Anglosphere

Final Version of the America 3.0 Dust-Jacket Cover

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America 3.0

This will be cover on America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century-Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come, which will be published on May 28, 2013.

Jim Bennett and I went back and forth with our publisher, Encounter, on this cover. We are grateful for their diligent work, and we are very pleased with the final version. Encounter had the original idea of three bands depicting America 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. The original picture for 1.0 was different, but this one works nicely. It shows a farmer plowing with animal muscle power. That is precisely the image that captures the A1.0 era. It was a time of family-scale farms, and it was before the introduction of mechanical power. The second image is of an industrial era auto assembly line. This is the epitome of A2.0. It is mass production, motor power, wage work not independent business ownership, big business, big labor and in the background, big government. It was a great world in many ways, but it is a past that will never come back. Of course, it is impossible to photograph the future, and unless we had the budget to make a “science fiction” picture, the top band, A3.0 could only be a rough approximation. Still, this pictures captures much of the story. It shows an exurban landscape, with a highway but lots of green. We anticipate that there will be much more dispersion of the American people across the landscape, for reasons we describe in the book, especially in Chapter 1: America in 2040. Also, the color scheme shows increasing brightness, indicative of the hopeful future we foresee for America.

Cross-posted on America 3.0

America 3.0: Foreword and Blurbs: Glenn Reynolds, Michael Barone, Jonah Goldberg, John O’Sullivan

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We are thrilled to announce:

(1) Glenn Reynolds, a/k/a Instapundit has written a foreword for America 3.0.

(2) Michael Barone, Jonah Goldberg and John O’ Sullivan have provided blurbs for the book.

We are grateful for the kind words and support from these distinguished gentlemen.

“Many pundits—and, polls say, most Americans—think America’s best days are behind us. In America 3.0 James Bennett and Michael Lotus argue that our best days are ahead—if we take the trouble to understand our past. We need to build on the unique American institutions that enabled previous generations to produce the successful agricultural America 1.0 and the even more successful industrial America 2.0 and to cast aside elements which prevent us from creating an even more successful post-industrial America 3.0.”

—Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner, American Enterprise Institute resident fellow, and coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics.

“Capitalism, argued Joseph Schumpeter, relies upon creative destruction. In recent years, we’ve seen a lot of destruction while the creation has been less appreciable, at least in the eyes of many. James Bennett and Michael Lotus offer a glimmering vision: we are at the dawn of a miraculous era of creativity. This is a valuable book not just for its hopeful vision of America’s destiny, but for its concrete insights into the forces and trends pushing us to our rendezvous with destiny.”

—Jonah Goldberg, editor at large National Review Online, author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

“Obamacare just hasn’t caught on with the American people. It is still opposed and resisted by most Americans. That was not supposed to happen. Theorists of the blue social model (or America as Sweden) were confident that once in place, Obamacare would set down roots in American democracy and become immovable. But alternative models of health care—red social model alternatives—are increasingly demanded by the voters. That’s true in economics, social welfare, and almost every other department of government. James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus predict that America’s future will be a better version of its traditional past, rather than an imitation European Union. They argue their case brilliantly and persuasively. This book is in danger of giving conservative optimism a good name.”

—John O’Sullivan, editor at large National Review, author of The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World

Cross-posted on America 3.0.

175 Years of Transatlantic Steam

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On April 8, 1838, the steamship Great Western..the first steamship to be purpose-built for the transatlantic passenger traffic…left Bristol for New York City. Four days earlier, though, another steamship, the Sirius, had left Cork for the same destination.  Sirius had not been designed for the Atlantic run; it was a small channel steamer which had been chartered by the rivals of Great Western’s owners. This competitive enterprise had encountered delays in the construction of their own Atlantic liner, the British Queen, and had chartered Sirius to keep Great Western from scoring a win in the PR battle.  Sirius did arrive at New York first, on April 23, but Great Western came in only 12 hours later…its crossing of a little more than 15 days was the fastest ever from England to America.

There were earlier crossings that had been at least partly steam-powered: the American ship Savannah in 1819 (which actually used only sails for most of the voyage),  and the Dutch Curacao and the Canadian Royal William, which made their crossings in 1827 and 1833 respectively. But it was the Great Western vs Sirius race which marked the beginning of steam passenger and mail service across the Atlantic.

The paddle wheels and auxiliary sailing rigs of the early steamers gave way to screw propellers and total reliance on steam, and reciprocating steam engines were later supplanted by steam turbines…which in turn have now largely been replaced by diesels and in some cases gas turbines. Aircraft carriers and submarines still use steam turbines, though, with the steam generation done by nuclear energy rather than the burning of coal or oil.

