The Rise of “The Dissipant”

As a libertarian, I don’t advocate for social legislation and I think doing so undermines limited government. That doesn’t mean I don’t actually have social values. The beauty of liberty, however, is that it creates social good without social legislation. Liberty comes with responsibility. In a free society, liberty and responsibility go hand in hand because there are no moral hazards created by illusory safety nets or the artificial disconnection between actions and natural consequences. In a free system, experiencing the consequences of one’s actions gives rise to a stable, just and productive society with human relationships and mutually beneficial bonds at its heart.

I think it is reasonable to claim that the history of the United States through the mid-20th century demonstrates this principle. I don’t think the culture here was perfect then – I certainly would have been miserable with the economic and social limitations my mother experienced – but I would say in net we have traded a strong and virtuous culture for a less rigid but also less valuable one. Specifically, we seem to be losing the legacy of our industrious past and are losing sight of the connection between behavior and outcome.

At first I assumed that this was merely the inevitable consequence of a society in ever-increasing material surplus, but I have since concluded that this debasement of the American character resulted in large part from a deliberate attack that began in earnest with the ratification of the UN Treaty in 1945. The UN Charter provides a blueprint for, among other things, cultural infiltration that would create a character-type in American society that I call “the dissipant.”

The dissipant is a person who allows his wealth (not only material but educational, cultural, familial), as well as his time, youth and opportunity, to dissipate rather than harnessing them and capitalizing on them in keeping with the historic tour de force of American drive. Characteristics of the dissipant include narcissism, sloth, resentment of responsibility or consequences, a sense of entitlement, inability to appreciate genuine achievement, etc.

I know I risk sounding like a crank or a victim of Good-Ol’-Days syndrome, and I don’t take that on lightly, but as I have begun to see the influences on my children of the cultural trends in this country, I am forced to address this real issue. My inquiry reminded of a profound point I came across in Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, by Carroll Quigley, the misguided whistleblower who sought to celebrate The Grand Conspiracy by exposing it. Quigley pointed out that culture changes when succeeding generations are divorced from their parents’ values. This can happen naturally as with technological advancements, but it can also be done deliberately, and I believe it has been by the very forces Quigley was attempting to serve with his insight.

David Rockefeller defines The Grand Conspiracy and hints at its tactics:

For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure–one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.

The great barrier to Rockefeller and his fellow One Worlders’ goals, however, is the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights and its defenders, the American people. In order to neutralize this force, divorcing succeeding generations of the American people from a dedication to the cornerstones of the American Experiment is a vital necessity. They pursue this divorce by transforming the culture in numerous ways, including subverting education, manipulating immigration policies and patterns, undermining local communities, “de-stigmatizing welfare,” waging the Drug War, pursuing foreign conflicts and through many, many other powerful initiatives you see all around you.

One could argue that these myriad movements can be boiled down to two fundamental tactics designed to “normalize” and subjugate populations for an easier transition to world government: depopulation and deindustrialization. The dissipant, by design, serves both of these goals well, but we might be able to counter the trend simply by recognizing its existence and girding our children against its allure. To further this end, I hereby coin the term “dissipant.”