The Auron MacIntyre Show - This Is Why Empires Only Last 250 Years ｜ Guest： NewsFist ｜ 7⧸6⧸26

00:00:00.160 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining this afternoon. I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:07.720 It's America's 250th anniversary. We just had July 4th. It's in the minds of everyone and that 250 number is ominous for some because they remember the line about empires only lasting on average about 250 years.

00:00:23.840 A lot of people don't know that that came from the historian John Glubb, and he's got a short essay, eventually got turned into a little longer book, but the essay, I think, really gets the entire idea across in a very concise manner.

00:00:37.840 It's called The Fate of Empires, and I think it would be good for us to go through this document.

00:00:43.500 I don't think America really became an empire until at least the Civil War or maybe the Spanish-American War, so we aren't 250 years into our imperial phase yet.

00:00:53.840 But I do think that it's good to understand where we are with the different things that Glove brings up about how empires fall so we can diagnose many of these issues.

00:01:05.180 Because as you'll see, this document is very prescient.

00:01:07.700 It speaks to a lot of what America is experiencing right now.

00:01:10.740 Many Western countries are experiencing a lot of what Glove talks about here in this document.

00:01:15.600 And so even if we have not reached that pivotal 250 moment when it comes to empire, I think

00:01:22.980 it's important for us to take stock of where we're at.

00:01:25.280 So if there's anything we can do to preserve or prolong the American experience, we will

00:01:30.620 be able to do so.

00:01:31.740 Joining me today to discuss this is YouTube commentator News Fist.

00:01:35.180 Thanks for coming back, man.

00:01:36.720 Always a pleasure.

00:01:37.660 Oren, thank you so much for having me.

00:01:39.100 Happy Independence Day for yesterday and indeed to all the Americans watching.

00:01:43.200 I hope you had a great time.

00:01:44.780 Thank you.

00:01:45.340 Thank you.

00:01:45.880 And I think that, guys, this might take us more than one episode to get through.

00:01:50.140 I do want to read through the whole thing.

00:01:51.560 It's only about 26 pages.

00:01:53.000 So if you want to read that yourself, I encourage you to do so.

00:01:56.160 But we're going to try to get through the whole document.

00:01:58.160 Might not do it all today.

00:01:59.220 So we might need to break this into a series.

00:02:01.100 But we've done that before.

00:02:02.160 So nothing new for you guys.

00:02:04.460 But we're just going to go ahead and start reading.

00:02:06.820 And we'll stop and comment as we go along.

00:02:09.440 So again, this is John Glubb.

00:02:11.060 And this is his introduction.

00:02:13.020 I learn learning from history.

00:02:15.340 The only thing we learn from history, it has been said, is that men never learn from history.

00:02:20.360 A sweeping generalization, perhaps, but one which the chaos in the world today goes far to confirm.

00:02:25.860 What then can be the reason why, in a society which claims to probe every problem, the basis of history are still so completely unknown?

00:02:36.840 Several reasons for the futility of our historical studies may be suggested.

00:02:41.840 First, our historical work is limited to short periods.

00:02:44.660 the history of our own country or that of some past age which for some reason we hold in respect

00:02:50.720 second even with within these short periods the slant that we give to our narrative is

00:02:57.440 governed by our own vanity rather than objectivity if we are considering the history of our own

00:03:03.720 country we write at length of the periods when our ancestors were prosperous and victorious

00:03:08.500 but we pass quickly over their shortcomings and their defeats our people are represented as

00:03:13.800 patriotic heroes, their enemies as grasping imperialists or subversive rebels. In other

00:03:18.920 words, our national histories are propaganda, not well-balanced investigations. Third, in the sphere

00:03:25.240 of history, we study certain short, usually unconnected periods, which fashion at certain

00:03:32.060 epochs has made popular. Greece 500 years before Christ, the Roman Republic, and the early Roman

00:03:37.340 empire are case in point. The intervals between the great periods are neglected. Recently Greece

00:03:44.200 and Rome have become largely discredited and historical and history tends to become increasingly

00:03:50.700 the parochial history of our own countries. To derive any useful instruction from history it

00:03:56.540 seems to me essential first of all to grasp the principle that history to be meaningful

00:04:01.820 must be the history of the human race. For history is a continuous process gradually developing

00:04:07.220 changing and turning back in general in general moving uh forward in a single mighty stream any

00:04:13.780 useful lesson to be derived must be learned by the study of the whole flow of human development

00:04:18.380 not by the the selection or short periods here and there in one country or another every age

00:04:24.600 and culture is derived from its predecessors and adds some contribution of its own and passes it

00:04:30.940 on to successors if we boycott various periods of history the origins of new cultures which

00:04:36.060 exceed them cannot be explained. So this is kind of just his general approach to history that he's

00:04:42.620 describing here, the methodology he wants to employ. I think that there's a lot of truth here.

00:04:47.220 I've always called this the McNuggets version of history. As somebody who was a high school

00:04:52.180 history teacher, it always made me a little angry that we just seem to jump from special event to

00:04:58.260 special event. You didn't really get the continuity of the entire experience. This is why I enjoy

00:05:04.940 like podcasts, like the history of Rome. It's extremely long, but in 170 episodes, you get a

00:05:11.140 real actual overview. It's still, of course, you're always condensing. There's no way you

00:05:15.560 can get everything, but it really gives you that actual chronological development, which I think

00:05:20.860 is important. I will say I tend to disagree with him on this idea that history is a collective

00:05:26.940 story about the human race. I do think that it is useful to ultimately study other periods. I

00:05:34.120 I obviously enjoy, you know, Roman history, Greek history, as he points out here, but many other historical periods.

00:05:40.220 But I do think that really the story of most nations tends to be something that we should focus on.

00:05:46.960 There's nothing wrong with people mostly knowing their history, mostly understanding their history.

00:05:52.240 And the idea that, like, there's just this collective endeavor of history as opposed to, I think, really what we see is these great forces and these great men throughout history that actually drive it.

00:06:03.320 Sorry, but ultimately, the history of sub-Saharan Africa is not particularly useful to understanding the development of northern European cultures.

00:06:13.020 These things really don't interact that often.

00:06:16.320 Again, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't study them or that there isn't a value in having a wider historical reference, but I do think he's kind of overselling this collective idea of human history.

00:06:27.960 What do you think, News Fist?

00:06:28.840 well i mean sometimes you know i i think of history as um you know the the sort of history

00:06:36.640 of events okay there's like the great man theory of history the idea that history is driven forward

00:06:40.740 and then there is i i guess what you could sort of um was it hegel who had you know the idea of

00:06:46.720 the the weltgeist right the world spirit that history these like vast sort of underground

00:06:51.440 forces that no man really controls and that it is a conceit of any person in history to think that

00:06:58.700 they are in fact controlling history when you could make an argument that it is history

00:07:02.700 controlling them i mean this this very very quickly sort of ramps out into a sort of

00:07:06.980 systemic view that sort of history is all these like complicated forces driving in a certain

00:07:13.180 direction you can get the idea that sort of like humans as an organism as like a mass organism

00:07:19.000 goes through these like various stages um gloves sort of i guess kind of touches on this idea

00:07:27.040 quite notably as we'll see later in the thing he he talks about race very very very problematic

00:07:32.980 uh from today's perspective um and he views histories you know the the history of various

00:07:38.200 cultures as the expression of that race sort of breaking out and they sort of like swap over and

00:07:43.120 um he sort of says that if if one race were to gain total primacy forever then all of humanity

00:07:49.900 would like followed so it stands to reason that in the march of uh eternal progress which i'm not

00:07:55.920 believe in anymore to be quite frank um that you know other races would take over and and thus

00:08:01.500 sort of humanity as a whole progresses um i i don't know i kind of switch before i sometimes

00:08:08.400 really do feel like the great forces of history argument is is actually the right one because

00:08:14.020 despite the efforts of many people it does seem like history just sort of grinds inexorably forward 0.97

00:08:22.240 like some kind of juggernaut that cannot really be stopped it can be maybe retarded briefly or 0.61

00:08:28.880 diverted slightly but the for the same forces that made the the sort of a a nation or empire

00:08:35.760 great as as glub uh talks about uh inevitably a lead lead to its dissolution and downfall

00:08:41.840 i'm i mean there's a kind of stagist idea there i mean it's very convenient i mean you know i think

00:08:46.960 spangler talks about this as well i have not read uh enough spangler right spangler had an idea of

00:08:52.800 the cycle of empires too didn't he yes yeah no we'll very much see the echoes of spangler uh in

00:08:58.520 in the beginning of this document um and it's important for people to also know that glub was

00:09:04.080 kind of one of these uh imperial british guys who uh you know was constantly outside the empire

00:09:10.800 ended up in uh the middle east a lot and so a lot of his stuff kind of comes with that like

00:09:17.440 well you're so parochial for not being in these third world countries like i am and understanding

00:09:22.860 them the way i do so he's he's he's useful you know i i i don't i want people to get a balanced

00:09:28.420 understanding of glove i think there's a lot of really good insights in this uh but there are

00:09:33.780 some very clear biases there's a very clear attitude that kind of rides on top of this

00:09:39.380 whole thing that we'll see unfold as we go further but let's i will say i will say one thing um

00:09:46.120 this is very well written like for 26 pages it packs a lot into it like i've read books that

00:09:53.140 are like 300 pages that don't have as much information like packed in i would highly

00:09:57.820 recommend that people read this it's it's short and it's very very well written and very easy to

00:10:02.360 I agree 100% that if nothing else, you have to give his ability to condense these things, these very, very complicated issues down into their most important parts and really make a very interesting thesis out of what was basically a long magazine article.

