ASK SPENGLER
Are Americans
good enough
to be Americans?
An exchange with ATol readers


Dear Spengler,
After reading your continual (ad nauseam) diatribes on the subject of Western civilization, parlanced by Old World rhetoric, one could only assume that you personally feel threatened by the growing irrelevance of the passe European thought process in this modern world to which you have subscribed. To suggest that the United States is somehow a bastard child in the grand scope of world history based on its youth, and not worthy of any praise for its behavior, would appear somehow to be an embrace of fearful ignorance in its finest moment. If history is the yardstick by which you measure countenance and relativity, then to what honor do we owe an allegiance to the mistakes of the past from the more refined civilizations that preceded us?

To suggest that current events can somehow be explained and therefore corrected based on history is nothing more than the erotic dreams of leftover scholars grasping on to the one last thread of life remaining before them. That thread seems to surround the historical longing for order based on simplistic predictability and misinformation based on superstition. Chaos and reaction are the precursor to refinement, achievement and advancement in the thought process no matter how foreign. In that respect, I believe, the United States is truly the correction brought forth in the order of things to instill the necessary change.

All civilizations, and all history started somewhere. It seems by your belief that it can only continue successfully out of the books and thought processes of long forgotten empires. Not so.
Jim Van
United States

Dear Jim,
My issue is not with America but with the Americans. Germany, France and Japan merely are the place where Germans, Frenchmen and Japanese abide. Distinct from its population, America is a political design, a new Jerusalem in the eye of its founders, a City on the Hill. It is perhaps the best design humanity has brought forth in its troubled history. As I write below to Martin Leon King, all the other roads led to nihilism, sadly including the great project of universal Christian Empire going back to St Augustine. The civilizations of the past got what they deserved. (Why Europe chooses extinction, April 8, 2003). How China and India may develop is beyond our capacity to see, but I believe that in their best aspects these great countries will adopt much from America.

Whether the present inhabitants of the United States are good enough to be Americans is an open question. You are in the first phase of a civilizational war with peoples and countries for whom no veil separates past and present. You must beat them or win them over. To do this you must know their history, by which they mean their poetry. Yet America cannot even find sufficient translators to read urgent dispatches (Why America is losing the intelligence war, Nov 11, 2003).

You want to feel good about yourselves, but circumstances will not afford you this luxury. Nothing in your history qualifies you for the role you now play on the world stage. No one likes to change, but change you will; either you will learn what you must in order to win, or radical Islam will beat you.
Spengler


Dear Spengler,
Aside from the foreboding anticipation of catastrophe that surrounds the question and the problem of nuclear weapons, is there anything to be said from a constructive point of view when reflecting on the fact that any organization that wishes to possess the power of nuclear weapons must necessarily work with technology gurus who possess the knowledge of nuclear theory? Thus, whether one is branded Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or any other religious denomination, any quantum magician is by necessity a disciple of Niels Bohr and the circle of intellectuals who gathered in Copenhagen some eight decades ago to erect the universal language of quantum mechanics. Never before in history, as far as I can tell, has mankind penetrated so deeply into the nature of the fabric that sustains Being ~{!-~} Is it not most remarkable that out of these "clashes of civilizations" that we must experience now within this fragment of time in which our mind-souls have become entangled, that it is the universal language of mathematical science that is propagating more successfully than any scripture or creed. What have you, Spengler, to respond to the following conjecture? Amid the geopolitical storm and stress that weigh so heavy upon the world, a truly universal culture is suffering the birth trauma of a planetary humanity whose universal language is rooted in number and measure, and whose common substance is the mind and soul of the human race, its capacity to contain the Knowledge of the Universe that contains it. In the coming century we ought to see new myths spun to give the human race a new identity, a universal identity. Atom Arketype has been conceived to spin such a myth that begins with the following creed: the formula of the universe is Love, Light and Life.
AA
Orlando, Florida

Dear AA,
Science and technology can destroy as well as create, and not only in warfare. "Creative destruction", the phrase economist Joseph Schumpeter borrowed from Goethe's Mephisto, displaces whole populations. I wrote some years ago: "Does the Internet shrink the world? How can we compare it to an earlier technological revolution, namely ocean navigation - including breakthroughs in astronomy, shipbuilding, time measurement, map-making? At the end of the day, silks, cottons, coffee, tea, spices, sugar, rum and tobacco ruined four continents as the world's capital flowed to Western Europe." (What if Internet stocks aren~{!/~}t a bubble? January 27, 2000). Soaring productivity in agriculture and industry threatens the economic viability of most of the world~{!/~}s population. China, the world~{!/~}s manufacturing powerhouse, is losing factory employment in absolute terms. How will it absorb 800 million peasants into the economy of the 21st century? I do not share your confidence that science will lead to an era of enlightenment. The scarce element in the world is enlightened statecraft.
Spengler


Dear Spengler,
I was surprised at your traditional take on the decline of Western civilization due to our loss of connection to the classics of Greece and Rome, when you wrote: "Waning interest in the Athenian philosophers surely must correlate with the cultural decline of the West, and I share your enthusiasm for classical liberal, as opposed to merely functional, education."

