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The Late Great United States: The Decline and Fall of the United States of America

By Joseph George Caldwell

Max: You know, one thing I can’t figure out is whether these girls are real smart or just real, real lucky. Hal: You know, Max, brains will only get you so far, and luck always runs out.
-- Thelma and Louise (A Ridley Scott film, 1991, MGM United Artists)

The United States Is Already Dead, and Just Doesn’t Know It

In the 1990s, I wrote the book, Can America Survive?, in which I analyzed the current situation of the United States and the world. I started writing the book in 1994, revised it a couple of times, completed it in late 1998 and posted it on the Foundation website in 1999. My brief answer to the question posed in the title was, “No, – not in its current form for very long, and perhaps not in any form at all for very long.”

In the years since I wrote this book, nothing has changed to modify my prognosis. The problems that I described and analyzed have not been resolved, and not even addressed. They have, in fact, gotten much worse.

It is my opinion that the United States, as a society, is in the final stages of disintegration. The country has allowed the invasion of 12-20 million illegal aliens. The financial system is bankrupt, and the government is now in the process of “selling the furniture” (i.e., selling its infrastructure, corporations and land to foreign interests). The country’s culture is fragmented. The government has alienated the citizens – it now serves the wealthy, not the middle class. The nation has lost its sovereignty to “globalization.” All that lies between its current status and total collapse is the “tipping point” – the proverbial “last straw” that breaks the camel’s back.

When I was a boy, we were taught that dinosaurs were so stupid that even though they were mortally wounded, they would thrash around for minutes before their small brains finally realized that they were dead, and they collapsed. I believe that this perception of dinosaurs is no longer held, but the analogy is an apt one to describe the present state of the United States. Its economic “engine” is so large and powerful that it has a large amount of “inertia” or “momentum,” that carries it along even though its vital essence, its spirit, has died. It is like an airplane that is about to crash into a mountain.

Everything seems fine at the moment, but disaster is imminent and there is absolutely nothing that can be done to avert it.

Am I predicting a date for the collapse of the United States? No. In my view, the real collapse has already occurred – there is nothing of significance to predict. As Ariel Durant once remarked, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” The United States has destroyed what made it great. It has abandoned the concepts and principles on which the Founders established the Republic. It has lost its vitality, its life force, its direction, its purpose. The government has turned against the middle class, and, without the support of the people, the country is in the final stages of dissolution. It may continue operation for a while, but it is no longer a vibrant entity in control of its destiny. The car is running out of gas, and the joy ride is almost over.

Reasons Why the US Will Collapse Soon

There is not just a single symptom or sign of the United States’ moribund condition. (By the way, in medical parlance a “symptom” is a subjective indicator, and difficult to measure quantitatively, such as a feeling of nausea or anxiety, or a headache; a “sign” is a measurable indicator, such as a temperature or blood pressure or red blood cell count.) There are many. In Appendix A are listed a large number of specific indicators that suggest why the US is in trouble and will soon collapse. The major sections of this book were determined simply by arranging that long list into groups, or categories, containing related indicators. The following is a list of these categories. In the remainder of the book, I will present a brief chapter discussing each category. The categories are listed in order of my assessment of their importance.

Destruction of the Biosphere. Global industrialization is destroying the planet’s biosphere (global warming, deforestation, mass species extinction). All countries will soon perish. (Note on “global warming”: I am not going to get into the argument concerning whether global warming is happening, or what causes it. With the imminent breakup of ice at the North Pole for the first time in human history, it seems pretty clear that something is happening (although some people point to volcanoes as the cause). It doesn’t really matter very much whether global warming is happening or not, when large human numbers and global industrialization are causing the extinction of an estimated 30,000 species per year – that is a real threat to our existence, quite independent of global warming.)
The passage of Peak Oil. Global production of oil is peaking, and will start to decline. Our society is oil-based, we are running out of oil, and there is not a comparable substitute. All countries will fail as the petroleum age comes to an end and the era of global industrialization with it.
Overpopulation. The world and US populations are far higher than the current-solar-energy carrying capacity. When global oil production starts to decline, a global die-off will begin, concurrent with massive political upheavals.
Fractionated Culture. Because of mass immigration and little assimilation, the country’s culture has become highly fractionated. It is held together only by extreme wealth, rather than by race, religion, language, culture and ethnicity. As soon as global oil production starts to decline, the wealth (glue) holding US society together will dissolve, and the society will disintegrate.
Decline in US Culture. To an increasing degree, US culture has become soft, undisciplined, greedy, selfish, egocentric, hedonistic and materialistic. Through mass immigration from third-world countries, many of which are corrupt and inimical to traditional US culture, US culture is being overwhelmed by those cultures and reflecting them more and more.
Loss of Spirituality and “Manifest Destiny.” Many of the US middle class see no future, no hope.
Globalization. Globalization is destroying the hegemony of the US relative to other major world powers and the nation’s sovereignty.
Low Security: With open borders and massive international free trade, the US is very vulnerable, both on the national and individual levels.
The Politics of Envy. Both within the US and outside of it. (The “politics of greed” is the motivation for people to use political power to accumulate wealth for themselves; the “politics of envy” is the motivation for poor people to destroy those who have wealth.)
Oppression. The US government has adopted systems, programs and policies that have made economic slaves of the US middle class. Debt is a major tool of the government in this system.
Decline in Freedom. Each year, Americans have reduced freedom. Increased crowding from mass immigration and the “War on Terror” are the two principal causal factors.
Alienation of the US People from the US Government. The US government is no longer for the people. The government is waging war on the middle class. Its policies to vastly increase the riches of the wealthy elite have the direct effect of reducing the quality of life and discretionary income of the middle class, and subjugating it. The US government has become the enemy of the people. It is doing to the middle class exactly the same thing that the developed nations, through the international lending agencies, are doing to the third-world countries – miring them so deep in debt (through compound interest and debt-based money) so that they can never escape, are under total control, and are paying all of their discretionary income as interest.
Quality of Life Is Declining for the US Middle Class. It is now necessary for both parents to work in the competitive (paid, formal) labor market to support a family, whereas one person could support a family 50 years ago. Children are in “industrial” day care. Most young people today cannot hope to own their own home. Long commutes; high housing costs; high energy costs; diminished access to natural land; high medical costs; epidemics of disease and obesity caused by the system, stress, and poisoned food. Lower expectations for children. The current system is designed to enrich the wealthy, not protect the middle class. The goal and function of the present US political and economic system of US government is to “privatize the costs and socialize the benefits,” transferring much wealth from the middle class to the wealthy (e.g., via use of “eminent domain” and tax credits for the wealthy for major economic development projects; payment of interest on the national debt using income taxes, most of which come from the middle class; and “bailouts” of the wealthy when their financial schemes fail, also using income taxes).
Increasing Income Gap. Tremendously increasing income gap between top management and average workers, conspicuous consumption and flaunting of wealth. Increasing media attention to conspicuous consumption and flaunting of income. Instant billionaires. The ratio of the pay of top management has skyrocketed from about 40 to 1 a half-century ago to over 500 to 1 today. Heightened sense of economic class (wealthy versus poor). Increased dissatisfaction, politics of envy. Government policies and systems (income tax, the health care system and massive debt based on compound interest) transfer much wealth from the middle class to the wealthy.
Technical Reasons. (Factors involved in the collapse of complex societies, carrying capacity, economics.)
Political Incompetence. Just as King George III, US political leaders have failed to follow the dictums of Machiavelli, Sun Tsu, Liddell-Hart and others, and have lost the country.