00:10:23.220 uh so uh you know kudos to him for that as somebody who myself tries to be as concise

00:10:29.440 as possible and condense uh difficult uh you know ideas in my writing i do admire this style

00:10:36.140 so he says physical science has expanded its knowledge by building on the work of its

00:10:42.700 predecessors and by making millions of careful experiments the results of which are meticulously

00:10:47.980 recorded such methods have not yet been employed in the study of history our piecemeal historical

00:10:53.660 work is still mainly dominated by emotion and prejudice again i'm the most objective guy i'm

00:10:59.740 the only guy to have ever looked across history and thought about everybody involved the rest of

00:11:04.100 you are all tiny men you know only thinking about your own country and you're again we we get the

00:11:09.000 mood where he's writing this from uh the the lives of empires if we desire to ascertain the laws

00:11:14.880 which govern the rise and fall of empires the obvious course is to investigate the imperial

00:11:19.120 experiments recorded and history in history and this uh list calls for certain comments and we'll

00:11:25.500 just take a list uh look at the list here real quick oh it's another paragraph i will pass

00:11:30.460 above the chart oh no i read this one it it breaks into two sides it runs parallel yeah um

00:11:39.860 But looking at the list here, you can see that it's got all of the different nations listed, the rise and fall dates, but I'll just run through the links real quick.

00:11:49.960 He's got the Assyrian Empire, 247 years, the Persian Empire, 208 years, the Greek Empire under Alexander, 231 years, Roman Republic, 233 years, Roman Empire, 207 years, Arab Empire, 246, Mameluke Empire, 267, Ottoman Empire, 250, Spain, 250, Romanov, Russia, 234, and Britain, 250.

00:12:19.960 50 so again you can quibble on some of the dates he chooses when did the british empire exactly

00:12:25.180 end uh you know some of these are a little are well under 200 or 250 some are a little over uh

00:12:32.240 but you can see where he's going to we see an average life cycle uh in these empires again

00:12:37.660 you can quibble a little bit over the dates and uh the uh the duration but i think uh relatively

00:12:44.140 good spread um you could probably throw a few more empires in here obviously you know nothing's

00:12:49.380 going to be exhaustive uh but i think a relatively good representation here uh oh go ahead yeah i

00:12:57.660 did notice one thing when i was doing a bit of research about this which is that um it's hard

00:13:02.820 to get for the really really early ones but most of these empires went through monetary debasement

00:13:07.080 at some period in their history or they found sort of vast stocks of silver which basically led to

00:13:15.520 sort of the same effect even if they weren't debasing their own currency they found like you

00:13:19.740 know say they had silver coinage they found vast deposits of silver which led to the same effect

00:13:23.940 love does not really talk about it in this but the main thing like missing in my mind is that

00:13:29.280 there's no real talk of sort of economic debasement there's that old um quote that the morality of a

00:13:35.220 people is reflected in the morality of its money and i think there's something there's something

00:13:39.380 to this although if if if this is such a common and widespread phenomena as as glub insists then

00:13:46.640 again where we are back to wondering whether um these really are sort of like large forces in

00:13:52.560 history that can't really be mitigated or can they i mean i don't know yeah glub is very

00:13:59.880 deterministic in the same way that oswald spangler is uh these you know these kind of cyclical

00:14:04.700 histories tend to lend themselves to that. And I think there's always some truth. I am a big

00:14:11.680 believer. I know maybe it's cowardly. I'm chickening out. But I believe it's ultimately

00:14:16.260 both great men and trends and forces. I think that trends and forces create opportunities.

00:14:22.640 But if great men aren't there, then I think oftentimes events don't happen. You can look at

00:14:27.380 many civilizations that end up in long-term stagnation because they simply don't have the

00:14:32.260 dynamism of leadership to, you know, make something happen when the trends and forces

00:14:36.880 emerge. At the same time, no man is an island without certain opportunities, without certain

00:14:41.800 moments. You never would have had many of the great moments of history. I mean, you think about

00:14:46.960 someone like Julius Caesar. Would Julius Caesar have been Julius Caesar if not for that particular

00:14:53.820 political tension between the popularities and the optimates? I mean, really, Caesar just kind

00:14:59.600 of wanted to be uh high status and he wasn't given the opportunity due to uh kind of those

00:15:05.980 historical circumstances he got pinned in by the senate without those trends without those forces

00:15:10.680 would caesar have collapsed basically the the republic and founded the empire hard to know

00:15:16.860 right like these these are just things that we can't speculate on those counterfactuals are

00:15:21.360 always difficult uh so i do think that there's just a meeting of these two forces but you're

00:15:26.380 right to note that Glob is often focused more on the spiritual health of the country and the nation

00:15:32.760 than he is the material condition. Material conditions as of money are very important,

00:15:38.400 obviously. I think you're right to point those out. But we do get such an emphasis on those

00:15:42.840 material factors so often that it is often refreshing to then go to someone who's more

00:15:47.780 focused, I think, on these more spiritual aspects of the nation because it does give us a different

00:15:53.600 frame a different lens a different reference point than we often get in kind of modern analysis

00:15:58.860 but he says oh sorry if i just briefly interject like what do you think of the idea that um great

00:16:05.620 men are essentially like avatars of a certain zeitgeist like they they sort of uh is it just

00:16:11.600 does the time make the man does the man make the time or is you know you don't really you can't

00:16:16.060 really tell i really think it is the synthesis like i said i think you i think great men are

00:16:20.760 critical for events to move forward but they can't arise on their own i think trends and forces are

00:16:27.440 critical to explaining uh how actions actually play themselves out but without the great men to

00:16:33.940 actually take that action uh the trend and for the trends and forces are insufficient to explain

00:16:39.120 uh what's going on there so i really do think it's the the meeting of those two uh rather than

00:16:44.860 simply pushing it all into one camp or all into the other um so i think it's a little bit of a

00:16:50.720 false dichotomy though i mean as a thomas carlisle fan i will always you know root for a great man

00:16:56.120 of history you know that that that theory is always going to be uh central to my love uh but

00:17:01.160 he says the present writer is exploring the facts not trying to prove anything the dates given are

00:17:05.520 largely arbitrary empires do not usually begin or end on a certain date uh there is an endeavor to

00:17:11.360 deduce from them any lessons which seem to be applicable to all of them the word empire by

00:17:17.360 association with the british empire is visualized by some people as an organization consisting of

00:17:23.020 a home country in europe and colonies in other countries in this essay the term empire is used

00:17:28.000 to signify a great power often called a superpower most of the empires in the history have been large

00:17:33.460 land blocks almost without overseas possessions uh he uh we possess a considerable amount of

00:17:40.600 information on many empires recorded in history and of their vicissitudes and the length of

00:17:46.460 their lives. For example, then he gives the chart, normally a gradual period of expansion

00:17:52.540 and then a period of decline. The resemblance in the duration of these great powers may be

00:17:59.540 queried. Human affairs are subject to many chances and it is not to be expected that they could be

00:18:06.720 calculated with mathematical accuracy. So he's making clear here, look, I understand these dates

00:18:12.140 are fungible i understand the definition of empire can be confusing for people you know the british

00:18:17.400 they had these colonies overseas everywhere but that's not the normal way empires actually form

00:18:22.060 they're usually contiguous controlled land masses so he's saying look i get that this is a

00:18:27.960 generalization he's kind of giving himself enough room to say i i i know what we're doing here is

00:18:33.920 going to play be playing a little fast and loose with certain parts of definitions but we kind of

00:18:38.760 just need this looser framework in order to do this overall analysis we can't get caught up in

00:18:44.020 all of the minutiae you know what's quite interesting as i was reading this it occurred

00:18:49.380 to me that um religions last a lot longer than than empires like they they sort of you know have

00:18:55.860 like if you look at something like christianity for example it has managed to last through many

00:19:00.180 many many empires it's interesting that i i mean i i suppose that there must be many sort of

00:19:07.180 religions that have gone by the wayside that no one even thinks about now you know the the great

00:19:10.860 ones of course have survivorship bias right like that's why they are still around because their

00:19:14.520 principles preserve them over thousands of years and they did not get sort of caught up in these

00:19:20.020 similar games of empire i guess no 100 and very interestingly uh uh the clash of civilizations

00:19:29.120 huntington's clash of civilizations uh really emphasizes the importance of religion as a

00:19:35.860 continuous identity, even as kind of these different civilizational blocks like fall and

00:19:42.040 reform and different states come to their center. He really believes that these blocks of religion

00:19:49.600 are more important than any given organized government. So that's an insight that I think

00:19:56.680 has resounded with other thinkers, including Huntington. Nevertheless, it is suggested that

00:20:03.800 there is a sufficient resemblance between the life periods of these different empires to justify

00:20:09.100 further study. The division of Rome into two periods may be thought unwarranted. The first

00:20:14.680 of Republican period dates from the time when Rome became the mistress of Italy and ends with

