6 posts tagged “fascism”

Classic Article on A Christmas Carol: Read Butler Shaffer's "The Case for Ebeneezer" at LRC.

VDare.com is having their annual War Against Christmas Competition. See Tom Piatak's report.

The Bubble Economy.

Read "Evidence that the Fed Caused the Housing Boom" by Robert Murphy.

In February look for a book on this economic depression by Thomas Woods. I am happy to report that a mainstream publisher, Regnery, is publishing it. This will increase the book's exposure to people who are unfamiliar with Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Listen to the 1992 Mises Institute conference on Money and the Federal Reserve.

Read Peter Schiff at Taki's Magazine.

Hear the great Jim Rogers on The Lew Rockwell Show.

"Barack Obama," Chris Brown writes, "plans to initiate public-private partnerships."

"Obama's 'New Deal'" by Jeffery Kuhner.

"Garet Garrett knew where FDR's policies—and Bush's—would lead," says Justin Raimondo in The American Conservative.

George Smith writes about the evil Alexander Hamilton, founding father of crony capitalism.

The Fascist Market: Timothy Carney, author of The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, is interviewed in The University Bookman.

In my view, this deep alliance is a topic that too often gets overlooked, even by those who claim to be supporters of the free market. It can drive one mad how so many men frame arguments around the premise that today's economy is "free," or around the premise that the regulatory state was primarily created to "protect" consumers or small upstart businesses.

One gentleman, it is said, that explodes these myths is Gabriel Kolko. In Murray Rothbard's writings you will sometimes find references to his works, even though Dr. Kolko is a Marxist------By the way, read the new article, which mentions Kolko, by Dylan Hales called "Left Turn Ahead."

For example, in "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty" Rothbard wrote:

In The Triumph of Conservatism, Kolko traces the origins of political capitalism in the "reforms" of the Progressive Era. Orthodox historians have always treated the Progressive period (roughly 1900–1916) as a time when free-market capitalism was becoming increasingly "monopolistic"; in reaction to this reign of monopoly and big business, so the story runs, altruistic intellectuals and far-seeing politicians turned to intervention by the government to reform and to regulate these evils. Kolko's great work demonstrates that the reality was almost precisely the opposite of this myth. Despite the wave of mergers and trusts formed around the turn of the century, Kolko reveals, the forces of competition on the free market rapidly vitiated and dissolved these attempts at stabilizing and perpetuating the economic power of big business interests. It was precisely in reaction to their impending defeat at the hands of the competitive storms of the market that big business turned, increasingly after the 1900s, to the federal government for aid and protection. In short, the intervention by the federal government was designed, not to curb big business monopoly for the sake of the public weal, but to create monopolies that big business (as well as trade associations of smaller business) had not been able to establish amidst the competitive gales of the free market.

When a man says we "must" have this or that regulation against laissez-faire capitalism, I often wonder: Who will regulate the regulator?

H.L. Mencken Club.

In late November they had their very first annual meeting.

Addresses Online:

• “Hear No Genes, See No Genes, Speak No Genes--the Jargon of ‘Culturalism’” by John Derbyshire. (The text of Mr. Derbyshire's speech is just excellent. I am not sure how he writes for National Review.)
  
• “The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right” by Paul Gottfried.
  
• “Greek to Us: The Death of Classical Education and Its Consequences” by E. Christian Kopff.
  
• “The Old Right and the Antichrist” by Richard Spencer.

Secular Right.

Even though I am not an atheist, I'm okay with cooperating with those who are (in a non-militant sense). It is independent of being opposed to fascism and socialism. There were, of course, plenty of nonreligious gentlemen in the Old Right. (Rothbard, one of my heroes, was an agnostic.) However I agree with paleoconservatives when they say that traditional conservatism----in a cultural sense----cannot be atheistic. If it is to conserve the natural, the good, the transcendent, and the normal, then a conservatism that defends Western Civilization cannot leave behind its religious roots. That should be obvious.

Take a look at Joe Sobran's 1999 article "Christianity and History."

James Bovard: "Are Democrats Better on Privacy and Surveillance?" Ha-ha.

"Police Have Killed 400 With Tasers Since 2001."

