Recently in Decline and fall Category

The strangest thing. Julie and I just finished watching the great German film "The Lives of Others," about how the surveillance state in East Germany dehumanized people. Sophisticated domestic spying technology in the hands of a police state turned people into monsters and their prey, and corrupted every human relationship. I saw the film when it came out, and was knocked out by it, and wanted to re-screen it to prepare for a column I'm going to write about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Checking the NYT website before turning in, I see they've already posted David Brooks' column for tomorrow. It's based on this article in New York magazine discussing how New Yorkers today are using cellphone technology to organize their sex lives, and to set up encounters on the fly. People who do this will sometimes be on their way to one sex date when another offer comes in over the text transom, and they change plans. Just like that. Brooks writes:

Across the centuries the moral systems from medieval chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcendent, spiritual meanings. Love becomes a holy cause, an act of self-sacrifice and selfless commitment.

But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today's world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act that the choice of an erotic partner.

This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other's commitment.

Today there are fewer norms that guide in that way. Today's technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust.

In the Stasi state, you could not trust anybody intimately. But those people had an excuse: the government imposed this monstrosity on them. In our case, we're doing it to ourselves. We destroy our own humanity and call it freedom.

UPDATE: I can't sleep for thinking about this. And I am thinking about how, in the film, a turning point for Wiesler, the Stasi agent, is hearing a sonata played by a character mourning the death of another character (see that scene here, if you don't mind spoilers). He has seen the power of love and mercy bring hope and dignity to a relationship soiled by betrayal, and now, artistic beauty reveals to him his own capacity for humanity. And I'm also thinking about these passages from the foreword to "Witness," in which Whittaker Chambers tells his children, in the form of a letter, why he turned from the death-dealing abstractions of Communism. Excerpts:

How did you break with Communism? My answer is: Slowly, reluctantly, in agony. Yet my break began long before I heard those screams. Perhaps it does for everyone. I do not know how far back it began. Avalanches gather force and crash, unheard, in men as in the mountains. But I date my break from a very casual happening. I was sitting in our apartment on St. Paul Street in Baltimore. It was shortly before we moved to Alger Hiss's apartment in Washington. My daughter was in her high chair. I was watching her eat. She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life. I liked to watch her even when she smeared porridge on her face or dropped it meditatively on the Hoor. My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear-those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: "No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design." The thought was involuntary and unwanted. I crowded it out of my mind. But I never wholly forgot it or the occasion. I had to crowd it out of my mind. If I had completed it, I should have had to say: Design presupposes God. I did not then know that, at that moment, the finger of God was first laid upon my forehead.

And this, below the jump:

I've had the galleys for Chris Wickham's book "The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000" on my bedside table for months now. It sits there with other books I really want to read, but can't seem to get to because I have so much I have to read for my job. David Frum loved it, and reviews the book here. Excerpt:

This transition helps us to understand the most powerful and fruitful idea in Wickham's book.

As he tells it, the most important dividing line between "ancient" and "medieval" - the profoundest marker of the "fall of Rome" was not a matter of language or culture, of the shift from togas to tunics or from stuffed swan to roast meat. The most important dividing line was the loss of the power and capacity to tax.

The Roman emperors had imposed a wide variety of taxes on trade and land. The revenues from these taxes supported the army and provided the free grain ration to the populations of Rome and Constantinople.

After the breakup of the empire, the successor states tried to maintain the old Roman taxes. Some - like the Merovingian Franks - succeeded for a time. But sooner or later, all these tax systems broke down. The world had become too poor, trade and agriculture too unproductive, to yield a positive return on the effort invested in tax collection.

Instead, rulers began assigning lands to their supporters - on the understanding that the supporters and their tenants would follow the ruler to war when summoned. Land assignment was much less efficient than taxation, and the opportunity it presented for treachery was obvious, but as the world narrowed, what other choice was there?

This passage from Frum's piece made me wonder what would happen if the American people began a widespread tax revolt. That is, what if the US government, pressed hard by massive indebtedness and entitlement commitments -- which, as we know, will take up all federal tax revenues by mid-century, absent serious reform -- raised taxes so high that people either could not or would not pay them. What then? Do you see this as a realistic possibility? Thoughts?

Here's some diverse, intelligent commentary on the Benedict-Anglican story to wash the idiotic MoDo rant out of your head.

Episcopal Cafe floats the idea that this move is designed to strengthen the hand of Anglican traditionalists over the female bishops issue, hoping to keep the Anglican episcopate all-male in anticipation that Canterbury will eventually collapse, and those bishops who are left will reunite with Rome.

Ross Douthat today speculates that the pope is really seeking to form a solid alliance with serious Anglicans to confront rising Islam. Writes Ross, "There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict's approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him."