This book is a summary. It is simply an annotated taxonomy of the items listed in Appendix A. It states my views and highlights my reasons for holding them, and presents a brief discussion of each reason why I believe that the US is finished. Most of the points that I make have been made many times before by others, in much greater detail than I present here. In a number of sections, when discussing very important concepts, I will include quotations from works of others, simply to show that I am not the only one making these points.

As part of the discussion, I cite references that provide additional detail. For convenience, the references are also categorized, but the categories used for the references are not at all the categories used to summarize the categories of reasons for my view, since people write books on general topics and those topics are not the categories of reasons for my view. The reference categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, a book on the history of warfare might be placed in “war” or “history.” A book on religion and ecology could be placed in either “religion” or “environment.”

Within each category of reference, I have sorted the items (mainly books) in approximate order of my assessment of their importance relative to the category. Just because a reference is included does not necessarily mean that I recommend it or endorse it. A number of references are included to illustrate views that I consider wrong, or to illustrate examples of bad predictions or poor methodologies. (The references on predictions and prophecies are included simply for interest. None of the information contained in any of those works has any bearing on the views presented in this work – in fact, a review of almost any of the older ones will quickly reveal how wrong and useless most of them are. In general, I am loath to make predictions, and certainly any involving dates – this book is a discourse on the current state of the US, not a prediction of a specific year in which it falters or collapses. Everything in the physical universe eventually dies – in the long run, there is nothing to predict.)

All of the references cited are books or other documents in my personal library. For this reason, they should not be considered to be a bibliography – they are just a list of selected references and sources. I have acquired these books over the years, in a casual way. My views on the fall of the United States are my own, but they have certainly been tempered by what I have read.

One of the principal tools of intelligence analysis is “content analysis,” which is the scanning of documents, such as newspapers or periodicals, in the attempt to identify and understand significant situations or trends. In a sense, this book may be viewed as a “content analysis” of the books in my library, with respect to the status and direction of the US. If the list of references were a bibliography, it would include many “seminal” works, such as Malthus’ essay on population.

Except for a few examples of technical works, all of the references are non-technical, and many of them are “trade” publications (low-cost, popular editions of mass-produced works, such as paperbacks and soft-cover editions). Most of the sources are from the past two decades, since most of the works dealing with topics relevant to the subject of this book were written during this time period.

Almost all of the references cited are “hardcopy” documents (books and pamphlets). With the explosion of the Internet, there are many websites containing information relevant to the thesis of this book. There are two reasons why I refer mainly to hardcopy sources: (1) most of the world does not have access to the Internet; and (2) relatively few books relevant to this work are available from the Internet in their entirety.

The major sections of this book refer to major readily identifiable indicators – symptoms and signs – of the US’ moribund condition. These symptoms and signs are not root causes. In addition to discussing these indicators and the current problems facing America (and the world) attention is focused on the reasons underlying these problems (such as growth-based economics, debt-based money, interest, and globalization) and their causes and nature.

To a degree, each section has been written essentially independently of others. Since there is some overlap of the content of the sections, this means that there is occasional redundancy among the sections.
Destruction of the Biosphere

The main reason why the United States will collapse soon is that the entire system of large human numbers and global industrialization will soon collapse. In the wake of the global collapse, all of the world’s individual nations will collapse. The current system of human society is completely unsustainable, the principal reason being that it is destroying the biosphere on which we depend for our existence. Global industrialization is generating massive amounts of waste that are not readily decomposed by geological or biological processes. It is causing the extinction of an estimated 30,000 species per year. It is causing severe pollution of the land, seas and atmosphere. The pollution of the atmosphere is believed by many to be causing global warming to occur, which is likely to accelerate the mass human-caused species extinction now underway.

Throughout the planet’s existence there have been a number of mass extinctions. This is the first one that is human-caused. The first major book on this extinction is The Sixth Extinction, by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (1995). Mankind’s destruction of the biosphere has been going on for quite some time (since the dawn of the industrial revolution), but began to increase exponentially with the advent of the industrial revolution and the tapping of fossil fuels. The “wake-up” book on mankind’s destruction of the biosphere was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). The publication of her book opened the floodgates to publication of books on mankind’s destruction of the planet, such as Gordon Rattray Taylor’s The Doomsday Book (1970), Barry Commoner’s Making Peace with the Planet (1975) and J. E. Lovelock’s Gaia (1979). Other well-received books on this topic include Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature (1989), Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s Healing the Planet (1991), Gerard Piel’s Only One World (1992), Garrett Hardin’s Living within Limits (1993) and Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance (1992). Recent books on the subject include and Lester Brown’s Plan B 2.0 (2006) and Plan B 3.0 (2008). A good compilation of articles on carrying capacity is The Carrying Capacity Briefing Book (volumes I and II, 1996) by the Carrying Capacity Network. The Social Contract journal is a powerful voice on this subject.