I much prefer your namesake Oswald's view - that classical civilization has long since died, and what we have in the West is something else altogether which he called "Faustian", which has also peaked and is heading off into the sunset.

I find him pretty relevant these days, particularly his view that the last phase before a civilization's collapse is Caesarism coupled with a return to traditional religion.

I'd always thought you were some sort of disciple of his, but maybe not. Have you ever heard the story that Henry Kissinger was quite taken with Decline of the West, and even gave a copy of it to US president Richard Nixon to read? Maybe you're Henry Kissinger?
Russ Winter
Washington, DC

Dear Russ,
Contrary to widely disseminated rumors, I am not Henry Kissinger. As the old song goes, who~{!/~}s Kissinger now?

I agree that "classical civilization" long ago shot its bolt. But without learning the classics, one cannot even look into the abyss along with Nietzsche; one merely wanders aimlessly along the bottom. Athenian philosophy presents a problem rather than a solution; try as one might, one cannot pry the Socratic cult of reason out of its context, namely Athenian piety. Socrates drank the hemlock not because he believed in metempsychosis, but rather because he could not conceive of himself except as an Athenian. Lesser men than Socrates have displayed greater courage in the face of death, in the belief that their tribe would bear some part of their mortal existence into the future (more below in response to Martin Leon King). Socrates argued that one could not live a good life except in a good state. Considering the tragic end of the Athenian state, his (or Plato's) statecraft failed. But we cannot reject the premise that unaided reason offers solutions to political problems without re-living the Platonic debates, so to speak.

The "Faustian" alternative to "classic" civilization really is no civilization at all. Goethe~{!/~}s tragedy remains the great modern epic. Faust has exhausted philosophy and science before signing up with Mephistopheles. At the end of his misadventures, his final hope is to live among a free people on free soil, on land reclaimed from the sea, an existence so precarious that it would rule out the cardinal sin of complacency. United against a sea that at any moment might rush in, Faust's people would live in a state of constant mobilization. One wonders if Goethe would have recognized his ideal in modern Israel. Tragically, however, Faust employs tyrannical methods to advance his project, which turns out to be delusional. Because Faust never ceased to strive through all his failed projects, Goethe allows his soul to be saved. That offers scant comfort to the rest of us, who observe that Faust left nothing but ruin behind him in all his striving.

Something more than Mephistopheles "creative destruction" must reign if the world is to be more than a plaything for a handful of Uebermenschen - a term Goethe invented for Faust. America attempts to temper Faustian mutability with the Hebrew concept of divine sympathy for the downtrodden. Its success in this venture, however limited, has made it the world~{!/~}s only superpower.
Spengler


Dear Spengler,
Re The secret that Leo Strauss never revealed [May 13, 2003]: As I fumble yet again through the impossibly vague writings of Leo Strauss, I am reminded of what the Jewish historian, Heinrich Graetz, said of the cabala, "at best it is esoteric, at worst, it is complete nonsense". On the one hand, I would very much like to know what Strauss deemed to be Maimonides' true beliefs. But I fear a thorough combing of the Strauss corpus may be as fruitful as the neo-cons' quest to find evidence of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq.

On the other hand, Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing conveys a man suffering from severe paranoia. A mind incapable of grasping The Truth instead of - as many Straussians contend - a mind burdened by the dread of trying to communicate "truths" without getting lynched ...

But a misguided Strauss? It's hard to imagine so great a thinker suffering from so blatant an intellectual hitch. Then again, other modern Jewish intellectuals have evidenced unexplainable lapses in thinking. Hannah Arendt's love affair with Martin Heidegger comes to mind. Spengler, were Strauss's thoughts obscure or did he intentionally obscure his thoughts for his readership?