Here’s the British actress Fanny Kemble, writing circa 1882,  in annotation of her years-earlier comments about the difficulties and emotional pain caused by slow communications between the continents:

To those who know the rate of intercourse between Europe and America now, these expressions of the painful sense of distance from my country and friends, under which I suffered, must seem almost incomprehensible,—now, when to go to Europe seems to most Americans the easiest of summer trips, involving hardly more than a week’s sea voyage; when letters arrive almost every other day by some of the innumerable steamers flying incessantly to and fro, and weaving, like living shuttles, the woof and warp of human communication between the continents; and the submarine telegraph shoots daily tidings from shore to shore of that terrible Atlantic, with swift security below its storms. But when I wrote this to my friend, no words were carried with miraculous celerity under the dividing waves; letters could only be received once a month, and from thirty to thirty-seven days was the average voyage of the sailing packets which traversed the Atlantic. Men of business went to and fro upon their necessary affairs, but very few Americans went to Europe, and still fewer Europeans went to America, to spend leisure, or to seek pleasure; and American and English women made the attempt still seldomer than the men. The distance between the two worlds, which are now so near to each other, was then immense.

(The quote is one of several passages cited in my post  Further Fannyisms)

Also: the ultimate development of the steam-turbine-powered passenger liner was represented by the SS United States. Sadly, this beautiful ship is in imminent danger of being turned over the the scrapper’s’ torches…to save her, the SS United States Conservancy needs to raise $500K in the next month and will welcome contributions.

Margaret Thatcher: Revolutionary, Leader

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…[H]er longest-lasting impact has been neglected. Indeed, it is so long-lasting that it is yet to fully play out, even now.
 
Margaret Thatcher changed the Right from a reactionary movement into a revolutionary one … .

Mark Wallace

The Conservatives in Britain needed to become revolutionaries. American Conservatism was started by William F. Buckley, Jr. and was meant to be revolutionary, or at least counter-revolutionary, and many of its early thinkers were former Communists who thought of themselves as continuing a revolutionary struggle.

Mrs. Thatcher pointed out nicely against whom the revolution must be made: crony capitalism:

Too many people and industries preferred to rely on easy subsidies rather than apply the financial discipline necessary to cut their costs and become competitive. Others preferred the captive customers that a monopoly can command or the secure job in an overmanned industry, rather than the strenuous life of liberty and enterprise.

Margaret Thatcher: Rebuilding an Enterprise Society Through Privatisation.

Saying “the State” is the problem is only partly true. Millions benefit from the State as it currently operates, and most of them are not employees of the State. They are rationally self-interested in keeping things as they are.

Choosing “the strenuous life of liberty and enterprise” is a moral choice at least as much as it is a self-interested one.

“Greed is good” does not get you capitalism. Greed is more easily satisfied by turning state power to personal gain. Capitalism, or the better term, free enterprise, permits great personal gain, and improves the lives of many people over time. But it cannot rely on self-interest alone to keep it going. It is a way you have to decide to live, individually, and as a nation.

Once upon a time I read a book which showed me that the growth of the state and the slow extinguishing of freedom and enterprise were virtually inevitable. The beneficiaries of each incremental increase in state power, of each incremental loss of personal freedom, were acutely focused on gaining and keeping their advantages. The losers in this process were diffuse, unfocused, distracted by everything else in life.

The common good had no champion, as a practical matter. In terms of strictly material incentives, it never would.

Worse, in terms of non-material incentives, it is even worse. To go against the currently powerful, the currently well-connected and prestigious, will lead to scorn, insults and derision.

And I eventually came to understand that pushing back against this process is precisely what is meant by the word leadership, under current conditions.

There is always a “them” who are the current ruling group. They are the ones dealt into the existing game, its apologists and advocates. To take them on, to organize and lead an opposition movement, the leader must have extremely strong character. Such a leader must be self-assured, know how things really work, and have a very thick skin. The leader must have no regard for conventional wisdom and no respect for the often unstated limits of what can be done or, even more, what is “simply not done” or “simply not said.”

As a practical matter, such a leader must have the capacity to speak plainly and clearly to a majority of ordinary people who are quietly victimized in the existing game, to show them how certain changes will be good for them, and good generally. They do not lead by force or lies, they lead by telling hard truths and gaining assent to the hard path to better things.

Mrs. Thatcher was such a leader.

Mr. Reagan was such a leader.

We need more of them. But they are always scarce.

Fortunately, though scarce, there have always been a few of them.

And as things get worse, people turn to them, reluctantly, out of necessity.

May God grant us more such leaders in the troubled days ahead.

UPDATE

Michael Barone sent the following anecdote:

My one significant exchange of words with Mrs. Thatcher.
 
I asked, perhaps a bit obsequiously, whether it was a  weakness of her philosophy that its success depended on having a strong leader like her or Ronald Reagan.
 
She responded in her booming voice: “But isn’t that always true?”
 
After a pause: “Isn’t that ALWAYS true?”
 
Your point, exactly.

Mrs. Thatcher was correct on this point.

The system does not go of itself.

There has to be leadership.

There is no alternative.

UPDATE II

I have been schlepping around for 20 years a copy of The Anatomy of Thatcherism by the late Shirley Robin Letwin. It is very good after about 50 pages.