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To: Zoltan! who wrote (8733)	10/10/1998 11:17:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 67261

On moral decline & economic decline.... As a History PhD ..Ahem, ahem! Do I hear applause??...perhaps I should weigh in here. You are both right & both wrong. (How is that for a Solomonian solution?) Quite a few "professional" historians have linked moral and economic decline. I would add, however, that normally they would not see a one-way causal relationship; the pros look for many causes operating simultaneously. But at the turn of the 20th century, there were a number of writers(Oswald Spengler is the best known of them), few of whom were what we would call "professionals", who saw "moral" (linked to racial) decay at the root of the decline of civilizations. Most of this was pretty weird stuff, and was very popular with proto-fascists of the day. More than popular: it became part and parcel of ultra-nationalist and/or fascist propaganda. jbe

To: Zoltan! who wrote (8733)	10/10/1998 3:48:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

So Zoltan are you then agreeing with JLA that a decline in moral order led to the leftist dictatorships in Europe and eventually to WWII? (I would put this in quotes but I dont have the JLA classic here - so I paraphrased but thats basically what he said). Our point is that economic conditions typically CAUSE a so-called moral decline, not the other way around.

To: Zoltan! who wrote (8733)	10/10/1998 3:50:00 PM
From: Borzou Daragahi	Respond to of 67261

You are absolutely wrong. That's human history. One sign extremist of thinking--whether on the left or right--is an obsession with "absolute" truths and untruths. I'm no historian, admittedly. And I do not pretend to understand human history and glean any absolute truths from it. Anything I write here is in the spirit of conversational give and take and a desire to enlighten my myself and, if I can, others. I have no desire to checkmate or bludgeon anyone into silence and submission. Then proceed to the Durant's multi volume opus The Story of Civilization. It's been in my father's library since I was a kid, and I've read through parts of it many times. I see the Durants more as chroniclers of world history than theorists. Remember, I said "generally people who believe," I wasn't speaking of historians, who often give numerous reasons--social-moral (criminality), meteorological (drought), environmental (earthquake), political (war)--for economic decline.