The really interesting thing about the current destruction of the planet’s biosphere is that absolutely nothing of any significance is being done to stop it. Countless books have been written on the subject for half a century, and the process is well recognized and understood. Mankind, however, appears powerless to do anything about it – and this is a lack of will, not of know-how.

The only noticeable actions in response to the planetary crisis are anguish, wringing of hands, and the writing of more books on the subject. Politicians routinely suggest measures that will reduce pollution or energy consumption by ten percent, while the human population increases by ten percent every few years, so that the net result is zero. They continually reiterate that if only economic growth continues, then all countries will experience a “demographic transition,” the global population will level off and decline, and the planet’s environmental problem will be solved. But this has never happened. It has not happened in fifty years of trying. Each year, global human population increases by about 70-80 million people. Each year, planetary deforestation continues and another estimated 30,000 species is made extinct. Continuing with their program will cause no decline in human numbers in the foreseeable future, and will result in the extinction of millions of species. During the past half-century under this program, human population has doubled and the levels of pollution have more than doubled. It is very clear that mankind will do nothing proactive to stop the problem, and that the process of global industrialization will continue to run its course until it collapses by itself.

The planet’s leaders tell endless lies about their actions in response to the crisis. Recently, demonstrators climbed onto the roof of the Houses of Parliament in London to protest the construction of a third runway at Heathrow Airport. Jet airplanes are known to be a major contributor to global pollution and global warming from greenhouse gasses. Politicians claim to be doing something about this problem, but this is not true. They speak out of both sides of their mouths. They lie. If they were planning to reduce atmospheric pollution, they would be speaking of closing down a runway at Heathrow, not of building another one. Sheer hypocrisy! This one incident is typical of society’s response to the current planetary crisis. The planet’s political leaders have no intention of slowing global industrialization. They are all calling for increased economic activity and industrialization, not less. They are all calling for improved standards of living, which uses more energy and generates more pollution, not less. With the announced intention of Communist China and India to industrialize and raise the standards of living of their peoples, the destructive process of global industrialization will accelerate.

The major reason why the US will collapse soon is that the system of large human numbers and global industrialization is destroying the biosphere and cannot continue, this process has been on-going for decades, and nothing is being done about it. The situation is a classic example of Catton’s “overshoot and collapse.”

The Passage of Peak Oil

In 1956 the petrogeologist Dr. Marion King Hubbert published a paper in which he predicted that US oil production would peak in about 1969. His prediction was rejected by almost everyone until 1970, when his prediction was seen to be correct. Dr. Hubbert used his technical knowledge of geology and the statistical characteristics of the rate and size of oil deposit discoveries to make his prediction. If you plot a curve showing national oil production by year (a “time series”), the plot (smoothed to remove minor fluctuations) resembles a “bell-shaped” curve that is low in the early 20th century, rises to a maximum about 1969, and declines thereafter. This curve has come to be known as “Hubbert’s Curve,” and the point at which the oil production is a maximum is called “Hubbert’s Peak.”

Upon seeing the impressive success of Hubbert’s methodology in predicting the decline of US oil production, others applied his methods to predict the peaking of global oil production. Their analysis indicates that global oil production will likely peak this decade. From approximately now on, if global industrialization continues, global oil production will start to decline, and most of the planet’s commercially recoverable oil will be gone by 2050. The peaking of global oil production is referred to as “Peak Oil.” (The average production life of an oil field is about thirty years. For a large area (many oil fields), the production curve is similar in shape to the discovery curve, lagging by about thirty years. Global discoveries peaked in about 1974, and global production is expected to peak about now.)

Many books have been written on the subject of Peak Oil. One of the best is Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage, by Kenneth S. Deffeyes (2001). Others on the same topic include Paul Roberts’ The End of Oil (2004) and Matthew R. Simmons’ Twilight in the Desert (2005). A comprehensive history of oil is Daniel Yergin’s The Prize (1991) (also a PBS television documentary). An excellent documentary about the passing of oil is A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2006) produced and directed by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack (available on DVD; excerpts may be viewed on YouTube).

Some people have a difficult time understanding or accepting the concept of Hubbert’s Curve. They point to the fact that new oil deposits are continually being found as evidence that this will continue forever. An example might make the concept easier to understand. Suppose that someone has a container filled with coins – quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies – and that he throws handfuls of the coins across a cornfield (maize field) and plows the field. The field represents the surface of the Earth, and the coins represent oil deposits – the coins of different values represent oil deposits of different sizes. Wherever a handful of coins was thrown there is a large “oil field.” Elsewhere there is no oil at all. Now, each year that the field is plowed for a new crop, look for coins and pick them up. The first year, you will find quite a few. The next year, you will find less. Each year you will find fewer and fewer coins, because there are just a finite number of them and you are removing them – they are not being replaced (unless you subscribe to the Russian’s abiogenic theory of oil creation). After a number of years, you would be able to estimate the relative proportions of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. You could draw a curve showing how many coins were found each year, and extrapolate it to estimate how many coins (of each size) will be found each year in the future. From this you could estimate the total number of coins in the field (of each size) and the total value remaining. To do this you do not need to know anything about the number or mix of coins that were distributed in the field. This is exactly how Hubbert’s Curve is constructed.

Since the major source of energy for the industrial world is oil, and since the high levels of food production have been enabled by oil, the decline in global oil production will usher in an era of massive economic and social disintegration. Good books on this topic include Thom Hartmann’s The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight (1998) and Richard Heinberg’s The Party’s Over (2003) and Power Down (2004). An excellent website for source material on this topic is Jay Hanson’s Die Off website at http://www.dieoff.com .

