“Weapons systems and political stability”
Prof. Carroll Quigley’s Last Public Lecture
Last Public Lecture Given (months before his death)
Oscar Iden Lecture – Georgetown University - School of Foreign Service
1978
A summary of Prof. Carroll Quigley’s Last Public Lecture, given 1976. His text is worth a read. With his great vision and sight, he touches the key wounds of the current Western civilization and suggests urgent attention.
Present government policies are unleashing future hard times. The middle class and the less instructed or protected are being marginalized and are being forced to pay for the irresponsible actions of the elite. The Portuguese state is now under the control of the financial "traps" in Europe and the "National" politicians (sometimes pampered beyond belief) are the mouthpieces and enforcers of “policy” as dictated by these absentee "Investors".
These essays covered the growth of the State in the Western tradition from 976 – 1976. It is said that his approach went against the grain of most academics who only taught history in short sound bites. He believed that people could not understand anything unless they saw the whole picture - and the essence of his philosophy was that history is logical - things happen for a reason. For him the core of all that occurs throughout the ages is the underlying force of fundamental human values.
Carroll Quigley noticed that American society, and Western Civilization, were in serious trouble in the late 70’s. And his final essay “The Sate of Individuals” was particularly prophetic and events during the subsequent decades have “cleaned” his controversial conclusions.
III: “The State of Individuals,” A.D. 1776 - 1976
“...when a society is reaching its end, in the last couple of centuries you have... a misplacement of satisfactions. You find emotional satisfaction in making a lot of money... or in proving to the poor, half-naked people in Southeast Asia, that you can kill them in large numbers.”
“...a state is not the same thing as a society, although the Greeks and Romans thought it was. A state is an organization of power on a territorial basis.”
“Thus, the use of fiat money is more justifiable in financing a depression than in financing a war.”
“Hitler's economic revolution in Germany had reduced financial considerations to a point where they played no role in economic or political decisions.”
“In addition to their power over government based on government financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in ways they wished them to go by other pressures.”
“On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy.”
Prof. Carroll Quigley’s Last Public Lecture
Last Public Lecture Given (months before his death)
Oscar Iden Lecture – Georgetown University - School of Foreign Service
1978
A summary of Prof. Carroll Quigley’s Last Public Lecture, given 1976. His text is worth a read. With his great vision and sight, he touches the key wounds of the current Western civilization and suggests urgent attention.
Present government policies are unleashing future hard times. The middle class and the less instructed or protected are being marginalized and are being forced to pay for the irresponsible actions of the elite. The Portuguese state is now under the control of the financial "traps" in Europe and the "National" politicians (sometimes pampered beyond belief) are the mouthpieces and enforcers of “policy” as dictated by these absentee "Investors".
These essays covered the growth of the State in the Western tradition from 976 – 1976. It is said that his approach went against the grain of most academics who only taught history in short sound bites. He believed that people could not understand anything unless they saw the whole picture - and the essence of his philosophy was that history is logical - things happen for a reason. For him the core of all that occurs throughout the ages is the underlying force of fundamental human values.
Carroll Quigley noticed that American society, and Western Civilization, were in serious trouble in the late 70’s. And his final essay “The Sate of Individuals” was particularly prophetic and events during the subsequent decades have “cleaned” his controversial conclusions.
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“…. Currently our desires are remote from our true needs. Societies are built on needs
and they are ultimately destroyed through desires.
Power between the state and the society rests on the ability
of the state to satisfy human needs.
The state is a good state if it is sovereign and responsible.
There are seven level of culture or aspects of society:
military, political, economic,
social, emotional religious and intellectual.
Military: men cannot live outside of groups. They can satisfy their
needs only by co-operating within community. This group needs to
be defended.
Political: If men operate within groups you must have a method
to settle disputes. Economic: The
group must have organizational patterns for satisfying material needs. Social: Man and women are social
beings. They have a need for other people. They have a need to love and be
loved.
Emotional: Men and women must have emotional experiences. Moment to
moment with other people and moment to moment with nature.
Religious: Human beings have a need for a feeling of certitude in
their minds about things they cannot control and do not fully understand.
Intellectual: Men and women have a need to comprehend and discuss.
Power is the ability in society to med these eight fore-mentioned
human needs. Community is group
of people with close inter-personal relationships. Without community
no infant will be sufficiently socialized. Most of our internal
controls which make society function have historically been learnt in
community.