00:20:19.940 the ascension of Augustus. The imperial period extends from the ascension of Augustus to the

00:20:25.640 death of Marcus Aurelius. It is true that the empire survived nominally for more than a century

00:20:30.840 after the state but it did so in constant confusion rebellion civil wars and barbarian

00:20:36.380 invasion yeah uh that is kind of important though right like that he is saying basically i knocked

00:20:42.320 100 years off the roman empire uh to make it fit into my thesis because it didn't really count

00:20:47.220 because there's too much chaos that one does feel like a good bit of cheating there i understand why

00:20:51.540 you split it between empire and republic uh but just shaving an extra hundred years off the empire

00:20:57.020 itself and then we could talk of course about byzantines uh and whether those are even romans

00:21:01.580 uh so of course again lots of debate here but he is acknowledging that that was always going to be

00:21:06.180 the case i mean the later part of the roman empire was uh wait i was a um how do i put this

00:21:12.440 delicately a a highly chaotic period you know um i mean just just think of um you know emperors like

00:21:20.140 elagabalus for example uh you know if listeners aren't familiar with elagabalus he was uh where 0.87

00:21:25.480 he from was he like from syria or somewhere anyway he was a he was a a transsexual emperor who uh

00:21:32.040 instantiated a the sun god basically which was also called elagabalus so he was meant to be 0.91

00:21:37.480 uh you know with the uh with the sun god and he was very i guess you would call it queer

00:21:42.360 uh today and um he was eventually executed i believe by the praetorian guard which is sort 0.67

00:21:46.920 of like what happened during this period of many emperors where it just turned out it was the

00:21:50.840 the praetorian guard that really sort of like had the final call on on any emperor um if if you take

00:21:57.860 the idea that which i think glob talks about that uh an empire is the the idea of an expanding

00:22:04.100 ethnos or expanding race or expanding people then once it starts uh sort of bringing in like a a

00:22:11.000 whole lot of like foreigners slaves all this kind of like other stuff it really begins to 0.98

00:22:15.920 to lose its its character and it stops i guess being as is dynamic you know you you don't have

00:22:22.080 to invent new stuff you've you've got a million slaves to do it for you right yeah no and i think

00:22:26.940 that that's a theme that we can see across many authors glove definitely hits it very strong and

00:22:31.980 this one which is again why i think uh this work is is so important uh because obviously all western

00:22:37.860 nations including america are certainly facing this crisis of illegal immigration and legal

00:22:43.000 immigration, kind of supplanting the native population. And if you don't understand nations

00:22:49.220 as peoples, if you think it's just some economic zone or some set of rules that the judges preside

00:22:55.900 over, then you can easily be confused as to why these new people circulating in your society

00:23:01.440 are killing it. But I think that understanding, having a Spunglerian or a Glubian understanding

00:23:08.200 of this i think is pretty critical to understand why we are kind of uh enduring what we are in the

00:23:13.880 at the moment i don't know about that remember remember when george washington famously declared

00:23:19.060 america to be an economic zone right yeah sorry john john jay said you know we're all one people

00:23:25.920 under one economy using one dollar uh one fiat currency you know it's uh famously in the federal

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00:23:59.860 not all people not all empires endured for their full lifespan the babylonian empire of nebuchadnezzar

00:24:08.260 for example was overthrown by cyrus after a life duration of only 74 years an interesting uh an

00:24:14.480 interesting uh deduction from the figures seems to be that the duration of empires does not depend

00:24:20.360 on the speed of travel or the nature of weapons the assyrians marched on foot and fought with

00:24:25.340 spears and bows and arrows the british used artillery railways and ocean-going ships yet

00:24:30.780 the two empires lasted for approximately the same period this is a tendency nowadays to say that

00:24:35.860 there's this jet age and consequently there is nothing uh for us to learn from the past empire

00:24:41.360 such an attitude seems to be erroneous so this is a really good point right he's saying look it

00:24:45.980 doesn't really matter how much technology has advanced we'd like to think of the advancement

00:24:51.180 of technology you know capital p progress as the important factor determining everything in the

00:24:57.200 world he says really whether you're some guy you know hoofing it on foot in the desert in uh you

00:25:03.520 know bc or if you're the british empire you know using steam power and gunpowder and everything

00:25:09.500 else really the duration of these empires seems to be something that is tied more to human nature

00:25:16.180 than it is to direct material progress not that as you say with money we won't see that degradation

00:25:24.480 kind of reflecting itself in different material actions but that that is not the sole determiner

00:25:30.640 in fact it doesn't seem to have that much of an influence on how long these empires last

00:25:36.080 someone else must have made this point but what this makes me think of is that

00:25:40.400 you know an empire is like a kind of super organism for lack of a better better word you

00:25:45.460 know like a sort of vast kind of conglomeration of of people and that because it is composed of

00:25:53.620 sort of people who are sort of perforce individuals the the more coherence this uh nation or ethnos

00:26:00.400 has the more sort of communication between the different nodes in this super organism there is

00:26:05.360 the more effectively it can drive in one direction and once that communication gets disrupted for

00:26:10.940 whatever is whatever reason it starts to sort of delinquiesce and come apart yeah i i'm actually i

00:26:17.420 desperately need to get back to writing it but i started a book on this very topic of hyperagents

00:26:22.460 of of nations as hyperagents as these organisms that are uh expanding and as you say are a

00:26:29.060 collection of uh the people within but uh well yeah hopefully i'll put my nose to the grindstone

00:26:34.360 to get more of that done it's tempting to compare the lives of empires with those of human beings

00:26:39.840 we may choose a figure and say that the average life of a human being is 70 years not all human

00:26:45.100 beings live exactly 70 years some die in infancy others are killed in accidents in midlife some

00:26:50.460 survive to the age of 80 or 90 nevertheless in spite of such exceptions we are justified in

00:26:56.980 saying the average that 70 years is the fair estimate of the average person's expectation

00:27:02.480 of life basically don't get pedantic yes i know that you might be 5'8 but most women are 5'4

00:27:08.140 uh we we may uh perhaps at this stage be allowed to draw certain conclusions a in spite of the

00:27:15.220 accidents of fortune of the apparent uh circumstances of the human race at different

00:27:19.720 epochs the periods of duration of different empires at very epochs shows a remarkable

00:27:24.280 a remarkable similarity b immense changes in technology of transport or in the methods of

00:27:30.400 warfare do not seem to affect the lifespan uh or life expectation of an empire c the changes in

00:27:36.740 technology of transport or of war have however affected the shape of empires the Assyrians

00:27:43.040 marching on foot could only conquer their neighbors who were accessible by land the

00:27:48.100 Medes the Babylonians and the Persians and the Egyptians the British making use of ocean-going

00:27:53.560 ships conquered many countries and subcontinents which were accessible to them by water North

00:27:59.740 America India South America Australia and New Zealand but they never succeeded in conquering

00:28:05.840 their neighbors, France, Germany, and Spain. But although the shapes of the Assyrian and British

00:28:10.280 empire were entirely different, both lasted about the same amount of time. And this is, again, a

00:28:15.220 really good insight because when you look at the American empire, one of the reasons that many

00:28:18.520 Americans don't even know they have an empire is that we have radically changed how empire works,

00:28:23.460 right? In the American version, our empire is almost entirely this weird projection of economic

00:28:29.160 and military might, where technically we have not conquered all these countries, but we just happen

00:28:34.460 to have military bases in them and entirely control you know the the economic system in

00:28:39.540 which they exist and more or less leverage our uh influence to impact their sovereignty uh so we

00:28:45.380 have this weird mix of hard and soft power where we're like in this constant detente like yes

00:28:51.260 america you're you're a free nation you're your own nation but america might have three or four

00:28:55.780 military bases on on that free nation and you don't have any on ours and if you know you ever

00:29:00.960 decide to step out of line we may or may not you know just freeze all your assets in banks and send

00:29:05.740 an aircraft carrier to hang out and you know the gulf next to you so it's a very interesting mode

00:29:11.680 of empire as he says but an empire nonetheless i mean it's it's what the u.s basically has is sort

00:29:17.820 of a global legal tender right so you know say you you have a crappy currency that you wish to

00:29:23.820 print a lot of and you want other people to use it people are like well i'm not going to use this

00:29:27.520 currency because it's crappy and you keep printing it and so uh the government in question is like

00:29:32.640 hmm what if we forced people to use it right the only way you can pay your taxes is you know to

00:29:38.260 use this currency and if you don't pay your taxes we are going to uh you know come down on you with

00:29:42.880 coercive power of the state now this is very easy to do in in a country but how do you do this to

00:29:47.660 the entire world well the way that the u.s has basically managed to leverage it is that's what

00:29:51.400 the petrodollar is effectively yes everybody has to use petrol for energy everyone has to pay for

00:29:57.400 in american dollars so they have it is essentially a sort of legal tender system for the entire

00:30:02.880 planet which is pretty amazing if you think about it yeah closing the gold window was a pretty

00:30:08.220 impressive coup uh but we pulled it up so here we are all right the human yardstick uh what uh what

00:30:15.280 then we may ask uh can have been the factor which caused an extraordinary similarity in the duration

00:30:21.300 of empires under such diverse conditions and such utterly different technological advancements

00:30:26.760 One of the very few units of measurement which have not seriously changed since the Assyrians in the human generation, a period of about 225 years.