The reason why Peak Oil is expected to result in massive economic and social upheaval is that the major source of energy for the industrial world is oil, and it is not easily replaced. Oil can be used for many things, such as plastics, fertilizers and other chemicals, not just as a source of energy. Also, it is easily transported, i.e., can be stored on cars, trucks, ships and airplanes. The production of synthetic oil (e.g., from coal) requires much energy (e.g., from the coal). Moreover, this is but a stop-gap measure – all coal will be gone within a few hundred years (or much sooner, if much of the coal is converted to oil, since much energy is required to synthesize oil from coal). Electricity can be used for land transport, but only for a stable population (e.g., trolley cars, electric trains, subways). Solar energy (e.g., hydroelectric, biomass, wind, solar thermal, solar cell) can replace only a small fraction of the energy now obtained from oil, and it is not as high grade or as transportable. Believing that solar energy will be a replacement for oil is laughable. If it were, we would see plenty of solar-energy-powered factories producing more solar factories, and there would be no “energy crisis.” (People are finally beginning to write about the folly of turning to biomass as a replacement for oil. See, for example, Walter Williams’ column, “Ethanol’s a scam, not a solution” (Creators Syndicate, 16 March 2008) and the cover feature of the 7 April 2008 issue of Time magazine, “The Clean Energy Scam,” by Michael Grunwald, which discusses, among other things, the effect of using biomass on the destruction of forests in Brazil.) Uranium can provide energy for a long time, but only if used in fast-breeder reactors, which produce plutonium. The idea of having thousands of plutonium-producing “factories” around the globe in this era of terrorism is rather absurd. Nuclear energy produces radioactive waste that lasts for tens of thousands of years.

The world population has soared from one billion to 6.7 billion because of oil, and it will decline back to low levels as global oil production falls.

It is worth noting that not everyone subscribes to the inevitability of Hubbert’s Peak. An implicit assumption in the application of Hubbert’s methodology is that the oil deposits were created many eons ago (by biological processes), and are hence of essentially fixed size. An alternative theory is that oil is also geological in origin (“abiogenic petroleum origin”). The Russians subscribe to this theory, and they are finding much oil. It is also worth noting that the methodology for constructing Hubbert’s Curve does not depend on an assumption about the origin of oil – it is based only on empirical statistics (on oil deposit sizes and discoveries), but it does assume that the amounts are essentially fixed.

Many people view the passing of Peak Oil as a disaster. It is in fact a chance for salvation – a chance to save what remains of the biosphere’s species, before further damage occurs. It is oil that has fueled large human numbers and global industrialization, with the resultant environmental destruction and mass species extinction. The sooner the fossil-fuel-energy age is over, the sooner the mass species extinction may come to an end. Switching to other fossil fuels or carbon-based fuels (e.g., coal, gas, oil shale) as global oil production declines simply continues the biospheric destruction. Continuing to use fossil fuel in any form simply allows global industrialization to continue, causing the mass species extinction to continue for a longer time. There are two points here: (1) fossil fuels will exhaust soon, and there is no comparable energy replacement for them; and (2) because large human numbers and industrial activity are causing mass species extinction, finding an alternative energy source, even if it were possible, would simply continue the biospheric destruction and species extinction. Like a drug addict or alcoholic, we may want more energy, but we don’t need it – and it would destroy us if we were to find it.

Economists have been saying for decades that if the price of oil gets high enough, then substitutes for oil will be found. The price has risen from $10 a barrel to over $100 a barrel in recent years, and no comparable replacement has been found. And no matter how high the price goes, it will never buy back the species that have been made extinct. Striving to keep human energy use at high levels is tantamount to striving to continue global warming and species loss.

Overpopulation

It is an historic certitude that human populations (and most others) expand to the limit of the food supply. It is also a fact that if the food supply collapses, the population also collapses. The major book on this subject is William R. Catton, Jr.’s Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change (1980). A more recent work on the subject is Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005). See also Jay Hansen’s Die Off website (http://www.dieoff.org ). Population collapse may occur for a number of reasons, such as climate change, deforestation, soil fertility changes, overfishing, overhunting and pests. The large size of today’s human population has been enabled by oil. As oil production declines, global food production will decline, and a massive human die-off will occur (from starvation or war).

As the petroleum age draws to a close, human society will return to a solar-energy-based civilization. To be sure, there are some other significant energy sources on the planet in addition to oil. One is nuclear energy. It is not a viable long-term solution because it generates large and intractable amounts of waste. For uranium supplies to last for a long time, they must be used in fast-breeder reactors, which produce plutonium. In this age of terrorism, the presence of a large number of plutonium-producing plants scattered around the planet is not a stable situation. Another source of energy is coal. The planet is estimated to contain sufficient coal to fuel industrial society for several hundred years, but the problem of burning the coal without releasing the carbon into the atmosphere (and causing a lethal greenhouse gas effect) has not been solved. Also, the conversion of coal to oil (e.g., via Fischer-Tropsch liquefaction) requires much energy – if this is done, the coal supply will not last nearly as long as it would if used directly. (A couple of years ago there was much talk about using America’s vast coal reserves to produce oil and more electricity, but those plans have collapsed – the “energy” cost of making oil from coal or pollution-free electricity from coal is very high.) The feasibility of using nuclear fusion to generate electricity has been demonstrated in the laboratory, but despite a half-century of trying, the practicality of this energy source remains elusive. The evidence seems overwhelming that as oil depletes, human society will return to existing on recurrent solar energy.

(The concept of “carbon sequestration” to place the carbon dioxide formed from the burning of fossil fuel is laughable. The carbon is already sequestered – why not simply leave it where it is? Some day, all coal will be gone, and so burning of coal is not a long-term solution to society’s energy requirements. Absent a good use for the energy (e.g., using it to transit to a different system of planetary management, one that is long-term sustainable for the biosphere and the human species), there is no point to using the coal at all – by prolonging the industrial age it simply causes the extinction of countless more species.)

The “awkwardness” of the present situation is that solar energy can support only a small fraction of the world’s current population. At a low level of living, solar energy can support about 500 million people. At a high level of living, it can support on the order of about 5-10 million people. As global energy supplies exhaust, human population will fall back to these numbers (i.e., will die off). The only significant issue is, as Joel Cohen and others have put it, “how many people, at what level of living.” The recurrent-solar-energy budget is fixed. All that may be decided is whether to use it to support a high level of living for a few people or a low level of living for a larger number. In any event, the size of a long-term-sustainable solar-energy-based human population is far smaller than the current human population. (For discussion of human carrying capacity, see, for example, David and Marcia Pimentel’s Food, Energy, and Society (1979, 1996), and Joel Cohen’s How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1995).)