"Obama Finds Favor with Neoconservatives," writes Paul Gottfried.

"Blagojevich, Obama, And The Diversity–Fueled 'Chicago Way'" by Steve Sailer-----And see his new book America's Half-Blood Prince.

"In Praise of McCarthyism" by Justin Raimondo.

Ron Paul is interviewed at Huffington Post.

Patrick Keeney writes about Theodore Dalrymple's new book, The Politics and Culture of Decline. He is additionally the author of In Praise of Prejudice.

See Clyde Wilson's "Nathaniel Macon and The Way Things Should Be" at Chronicles.

Stateless Proprietary Communities: I was going to type up a separate larger entry on this but decided not to. Instead, please allow me to leave you all with a few articles by anthropologist Spencer Health MacCallum on this subject...

• “The Enterprise of Community: Market Competition, Land, and Environment.”
• “Land Policy and the Open Community: The Anarchist Case for Land-Leasing versus Subdivision.”
• “The Quickening of Social Evolution: Perspectives on Proprietary (Entrepreneurial) Communities.”
• “The Social Nature of Ownership.”
• “Werner K. Stiefel's Pursuit of a Practicum of Freedom.”

Fannie and Freddie, If Only Someone Warned Us. . .

Someone did in 2003.

The Republicans that voted in the primary could have voted for him, but, alas, it was not to be. Instead of someone that knows what he is talking about in economics and finances, they nominated someone who is just the opposite. A Senator who could not see what was going to inevitably happen and, furthermore, believes the solution to yet another clear failure of statism in the market place is more statism.

Listen to Dr. Ron Paul being interviewed here.

"Austrian" Economists Predicted the Entire Financial Crisis. . .

They predicted this crisis, as they did the Dot Com Crash and, to go back further in time, even the Great Depression. Maybe it is time people start reading their essays and books. Let's all educate ourselves: click here.

Correct ideas are what can put us on the right track.

Read Mr. Rockwell's "The Social Imperative of Sound Money." (Listen to this speech here [mp3].)

And see his essay "Understanding the Crisis."

The Free Market Economy is the Engine of Civilization: From Barter to Money.

Money is a crucial feature to any advanced civilization, notwithstanding how much it is looked at negatively and portrayed as intrinsically a nasty thing in "progressive" culture. Now before man can attempt to answer questions, such as, What is money?, Why do we have it?, or How does money develop in society?, there first must be an understanding of why there is any trade at all.

Comprehending that is reasonably straightforward. After that, we all will endeavor to answer those questions raised in regards to money. In so doing, the important connection money has to civilization and liberty will be concretized in the mind. Finally, we will look at the forces that undermine money, and thereby undermine civilization and liberty.

But first, imagine, following the lead-----I'm just attempting (please understand!), as a midget, to stand on the shoulders of giants-----of Murray N. Rothbard's work, that egalitarianism was not a "revolt against nature." That is, if all men were exactly alike in every single way imaginable. That even land was distributed in a homogeneous way in which every acre of land had an exactly equal proportion of resources. And, also, imagine that Mother Nature behaved in a way in which her affects were always and everywhere the same across the world in a homogeneous-collective manner as against one in which her behavior, so to speak, was different at different locations. And so on. Man in this world would be little different than a robot produced out of a mass production factory. Every man, being of identical nature, confined to his land, being of identical nature as well, would produce and consume exactly the same thing, in the same proportions as every other man. Clearly a division of labor qua society would not develop. To quote Ludwig von Mises (as Rothbard did on this subject): "No social life could have arisen among men of equal natural capacity in a world which was geographically uniform."

The real world, in which we live, is not like this at all. Rothbard is therefore absolutely correct when he said that egalitarianism is a "revolt against nature." Men, on the contrary, differ vis-à-vis each other. Land, too, is heterogeneous. Neither is Mother Nature a fan of egalitarianism. As Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn wrote, "'Nature' (i.e., the absence of human intervention) is anything but egalitarian; if we want to establish a complete plain we have to blast the mountains away and fill the valleys; equality thus presupposes the continuous intervention of force, which as a principle, is opposed to freedom. Liberty and equality are in essence contradictory."

