In Part III of Jim Puplava's The Day After Tomorrow, we are shown how likely consequences can follow from likely causes in a disastrous chain reaction. An economy burdened by debt and endangered by market bubbles, a falling currency and massive government expenditures, is pushed over the edge by a well-planned terrorist strike. To be sure, a financial collapse need not lead to permanent national ruin for a great country. But under present-day circumstances an economic unraveling presages a political and an international unraveling.
A serious economic contraction in the United States would almost certainly lead to international turmoil, social unrest in North America and a constitutional crisis. History offers, as an example of this process, the economic and political course of the 1930s. During that fateful decade, the march to war began with the contraction of the world economy. This contraction engendered the rise of nationalism and militarism in Germany and Japan. In country after country, the powers of the state were augmented while the rights of the individual were attenuated. War followed naturally from this sequence. And now, 60 years later, the postwar cycle has nearly run its course. The sequence is about to recur on a scale far more calamitous than the Great Depression and World War II.
Today the world's population is many times larger than it was in 1930. The peoples of the world are more interdependent and therefore more vulnerable to economic upset. Economies are now set, like dominoes, side by side. Once the trouble begins, democracies are everywhere vulnerable to the revolutionary politics of civilization's discontents. On this subject Sigmund Freud wrote: "the inclination to aggression is an instinctual disposition in man, and I return to my view that it constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization." He further explained that man's "aggressive instinct is the derivative and the main representative of the death instinct...."
Despite "globalization" and the "global village" idea, increasing trade has not erased national and religious rivalries. The divisions within the United States itself are not to be taken lightly. We may shortly discover that life becomes cheap when goods become scarce. The inflation of currency opens the way to economic disaster. The inflation of human beings tends toward humanitarian catastrophe (i.e., a population explosion originating in the underdeveloped countries). Connected with this, the migration of people from the underdeveloped world to the developed world may be logical and necessary; but Arab and Chinese immigrants, in North America and Europe, aren't mere economic actors. They carry ideological, religious and racial baggage - which means "historical" baggage (i.e., historical grievances). The era of European colonialism involved war, conquest, genocide and exploitation. China and Arabia remember the past. They do not trust the placid European of today. They do not credit American good intentions. When looking west they see the crusader, the empire-building imperialist and the Christian chauvinist (despite the fact that these manifestations have largely disappeared). For the embittered substrata within the eclipsed civilizations of China and Arabia, the retreat of colonialism and the present-day timidity of the Western Bloc is more a sign of weakness than proof of the European's humane enlightenment. It signifies, merely, that it is time to take the offensive. If this is the program of a radical minority during prosperous times, it may easily become the doctrine of the majority during a severe economic contraction. Therefore, the coming contraction of the world economy sets the stage for religious and ethnic strife on a global scale.
Whereas, in 1830, capitalism was the vigorous engine of growing prosperity, today's "late capitalism" seduces the prosperous nations to spend money they don't have on things they don't need. At the same time, the American educational system (with important exceptions) has promoted an entitlement mentality under the unspoken dictum, "We pretend to teach and they pretend to study." Already stretched by military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States will soon face an unprecedented economic, political and military challenge (rolled into one). The coming economic crisis is simultaneously an international and a constitutional crisis for the West's leading power. American's have been subject to corruption on account of abundance, on account of being spoiled by plenty. The expectation of greater and greater wealth is not realistic. What goes up must come down. But the real crisis is only superficially a financial crisis. Bankruptcy begins in the heart and mind long before it advances to the pocketbook. It is in the hearts and minds of the young that the bankruptcy first gives us a sign.
In the first century B.C., Cicero warned of "the false notions of men who think, through their ignorance of virtue ... that the best men are those who are rich, prosperous, or born to famous families." It isn't money that matters most, but a plentiful supply of good citizens. If we forget to plant goodness in children, through education, we set ourselves on the road to revolution and war. Without goodness there is nothing left but money - a mere symbol of goodness that ultimately destroys those who are bound to misuse it. Real wealth depends on virtue; and the same can be said of real freedom and republican government. Freedom without virtue quickly degenerates into licentiousness, so that the least restraint of government proves unendurable. Under such conditions the law ceases to operate and anarchy prevails. What logically follows is called tyranny.
Cicero argued that without "an even balance of rights, duties, and functions" a government "cannot be safe from revolution." Freedom is not sufficient in itself. Virtue and its corollaries must be cultivated. Today we hear reports about the lawlessness of government. But more and more, this lawlessness is matched by the lawlessness of the governed. One may object to this characterization, but statistics on employee theft and corporate mismanagement signify a decline in character across the board.
The constitutional crisis that America faces will take the following form: the politicians who seek to profit by destroying the Constitution will pursue a policy of "divide and conquer" by subverting the concord between classes and ethnic groups. Society is never perfectly united. There are ideological and racial differences. The poor can be turned against the wealthy, the black against the white, the native against the immigrant, etc. A cunning politician, aided by agents of a meddling foreign power, can play artfully upon society's divisions. Imagine what happens in a republic when one class is played against another.
The impending crisis is threefold. America faces economic, international and internal troubles.