The US has made no efforts to prepare for life in a recurrent-solar-energy-based world. At a low level of living, recurrent solar energy can support (long term) about 63 million people in the US; at a high level of living, recurrent solar energy can support about one-tenth this number, or 630 thousand. The current (2008) population of the United States is 304 million, and it is increasing by about three million per year (from immigration). That is about five to fifty times as many as can be supported by recurrent solar energy, and the situation is getting worse every year. It is interesting to compare the situation for the US to that for Russia. Although Russia has a larger total land area than the US, it has less arable land. At a low level of living, solar energy can support about 44 million people in Russia, and at a high level of living it can support about 440 thousand people. The current population of Russia is 142 million people, and it is declining by about one-half million per year. This is about three to thirty times what solar energy can support, but at least Russia is headed in the right direction (i.e., its population is declining to a recurrent-solar-energy-based level). (The statistics on populations supportable by solar energy are taken from Can America Survive? and related documents at http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm , http://www.foundationwebsite.org/PopAnalysisAllCountries.txt and http://www.foundationwebsite.org/PopProfileAllCountries.txt .)

When populations change size for the usual demographic reasons (changes in birth rates, death rates, and migration rates under peaceful conditions), they change rather slowly. Even if the US started today to bring its population into line with solar energy limits by stopping all immigration and adopting a one-child-per family policy (as in Communist China), its population would not start to decline for some time (due to “momentum” of the “population pyramid,” as the current children reach child-bearing age), and would then decline slowly. Unfortunately for those who would like to continue US and world populations at a high level, the decline in global oil production is upon us, and they will soon be declining rapidly. The amount of energy available to support the human population is about to begin to fall rapidly, and there is little that can be done about it (oil can be pumped out of the ground just so fast). When the global oil production decline is in full fall, global population will fall by about one hundred and fifty million per year. Considering that the global population is currently increasing by about 70-80 million per year, this means that an average of about 220-230 million deaths a year will occur from starvation or war over the next four decades.

The US imports more than half of its oil (about sixty percent, according to The Oil Drum (http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3233)). For some time, it will be able to continue oil imports by paying a lot for them, and let people in other countries starve to death (or reduce demand by wholesale extermination of the population of other countries). Eventually, however, there will simply not be oil for anyone at any price, and, despite what cornucopians such as Julian Simon may claim, there is no comparable substitute that heightened demand will create. At that point, all nations still in existence will revert to solar-based agriculture.

(There is a famous wager that was made once offered by Julian Simon to Paul Ehrlich (author of The Population Bomb (1968)), in which Simon bet that the price of commodities, including grain and fossil fuels, would not rise in price in future years. Here is a quote from Simon’s book, The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996): “The first edition of this book contained this statement: This is a public offer to stake $10,000, in separate transactions of $1,000 or $100 each, on my belief that mineral resources (or food or other commodities) will not rise in price in future years, adjusted for inflation. You choose any mineral or other raw material (including grain and fossil fuels) that is not government controlled, and the date of the settlement. Offering to wager is the last resource of the frustrated. When you are convinced that you have hold of an important idea, and you can’t get the other side to listen, offering to bet is all that is left. If the other side refuses to bet, they implicitly acknowledge that they are less sure than they claim to be.” For many years, Simon bragged that he would have won the bet, had it been made. All it took, however, for the price of commodities to start to rise was for the world to reach Hubbert’s Peak. Now, the price of oil is about $100 per barrel, and the price of grains is also rising (adjusted for inflation). And, of course, no amount of demand increase can bring back the species that have been lost from large human numbers and industrial activity. In the long run, Ehrlich was right. In the long run, Malthus will be proven right.)

Some people do not like to use the word “overpopulated,” asserting that there is no such thing, that there can never be a “surplus” of people. This is a foolish denial of the way things are. The large current US population has been made possible and is sustained by the availability of large amounts of oil. When the oil is gone, the population will fall. That condition is overpopulation.

Fractionated Culture

Massive Immigration without Assimilation Has Fractionated the United States’ Culture and Society

After the invasion of North America by the Europeans and the die-off of the Indians (from disease, starvation, dispossession of their lands and extermination of the buffalo (bison)), North America was a patchwork of different cultures – the Spanish in (what is now) Florida and the US Southwest, the French in eastern Canada and the Louisiana Territory (the middle third of the US) and the British in the eastern US. After the US was founded, it received waves of immigrants from Europe, such as from Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia. Gradually, as English became the country’s principal language and immigration continued mainly from Europe, the US coalesced into a strong nation. It had a single language and was largely white and Protestant. The native American Indians had been decimated. The largest single minority was African slaves (Indians do not make good slaves). As the Industrial Revolution progressed, the country freed the slaves and eventually accommodated the Africans and integrated them into the mainstream American culture.

This process is now being reversed, by mass immigration over a short period of time by alien cultures from around the world. The largest single block of immigrants is from Mexico, and there has been little attempt to require them or even encourage them to speak English. Mass immigration is the result of the Immigration Act of 1965 (The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 or the Hart-Celler Act, which amended the Immigration Act of 1924). Prior to passage of this Act, immigration was restricted to small numbers of people from the same European countries and cultures that had settled the country and made it strong and great. After passage of the Act, immigration swelled to massive numbers, and most were from alien (nonEuropean) cultures. As legal immigration from alien cultures increased, with little assimilation there were now present in the population many people who were obviously foreign, and it became very easy for illegal immigrants to “blend in.” Strong legislation was passed to prevent discrimination against legal immigrants, and it soon became impossible (in today’s politically correct society) to discriminate against illegal ones. Illegal immigration increased to extremely high levels – presently about two million per year – far eclipsing legal immigration. Over time, the US became very fractionated, with respect to all components of culture (“peoplehood”) – race, language, religion, ethnicity and politics.