Man would obviously not trade with his neighbor if his neighbor had everything he had. Man instead trades with his neighbor because his neighbor has something he does not have. More fundamentally, it is recognizing that trade in the second of the two cases is better or more profitable than trying to produce everything in isolation. A world with an extreme household protectionism would have extremely low standards of living. The population number would be nowhere near the number it is today.

It is the fact that engaging in a market economy with others is more profitable than not to engage that explains why barter developed. Man's needs and wants can be better fulfilled in the market economy. It is based on exchange and in production----production to be used in future exchange. Society is hence not an end to itself; it's a means. Men come together to do things together.

Now explanations of this development, from famous economists like Adam Smith, according to economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, that pronounce the market economy developed for reason that man has an instinct to it and an inborn like of other men is erroneous. Both of these assumptions are not needed to explicate the development.

Trade may take place between two men, who might actually dislike each other, who rationally, opposed to instinctively, see the advantages of this type of interaction. If these two men trade with each other, then it is because the first man has something the second man wants and the second man has something that the first man wants. (Feelings of friendship, when voluntary cooperation has been established, can then truly develop!) This is not, though, the consequence of them viewing what they trade as equal to each other. No trade would result if that was the case. The trade is the consequence of them viewing these traded goods as having a different worth. One man ranks one thing higher and the other man ranks the other thing higher. Hence both trade because they see themselves as becoming better off than not trading.

This is the beauty of what Robert Nozick called "capitalist acts between consenting adults" (whose line the economist Walter Block often quotes). The mutually beneficial nature of all capitalist acts inter partes is logically implied when they take place (ex ante). It is because it is logically implied----because it must be logically implied----that such acts take place. Voluntary exchanges all logically imply it. For this reason, no empirical testing is required (and how would man go about that testing?) and no empirical testing can show this to be false. This logical deduction of action is not technically observed, but is implied even for an observer----who is an actor----who wishes to observe anything----i.e., it is implied in the way one observes anything----and for this reason cannot be refuted. It is the prerequisite (or praxeological precondition) for any voluntary exchange to take place. It is the foundation of these exchanges.

("Socialist" acts, contrariwise, we can call "acts between non-consenting adults." They imply something quite different than capitalist acts. Whereas capitalist acts take place because they are seen as advantageous for both parties, socialist, non-consenting acts are acts where one party aggressively forces his will on another. One party benefits; the other party has a loss to what was taken away. Furthermore, institutionalizing socialism above individual acts of random physical invasion is to make matters even worse for a society than "unsystematic socialism." Since institutionalized socialism is a systematic attack or redistribution of wealth from those engaging in capitalist acts----who under systematic socialism cannot rightfully defend their property from attacks----to those engaging in socialist acts, the costs of engaging in capitalist acts will be higher, and therefore there will be less capitalist acts in society. Consequently, there will be less wealth and wealth creation.)

But, from the fact that these initial barter (direct) exchanges necessitate a situation where there is a double coincidence of wants (i.e., the first man has something the second man wants and the second man has something that the first man wants), there is a major hurdle to which man has to jump through to exchange with another. It might turn out, for example, that one man sees that another man has in his ownership something he himself very much wants, but cannot trade with him because he himself has nothing that this man wants. In each and every exchange there is this hurdle. The range of man's potential capitalist exchanges will be limited. Thus, the division of labor cannot be complex and diverse under barter. Specialization, like we have today, is not a possibility.

This is why indirect exchange develops. To fulfill man's desire to trade, as elucidated above, man must find ways to facilitate it in a way to overcome the difficulties of barter. Man wanting to expand his trading opportunities, by overcoming the lack of double coincidence of wants, must find goods that are greatly marketable. These are goods that are popular; that are in high demand; that many, many people want and value. By obtaining these goods a man has therefore opened up his trading opportunities to a higher degree. And the higher this degree is, the more wealth creation prospects he has. The value he places on these goods, unlike other goods, is that they help him in acquiring services and other goods. He values it for its exchange value as opposed to its potential use value. It also follows that he will have the incentive to find a marketable good that has divisibility (without losing value), which will allow him to divide it up so as to more easily purchase more than one item and to easily purchase both expensive and inexpensive items.