00:30:39.500 Thus, the period of 250 years could represent about 10 generations of people.

00:30:44.200 A closer examination of the characteristics of the rise and fall of great nations may emphasize the possibility of significance of the sequence of generations.

00:30:51.980 let us then attempt to examine the stages in lives of such powerful nations so basically here he's

00:30:58.420 just saying look if if if the changes in technology and all these other things don't really impact it

00:31:03.280 then there must be something about human nature there must be something built in to the organization

00:31:07.540 of human life anthropologically there must be some limitation on uh these empires and he's

00:31:14.000 suggesting that the success of generations about 10 generations worth of people ends up

00:31:19.820 going through a predictable life cycle of the empires here

00:31:24.120 stage one the outburst again and again in history we find a small nation treated as

00:31:31.460 insignificant by its contemporaries suddenly emerging from its homeland and overrunning

00:31:35.760 large areas of the world prior to philip 359 to 336 bc macedon had been an insignificant state

00:31:43.980 to the north of greece persia was the great power of the time completely dominating the area from

00:31:50.340 eastern europe to india yet by 230 or 323 bc 36 years after the accession of philip the persian

00:32:01.060 empire had ceased to exist and the macedonian empire extended from the danube to india including

00:32:07.100 egypt this amazing expansion was perhaps the attributed to the genius of alexander the great

00:32:12.300 but this cannot have been the sole reason for although after his death everything went wrong

00:32:17.580 the macedonian general fought one uh fought the macedonian generals fought one another and

00:32:23.360 established rival empires macedonia macedonian pre-eminence survived for 231 years in the year

00:32:31.400 in the year 8600 the world was divided between two superpower groups as it was as it has been

00:32:38.640 for the past 50 years between the Soviet, Russia, and the West. The two powers were the Eastern 0.52

00:32:43.480 Roman Empire and the Persian Empire. The Arabs were then the despised and backward inhabitants 1.00

00:32:49.040 of the Arabian Peninsula. They consisted chiefly of wandering tribes and had no government, 1.00

00:32:57.320 no constitution, and no army. Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa were Roman provinces.

00:33:03.640 Iraq was part of Persia. The prophet Muhammad preached in Arabia from AD 613 to 632. When he

00:33:12.860 died in 633, the Arabs burst out of their desert peninsula and simultaneously attacked the two 0.98

00:33:19.120 superpowers. Within 20 years, the Persian empire had ceased to exist. 70 years after the death of

00:33:24.700 the prophet, the Arabs had established an empire extending from the Atlantic to the plains of 1.00

00:33:29.820 northern india and the frontiers of china at the beginning of the 13th century the mongols were a

00:33:34.880 group of savage tribes in the steppes of mongolia in 1211 genghis khan invaded china by 1253 the

00:33:42.620 mongols had established empire extending from asia minor to the china sea one of the largest

00:33:48.240 empires the world has ever known the arabs ruled the greatest the greater part of spain for 780

00:33:54.180 years from 712 AD to 1492. 780 years back in British history would have taken us to 1196

00:34:02.820 and the King Richard Corr de Loin. During these eight centuries there have been no Spanish nation

00:34:09.720 the petty king of Aragon and Castilla alone holding on to its mountains. The agreement

00:34:15.220 between Ferdinand and Isabella and Christopher Columbus was signed immediately after the fall

00:34:19.500 of granada and the last arab kingdom in spain in 1492 within 50 years cortez was conquering mexico

00:34:26.980 and spain was the world's greatest empire examples of the sudden outbursts by these uh empires are

00:34:32.800 born could be multiplied indefinitely these random illustrations must suffice so he's giving this

00:34:39.400 framework where these countries sometimes uh you know they're completely obscure sometimes uh like

00:34:44.920 spain they've been beaten down from a period of greatness and then all of a sudden there's this

00:34:49.220 kind of catalystic event uh maybe it's the founding of a religion uh maybe it's the defeat

00:34:55.200 of a long uh you know opposed enemy uh like spain but we all of a sudden get this moment of uh kind

00:35:02.060 of civilizational vitality uh where it just explodes onto the scene and starts taking large

00:35:07.960 amounts of land uh even at these moments where oftentimes these people are considered very 0.99

00:35:12.940 barbaric uh you know they you have the mongolians uh you have uh you know the um the arabs they're 0.78

00:35:19.360 they're not considered technologically advanced but not considered culturally advanced but they 1.00

00:35:23.100 have this kind of barbaric energy there and they're able to take over kind of these uh these

00:35:28.440 poorly organized or these kind of calcifying uh uh you know aging empires and they just sweep

00:35:36.680 through the land all at once so it really is this focus on vitality and explosion after that

00:35:42.800 one event uh that kind of unites them or uh you know drives them towards uh this kind of

00:35:48.900 wide-ranging conquest yeah it's it's it's barbarism uh overcoming the decadent uh fundamentally

00:35:56.280 globe talks about this later how one of the marks of when an empire becomes decadent is that they

00:36:03.120 they turn inward and they become defensive so you know one way of putting this is that

00:36:07.800 when the explosion happens uh the people involved they have uh nothing to lose and everything to

00:36:14.500 gain whereas the decadent empire has everything to lose and nothing to gain by further conquest

00:36:20.400 and i keep i keep thinking about june actually for some reason right it just it reminds me a bit

00:36:25.580 of the the fremen in june right like they're absolutely you know they're they're hard as 0.93

00:36:29.160 nails they're like you know they live in the desert eating you know mice and you know drinking 1.00

00:36:33.660 dew water and stuff like that and then you you know you you have the universe divided into these

00:36:38.080 two sort of established mostly sort of decadent empires that are then overcome by this sort of

00:36:43.600 incredible um well barbaric energy basically i mean i don't know the the thing about spain is 0.96

00:36:50.580 quite interesting as well right because the the muslims thought that they'd conquered all all of 0.95

00:36:54.760 spain apart from the the uh the spanish remaining in the north and then but eventually um decadence

00:37:02.320 came for the the muslims in spain as well that's right yeah that that is i think the interesting

00:37:07.860 thing again you know this is uh and again i will be making lots of allusions to spangler because

00:37:12.900 i do that anyway and obviously this is right in the wheelhouse uh but this morphological life

00:37:17.020 cycle right this idea that cultures truly are born and die in a in a real human sense in the

00:37:23.180 same way that a plant or any other living thing uh is you know created and born and then fades away

00:37:28.800 uh is deeply rooted in kind of glub as well he's obviously uh very uh enamored with this idea

00:37:36.060 that uh there's there's a certain level of finality a certain level of inevitability

00:37:41.680 locked in to how these things uh you know kind of emerge and we can see right now you know as

00:37:47.600 yeah i'm one of these people who talk about the need for america to focus more on itself and not

00:37:52.420 its empire but is that is that what causes the decline or is that inevitable is it still the

00:37:58.060 right move even if it might cause decline because ultimately you do have to care about the people

00:38:02.280 these are all really hard questions you know uh you know um james burnham in suicide of the west

00:38:07.460 said that basically you're either expanding or you're dying these are the only options for

00:38:11.820 civilizations and this is why he actually pushed basically neoconservatism because he believed that

00:38:17.620 america had to become this like really powerful explosive expanding uh you know civilization

00:38:24.140 or it would inevitably cede its mandate of heaven to someone else uh so there there is a lot to

00:38:30.060 consider here and how much agency we even have in the process you know if this has to happen

00:38:35.520 then we can kind of debate it endlessly but it's going to happen either way right so a lot of

00:38:40.140 people reject that level of fatalism they reject that idea of uh kind of the preordained uh but i

00:38:46.080 think i think it's important to consider it when we're trying to understand the world around us

00:38:49.900 if these patterns truly do repeat, uh, then we need to understand them at some level.

00:38:54.740 I think the, the generational aspect of this is quite important, right? Like, yeah. So you've got,

00:38:59.200 you've got 10 generations. Okay. So every, every generation is different to the one that comes

00:39:05.220 after they grow up in, in different circumstances. Okay. So the generation of the outburst, I guess

00:39:09.560 we could say, right. Is, uh, you know, a beaten down people, you know, they are, they are used

00:39:14.820 to suffering, right. They are like hard as nails. They're like, you know, pioneers. There's great

00:39:19.880 risk involved you know i'm going to sail halfway across the world to you know find a bunch of gold

00:39:25.060 and silver you know they're into like glory which is another thing i think the globe covers you know

00:39:29.520 as as the as the civilization decays the the idea of glory of just getting in there and and quite

00:39:35.140 frankly beating the crap out of your civilizational or religious enemies begins to decline instead of

00:39:41.940 like glory that you know the the cone of the barbarian thing you know what is best in life is 0.60

00:39:46.120 to conquer and you know see their women flee before you it just it drops out of fashion and

00:39:52.900 i can't help but think that it's the generational part of this right because as as an empire grows

00:39:58.820 more comfortable and it grows more defensive the children of the next generation they grow up

00:40:03.460 inside that structure and and after it begins to to calcify the way to get ahead in society

00:40:10.560 becomes not from gaining glory by going in you know conquering foreign lands it becomes you know

00:40:16.760 a good a good job in the administration and and then this just keeps rolling forward yeah and i

00:40:22.500 think that's such an important point because it also mirrors real human life right like when we

