The Barbarians are Rising

***

“Don’t you? You were there; you saw what’s happening. The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they’re uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization, and wouldn’t like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they can understand of it–luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?”

Trask nodded. “And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they’re going to grab the controls. Zaspar Makann says they can, and he’s the Leader.” He poured a drink from a decanter that had been looted on Pushan; there was a planet where a republic had been overthrown in favor of a dictatorship four centuries ago, and the planetary dictatorship had fissioned into a dozen regional dictatorships, and now they were down to the peasant-village and handcraft-industry level. “I don’t understand it, though. I was reading about Hitler, on the way home. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zaspar Makann had been reading about Hitler, too. He’s using all Hitler’s tricks. But Hitler came to power in a country which had been impoverished by a military defeat. Marduk hasn’t fought a war in almost two generations, and that one was a farce.”

“It wasn’t the war that put Hitler into power. It was the fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the homemade barbarians, didn’t have anybody to take their responsibilities for them. What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class that’s ashamed of its privileges and shirks its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they are, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won’t use force to maintain its position. And they have a democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter themselves behind democratic safeguards.”

– Conversation between Otto Harkaman and Lucas Trask, Space Viking, H. Beam Piper

***

H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking is, unfortunately, the novel for our time.  “The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they’re uniting.”  We’ll soon reach over 50% of the people who pay no taxes, but instead, receive largesse from the public bourse.  We are in the position of Rome, though, not Marduk, as in this novel, or Germany in the 1940’s.  If we go fascist, there is no external power strong enough to pull our chestnuts from the fire.  Most of the other soi-disant “free” countries are already halfway to National Socialism themselves.  Rather than face down a United States that goes down this path, they will be more likely to join us in giving all power to the UN, just as most of the European states, although not the people, have ceded their authority to the European Union.

We had a wonderful civilization here in the West, especially the United States. We could have made almost anything of it, and did do much with it, raising living standards around the globe with our ingenuity and free trade. But it’s too late now. We’ve torn down the gates; the barbarians are in charge.  Beam Piper saw it coming more than forty-five years ago.  I suppose it isn’t hard to see for a student of history.  I’ve seen it coming, too.  But it’s different when it’s on your doorstep and knocking to come in rather than being held at bay in a kennel in the yard.  Can we hope for a Reagan to emerge?  Can we hope that there might only be need for a Reagan, as there was with the Carter years?  If not, we’re more likely to need a Washington, and they are even more scarce than Reagans in the history of this country.

Read the book.  You can buy it, or check Project Gutenberg:  http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20728