Writing from the Catholic left, David Gibson observes that Benedict has not been the status quo transitional pontiff many expected, but rather something of a conservative revolutionary. Excerpt:

Thus far, Benedict's papacy has been one of constant movement and change, the sort of dynamic that liberal Catholics -- or Protestants -- are usually criticized for pursuing. In Benedict's case, this liberalism serves a conservative agenda. But his activism should not be surprising: As a sharp critic of the reforms of Vatican II, Ratzinger has long pushed for what he calls a "reform of the reform" to correct what he considers the excesses or abuses of the time.

Finally, Inside the Vatican's Robert Moynihan, in his e-mail letter today (no link available), -- link here (thanks to reader Pauli) offers the fascinating opinion that Pope Benedict may be undertaking a sort of Benedict Option, to prepare the church universal for a dark night. Excerpt:

If one looks at these meetings in the context of recent events, the essential point is this: Benedict XVI, though now 82, is moving on many different fronts with great energy in a completely unexpected way, given his reputation as a man of thought, not of action. (We are going to have to revise our understanding of his pontificate.) He is clearly reaching out to reunite with many Christian groups: the Lefebvrists, as these meetings show, but also Anglicans, the Orthodox, and others as well. He seems to be trying to make Catholic Rome a center of communion for all Christians. This activity, occurring at an accelerating speed over recent months, looks almost like a "rallying of the troops" before some final, decisive battle.

In short, many eyes are now on Benedict, wondering what he really intends here.

The answer seems simple enough: Benedict is trying energetically to "get his house in order."

But which house?

On one level, it is the Christian Church -- a Christian Church under considerable pressure in the highly secualrized modern world.

In this "house," this "ecclesia Dei" ("church of God" or "community of God"), dogmas and doctrines, formulated into very precise verbal statements, are held as true. These verbal formulas are professed in creeds. Benedict is seeking to overcome divisions over the content of these creeds, these doctrinal formulas, in order to bring about formal, public unity among separated Christians.

He is trying to find unity not only with the Lefebvrists (and all Traditionalists within the Church) but also, as we have seen in recent days, with the Anglicans and the Orthodox Churches.

So this dialogue with the Lefebvrists must be seen in the context of multiple dialogues, all occurring at once: Catholic Traditionalists, Protestant Anglicans, the Orthodox Churches.

One might almost say this pontificate is become one of "all dialogue, all the time."

But on a second level, considering world events and the evolution of the world's economy and culture, something else is also at stake.

Benedict is rallying his troops. He is trying to reunite all those factions and denominations and groups in the West that share common beliefs in the eternal destiny of human beings, in the sacredness of human life (since human beings are "in the image and likeness of God"), in the existence of a moral standard which is true at all times and in all places (against the relativism of the modern secular culture), in the need for justice in human affairs, for the rule of right, not might.

And so he is doing his best, in what seems perhaps to be the "twilight of the West," to build an ark, centered in Rome, to which all those who share these beliefs about human dignity may repair.

And this means that what Benedict is doing in this dialogue which got underway today is also of importance to Jews, to Muslims, and to all men and women of goodwill. Mankind seems to be entering a new period, a period in which companies and governments may produce, even for profit, "designer humans," a period of resource wars, a period of the complete rejection of the traditional family unit.

Benedict, from his high room in the Apostolic Palace, seems to be trying to rally the West in the twilight of an age, so that what was best in the West may be preserved, and shine forth again after the struggles of our time are past.

Benedict's Benedict Option, in other words. What an amazing man, exactly the man I would hope to see on the Throne of Peter at this time in our history.

If you didn't watch last night's Frontline episode on Brooksley Born, go to the Frontline website now and do so. You should also read the transcripts of interviews with economists and others in on the story. I knew about her case, and blogged about it in the past, but it was good to see Frontline take it on. Born is the lawyer appointed by Clinton to run the tiny Commodities Future Trading Commission, a financial regulatory agency. In 1997, she noticed that the trade in financial derivatives was completely unregulated and unobserved, because banks didn't have to disclose what they were doing in the field. She warned that the derivatives trade could bring down the entire financial system if things went bad, and proposed to bring it under the federal regulatory umbrella. Wall Street howled, and then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and SEC chair Arthur Levitt, called Born in and read her the riot act. When she refused to back down, the big guys went to Congress to get her shut down, and Congress took away CFTC's right to regulate derivatives. Then Born resigned.

In their interview with Born, Frontline asked her why Greenspan, Rubin and others came down on her like a ton of bricks to protect derivatives traders from government oversight. Her response:

I think the reasons varied from department or agency. But one of the reasons was that some of the people involved really were purists in terms of belief in free markets and were absolutely, from a doctrinal point of view, opposed to regulation.

I think others were concerned with keeping the big banks and the investment banks happy and making sure that they were responsive to the demands of those entities.

One thing we have to remember is that the financial services industry was the largest campaign finance contributor then -- and perhaps even now, I'm not sure -- and it was very effective in lobbying both the executive branch and Congress.