00:40:27.100 think about it you know who who are the young adventurers who are going to go out and crush

00:40:32.180 it's young men right it's young men are when you're young you have little to lose you need

00:40:36.640 to prove yourself you're in like this high degree of competition with everyone around you for mates

00:40:41.700 and status and everything else so you're willing to go out there and do daring feats to do violence

00:40:46.120 to take chances risks and business all these things because you don't have that status you

00:40:52.080 don't have that comfort old men of course don't do that like they tend to have already been 0.61

00:40:56.960 established they made it to that more elderly position because they already achieved those 0.58

00:41:01.320 things they don't want to you know ruin them so they tend to say hey let's not rock the boat let's

00:41:06.000 not overturn things let's not take these big chances uh you know which has some validity but

00:41:11.120 it also means that you stop being this dynamic force of growth and so you have this current i

00:41:17.360 think paradigm where we're getting to the end of a lot of generations in these western countries

00:41:23.180 and young men are looking around they're looking for their chance to uh you know break out to exert

00:41:29.360 dominance to gain status to make their way uh and they're not afforded that because they're in all 0.91

00:41:34.720 of these sclerotic countries that are uh you know trying to preserve things keep everything the 0.99

00:41:39.460 status quo not rock the boat and so that's why you're seeing young men become so restless in

00:41:44.520 all of these countries because they're literally being denied the opportunity to go through what

00:41:48.960 is functionally our male initiation ritual they can't become men they can't fully embody uh that

00:41:55.180 that masculine energy because yeah they can't attract mates they can't make money they can't

00:42:00.360 prove themselves through violence uh these are all things again you can be uncomfortable with

00:42:04.700 any of these things but it really doesn't matter like this is the reality and this is what young

00:42:09.300 men need and yes it's dangerous uh you know most countries that try to do this fail they die most

00:42:15.240 young men who go into battle you know well not you know it depends on the war but a lot of young

00:42:19.900 men who go into battle don't come back right like so there is a high degree there's a very real

00:42:24.540 danger in this process but without the danger you can't have the vitality safety is its own slow

00:42:30.400 death well what is seen as a virtue in the expanding empire in the terms of of young men

00:42:35.320 right who are willing to go out and die and explore and stuff becomes uh unvirtuous in a

00:42:40.680 declining empire because the older men are all established they don't want to rock the boat

00:42:45.480 if you've had a series of endless wars as well you may have that effect i mean i know it's not

00:42:50.260 very, very popular now to consider that humans breed by trait. But I think this is, if you look

00:42:58.240 at history, pretty obvious. And if you engage in endless, endless, endless wars and all of your

00:43:04.660 young, proper, aggressive men start getting killed off again and again and again, then the ones that

00:43:10.380 will succeed purely on a genetic level by having more children are the defensive ones who stayed

00:43:15.220 home and got a nice comfy job in the bureaucracy and had five kids but also the the old are going

00:43:22.180 to they're not going to want the young men to perhaps upset the boat right an established

00:43:28.500 empire has like many alliances with many many different countries it's not worth it to go

00:43:32.980 across the world like you know what if this possession that you want to seize is uh is owned

00:43:37.940 by someone that you've got a trade treaty with you know something like that it just seems that it

00:43:41.780 that i i think it's unavoidable that establishment of an empire leads to sclerosis i don't i don't

00:43:49.460 see any real way around that unless you have endless war and that of course brings with it

00:43:55.040 its own problems yes but then i also don't think you can avoid creating an empire so this is where

00:44:00.640 the fatalistic you know deterministic understanding really comes in uh these these are not i think

00:44:06.820 conscious decisions that you can entirely control at some point every nation who is growing and

00:44:13.940 succeeding feels the need to exert its will on the people around them that they have people

00:44:18.100 currently hate the american empire but there's nothing new like this is nothing new uh it's the

00:44:23.720 same thing the british did it's the same thing the romans did it's the same thing ottomans

00:44:26.440 you know what is new though right like at least in the one in west or you know maybe this is a

00:44:31.540 sclerotic empire thing as well the idea that um to hate your enemies is really bad

00:44:37.340 this is a weird sort of like modern like oh you know yeah we don't want to do like hate speech

00:44:43.280 here do these people are like literally killing your citizens yes yes but we wouldn't want to be

00:44:48.320 unkind uh now would we i mean you know yes yes they are killing our citizens i mean it's it's 0.94

00:44:54.000 weird whereas in an expanding empire they would just be like kill them all like you know you you 0.98

00:44:59.300 mess with one of us we'll we'll decimate your entire country in the in the in the sclerotic 0.99

00:45:04.580 empire they're just like you know look maybe we'll cut another trade deal with you know just 0.98

00:45:08.780 leave us alone you know dane geld proliferates well and i and that's the interesting thing a

00:45:13.680 lot of people will blame liberalism and i've done a lot of work on liberalism and its flaws so i'm

00:45:18.440 not letting it off the hook here but a lot of people will blame liberalism for the united states

00:45:22.600 or the wider western approach to uh kind of slowly dying off and not being willing to fight back but

00:45:27.940 as you say you know the romans were in no way liberal and they still were willing to pay off

00:45:32.740 you know their their uh enemies near the end uh you know these are this is a function of dying

00:45:38.400 empires no matter what their ideology you know alexis toqueville was talking about the wonders

00:45:42.600 of liberal democracy and then also talked about why you should be able to light north africans

00:45:46.860 on fire if they get out of line right so like yeah he's a liberal but uh very very different

00:45:51.800 ideas of what that meant and so it's important to remember that while ideas are important right

00:45:56.920 like i you know i believe in ideas have power um many of these underlying issues that we point to

00:46:02.580 with liberalism are actually just part of being a decadent and dying civilization not something

00:46:08.420 that's intrinsically tied to what was founded when when people like oh well because america

00:46:12.540 was found in liberalism it was always going to do this well if it had been founded in something

00:46:16.420 else it still would have done this because that's actually just how empires work that's kind of the

00:46:20.200 point of glove's entire essay is that this is something we could observe across ideologies

00:46:25.100 across technologies across history and peoples these are things that are built into the life

00:46:29.780 cycle of empires it's not something you can escape because you cleverly crafted your you know

00:46:34.260 political ideology to be foolproof yeah i mean christianity is exactly the same if you look um

00:46:40.060 back sort of like the church fathers after the the second temple was destroyed um they're going

00:46:44.940 around being like yeah get btfo'd like that's that's what you get let let us don't forget

00:46:51.100 vlad tepesh was a devout christian right so you you get these different versions of of you know

00:46:57.740 like if you if you went back how did charlemagne convert the saxons to christianity not not through

00:47:03.860 not through winsomeness i i doubt the founding fathers would would even recognize um you know

00:47:10.220 liberal democracy as as it is termed now what you gave everyone the vote you gave people who don't

00:47:15.720 own land but you gave women the vote you gave the the slaves like what the hell is wrong with you

00:47:20.340 But these ideas, they just sort of, and then inevitably in these decadent sort of like periods of history, as these ideas soften and delinquiesce, there arises like this shrill cry to sort of say that anyone who did not believe in the current sort of delinquiesced version of these words or ideals are backward or reactionaries or like whatever.

00:47:50.340 all right back to glub here uh characteristic of the outburst these sudden outbursts are usually

00:47:55.920 characterized by an extraordinary display of energy and courage the new conquerors are normally

00:48:00.960 poor hardy and enterprising and above all aggressive the decaying empire uh which they

00:48:06.940 they overthrow are wealthy but defensively minded in the time of rome's greatness uh the legions

00:48:12.940 used to dig a ditch around the camp at night to avoid surprise but the ditches were earthworks

00:48:17.920 and between them wide spaces were left where which romans could counter-attack but as rome grew

00:48:22.960 older the earthworks became high walls through which access was given only by narrow gates

00:48:27.500 counter-attacks were no longer possible the legions were now passive defenders but the new

00:48:32.900 nation is not only uh distinguished by victory in battle but by uh unrest unresting enterprise in

00:48:39.620 every field men hack their way through jungles climb mountains or brave the atlantic and pacific

00:48:44.260 oceans in tiny cockle shells uh the arabs crossed the straits of gibraltar in ad 711 with 12 000 0.91

00:48:52.500 men defeating a gothic army of more than twice their number march straight over 250 miles of

00:48:58.160 unknown enemy territory and seize the gothic capital of toledo at the same time in british

00:49:02.980 history captain cook discovered australia fearless initiative character uh characterizes such periods

00:49:10.140 Other particularities of the period of the conquering pioneers are their readiness to improve and experiment. Untrammeled by traditions, they will turn anything available to their purpose. If one method fails, they try something else. Uninhibited by textbook learning, action is the solution to every problem.

00:49:30.160 Poor, hardy, often half-starved, and ill-clad, they abound in courage, energy, and initiative, overcome every obstacle, and always seem to be in control of the situation.

00:49:45.500 Again, we can see echoes of this in Spangler when he talks about the transition from the culture phase to the civilization phase, the way that when you're a young country, you're young, you're hungry, you're constantly working, you're constantly overcoming, you're constantly challenging everything, everyone is energized, there's always a new opportunity.