Uncertainty, it should be noted, is what pushes man to adopt money. It is the uncertainty of knowing whether or not one is able to trade. (Only a world of "perfect certainty" would money not be needed.) As long as at least one entrepreneurial man can perceive all of this, a society can then start to economically evolve out of the primitive barter stage. Other men will see this. They will see that he who does such progresses upward in the hierarchy of wealth. There will therefore be an increasing demand for goods qua a medium of exchange. The interconnection of the market will increasingly intensify. It will push other men, who otherwise might not be bright enough to see the advantage of doing so, to follow the lead. "The result is a reinforcing spiral," wrote Murray Rothbard. "[M]ore marketability causes wider use as a medium which causes more marketability, etc. Eventually, one or two commodities are used as general media----in almost all exchanges----and these are called money."

This reinforcing spiral will result in the choice of a commodity that is demanded (valued), dividable, durable, homogeneous, portable, scarce, stable in supply, etc. Money is dependent on man's valuing it in terms of its, to quote Rothbard, "preexisting prices on which to ground demand." It depends on its barter demand. Unwinding the spiral by a regression, one finds that the evolution of a good (or two) to the position of money is the result of it being originally valued by man as a good in itself to be consumed. Hence, money can only originally develop through the free market as a commodity. And, hence, the only way government can enter the picture of money is if it does so on top of the necessary market development of money. Fiat paper money, by itself (with or without government force), could never get off the ground; anymore than if you took a clean sheet of practically worthless paper, applied some ink to it, and tried to buy something with it. Money, like language, is a product of freedom. That is, of free interaction, association, and discrimination. The State did not create money; anymore than it created language.

With the development of money, to iterate, the severe limitations of barter go away. The market economy becomes integrated. "Capitalist acts between consenting adults" can happen right away with money. Practically everything can be bought and sold in terms of money, without the problem of double coincidence of wants. There will thus be more exchanges and productions of goods and services. The standard of living will thus rise.

Money, moreover, allows man to easily calculate. Cardinal calculations are possible. (But the development of this, which man has to place value on, is itself an ordinal choice or ordinal value. Further, it is the feature of a market money's homogeneity that makes these cardinal calculations possible.) Exchange ratios arise. The question of how to direct scarce resources to fulfill the most wanted desires of man becomes possible to answer with a common, universal medium of exchange. The entrepreneur can now more easily see what lines of production are (relatively) more profitable than others. He can compare them. Of course this, too, raises the standard of living exponentially. The businessman can see his profits and losses. He can calculate his capital and income. Money thus develops the pricing system, which helps direct the traffic of the market. Any complex society needs the pricing system to direct scarce resources which have alternative uses. The only alternative is chaos.

The Transformation of Capitalistic Money to Socialistic Money.

Increases in the supply of money, once money has been established in society, is of no particular importance in terms of net living standards. Unlike other goods and services, an increase does nothing to make society wealthier. Only insofar as an increase of the particular money confers a non-monetary benefit to be consumed (either directly or, as a capital good, in the production of a future consumer good), can such an increase be said to raise living standards. A greater supply of money, ceteris paribus, just means a smaller purchasing power. A lesser supply of money, ceteris paribus, just means a larger purchasing power.

Assuming that the money chosen was gold, as it has been in modern times, in a free "society, one can acquire money in only three ways," said Rothbard:

(a) by mining more gold [which, by the way, is an expensive and slow process that will generally not lead to "price inflation"---my note]; (b) by selling a good or service in exchange for gold owned by someone else; or (c) by receiving the gold as a voluntary gift or bequest from some other owner of gold. Each of these methods operates within a principle of strict defense of everyone's right to his private property.

In the world in which we live this might look a little foreign, no doubt. So obviously something happened to the development of capitalistic money to turn it into the socialistic money we have today. This is an involved subject, but economically speaking the transition follows a precise pattern.

Before this blog entry briefly gets into that, however, it is very important to understand that one can try to acquire wealth by counterfeiting money. This activity of fraud is in direct violation of private property rights. As such, it is not part of the three acceptable ways to obtain money, which Rothbard described above.