This process of fractionation has been evident for a long time. The first major book on the subject was Joel Garreau’s The Nine Nations of North America (1981). As the process of fractionation became more extensive and obvious, many more books were written on this subject, including Arthur Schlesinger’s The Disuniting of America (1991), Lawrence Auster’s The Path to National Suicide (1990), Rosalie Pedalino Porter’s Forked Tongue (1990), Brent Nelson’s America Balkanized (1994), Georgie Anne Geyer’s Americans No More (1996), Patrick Buchanan’s The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (2002) and State of Emergency (2006). There are many books on immigration, including Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation (1995) and Jean Raspail’s prophetic novel, The Camp of the Saints (1973). A very comprehensive source on immigration is The Immigration Briefing Book, by the Carrying Capacity Network (1994).

In his book, Day of Reckoning (2007), Patrick Buchanan observes, “Is diversity a strength? In the ideology of modernity, yes. But history teaches otherwise. For how can racial diversity be strength when racial diversity was behind the bloodiest war in U.S. history and has been the most polarizing issue among us ever since?” Buchanan quotes findings of Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone on the subject of diversity in America: “His research shows that the more diverse a community is the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone – from the next-door neighbor to the mayor…. Prof. Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, ‘the most diverse human habitation in human history….’

“…By 1960, 88.6 percent of our nation was of European stock and 95 percent Christian. America had never been a more united nation. African Americans had been assimilated into the Christian faith and national culture if not fully into society. While Jews, perhaps 4 percent of the population, were non-Christians, their parents or grandparents had come from European Christian nations.

“Since the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the Immigration Act of 1965, however, the ethnocultural core has begun to dissolve. Secularism has displaced Christianity as the faith of the elites. The nation has entered a post-Christian era. There is no longer a unifying culture. Rather, we are fighting a culture war. And the European ethnic core is shrinking. From near 90 percent in 1960, it is down to 67 percent today, and will be less than 50 percent by 2040.

“Here we come to the heart of the matter.

“Quo Vadis, America? Where are you going?

“If we have no common faith and are divided by morality and culture, and are separated by ethnicity and race, what holds us together? Especially in light of Putnam’s report that ‘diversity’ dilutes ‘social capital,’ erodes communities, and engenders mutual mistrust.”

Buchanan makes a number of other comments on diversity and related topics. Excerpts are presented in the Appendices.

Near the end of his book, Buchanan quotes Euripides: “There is no greater sorrow on earth, than the loss of one’s native land.” The truth of this statement is profound. It has been said that we do not own the land, that it owns us. We are rooted in our land, as much as in our culture. When we lose our native land, we have lost the physical link to our culture and our heritage. We have lost something as significant as our parents and our family. Economic development is destroying the lands that I knew as a boy in Canada and the United States. The wooded areas in which I used to hike are now all destroyed, consumed by highways, housing developments, schools and shopping centers. When I was a boy in Spartanburg, the city water supply was a pleasant little lake called Rainbow Lake. We used to go swimming there on weekends. Family reunions were held in the Rainbow Lake Pavilion. The population of Spartanburg back then was about 50,000 people. Most people could walk to school – certainly to elementary school, and in many cases to high school. Now, with a population of several hundred thousand, Rainbow Lake has been destroyed, replaced by a much larger Lake Bowen (Bill Bowen, who planned the lake, was an uncle of mine by marriage). The amazing thing about this is that we now have water shortages! All that matters to the controllers of the US is wealth, and creation of scarcity is one of the best ways of increasing the value of things. Unfortunately, economic growth destroys nature. It is destroying our native land.

Some Background on the Passage of the Immigration Act of 1965

The drive for the Immigration Act of 1965 came from interests that strove to weaken the traditional, mainstream, dominant US culture, which was white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP, European, Northern European, Nordic, Teutonic). The two principal actors in passage of the Act were Senator Edward Kennedy and the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (the Act was sponsored by Senators Emmanuel Celler and Philip Hart). Both parties sought to weaken the dominance of Teutonic culture in the United States. The ADL was founded in 1913 after the lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta. A description of the ADL’s work in promoting mass immigration to the US from alien cultures is presented in Kevin MacDonald’s The Culture of Critique (1998). A discussion of Senator Kennedy’s role in passage of the Act is presented in Lawrence Auster’s The Path to National Suicide (1990).

(In this section and a later one, there is a fair amount of discussion of Jewish groups and Jewish culture. I have no particular interest in Jews or Judaism, and my discussion of them in this work arises simply from my observations of the significance of their role in affecting US culture and security, in observing the remarkable success of their efforts in statecraft and nation-building, and in comparing the success of their efforts to those of the United States.)

In working together for passage of the Act, Senator Kennedy and the ADL had different motives. Although Senator Kennedy was (and is) a Catholic, his sponsorship of the Act had little to do with his Catholic religion. The passage of time has shown that the Catholics as a group have little interest in “taking over” the US government, culture, or country. (During the era of the Papal States, the Roman Catholic Church was very interested and involved in acquisition and use of political power. While the Roman Catholic Church is still quite concerned with material wealth and still operates a small country (the Holy See, Vatican City), it is not at present involved in major political operations.) Although far fewer in numbers than Protestants, they view themselves (as Christians) very much as an integral part of the traditional US culture, not as an alien people attempting to take it over or assume control of it.

The motives of the ADL were quite different. The ADL is a socio-political instrument of the Jewish political movement, and its motivation and role in passage of the Act were to further their political ambitions in support of the movement to establish the Jewish state of Israel (Zionism). As a Jewish organization, the ADL was in no position to sponsor the Act, and they sought a gentile to “front” for it. Senator Kennedy was mindful of Jewish political power. As a young senator early in his career, he sought to enhance his power by aligning with the wealthy ADL and the “Jewish lobby.” He was quite willing to accommodate this group by serving as a Christian “front man” for the Act. It was Kennedy’s religion as a Christian (not as a Catholic) that served the ADL’s interests. The Act could have been sponsored by either a Protestant or a Catholic, and achieved passage. The fact that Kennedy was Catholic and not Protestant was in fact a weakness, but the popularity of the Kennedy family name compensated for this. Although Kennedy, as a named sponsor of the Act, bears some responsibility for its passage and for the resultant destruction of US culture that it caused, this was not his primary objective. Kennedy’s role in passage of the Act was that of a pawn serving as a gentile front-man for the ADL. With his connection to the Kennedy family, he served the ADL very well in achieving their objective of passage of the Act. His primary motive, however, was advancement of his own personal political power, not of the political power of the Catholic Church (or of the Zionist movement). The fact that mainstream US culture would be destroyed was not a concern to him – in fact, he adamantly insisted that this would not happen.