00:50:05.460 when you move into the civilization phase the idea is we have enough money we we figure things out

00:50:11.300 the thing to do is preserve the system that worked that's the only thing that matters and things start 0.81

00:50:16.860 to kind of ossify everything gets stuck in their patterns this is when you know young men are

00:50:21.640 discouraged from taking those actions that we talked about so again it really is this contrast

00:50:25.920 of spiritual health yes you're you're poor and you're you're you know but you're also lean and

00:50:31.020 hungry and this is what drives you it's the soft decadence once again that we see that really is 0.99

00:50:36.640 the issue for glub the cause of race outbursts the modern instinct is to seek a reason for 0.93

00:50:45.260 everything and to doubt the veracity of a statement which is a which a reason cannot be found

00:50:51.360 so many examples have been given to the sudden eruption of an obscure race into a nation of

00:50:57.520 conquerors that the truth of the phenomenon cannot be held to be doubtful to assign a cause is more

00:51:03.360 difficult perhaps the easiest explanation is to assume the poor and obscure races tempted by the

00:51:08.020 wealth of the ancient civilization and there would undoubtedly appear to be an element of greed for

00:51:12.740 loot and barbarian invading so it's such a motivation can be divided into two classes

00:51:17.360 the first is mere loot and loot plunder and rape as for example the case of Attila the Huns

00:51:22.940 Attila and the Huns, who ravaged 0.57

00:51:25.060 a great part of Europe 0.91

00:51:26.820 from AD 450 to

00:51:28.580 453. However,

00:51:30.620 when Attila died in the later year,

00:51:33.300 his empire fell apart and his tribes 1.00

00:51:34.880 returned to Eastern Europe, meaning the barbarians 1.00

00:51:37.220 who were founded dynasties 0.82

00:51:39.080 in Western Europe on the reigns

00:51:41.020 of the Roman Empire, however, did so

00:51:42.980 out of admiration for Roman civilization

00:51:44.660 and they themselves aspired to

00:51:46.980 become Rome. This is a very interesting point.

00:51:49.680 Yeah, if I could just interject

00:51:50.860 uh interject race i'm look i don't want to i don't want to hear that that kind of language

00:51:56.600 the idea of a race existing breaking out and conquer oh that's um no no it's only the human

00:52:04.160 race news fist i mean it's actually really where was this written is this like 18 i want to say

00:52:10.980 it's the 30s i should go back okay it's it's quite it's quite refreshing to just have glob

00:52:18.020 just come out and say oh yes well these were distinct people distinct races that you know

00:52:21.980 sort of bound together like broke out in this sort of sudden thing they weren't just sort of

00:52:26.940 random collections of multicultural peoples you know what i mean yeah no for sure and it's also

00:52:34.360 very interesting that he contrasts the idea of the barbarians who maybe they're just out there 0.92

00:52:39.140 looting right dick you have the huns and they just want gold they want women they want whatever 0.92

00:52:43.440 but there's no real larger idea there's no grand identity there's no uh you know infrastructure 0.99

00:52:50.460 anything built along the way they're just pillaging as where some then some of these

00:52:54.860 other like more explosive races they were aping the roman empire even as they conquered it you 0.96

00:53:00.040 know the the goths uh you know many others they wanted to become rome i mean even in the american

00:53:04.380 founders you know were obviously just like cosplaying rome uh for the large part so

00:53:09.320 there's something about this desire

00:53:11.920 to be the great civilization that's 0.99

00:53:13.780 necessary not just the barbarian 0.90

00:53:15.780 explosion so I think that's kind of what he's

00:53:17.820 drilling down here and is like yes

00:53:19.740 you will just have some guys who go out there to pillage

00:53:21.780 for the sake of pillaging but

00:53:23.500 there is a deeper truth

00:53:25.560 behind this idea that we are going to

00:53:27.560 fill this void

00:53:29.640 of an ancient civilization we're going to become

00:53:31.700 like them that

00:53:33.360 aspiration is critical to the formation

00:53:35.820 of the new force

00:53:39.320 A providential turnover. 0.99

00:53:41.660 Whatever causes may be given to the overthrow of a great civilization by barbarians, 0.99

00:53:46.760 we can sense the certain resulting benefits. 1.00

00:53:49.020 Every race on Earth has distinct characteristics.

00:53:51.520 Some have been distinguished in philosophy, some in administration,

00:53:55.200 some in romance, poetry, or religion, some in their legal system.

00:53:59.040 During the preeminence of each culture,

00:54:01.200 its distinctive characteristics are carried by it far and wide across the world.

00:54:07.100 It's the same nation. If the same nation were to retain its domination indefinitely, it it's peculiar qualities would permanently characterize the whole human race under the system of empire. Each lasting 250 years, the sovereign race has time to spread its particular virtues far and wide.

00:54:25.920 then however another people with entirely different particularities take its place and

00:54:30.640 its virtues and accomplishments are likewise disseminated by their system each of the innumerable

00:54:37.740 races of the world enjoy a period of greatness during which peculiar qualities are placed at

00:54:44.980 the service of mankind to those who believe in the existence of god the ruler and director of

00:54:50.560 human affairs such a system may appear as a manifestation of divine wisdom tending towards

00:54:55.140 the slow and ultimate perfection of humanity so this is interesting he kind of makes the the

00:54:59.660 conquest of different races a teleological uh thing where we're all advancing towards this kind

00:55:05.100 of culmination of human history by each race contributing something when it dominates for a

00:55:09.480 time but again as you say very controversial language the idea that races are different

00:55:14.240 they have very particular uh understandings and skills and when those races come to the forefront

00:55:20.380 those skills are manifested and spread throughout the world uh when the culture spreads and the

00:55:25.540 empire spreads those characteristics also spread so in a way uh each civilization gets kind of its

00:55:31.820 moment of empire uh and then gets to influence the globe with its particular understanding

00:55:37.080 again something very controversial for many people today uh but i think something that's

00:55:42.200 unavoidably true when we look at history but this is also the weak view of history right

00:55:46.900 fundamentally at the end yeah for sure we are progressing towards some omega point some telos

00:55:54.320 uh at which point i mean the ultimate perfection of humanity i'm sorry i don't i don't agree with

00:55:58.460 that i just i don't believe it right i don't think that uh there is an ultimate perfection of humanity

00:56:03.620 and i would go further and say that um there are almost certainly certain races or groups that

00:56:09.000 would you know just drag everything back um but this this is a this is sort of a very optimistic

00:56:15.160 view of the cycling of empire saying like okay yes empires rise and fall but ultimately you know

00:56:21.360 we are all pulling together we are you know we're gonna we're gonna make it bros we're gonna like

00:56:25.000 someday um the ultimate perfection of humanity okay i mean i look i can't see a thousand years

00:56:30.960 in the future so you know but yeah i i don't i don't buy that i call this corkscrew theory of

00:56:37.140 history uh you know like you have your linear you know wig history we're always going up you

00:56:41.520 have your entirely cyclical, you know, we always just go in the same. And then you have kind of

00:56:45.720 this, well, we're, we're, we're always doubling back. You know, we're, we're always going through

00:56:49.540 these cycles, uh, with their rise in the fall, but we always end up a little closer, a little

00:56:54.040 higher than we did on the last cycle. Uh, so I, I, and I see this played out in many views of

00:56:59.220 cyclical history, because to be fair, there is a general advancement of things like knowledge,

00:57:03.780 right. That seems to show itself. It's hard to argue that, uh, you know, uh, people doing,

00:57:09.180 you know laser brain surgery with robots are not more advanced than people who were you know

00:57:15.060 riding around on horses most of the time uh but uh there is uh obviously i think uh so i think

00:57:21.820 there is some truth to that corkscrew theory of history though i am i am like you skeptical that

00:57:26.740 there is some ultimate perfectibility of humanity that in that this process ends up with but there

00:57:33.940 also seems to be with the rise of technology a sort of spiritual decay but i mean i don't i don't

00:57:39.160 know whether oh yeah you can apply that to the whole world but it does it does seem that as

00:57:43.460 technology advances um there is a spiritual decay as well but i mean i don't know man is it just that

00:57:50.500 we rely more on technology do we need to bring back the mentats again as a june reference you

00:57:55.120 know we're like instead of having like thinking machines we have um you know people that memorize

00:58:00.720 tons of knowledge i don't know i don't know no for for sure i mean there is a really interesting

00:58:06.480 uh question of technology and its effects i think that that's very true um you know yes you might be

00:58:12.740 able to uh build these extremely expensive jet fighters but you're still losing uh wars to goat 0.72

00:58:19.600 herders with ak-47s right uh and this is the this is the barbarian thesis as well so all of these

00:58:25.260 things that interact like i think that that's what's interesting about this like we can we can

00:58:28.760 pull apart different aspects of the theory uh we can consider them we can see what's important

00:58:32.880 inside of them but we can also recognize that there are issues with uh kind of this overall

00:58:36.920 thesis in certain areas so as with any thinker guys we don't just take what's on the page right

00:58:42.560 like we read it we understand it we synthesize it uh we don't just say oh well i read a book so i

00:58:46.920 believe everything uh it's set so people running around being like oh you can't read carl schmidt

00:58:51.080 he was a nazi um yeah actually because i can just read parts of his book that are true and understand

00:58:55.800 them and then leave the parts that i don't think are true it's not actually that hard but you know 0.76

00:59:00.520 what else is interesting about the barbarians is um they are not afraid to die uh whereas i mean 0.55

