REFLECTIONS

From Barnes & Nobles, I downloaded the sample of Mark Steyn’s newest book, After America: Get Ready for the Armageddon, It is a nasty remembrance of the mess humankind keeps getting itself into constantly throughout its history. Some quotes from it:

“There is the moral of all human tales; ‘tis but the same rehersal of the past, First Freedom, and then Glory—when that fails—barbaism at last.” –Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

“The sun’ll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow there’ll be sun.” –Charles Strouse and Martin Carmin, Annie

“A bait banker thus desponds,
From his own hand forsees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
Tis like the writing on the wall.” –Jonathan Swift, The Run Upon the Bankers

The sample quoted one of my favorite scenes from the Wodehouse’s novels. Steyn mentions how Bertie Wooster and his Aunt Dahlia are discussing his uncle being upset by the Exchequer’s insistence upon taxing his income:

“Is he still upset about that income-tax money?” ask Bertie.

“Upset is right,” replies Aunt Dahlia.” He says that Civilization is in the melting-pot and that all thinking men can read the writing on the wall.”

“What wall?”

“Old Testament, ass,” snaps Aunt Dahlia. “Belshazzar’s feast.”

“Oh, that, yes,” says Bertie. “I’ve often wondered how that gag was worked—with mirrors, I expect.”

Steyn turns to the biblical passage. I thought, “oh, no. He is going Paul Erlich on me.” You must recall those silly books from the nineteen-seventies about end-of-the-world by various combinations of Old/New Tesstaments and space aliens. In After America, we learn how Daniel 5: 25-28 speaks of man’s foolishness with economics.

[note: the passage uses arabmaic names of weights and monetary values. Mina, shekel (1/60th of mina), and parsu (half-mina). In modern terms half-dollar, penny, and two bits.]

“This is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, TEKEL, AND PERES. These words means: MENE, God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it; TEKEI, you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting; PERES, your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

“If the deficits are “unsustainable,” than what happens when they can no longer be sustained?” –Mark Steyn

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” –Herbert Stein

When will it stop? Who will suffer when it does stop? Didn’t the novelist Ernest Hemingway write that the bells toll for thee?