In serving as a sponsor for the Act, Kennedy was in fact a shill for the ADL. More than any other single event, the Immigration Act of 1965 signaled the demise of traditional American culture. The ADL’s role in passage of the Act was long-standing and with purpose (i.e., the nurturing of the modern state of Israel); Kennedy’s was not – it was opportunistic. He was simply the Judas who betrayed his country for a few pieces of silver. While Senator Kennedy, as a named sponsor of the Act, may claim responsibility for it, and while his name will forever be linked to this signal event in America’s demise, he was in fact not the prime mover, but simply a Quisling, a Benedict Arnold, who betrayed his country and culture for his own personal gain. (The only essential difference between Benedict Arnold and Edward Kennedy is that, whereas Arnold’s cause failed and his treachery was therefore in vain, the goal of Kennedy’s treachery was achieved – he has lived to see the dissolution of the culture of the United States, primarily because of his Immigration Act of 1965.) Senator Kennedy was recently (May 2008) diagnosed with brain cancer. Had he died before sponsoring the Act would have made little difference, for two reasons: (1) the ADL would have found some other gentile to front for it; and (2) as Ariel Durant observed, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” By even considering the Act, it is evident that US culture was well down its path to destruction, and positioning for its demise. From this perspective, even the participation of the ADL per se is of little consequence: had the ADL not been the agent primarily responsible for passage of the Act, some other group or event would have served as pivotal agents in the US’ demise. (This is admittedly a rather philosophical perspective – few of us can control our lives to a great degree, but achieve our life’s purpose or significance simply by responding to the larger environments and situations into which we are born or find ourselves.)

One might reasonably ask why and how Americans could have allowed mass immigration to overwhelm and displace / destroy their culture. The story is a little long, but it is very interesting and illustrates well the importance of culture in determining the destiny of a nation, and so I will digress a little by discussing it in some detail. It also points out some features of Israeli society that contrast significantly with present US culture, with respect to national survival. Prior to the 1965 Act, US immigration had been limited to a few tens of thousands of people, mainly from Europe, for many decades. The ADL and Senator Edward Kennedy convinced Americans that restricting immigration to Northern European cultures was morally wrong. President John Kennedy had recently been assassinated, and many Americans mourned his loss. He had written a book, Nation of Immigrants (1958), in which he praised immigration, and he had attempted to pass an immigration bill of his own, but failed. Robert F. Kennedy, who had been Attorney General under President Kennedy, also pressed for passage of the new bill. President Kennedy’s book was revised and enlarged in a 1964 edition – it is significant to note that the 1964 edition was copyrighted by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Some people, such as North Carolina Senator Sam Irvin, asserted that the new bill would flood the country with immigrants from alien cultures and change the ethnic composition of the country. Senator Kennedy countered that this would not happen, and implied that the opponents of the bill were racist bigots. The bill passed, and the country began its passage to oblivion.

One of the key features of the new Act was the fact that it promoted “family reunification.” This meant that foreigners having close relatives in the US were likely to be granted immigration visas. Since Asians and Latinos have high birth rates, this feature resulted in a phenomenon called “chain migration,” in which large extended families were granted entry. Birthright citizenship was granted to any child born in the US. Relatives of such children, such as a mother or father, were also granted immigrant visas – such babies were called “anchor babies.” (The January 3, 1999, issue of the St. Petersburg Times Parade Sunday Supplement contains a feature (cover) article entitled, “An American Experience: A Report for the Millennium,” by Ted Szulc. It documents the story of how one Mexican crossed the border thirty-two years previously, concealed in the trunk of a car. He evaded police for several years until his wife had two children, who were automatically granted birthright citizenship. With US-citizen children, he and his wife then qualified for a Green Card (a work-permit visa), followed by US citizenship. They went on to have ten children – all US citizens. All stemming from one criminal invader of our country. To further its program of selling of America to generate more wealth for the wealthy elite, the US government has rewarded this criminal alien invader with citizenship for himself and ten of his relatives. The US Constitution requires the government to protect the country from invasion. The government imprisons one percent of its adult male population, while rewarding alien invaders with citizenship. The US government is guilty of high treason, and should be held accountable. It rewards illegal aliens with birthright citizenship for their children, while it imprisons its own citizens at the highest rate in the world. It no longer deserves the support of the governed.)

The Effects of Mass Immigration on US Society

Over the years, many Americans became alarmed at the flood of illegal aliens, and complained. They complained mainly on the basis that the illegal aliens were depressing their wages and taking their jobs. Few people complained that the masses of illegal immigrants were changing US culture, since this argument was immediately labeled as “racist” and “bigoted.” Instead, the argument asserted by the government in favor of mass immigration was invariably that it was good for the economy, and it did not depress wages or employment for citizens. The fact was and is that immigration was good for the economy. It did depress wages and employment to some extent (mainly for lower-wage earners), but the overall effect of immigration is to increase gross domestic product – the country with 300 million people living in it produces much more goods and services than the country with only 200 million people, and the country’s wealthy elite are much better off. Mass immigration was very good for business, and so the government, which now served the wealthy elite, was not about to put the brakes on it. The fact that mass immigration was destroying the culture, the environment, and the quality of life for many US citizens was downplayed, suppressed, ignored, and contradicted by the US government and its economists.

As an example of “Hume’s Paradox” (that the masses have the power to overthrow their governments, but rarely do), US citizens were too timid to stand up for their culture. They let the US government convince them, quite falsely it is now patently obvious, that it was in their economic interest to allow mass immigration. They were dissuaded from standing up for their culture because (1) they were accused of bigotry in doing so and (2) they were promised an increased standard of living. In the end, seduced by the false promise of continued material well-being, they lost both their culture and their standard of living.