00:59:05.920 like this this is one of the things when when the west was sort of introduced to jihadism you know 0.71

00:59:10.860 like sort of you know around 9-11 or the muslim brotherhood and stuff like that and just seeing 0.58

00:59:14.960 these people like basically stand up and say like you know we're not afraid to die right like you

00:59:18.460 know what's that quote i think it's from um one of the guys in in isis who is like you know you

00:59:23.300 in the west you know you are afraid to die but for us life is just the beginning you know like

00:59:28.080 you know we long for death and all the people in the west are like what what the hell right

00:59:33.920 because it's it's true you know in in the west people are like afraid you know to to die which

00:59:39.680 in and this creates like a massive asymmetry so you may have your fighter weapons your fighter

00:59:45.420 jets and your laser cannons and you know you know like you know um starbucks latte but at the end

00:59:51.800 of the day if you're like up against like millions of people who just are not afraid to die that

00:59:55.700 creates like a very very powerful asymmetry absolutely i mean and this is why we see every

01:00:00.100 aristocracy decay right like at the beginning of every civilization the aristocracy are warriors

01:00:04.980 you know the the way to rise in early rome was uh you know glory on the battlefield the fact that

01:00:10.380 you couldn't get into the army because you couldn't afford your own equipment was like basically in a

01:00:14.740 way to make it impossible for you to climb the social ladder by the end of the roman empire the

01:00:18.640 idea of a emperor going into battle was insane right like and so you know same thing with the

01:00:24.660 united states our presidents used to be generals uh now the idea of a general being a president is

01:00:30.080 basically out of bounds uh at this point so uh you know just we see this evolution over time

01:00:36.180 you know again in all these different civilization it's a pattern that we can identify all right i

01:00:40.480 want to finish this page and then we'll can i just quickly briefly oh yeah sure that's quite

01:00:45.840 really interesting if you if you think about it right u.s presidents reagan was an actor

01:00:49.060 trump is a real estate developer biden was a a lifelong bureaucrat it's i mean how long has

01:00:56.720 it been when was the last time america had like an actual warrior president it must be a long time

01:01:02.940 yeah like eisenhower at this point basically right um yeah i yeah i mean and you think about

01:01:09.360 guys uh you know you had generals run for office it's not like we haven't had or or military

01:01:15.360 personnel even a guy like john mccain you know lots to say about john mccain but the man was a

01:01:21.660 fighter pilot right and that didn't help him win a presidency they elected barack obama who's a

01:01:26.640 community organizer and a lawyer instead you know so so we can see that uh i guess uh george w bush

01:01:33.480 would he was a cia and officer in a and a uh oh yeah bush senior was yeah yeah i said george w

01:01:40.680 but george h yeah he he wasn't he wasn't a soldier he was an intelligence he was a spook

01:01:46.280 which is i believe he was he was a pilot i think he was a pilot as well in the military oh right

01:01:50.600 okay okay so that that kind of would account yeah not direct infantry guy but you know still still

01:01:56.660 in combat i think uh yeah if i remember correctly uh so uh yeah i think he would qualify but we can

01:02:02.780 see what we're saying the general trend is away from you know honoring military service uh as a

01:02:07.540 critical part of something that would qualify you for office all right the course of empire the first

01:02:13.720 stage of life of a great nation therefore after its outburst is a period of amazing initiative

01:02:17.800 and almost incredible enterprise courage and heart uh hardy hood these qualities often in a

01:02:24.380 short time produce a new and formidable nation these early victories however are won chiefly

01:02:29.980 by a reckless bravery and daring initiative the ancient civilization thus attacked will have

01:02:36.180 defended itself by its sophisticated weapons and by its military organization and discipline 0.89

01:02:41.420 the barbarians quickly appreciate the advantages of these military methods and adopt them as a

01:02:47.000 result the second stage of expansion of the new empire consists of more organized disciplined and

01:02:53.860 professional campaigns in other words the daring initiative the original conquerors is maintained

01:02:58.740 in geographic exploration for example pioneering new countries penetrating a new force climbing

01:03:05.700 unexplored mountains and sailing uncharted seas the new nation is confident optimistic and perhaps

01:03:11.400 contemptuous of the decadent races which it is subjugated the methods employed tend to be

01:03:17.380 practical and experimental both in government and in warfare warfare for they are not tied

01:03:22.820 by centuries of tradition as happens in ancient empires moreover leaders are free to use their

01:03:28.320 own improvisation not having studied politics or tactics in schools or textbooks so again we see

01:03:34.760 kind of this um you know uh this derision of learning of being locked into this form again

01:03:41.020 we could see that in spangler uh spangler talked a lot about how books are written the end of

01:03:45.400 civilization to explain what's already happened people who are writing books are not doing things

01:03:49.800 people who are explaining things are not doing things and so uh glove really values this uh you

01:03:55.700 know vitality this uh this freedom from tradition the willingness to create something new to forge

01:04:02.340 something new uh to fall back on on on tactics that you have yourself devised and that you're

01:04:07.560 not just you know going through this rote memorization this is of course exactly the

01:04:11.300 opposite of what we see in the west where managerialism and the idea that everything

01:04:14.840 should be done by the book we have the playbook if you don't think about uh you know uh managerialism

01:04:20.360 as tradition you're missing something important uh so like we already have these procedures that

01:04:25.080 everyone has to go through no one is allowed to have agency anyone who goes out and tries to do

01:04:28.900 something for themselves is uh suppressed and again this is what creates these decadent societies

01:04:33.760 and makes young men restless this is what so many young men are struggling against right now

01:04:38.860 because if they go into some corporate job they know they're going to spend their whole life

01:04:42.260 basically following instruction manuals and hr outlines not making something doing something

01:04:47.380 important yeah i'm i am reminded of um how after the u.s withdrawed from afghanistan and they saw

01:04:56.560 like pictures every single afghani soldier had learned um trigger discipline everyone's like

01:05:03.060 oh wait we taught them that you know uh the usa in the stage of him uh of pioneers in the case of

01:05:11.560 the united states of america the pioneering period did not consist of a barbarian conquest of a

01:05:16.160 a feat civilization but the conquest of barbarian peoples thus viewed from the outside every uh

01:05:21.980 every example seems to be different but viewed from the standpoint of the great nation every

01:05:26.640 example seems to be similar the united states arose suddenly as a new nation and its period

01:05:30.820 of pioneering was not was spent in the conquest of vast continent not an ancient empire yet the

01:05:36.480 the subsequent life in history of the united states uh what uh has allowed the standard pattern

01:05:41.900 which we shall attempt to trace the periods of the pioneers of commerce affluence of intellectualism

01:05:48.980 and decadence all right so again we see he's talking about the united states instead of

01:05:53.660 conquering these old empires as many previous expanding peoples do these sclerotic effeminate

01:05:59.120 empires instead uh they had to conquer the nation the continent itself this newly discovered nation

01:06:04.960 so it's it's a different scenario but it's not entirely unsimilar so he's going to kind of

01:06:09.740 parse this out uh in the american context to make it uh you know kind of work with the rest of his

01:06:14.940 theory since at first that seems like an outlier but his insistence is it's not

01:06:19.440 all right guys well we are going to go ahead and move to the questions of the people as i said this

01:06:26.940 is going to turn into a series i'd say uh news fist predicted it would take us about three

01:06:31.080 episodes and i think he was spot on on that so uh we'll we'll probably uh crank out one of these a

01:06:36.480 week or something make this an ongoing series as we try to get through uh the document so uh hang

01:06:41.440 on for that we will certainly uh go through the whole thing as i said if you want to read it

01:06:45.740 yourself uh it's like 23 pages well of the introduction everything pretty pretty good

01:06:50.900 approach pretty easy to read i encourage you as always uh not to just you know go with us but make

01:06:56.140 sure that you are reading these on your own so you can understand them well that said uh we're

01:07:00.600 gonna head to the questions of the people but before we do news fist where can people find

01:07:03.540 your excellent content uh you can find me on youtube just search for news fist uh ignore the

01:07:08.820 sri lankan news channel that's you know conflicting with my seo um on uh tuesdays and fridays i do a

01:07:17.040 show with rhetorically defective ardian fist over on his channel on um thursdays i do clown-based

01:07:23.500 life forms which is sort of my comedy podcast and i have an interview out uh just dropped a couple

01:07:28.740 of days ago is not me not you one of the guys from the ogc where we talk about the three different

01:07:33.780 kinds of evil uh luciferic rebellious evil um aromonic sort of you know when things get inverted

01:07:40.980 and uh sarathic evil which is sort of like annihilatory evil um people have said they

01:07:45.440 really enjoy listening to that so check it out there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff on my

01:07:48.860 channel check it out there's there's there's lots of news fist everybody can get their fill of news

01:07:52.820 fist all right uh maddie ice says or it's nice to see you have fist on though it is not his real

01:08:00.280 name i hope you had a good independence day i was thinking the other day that it's nice to

01:08:05.200 change this uh of things to see james lindsey lindsey ankle biting at you cheers uh i if james

01:08:12.960 was raging out i do not know anything about it i haven't seen any of james tweets for a long time

01:08:17.280 he has he has been raging out we'll be covering it actually on the next episode of audio okay

01:08:21.740 i can catch up on the drama about myself by watching yeah yeah yeah that's important yeah

01:08:27.440 is news fist not your real name are you not that is not that is not oh actually it was in fact

01:08:34.440 newsius mcfistius yeah right yeah i had to like shorten it you know in the original latin yeah

01:08:40.120 right yeah that's right yes of course right manajude says uh the prophets of doom by nema

01:08:45.260 farvini is a great introduction into history and theory of cyclical history for anyone who is

01:08:49.540 interested yes uh you know uh nema is a great author uh i think i actually have a a tagline

01:08:55.220 in that book. I think I endorse that book. Uh, it's, it's well done. Uh, you should definitely

01:08:58.660 check out his work. Uh, philosophical thirstworm says the monetary piece is more interesting than

01:09:04.740 Lulbertism. Uh, Greek, uh, Greek minting was, uh, so high, was so high demand that rapidly flowed

01:09:12.340 outward, uh, of their market crashing it. Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of very important economic

01:09:17.420 effects. The problem with libertarians as always is not that they're wrong about monetary policy.

