The Death of the Western Statesman

"Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" ----Marley's Ghost (A Christmas Carol)


For the past one-hundred years, the West has been influenced by the notion that selfishness is a virtue. No one more conspicuous than Libertarian ideologues Ayn Rand, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. But it doesn't take just one "intellectual" to steer the course of a nation's history into a different direction. It takes a concerted effort. It requires coordination from the vast houses of "expert" opinion. Academia, Psychology, Media, and the corporations that fund them for their own selfish and often times destructive gain. 

A highly insightful documentary, "The Century of the Self," chronicles the rise of this Selfishness-is-Virtue notion. That human beings are ends in and of themselves and that satisfying their inner desires is that end. Big Business has capitalized on this for decades, bringing forth products that they claim identifies with a person's character (i.e cars, clothes, house), preying on people's inner longings for something more than things with....you guessed it---things. 

The late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, herself another "Libertarian", proclaimed that there was no such thing as society. Ayn Rand said the less fortunate don't deserve any love. Ronald Reagan said government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem. These individuals were a microcosm of the true mind and intentions of the reactionary ruling class that dictated them. Many articles too numerous to count have been published about the inconvenience of government, and that basically the individual's desires and personal ambition is threatened or hampered by the state. By the "individual" of course they mean the rich.

The mental degradation that the West has suffered from precedes people the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan however. This degradation is deeply rooted in the idea that in that government only hurts society when it intervenes. That rain or shine, society must left to its devices, free of state intervention. It goes back hundred of years when the Venetian Oligarchy almost helped destroy Western civilization.

One gets a glimpse of this by seeing the rise of Hitler and Mussolini. The lack of Statesmanship in Europe during its economic depression led to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and in turn WWII as we have known it, and indirectly with the creation of the Zionist Regime in Israel. 


Marley's Ghost from the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, " stated, "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" 
For decades the true ideal of statesmanship has been under attack from very powerful forces. No one knew this more than President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he implemented the New Deal and envisioned a country where the shackles of poverty and destitution would one day be removed. The opposition he faced was so tremendous and cancerous, that it still exists to this day. And though his legacy continues to outlive any president after him, this legacy is being rapidly undermined by this cancer that has managed to outlive him. An attack against Statesmanship has been going on for decades without much resistance. There are many names for this cancer: Oligarchy, Ruling Class, Reactionary, Fascist, Authoritarian, etc. Any of these terms will suffice. 

The main engines of the modern nation-state: The social safety net, infrastructure, public education, manufacturing, and national banking have all been undermined, coming apart at the seams, not because of their inherent flaws as the reactionaries in power and institutions of "higher learning" would have you believe, but because they have been victims of covert and overt onslaughts. Whether it be COLA re-adjustments (like the chained CPI) to starve these programs, denial of funding, or brazen recklessness in allocations of funds from the coffers of these programs. 

What is a Statesman/woman

A statesman/woman is any citizen with the desire and will to help leave society better than they found it. Mankind is their business. It doesn't matter what occupation they have, whether it be garbage collector, plumber, doctor, head of state, bus driver, administrative employee. A citizen's highest duty is to make or keep society better when they leave it for their children. This is known as societal trusteeship, where the living inherited from the dead what they must pass on to unborn generations. The  The golden biblical rule, Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, is key to this concept. This principle drives us to be more than what society simply expects (depending on which society one lives in). It can bring virtues out of us we never thought we had. After all, corporate executives and other members of the ruling class have children too. 

The Problem with the Virtue of Selfishness

If every citizen decided to chase the so-called ideal of fulfilling their inner desires, society would be ravaged in all aspects of the word. It is a self-defeating position, because human desires can never be satisfied. We are told that it is best for the state to sit down and twiddle its thumbs and allow the "individual" to do as they please, because for whatever reason their desires are rational and when they benefit, all of society benefits. By individuals of course, they mean the rich and the corporations they run. What's more depressing is the fact that even after this idea has unraveled where Corporations do as they please and so does poverty (which is continually on the rise all over the world), and the world is facing incremental unrest and misery partly caused by this notion (evident in institutions like the IMF and World Bank), they still insist on this concept.

The culture of selfishness and corporate greed is so pervasive in Western Culture especially American, that poverty has exploded, bridges and roads and such are crumbling, wages have declined and unemployment is on the rise, despite what Wall Street and their politicians along with media mouthpieces would have you believe. Yet these same individuals who tout that the state is not to intervene domestically in aid of ailing citizens and institutions, are the same individuals who say that the state should be granted limitless amounts of money to wage war on other countries, and not to have its funds cut. As if the institutions of war are not part of the state (fascism is the likely term for this). 

As liberal news show host Rachel Maddow pointed out in a Lean Forward commercial on MSNBC, that a corporation would not build a bridge. It doesn't profit from such a venture and so will decline to do so. Same goes for housing for the poor, for revitalization of roads and tunnels, investment in education and schools, and so forth. And if a corporation or an individual will not build it, then who?

A statesman understands that his job is merely a little piece of the big picture. Ultimately the heart of statesmanship is about people, not the state as some may aver. And once the main objective of statesmanship (which is the betterment of the human condition) is undermined, society will be begin to unravel.

The decline of the West is in large part due to the death of the Western Statesman. The lack of vision and love for countrymen in public officials and policy (foreign or domestic) which have been preceded by vulture capitalist interest, and the passive and/or witless approval of citizens to continue to see this perpetuation of degradation in the western body politic are two unequivocal culprits. 


You can contact Lawrence at Killerteddybear666@gmail.com