The societal development of money brings the formation of banks. Their job is the storage of money and to provide for increased transactions between savers and entrepreneurs. Banks can either obtain income legitimately, as covered above, or illegitimately. They can facilitate transactions between savers and entrepreneurs legitimately or illegitimately, as well. Fractional reserve banking is an example of illegitimacy. All banks might have the desire to engage in this activity, but their desire will be limited indeed as long as there is open entry into competition (with no government central bank regulating this away in which this limit or check is eliminated [see below]). In addition, with a free market it will be limited because of the possibility of bankruptcy. (Profit and loss is both salubrious and necessary for an economy. [Bank runs are beautiful.]) Only the government can change matters. It and only it can take away competition by force or can attempt to prevent bankruptcy when bankruptcy occurs. Either of the two interventions will create moral hazard (i.e., there will be more financially risky behavior) and encourage the practice of fractional reserve banking.

Fractional reserve banking occurs when a bank issues more paper receipts (titles) than actual commodity money they possess. A one-to-one ratio (one hundred percent reserve banking) does not exist. From this it should be straightforward to see that if a bank engages in the handing out of more paper receipts (called "fiduciary media") than gold it holds in storage, it is no different ethically than a garage storage place taking one's items away from their customers while they promise to guard them. This is a violation of private property and makes the given bank financially bankrupt. That is to say, if each and every customer would come to the bank to demand their money, the bank would not be able to fulfill its contracts. Those interested in a just and free society, then, must want the law-contract enforcement agents that be to prevent these kinds of practices.

Put in another way, there will be more titles representing money property than actual money property. It tries to make two equal to one. It is an attempt to create physical property from nothingness. Because these titles have no value except insofar as they serve as a function to represent what they are titles to, the notion of free and contractual fractional reserve banking seems to make little sense. When man A deposits x amount of money, it cannot be said that x amount of money is also owned by man B at the same time. Only if it was contractually loaned (or voluntarily given) to B can it be his, but it cannot be exclusively owned both by A and B at the same time.

But, as stated, it is free banking, with no central bank, that has a build-in major economic limitation to fractional reserve banking activity, even if the enforcers of law do nothing about it. Interactions do not just occur with one customer and his respected bank or two customers of the same respected bank. Interactions can happen between one customer of one bank and another customer of another bank. That is, one man of Bank A can write a check to a man of Bank B. The second bank, with the new check, will demand the money (all of it) from the first bank. If Bank A has been reckless in engaging in fractional reserve banking, it will not be able to fulfill Bank B's request. To cut to the chase, this associational environment will thus put a major constraint on this fraud. The more banks there are, the more this constraint will increase. (Another limitation is a public that is aware of fractional reserve banking and is very untrusting of any bank that engages in it.)

What is more, artificially increasing the supply of money (via, e.g., bank notes, bank deposits, or "checkbook money" that people can use in their daily affairs)----which, unhappily, costs virtually nothing----will lead to a host of unintended consequences. (More will be written on this a little later. The unintended consequences will be far more pronounced when this artificial increasing of the money supply is systematically implemented via government.) There will be a redistribution of wealth, as already indicated. The greater the supply of money, ceteris paribus, the less purchasing power it will have relative to all goods and services. However, the result of inflation (i.e., the increase of the money supply without "specie" or commodity backing) is a result that comes to pass in a way that trickles through the economy. It is not an instantaneous event. Those accordingly getting the fake new "money" get it at the parasitic expense of those who get it later or not at all. After this inflationary process has trickled its way through the economy, prices will have risen (ceteris paribus) to reflect the new condition of the larger money supply. It is this uneven process that results in what are called "Cantillon effects." Effects of which have the result of redistributing real wealth.

Government, wanting to expand its revenues, can see all of this. This is why governments have sought control over the supply of money and the making of an alliance with the banking industry. Such an alliance would be beneficial to both, if only they can ideologically corrupt the public to thinking that it is beneficial to them as well. That, sadly, is not too difficult taking into consideration that the public's knowledge of economics is abysmal. Both the government and the banking industry can then engage in robbing the wealth of the public by controlling the money supply. Government can then tax in a new way, an indirect and unseen way.