Prior to 976 most controls
in society were internal. In the West after 976 due to specialization
and commercial expansion
controls began to be externalized.
Sovereignty has eight aspects: defense, judicial,
administrative, taxation, legislation, executive, monetary and incorporating
power.
Expansion
in society brings growing commercialization with the result that all
values, in time, become monetized. As expansion continues it slows
with the result that society becomes politicized and eventually
militarized. This shift from
customary conformity to decision making by some other power in
its final stages results in the
dualism of almost totalitarian imperialism and an amorphous mass culture of atomized individuals.
The main theme in our society today is competition and no truly
stable society can possibly be built on such a premise. In the long term society must be
based on association and co-operation.
From 1855 Western Civilization
has shown signs of becoming increasingly unstable due to: technology and the
displacement of labor: increased use of propaganda to brainwash
people into thinking society was good and true; an increased emphasis on
material desires; the increased emphasis on individualism over conformity;
growing focus on quantity rather than quality; increased demand for vicarious
satisfactions.
As a result more and more people
began to comprehend that the state was not a society with community values.
This realization brought increasing instability.
Another element of the trend
towards instability in Western Civilization was the growth in weapon systems
that if actually used would ensure total destruction of the planet.
This in effect meant that they were effectively redundant.
In addition the expansion
of the last 150 years has in essence been based on fossil fuels. The
energy which gave us the industrial revolution, coal – oil – natural gas –
represented the combined savings of four weeks of sunlight that managed to
be accumulated on earth out of the previous three billion years of
sunshine. This resource instead of being saved has been lost. Gone forever
never to return.
The fundamental all
pervasive cause of World instability today is the destruction
of communities by the commercialization of all human
relationships and the resulting neurosis and psychosis. Medical science
and all the population explosions have continued to produce more and more
people while the food supply and the supply of jobs are becoming
increasingly precarious, not only in the United States, but everywhere, because the whole purpose of using fossil
fuels in the corporate structure is the elimination of jobs. Another
reason for the instability of the Western system is that two
of the main areas of sovereignty are not included in the state
structure: control of credit/banking
and corporations.
These two elements are
therefore free of political
controls and responsibility.
They have largely monopolized power
in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly
going forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneur-management skills and
everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of
production. The only element of production they are concerned with is
the one they control: capital. Thus capital intensification has destroyed
food, manufacturing, farming and communities. All these processes create
frustrations on every level of modern human experience and result in the
instability and disorder we see around every day. Today in America there
is a developing constitutional crisis. The three branches of government
set unpin 1789 do not contain the eight aspects of sovereignty.
As a result each has tried to go outside the sphere in which it should
be restrained. The constitution completely ignores, for example, the
administrative power. As a result the courts, in particular the
Supreme court, is making decisions it should not be making. In addition
the President, who by the constitution should be easily impeached, has
become all powerful to such an extent that the office is now as basically Imperial. However, to me the
most obvious flaw in our constitutional set-up is the fact that the
federal government does not have
control over money and credit and does not have control over corporations.
It is therefore not really sovereign and is
not really responsible. The final result is that the
American people will unfortunately prefer communities. They will cop or opt out
of the system. Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed
people who are not personalities are trained to fit into it and say it is a
great life but I think otherwise.
Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life
is fun. And if a civilization crashed it deserves to. When Rome fell the Christian answer was. “Create
your own communities”.
III: “The State of Individuals,” A.D. 1776 - 1976
Quotes - Carroll Quigley
“...when a society is reaching its end, in the last couple of centuries you have... a misplacement of satisfactions. You find emotional satisfaction in making a lot of money... or in proving to the poor, half-naked people in Southeast Asia, that you can kill them in large numbers.”
“...a state is not the same thing as a society, although the Greeks and Romans thought it was. A state is an organization of power on a territorial basis.”
“Thus, the use of fiat money is more justifiable in financing a depression than in financing a war.”
“Hitler's economic revolution in Germany had reduced financial considerations to a point where they played no role in economic or political decisions.”
“In addition to their power over government based on government financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in ways they wished them to go by other pressures.”
“On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy.”
“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies ...
is a foolish idea.
Instead, the two parties should be
almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any
profound or extensive shifts in policy.
Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary,
by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue,
with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.” 
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