01:09:22.020 is this that just that they try to turn it into like a grand unifying theory um you know they are

01:09:26.540 just as materialist as Karl Marx uh that that is their great failing they're right about economics

01:09:32.160 it's just unfortunately they try to turn it into then like a theory of morality and political power

01:09:36.840 and everything else and it falls apart yeah uh Frigid uh Roosevelt maybe uh can you expand on

01:09:46.260 elements of feminism present in middle east that glob references uh elements of feminism uh yeah 0.98

01:09:53.840 yeah yeah so so glob basically makes the point that uh one of the sort of effects of a decaying

01:10:00.160 or decadent empire past like what he calls the high noon point is um the excessive involvement

01:10:06.360 of women in political life when women start taking stuff over and despite you know people

01:10:12.200 in the west thinking that you know this is purely western phenomena this also happened i think he

01:10:16.200 like references the ottoman empire it's it's just as as things sort of get more softer and

01:10:22.800 more comfortable and i guess sort of more more womanly uh really and then you know you you know

01:10:29.260 taken to the end point you get you know for example what's happening in uh you know in the

01:10:33.000 uk where everything is like basically ruled by women and very uh homosexual men and it just it

01:10:40.420 just all starts coming upon the seams yeah there there is a once again a very notable uh you know 0.83

01:10:46.860 changeover you know at the beginning of a civilization you need young men who are doing

01:10:50.700 dangerous things they are the ones who get glory they are the ones that are most valuable at the

01:10:55.060 end of a civilization you want to protect things you want to you know keep everything as peaceful 1.00

01:10:59.540 as possible very feminine environment women can start thriving in there because they feel safe 1.00

01:11:04.220 the institutions will protect them uh women and foreigners actually tend to team up at the end of 1.00

01:11:09.400 empires uh which is why uh you know the bible makes it a literal literal biblical curse to be 0.69

01:11:14.020 ruled by women and foreigners uh never never forget that that one's actually right in the bible

01:11:18.800 yeah yeah uh post mode uh with a very generous donation thank you very much uh petrodollar is

01:11:26.540 leftist bs to explain u.s middle east policy without reference to uh asking as ethno nationalism

01:11:33.120 petrodollar is a small dollar dominates uh because uh because us final because the u.s maybe

01:11:40.140 uh final consumption is 50 of the world nations uh u.s it use it maybe uh to adjust uh their

01:11:48.960 currency for uh export um i i think there's quite a bit to the petrodollar um i don't think it's

01:11:56.000 just it's just uh you know to keep us from knowing that like israel exists i i'm not quite sure how

01:12:03.560 that theory uh works uh but i don't know news fish you got in the petrodollar i'll let you uh

01:12:08.380 final word on that okay okay so look i've seen this this argument before okay right so the the

01:12:13.320 petrodollar theory doesn't really exist because the u.s dollar is the most liquid and everyone

01:12:17.380 would want to trade in it okay so yes the problem is that the u.s dollar is not neutral if it was

01:12:22.900 neutral then there wouldn't be such things as sanctions so it's not like it's you know it's

01:12:28.160 like okay say youtube you like you know allows you to watch anything you want right and just

01:12:33.000 serves you stuff based upon your entrance and then it puts its thumb on the scale and suddenly it's

01:12:38.000 like not just what you want to watch not just whom you want to trade with we're going to put our

01:12:43.300 thumb on the scale this is the the problem and the reason why i say that the petrodollar is a bit like

01:12:49.580 legal tender is because that's how sort of fiat currencies survive from the the french assignon

01:12:55.920 to the u.s dollar um people generally speaking do not want to use a bad currency okay so yes the

01:13:03.760 u.s dollar it is incredibly like deep and incredibly wide but there is also you run the

01:13:08.840 risk that if you piss the u.s off they will sanction you they will like you know cut you

01:13:12.800 out of swift all all of this stuff has been going on for a really long time even trump came out

01:13:16.920 recently and said, like, listen, we've really got to stop doing this because it's driving people

01:13:20.280 away from the U.S. dollar. It's enabling BRICS. So if the U.S. dollar was purely neutral and they 1.00

01:13:27.260 did not make political decisions on whom could or could not use it, then I would agree with you.

01:13:32.420 Maybe the U.S. will go back to that idea, although somehow I doubt it.

01:13:37.120 Well, and yeah, like you said, this is why BRICS is so important for the countries that are trying

01:13:41.160 to involve themselves, because they know that until they are basically free of the American

01:13:45.300 economic constraints they will not have sovereignty and so that's why all of these

01:13:50.200 nations are trying to find some other way to kind of break out now don't get me wrong they'll just

01:13:55.000 create another organization that's going to steal their sovereignty but that's that's for them to

01:13:59.300 run into that problem the most important thing is for our purposes here is as you say you know for

01:14:04.500 instance Biden thought that because of the American hegemony in the monetary system he could

01:14:10.100 just win the war in ukraine by devaluing uh russian currency right that was that was his

01:14:15.380 entire argument and instead what happened was the dollar took a serious hit uh and and uh you know

01:14:21.740 russian currency increased in value so uh you know that that is a very real thing that basically

01:14:27.520 the leadership of our country banks on is the ability to win a war just by shutting people

01:14:32.280 out of banks more or less and the more you do that as you say the less your currency becomes

01:14:37.220 something that people actually want to interact with because they know it always comes with

01:14:40.880 strings they can see how dangerous it is to leave themselves in that position where they're

01:14:45.560 vulnerable to economic warfare well it's a way of waging war with with very very low cost and it's

01:14:51.300 one thing when you're doing it to some small african country right there is literally zero 0.98

01:14:55.380 cost to do that you can cripple an entire country you barely have to like pay anything but of course 0.78

01:15:00.440 you know like all forms of warfare gradually escalates and then you know you get a larger

01:15:04.180 company country and uh the americans like oh hey let's let's do that again we've already you know

01:15:09.480 we've already done that and then sooner or later you wind up where you're like sanctioning other

01:15:12.860 superpowers like china like china or russia and it all starts falling apart uh sean wyland says

01:15:19.820 boomer gynocracy 100 like the soviet union yeah they're they're you know it's free markets for

01:15:26.160 the socialism for me is uh definitely the boomer call in many scenarios that's a that's a gerontocracy 0.94

01:15:31.960 not a gynocracy oh i said you're right yes which would make far more sense with boomers being old

01:15:37.140 and not female uh though i guess half of them have to be um sean wyland says i blame uh post

01:15:43.840 materialism taking uh uh taking provisioning and protection for granted focusing entirely on

01:15:51.100 esteem and belonging uh social status social capital clout uh yep that is some definitely

01:15:57.560 something that has occurred over the years uh wyland also says most of these harvard nba types

01:16:04.420 they don't add up to dog poop give me uh guys who are poor smart and hungry wall street yes

01:16:10.620 yeah well they're not wrong they're not wrong and base tillbilly says uh eisenhower brought uh

01:16:18.000 through bush one uh were uh world war ii vets yeah like i said i i knew i knew that uh bush had been

01:16:24.920 uh in in the war so uh for sure uh but we're more focusing on generals like high level leadership

01:16:31.440 but you're right that there was at least some level of military service uh that that was expected

01:16:36.860 uh up until uh you know more or less uh barack obama even george bush jr uh was at least in

01:16:44.400 the national guard even though he basically didn't you know kind of use that to dodge a war

01:16:48.000 uh at the very least he served in some military capacity uh and after him that was just not

01:16:52.920 i mean junior is actually a really good example of what i was talking about about like the

01:16:57.380 generational thing yeah i mean you could you could say like um herbert walker was was a player okay

01:17:03.220 right like you know he was a formidable guy but his son was was just like raised by the oligarchy

01:17:10.580 you know he had an oil company like arbusto that like you know went bankrupt nothing happened to

01:17:15.560 him he just he just coasted through life and the more of these kinds of people you get winding up

01:17:19.900 in positions of power the worst stuff gets all right guys well we're gonna go ahead and wrap

01:17:25.660 this up uh please make sure you're checking out mr fist's great work over at his youtube channel

01:17:31.540 apparently you can uncover all the drama there later uh also if if it's your first time on

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01:17:56.940 everybody, for watching. And as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - July 06, 2026

This Is Why Empires Only Last 250 Years ｜ Guest： NewsFist ｜ 7⧸6⧸26

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