The monopolization of minting by government, in a nutshell, first occurs and then the debasement (coin-clipping) of money, which is enforced on the public by means of legal tender laws. This debasement it pockets to itself at the parasitic expense of everyone else. More coins are created by the debasement and then the public is forced to act like nothing has happened. Now given that government outlaws all competition, the government has no competition to keep it in check. Government can thus keep on providing a inferior money without worry of a competitor offering consumers a superior money. Moreover, any remaining superior money will be driven off the market, since government will be forcefully overvaluing inferior money and undervaluing any superior money.

Then the government has monopolized money paper titles (bank notes) and creates a central bank (à la the Federal Reserve System). Counterfeiting can then occur uniformly vis-à-vis the banks. The central bank becomes the "bankers' bank" and the "lender of last resort." Gold, as the commodity money, becomes nationalized. It starts to lose its role, in the minds of the public, as money. And banks can inflate, with the government's blessing, off of government's inflation through fractional reserve banking with bank deposits. They can no longer issue bank notes, since the central bank has monopolized their issue, but can still issue bank deposits as a way to inflate. In this monetary socialism, they can do this without too much worry, as long as the public does not wake up to what is happening (or hyperinflation occurs). The previous free banking constraints largely disappear. At this time the government will also have the desire to get off the gold standard completely, and thus allowing this check to go the way of the dinosaurs for it to fill its power and greed ambitions. Soon all that is left is a fiat paper money system----a system very easy to counterfeit with.

The government can inflate at will with the counterfeiting apparatus. All that is done, essentially, is that the central bank buys some, say, government bonds. This money is produced literally out of nothingness. The bond dealer takes it to deposit at a bank and the bank then deposits it at the central bank. This deposit is the bank's reserves. The bank can then make deposits, through fractional reserve banking, on top of these reserves, in the amount the government allows by law----i.e., the reserve ratio. A reserve ratio that is 10:1, for example, means that the bank can increase deposits by tenfold out of nothingness on top of that original money that, too, came from nothingness.

Additionally, in the U.S., there has been the further creation of other programs that give the false impression to the public that the banking system is a sound system; instead of it being seen as a house of cards. The making of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), for instance, is an example. However, wrote Rothbard, "the FDIC itself has less than one percent of the huge number of deposits it 'insures.'" He went on: "The very idea of 'deposit insurance' is a swindle; how does one insure an institution ... that is inherently insolvent, and which will fall apart whenever the public finally understands the swindle?" And the very existence of the FDIC makes the banking system more unstable by creating moral hazard and by relieving customers their responsibility to take good care of where they put their money.

Not only will this fascistic-statist system perpetually promote inflation, it will perpetually promote business cycles leading to recessions and depressions. By perpetually declining the purchasing power of money, this system will discourage savers and encourage non-savers and debtors. Consumption, leisure, short-term thinking and planning will be relatively encouraged. The cultural characteristics and work ethics that make a healthy economy are thus punished with this system; whereas the opposite is rewarded.* Many businesses will also be thrown off course because business calculations will be distorted as a result of inflation. There will be an overestimation of profits, during the initial effective stages of inflation, and this will misdirect many businesses, and might even lead them to use up their capital on these false signals. Just as the effects of inflation will reward bad financial behavior for the individual and for the family unit, it will do ditto for private enterprise.

It is the facilitating of transactions between savers and entrepreneurs by the artificial expansion of credit (via fiat money) that sets into motion mass business cycles. The initial "boom," in the higher-order capital goods industries----which basically operate on man's ability to develop roundabout methods of production, and willingness to hold off instant gratification so as to invest present goods in such capitalistic production, that aims at an output with a higher net total of goods (than not doing so) in the temporal future----that received the credit, is artificial and the resulting bust phase is simply the market trying to correct the distortions that the government and the banking system created. Simply put, the ratio of consumption to saving (qua investment**) in society will not be reflected. With an artificially greater supply of credit, the interest rate (i.e., the cost of the procurement of money or capital in the present) is lower than it otherwise would be on the market. Instead of it reflecting the actual time preference levels (i.e., the rate in which man prefers present consumption over the future) and, on the other side of the same coin, saving levels (vis-à-vis spending-consumption levels) that men have in society, the market is misdirected to act like the time preferences are lower than what they actually are and to act like savings are higher than what they actually are. That is, instead of the boom being created out of actual savings with a low time preference that is temporally sustainable, the "boom" is based on hot air. And, remember, an increase of fiat money most certainly does not increase wealth for society. It does not and cannot increase (real) savings or lower time preferences.

