Characterizing the 400 year Irish genocide and African slave trade and extermination of American Indians as "bucolic", Niall Ferguson goes on to blame the fall of every empire in history on Lee Harvey Oswald, and Osama bin Laden, and the ilk.
In the process, Ferguson gives evidence for a somewhat different conclusion, that no empire has ever exited the dumpster after going in there with American exceptionalism, American creative financing(Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton's history prof at Georgetown U, who wrote Tragedy and Hope), or transcendentalist voodoo trickledown T-Rex yellow rain economics, versus a skeptical zero sum perspective of imminently historical Robber Barons and Venetian banker clones. We hope that turns out well this time. Ferguson mentioned Malthus but not democracy. If cannibal shaman yellowrain makers let their fellow cannibals down, we might inquire at the oracle of Malthus for instructions. Malthus could work for innocent, buicolic true believer cannibals, don't you think? If still bucolic, not alchoholic, then cannibals perceive themselves as innocent with regard to 3/5 rule for anybody else. That's dangerous for the rest of the world, considering that the American Empire's dominance was founded on climbing into that dumpster from which no other empire has ever emerged. I guess you can say we are the first prototype that converts weakness into strength, if you like empire, versus democracy. Evidently climbing into the dumpster is not the problem. Ferguson might want to take a look at those Cole paintings again. Do they enfranchise the Irish, indians, and blacks at all stages, or have we been missing the 3/5 Invisible Man in the picture? http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65987/niall-ferguson/complexity-and-collapse http://www.foreignaffairs.com/features/readinglists/what-to-read-on-american-primacy http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FERG/Templates/Home.aspx?pageid=1 Maybe there is an implication that first one needs empire, probably for security reasons like when President Obama went to Ghana and proffered loans to buy genmod terminator cash crop monoculture genocide, and AFRICOM school of the coups as foreign security guards for foreign money and a securitized bread basket. Or would that be colonialism, can anybody tell? First security, then Malthus(physiognomy and phrenology), and perhaps a word about democracy one day, not sure. -Bob