If Brooksley Born had been listened to, would the calamity that has now overtaken us have been avoided? Frontline put the question to a number of experts here; the answer is that it's hard to say for sure. The real takeaway from last night's show was not so much on the specific question of derivatives, but on the unbelievable arrogance of Greenspan, Rubin and the smart guys who believed that you should not stand in the way of giving Wall Street what it wants. Several people in the show, and interviewed on the site, talk about how Greenspan really didn't believe in regulation at all; as a disciple of Ayn Rand, he believed that markets could be perfectly self-regulating. Last year, I think it was, he admitted in Congressional testimony that he was flawed in his thinking. Imagine that.

Last night's Frontline showed as clearly as anything else why you cannot blame the crash entirely on Bush. The things that Washington did, and did not do, to create conditions for the crash are a consequence of Wall Street owning both the Democratic and the Republican parties. If you saw the show, you no doubt were shocked to see that two of Rubin's top deputies, including one who played a hatchet man role in the Born affair, are now the top two men running Obama's economic policy: Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. Lo, we read today that former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, the one man near the top of Obama's economic adviser squad who believes that we need to rein in the power of the banks by re-imposing a version of the Glass-Steagall act and breaking them up, has been marginalized by the Wall Street insiders in the administration. We also read that Bank of England governor Mervyn King, the British equivalent of the Federal Reserve chairman, gave a strong speech yesterday in which he said the banks absolutely have to be broken up, and their businesses separated; the British prime minister has now come out against him. From the Guardian's report on King's speech:

In an outspoken speech last night, in which he made his clearest call yet for the banks to be broken up, King warned that the British people will be paying for the cost of the financial crisis for a generation.

"To paraphrase a great wartime leader, never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many. And, one might add, so far with little real reform," he said.

King's comments came as several banks, which either weathered last year's maelstrom, or survived only because of big government bailouts, are preparing to pay out billions of pounds in bonuses.

Hear, hear. I believe that in the end, the financial interests in the US will get what they want. And they'll get right back to business. And the same Congressmen will be re-elected by we the people. And we'll keep getting hosed, until there's an unimaginable catastrophe brought upon us largely by the greed and corruption of the power elites in Washington and on Wall Street -- and then God knows what we'll get in response. Did you see what the Congressional Oversight Panel chief Elizabeth Warren said to the WaPo recently? Excerpt:

And, you know, at the end of the day, it's about these economic factors, but we have to remember we have fundamentally changed as a country.

In the 1950s and the 1960s, coming out of World War II, we said as a government, as a people, what can we do to support the middle class. You know that's what FHA was to help people get into homes, right? VA, GI loans on education, we looked at policies, like whether or not they strengthen and support the middle class.

Somewhere, that began to change in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and the middle class instead became like a resource to be pulled from, and you know, they became the turkey at the Thanksgiving dinner. Who could who could carve off a piece? Who can get this little piece? Who could make a profit from this piece and that piece or squeeze down on the wages? And the middle class has gotten shakier and shakier, hollowed out.

The consequences of that are far more than economic. The middle class is what makes us who we are. It's affects the poor. A strong and vital middle class is a middle class that can offer a helping hand to the poor. A strong and vital middle class is a middle class that has room, is creating new jobs to ¿ basically to suck the poor up out of poverty and into middleclass positions. The middle class is what gives us political stability. It's what gives us an America that's all bought into the whole process that what we do is not just about a handful of folks at the top who profit from it. We all profit from it, and that's why we work, and that's why we vote, and that's why we accept that the outcome of elections. And that's why we're safe to walk our streets, because we have a middle class for which this ultimately works, this country.

And every time we hollow that out, every time we take away a little piece of that, we run the risk that some of what we understood at America, some of what we know as America begins to die. That's what scares me.

Hedge fund big David Einhorn gave a speech to value investors. Excerpt:

But then the question becomes, once you bail them out, what do you do to discipline the misbehavior? Our authorities have taken the response that kids will be kids. "What? You drank beer and then vodka? Are you kidding? Didn't I teach you, beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer, in the clear! Now, get back out there and have a good time." And for the last few months, we have seen the beginning of another party, which plays nicely toward government preferences for short-term favorable news-flow while satisfying the banking special interest. It has not done much to repair the damage to the neighborhood.

And the neighbors are angry, because at some level, Americans understand that the Washington-Wall Street relationship has rewarded the least deserving people and institutions at the expense of the prudent. They don't know the particulars or how to argue against the 'without banks, we have no economy' demagogues. So, they fight healthcare reform, were they have enugh personal experience to equip them to argue with Congressmen at twn hall meetings. As I see it, the revolt over healthcare isn't really about healthcare, but represents a broader upset at Washington. The lack of trust over the inability to deal seriously with the party goers feeds the lack of trust over healthcare.

Read the whole thing on Scribd. In short, Einhorn believes the Wall Street-Washington nexus makes the system to corrupt to engage in meaningful reform. He also sees a significant chance that astronomical entitlement obligations to aging populations of major industrial nations (US, Europe, Japan) will cause one or more sovereign defaults (that is, government bankruptcies). He doesn't trust the dollar, but trusts major foreign currencies even less. Einhorn is buying gold as hedge against economic collapse.