The Ruling Class Can Ruin Us All

By Charley Reese
Volume 8, Number 2 (Winter 1997-1998)
Issue theme: "Australia's identity crisis"

Civilizations rise or fall on the basis of the beliefs of the ruling class. Nothing mysterious about that. Belief always precedes action. The success or failure of an action depends most often on whether the belief on which it is based is true or false.

People, for example, who try to beat a train do so in the belief that they can get across the tracks before the train arrives. If their belief is correct, they live; if it is incorrect, they die. And so it is with nation-states and empires.

The ruling class of America, that mix of political, corporate, academic and financial people who occupy positions of power (one academic estimates there are only 7,000 such positions in the public and private sector combined), holds a number of false beliefs. Unless these beliefs are corrected, the United States is finished.

So, if we value our future, we would do well to examine the beliefs that underlie American policy - domestic, foreign and economic - that are pointing us toward disaster, pain, suffering and general misery.

Charley Reese is a syndicated columnist. Reprinted by permission, King Features Syndicate, copyright 1997. One of these false beliefs is that numbers don't matter, so therefore immigration can be virtually unlimited. False. The difference between a prosperous China and a poor China is about 700 million people. Continued population growth will degrade the environment, the economy, and the ability to enjoy life.

A second false belief is that diversity or multiculturalism is good. No, it's not. It is a breeder of perpetual conflict. There's no nation on earth with a diverse, multicultural population that is politically stable, democratic and prosperous.

The false belief that diversity and multiculturalism is good is based, somewhat paradoxically, on another false belief that there exists a universal man, or as they would say today, a universal person. This is the belief that human beings are all basically the same and therefore, with a little social tinkering, can be persuaded to live peacefully and happily together.

This is not so, it has never been so and it never will be so. Humans are tribal, and tribes compete for territory and re-sources. The more world popula-tion increases, the more intense the competition will become.

America is already experien-cing an undeclared race war. It is an interesting commentary on people's ability to delude themselves that we now think it is normal to have armed police posted in public schools. Just 30 years ago the idea would have struck Americans as absurd.

Still another false belief is that unlimited economic growth is possible. It isn't. Resources are finite. The carrying capacity of any given piece of ground is limited. If that were not so, archeologists wouldn't have anything to do.

The world is a graveyard of once-powerful and prosperous nations and empires. Unequal distribution of wealth, of resour-ces, of opportunity, is, always has been and always will be a fact of life.

European-derived people seem to have lost the will to survive. Biologist Garrett Hardin has said, "The politicizing of universalism by Western elites and their legal and social insti-tutions ... has deluded many European-derived people into believing that it is immoral to survive as a distinct group. As a result they can find no reason to resist the Third World flood inundating the West."

I believe we are now at a point where the ruling class will have to be replaced or we will proceed into the gloomy and dismal future where their false beliefs and bad actions are taking us.

I don't know if Americans will commit national suicide or decide to resuscitate themselves. It will depend on how many Americans can stand to look reality in its stern and unfriendly face. TSC