an end.
Henry Luce famously coined the phrase in a 1941 issue of Life. He declared that America’s role was to “exert upon the world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit by such means as we see fit.” As Luce imagined it, that influence would extend to economic and cultural dominance as well as political. His missionary vision took for granted that America had not only the right but the obligation to propagate its values and exercise leadership throughout the world. Seventy years later, Luce’s idea is still part of Washington’s bipartisan consensus, but in recent years it has collided with the practical limits of American power.
As editor Andrew Bacevich explains in his introductory remarks, the purpose of the essays assembled in this volume is not “to decry or to mourn the passing of the Short American Century (much less to promote it resurrection) but to assess its significance.” Each chapter is a study of different aspects of this era of American preeminence, reflecting on matters of race, consumerism, and globalization, as well as reviewing the history of the last 70 years with special attention to the critics of U.S. policies abroad. Though often sharply critical of the moral and political failings of this epoch, the contributors—a distinguished collection of historians and international-relations scholars—are also judicious in their interpretations. The book aspires to be much more than a series of polemics, and it is very successful.
Henry Luce famously coined the phrase in a 1941 issue of Life. He declared that America’s role was to “exert upon the world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit by such means as we see fit.” As Luce imagined it, that influence would extend to economic and cultural dominance as well as political. His missionary vision took for granted that America had not only the right but the obligation to propagate its values and exercise leadership throughout the world. Seventy years later, Luce’s idea is still part of Washington’s bipartisan consensus, but in recent years it has collided with the practical limits of American power.
As editor Andrew Bacevich explains in his introductory remarks, the purpose of the essays assembled in this volume is not “to decry or to mourn the passing of the Short American Century (much less to promote it resurrection) but to assess its significance.” Each chapter is a study of different aspects of this era of American preeminence, reflecting on matters of race, consumerism, and globalization, as well as reviewing the history of the last 70 years with special attention to the critics of U.S. policies abroad. Though often sharply critical of the moral and political failings of this epoch, the contributors—a distinguished collection of historians and international-relations scholars—are also judicious in their interpretations. The book aspires to be much more than a series of polemics, and it is very successful.
More @ TAC
A good result of the election
Brock
Can you get me the toll free number for Cheaper than Dirt.com? I need to place a rush order.
I’m blocked on this computer.
Deborah
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