Awaiting your sagacity,
Martin Leon King

Dear Martin,
Leo Strauss wanted to have his cake and eat it too. That is, he wanted to revive Athenian philosophical rationalism, but also to do obeisance to Martin Heidegger's critique of the Athenians. He wanted to be a Jew of sorts, but also to reject faith in favor of reason. He wanted to sustain democratic institutions while protecting the perquisites of an intellectual elite. Heidegger sought to refute the Athenians within the realm of abstract reason and descended into the mere semantics I ridiculed in the essay you cite. His acceptance as the 20th century's philosophical "genius" (as Strauss hailed him) is a scandal. What explains Heidegger's popularity, I believe, is the obvious fact that the Athenians were not purely abstract but also existential thinkers. If Socrates was so reasonable, any layman will ask, why did he drink the hemlock rather than escape into exile and continue teaching? Surely that is what Leo Strauss would have done. As I wrote to Russ Winter above, Socrates drank the hemlock not because he was sure his soul would migrate to something better but because he could not turn away from the existential choice of being Athenian. Strip away all of Heidegger's word games, and his message reduces to this: If Socrates drank the hemlock to remain Athenian, what prevents me from supporting Hitler in order to remain German? Heidegger never apologized for his flagrant Nazism, to the well-deserved embarrassment of Hannah Arendt. To get around this problem Strauss had to invent an exoteric and an esoteric Plato, which to my mind merely avoids the real difficulties in Greek philosophy (see response above to Russ Winter). Strauss leaves us with an elite that knows that all choices ultimately must be arbitrary existential ones, but which arbitrarily decides to propagate benign myths as opposed to malignant ones.

Strauss chose Athens (or rather his odd construct of Athens) over Jerusalem. But if Athens offers no solutions, what help comes from Jerusalem? Modern Jewish intellectuals are not much help. Leo Strauss' old mentor, the theologian Franz Rosenzweig, hoped in vain to link Jewish revelation to "natural thinking", or "healthy common sense", ultimately a barren exercise. As a sociologist, however, Rosenzweig offers luminous insights. "Revealed religion" (by which Rosenzweig means only Judaism and Christianity) offers an existential choice that is universal rather than tribal. Universality alone is not sufficient (Rosenzweig rejects Islam); what makes possible an existential choice for good rather than evil, according to Rosenzweig, is the human response to divine love. That is an idea as mystical as anything you will find in the cabala, but one with deep roots in Western history. America is not a philosophical proposition, one might say, but rather an existential choice of a different nature than Heidegger~{!/~}s Germany.
Spengler


Dear Spengler,
I was reading that guy Gibbon the other day (abridged version, natch) and couldn't help but notice a few disturbing similarities:

ROME: Hordes of Goths crossing the Danube unchecked, heck, they were even encouraged to do so by the elites.
US: Hordes of Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande ditto.
ROME: Unquenchable thirst for Eastern luxuries drained economy of specie.
US: Unquenchable thirst for cheap consumer goods results in hugely lopsided trade imbalance with China/Asia.
ROME: Expansionist wars overstretched military capability; shortage of Romans willing to serve led to recruitment of non-Romans into legions and use of mercenaries.
US: Armed forces stretched to the limit, military presence in over 100 countries; massive disinterest in military service among most of general population (countered only by payment of huge sign-on bonuses and the promise of fast-track citizenship to non-natives).
ROME: Debasement of the coinage.
US: Alan Greenspan.

My question is this: Should I stop reading so much and just watch the boob tube instead?

Dear Romulus,
American complacency worries me (see response above to Jim Van), but comparison to Rome does not hold water. Americans may import too much and save too little, but they believe in working for a living, unlike the Romans, who lived on a grain subsidy produced by slaves on latifundia and spent their days watching brutish games. In a world of asymmetrical warfare, it is not so much America's manpower as her brains that appear overstretched. In general we pay too much attention to the Ancients, under the misguided influence of Machiavelli as transmitted by Leo Strauss. The great model for the 21st century, I believe, is not the barbarian invasions of the 4th century but the religions wars of the 16th.
Spengler


Dear Spengler,
You've written at length about wealthy Europeans' attempts to will themselves out of existence. What about other wealthy nations like South Korea, Singapore, and Japan, which have similarly low fertility rates? Japan and Korea don't even have the advantage of a non-citizen laborer class.
Shanti Rao

Dear Shanti,
Even more than Western Europe, Japan has become a hedonistic dystopia. Its crushing defeat at the hands of America shook the credibility of traditional culture, and the Japanese have found nothing with which to replace it. No souls ever were more lost than the purple-haired youth one encounters in Japanese cities. There is nothing for them to go back to in their own culture, and insufficient access to other cultures. Christianity has faded from Western Europe, but what can one say about the state of Shinto in Japan? It is the least portable of religions, rooted in the multifarious deities who inhabited fields, rocks, trees and streams. An urban population that abandons the countryside will leave such elements of the divine back at the homestead. South Korea has adapted differently to the challenge to its old culture, in part through a remarkably high rate of conversion to Christianity. About one-third of South Korea's 35 million people are Christians, mainly Protestants. By no means do I advocate the introduction of Christianity as an antidote to cultural anomie. Nonetheless, the high conversion rate shows that high rates of economic growth are not by themselves a guarantee of happiness. Life is not worth living if it must end with mere animal existence. If traditional religions do not adapt themselves to the spiritual needs of humankind in the modern world, nations will look elsewhere for answers, or despair.
Spengler