When someone told legendary economist Adam Smith that Britain was “ruined” after the colonists in the United States overthrew British rule, Smith’s response was, “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
So, there is. By our nature, we conservatives tend to be very attuned to it. If liberals tend to assume that they can be morally, fiscally, and culturally irresponsible without having to worry about the consequences, we conservatives tend to go in the opposite direction. We often identify very real potential problems but tend to overstate their potential damage to the country and/or the timeframe in which the disaster will occur.
Of those two approaches, the conservative one is much wiser and tends to be right more often. There are an awful lot of slippery slopes that conservatives were correctly pointing to 5-10 years before the country rocketed down them, but that still doesn’t mean we’re always right. For example, if I told you that a 17-year-old male who didn’t drink was going to turn up a bottle of Everclear, drink a good bit of it, and then drive home, you’d probably note that’s an insanely dangerous idea that could easily get him or someone else killed. You’d be 100% right about that. However, as the 17-year-old in question, I can tell you that despite being so drunk I was seeing sounds (not kidding), I drove slowly on a nearly deserted road, made it home just fine, and haven’t driven drunk since. So, would you be wrong if you said that was a bad idea? Not at all. It’s just that, as one of my favorite quotes goes:
So, do I think the United States is headed towards a debt-driven economic apocalypse? Absolutely. Do I think there is a very real possibility that we could see a civil war, large-scale secession, revolution, or some other form of crack-up in the United States? Yes, indeed. However, it’s also worth considering why these things MAY NOT happen despite the fact that…
“A stunning poll from the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia showed that 52% of Trump voters and 41% of Biden voters favored red/blue states seceding from the union.”
Why is that? Well, allow me to play devil’s advocate and note five factors that MAY save us.
1) In the economic kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king: We all know that our nation’s government is far too big, spends far too much, and is printing ludicrous amounts of money backed up by nothing. This is a very obvious disaster in the making, but there may be one saving grace. The world is full of other nations that are nearly as irresponsible as we are.
Currently, there are NO NATIONS on the gold standard, which means that everyone is playing the same game we are with their fiat money. All the nations with big economies are also in debt, although most of them aren’t quite as deep in the hole as we are. Neither China nor the nations in the European Union are as deep in debt as the United States, but they have their own problems. The potential political gridlock and lack of European-wide bonds will hamper the EURO in becoming a world currency. Meanwhile, the potential instability and totalitarian nature of China is keeping the Yuan from surpassing the dollar. It is possible cryptocurrency could be a threat to the dollar one day, but it’s too new and volatile to be a contender in the here and now. In other words, we may be irresponsible and not doing nearly enough to keep our nation solvent, but our saving grace could end up being the best of several bad options.
2) A house that’s not easily divided may not be sold: While there are regions that certainly lean one way or the other, there are no longer any neat geographical divisions in America that would make for an easy split into a “north” and a “south.” The split is also not as pronounced as it may seem at times. For example, as my friend Karol Markowicz pointed out:
Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger is admittedly pretty squishy, but he did manage to serve two terms as the governor of ultra-left-wing California from 2003-to-2011. Democrat Joe Manchin is the senator for ultra-conservative West Virginia. Scott Brown was a senator in ultra-liberal Massachusetts from 2010-2013.
Getting beyond that, the split between liberals and conservatives in modern America tends to be more urban versus rural. Florida may be a conservative state, but Miami, Tampa, and Orlando are all blue. California is extremely blue, but the northern part of the state is very red. The same dynamic plays out with NYC and the Western part of New York. It’s POSSIBLE that if the country split into regions, instead of halves, this problem could be somewhat alleviated, but there’s just no easy way to skin this particular cat.
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