Once there were massive numbers of legal aliens from different cultures in the US, it became very difficult to distinguish them from illegal aliens, and illegal immigration mushroomed. It got so bad that in 1986 the US government passed the Immigration Reform Act granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. The government claimed that this would not be done again. It lied – granting of a path to citizenship to the 12-20 illegal aliens currently in the country has been promoted by the Bush administration and is being promoted by all three presidential contenders (John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama).

Machiavelli asserted that there are three main ways to administer a conquered people: (1) annihilate them (as the Romans did to the Carthaginians); (2) overwhelm them with large numbers of your own people (as the Communist Chinese are now doing in Tibet, the Israelis have been doing in Palestine, and the Europeans did to the native American Indians in North America); or (3) back local oligarchs (powerful families) and control the country through these surrogates. None of these approaches was feasible for minorities to overcome the United States, since it had not been conquered and its mainstream culture was too strong. The way that was adopted to conquer it, and, after four decades has proved to be highly successful, was to flood the country with immigrants from alien cultures. This could not have been done, of course, had the country’s mainstream culture not already started to decline and was ripe for takeover. As Ariel Durant once observed, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

In his book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006), Daniel Dennett relates the interesting story of an ant that laboriously climbs to the top of a blade of grass, falls off, and climbs back over and over again. It turns out that this strange behavior is caused by a parasite, the lancet fluke (Dicrocelium dendriticum), that is striving, as Dennett relates, “to get itself into the stomach of a sheep or cow in order to complete its reproductive cycle. This little brain worm is driving the ant into position to benefit its progeny, not the ant’s. This is not an isolated phenomenon. Similarly manipulative parasites infect fish, and mice, among other species. These hitchhikers cause their hosts to behave in unlikely – even suicidal – ways, all for the benefit of the guest, not the host.” Another parasite that causes similar behavior is the parasitic protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, which can cause rats and mice to be drawn to the scent of cats, rather than to be fearful of it. The recent flooding of the US with immigrants is analogous to the phenomenon of these behavior-controlling parasites. In similar fashion, Jewish culture has taken control of US culture, and America is now a client state of Israel. Jewish interest groups (ADL, Zionists, the “Jewish Lobby,” the “Israeli Lobby”) have played the role of the lancet fluke to induce America to do its bidding. Their primary tool was the Immigration Act of 1965 – which was passed by American lawmakers! With a little help from a cultural parasite, America destroyed itself.

The founders and early leaders of the United States knew what was required to establish and maintain a country. They restricted the vote to landowners and representation in favor of the white race. When revolution was initiated by the secession of South Carolina in 1861, Abraham Lincoln crushed the effort with a bloody civil war – the bloodiest war in the history of the US (close to one million deaths). In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the US government embarked on a genocidal war of extermination of the native American Indians. It exterminated the buffalo, which was essential to the food and culture of the plains Indians. It relocated Indians from their homelands to small, inhospitable reservations, some of which resembled moonscapes. It sent smallpox-infested blankets to the cold, starving survivors. When World War II broke out, they immediately placed all Japanese living in the US in concentration camps.

Jewish Capabilities in Statecraft

While America’s founders and early leaders knew what to do to create and maintain a nation, our current leaders have abandoned their principles, and the nation is disintegrating. It is not that they do not know what is required, but that they are implementing the will of the planet’s controllers (wealthy elite). The same is true for South Africa. The founders and present-day leaders of the modern state of Israel, however, know exactly what to do to found a nation and maintain it, and they have the will, intelligence, and skills to do it. This section describes some of the history and characteristics of Israeli statecraft, which is similar to that of America’s founders but stands in stark contrast to the policies and actions of US leaders of the past half-century and today.

The historical background of the eventual takeover of America by the ADL is fascinating. The Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews who founded the modern state of Israel knew what was required and were prepared to do it, to establish their own country. Prior to the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948, the country was Palestine. The founders of modern-day Israel had no racial or ancestral links to the Biblical Jews. They were Khazars, or Ashkenazim, from Eastern Europe (Germany). Following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, they saw an opportunity to obtain a country of their own, by taking over Palestine. The Arabs were in total disarray, and allowed this to happen. Although the Ashkenazim / Khazars had no historical or racial or ancestral links to Palestine (the Holy Land), they asserted that they had religious ties to the Biblical Jews, and on this basis deserved a homeland in the area then occupied by Palestine. They were in fact not “returning” to the Holy Land, since their ancestors were never from it. The Biblical Jews are not the ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews. The Ashkenazim had no moral or ancestral claim to the land of the Biblical Jews. They had no more legitimate, moral or hereditary claim to Palestine than Sammy Davis, Jr.

The Ashkenazim sought and obtained the backing of British Foreign Secretary Balfour for their cause. In 1917 Lord Balfour sent a letter to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild in support of this idea – this letter is now referred to as the “Balfour Declaration.” The letter did not suggest the taking over of Palestinian territory, but simply the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people within Palestine. Once the Ashkenazim got a foothold in Palestine, however, they quickly took over.

The movement of the Ashkenazim to take over Palestine is called Zionism. It is a political movement, disguised as a religious one. Religion is the handmaiden of government, and history has shown how it can be a very effective tool in accomplishing political goals. The Ashkenazi Jews had no ancestral link to the Biblical Jews, but they made very effective use of religion to imply that they had a rightful political claim to the Holy Land. In fact, there was no basis to their claim – moral, ancestral, historical, legitimate or other. Neither they nor their ancestors were from that land, which had been occupied by Palestine for two millennia. They had and have no moral right to Palestine, and the country, Israel, that they founded has no moral right to exist – the modern state of Israel was founded on sham and deception – but they backed up their unfounded claim with force. They now have a legal right to it – and a legal right to exist – since they, with the support of the United States, can enforce it.

After the Second World War, the Ashkenazim had the support of Britain to migrate to Palestine and set up homelands. Alarme

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