A shaky imbalance in investments is created between consumers' goods (of the lower-order) and capital goods (of the higher-order). A mass of malinvestments becomes inescapable. When the rate of interest lowers, there is a shift from lower-order to higher-order industries. There will thus be an artificially greater investment in higher-order capital goods and correspondingly less investment in lower-order consumer goods. If private property and the market was respected, then it would be just the opposite given the current time preference and saving levels. However they are not respected. Even moreover, men will be saving less as lenders (and, hence, consuming more) because the return will be artificially lower than it otherwise would be. Thomas E. Woods, Jr., an historian and economist, has pointed out that, in effect, the anti-market intervention is in a tug-of-war match in which the economy is being pushed in two opposite directions at the same time. But, in the long-run, the market will win because real resources are not there to keep the "boom" going. These resources are consumed. (Insufficient resources have been freed up for the future. Instead of saving, men have been consuming. And instead of entrepreneurs producing for such present oriented things, they were being pushed into future oriented things.) The prices of these capital goods at first go up. These investments are made to seem profitable. A bubble develops. But as the effects of inflation trickles through the economy and the bank credit expansion ends, these investments will be seen for what they are, viz., hot air investments. Now they are seen (correctly) as not profitable. The prices of consumer goods will go up (with the given ratio of consumption to saving), with a shortage of resources, relative to the capital goods and there will be a redirection, in which a recession or depression occurs, of investments back to where they would have gone (in terms of production order), and the higher-order investments dry up. Hence, this process will produce another inescapable result: wealth destruction. "In sum," wrote Rothbard,

businessmen were misled by bank credit inflation to invest too much in higher-order capital goods, which could only be prosperously sustained through lower time preferences and greater savings and investment; as soon as the inflation permeates to the mass of the people, the old consumption-investment proportion is reestablished, and business investments in the higher orders are seen to have been wasteful.

*(To note, the more wealth, the lower the time preference tends to be. That is because it is less difficult to save with more wealth than less. One would hence expect that, because there is more wealth, real interest rates would be lower than the last generation. As Hoppe notes in his must read Democracy - The God That Failed book, they are higher with today's generation. This can only be the result of a systematic increase in time preferences. That is, society is more "child-like" today. ...... Mises himself recognized that the particular statist intervention of inflation is a direct attack on what we can call "conservative" values: The cultural damage of inflation is "epically strong among the youth. They learn to live in the present and scorn those who try to teach them 'old-fashioned' morality and thrift.")

**(The issue of "hording" has no direct influence on this discussion and thus will be ignored. But understand that all this would do is increase the purchasing power of the "remaining" money in circulation. For a very quick look into the un-evilness, in both an ethical and economic sense, of misers see Walter Block's Defending the Undefendable.)

Transforming Socialistic Money Back to Capitalistic Money.

Money is an important cornerstone to civilization. It is, as Murray Rothbard said, the "lifeblood" of the economy. Because of this, when men look at the evil affect the State and their banking allies have on money (and all the side effects that are produced), this should be all we need to know about the State and how regulations are designed not to protect consumers but to protect special interests.

Apologists for the status quo, especially mainstream conservatives (who are not at all friends or allies of liberty----who would be aptly described as largely fascists), fail to recognize that much of big business and big media are intermingled with the government. These businesses get granted special privileges and benefits that mom-and-pop shops do not. On the other hand, mainstream liberals that respond that money is therefore to blame for this is equivalent to saying that water is to blame for the coerced drowning of a person, instead of the criminal that murdered the person with the employment of water.

In itself money, like water, is neutral. Usage can be for good and evil. As long as there is this central machine of democratic power it is only natural that those with more influence will direct its usage to their own benefit and at the expense of others. It is therefore nonsensical to think anything but rich people will have the most direct influence on government. These particular rich people want to go to the government because it has power and they do not. For this reason, the problem is not wealth or money. The problem is power. They do not go to the government because they have power but because they don't.

The banking industry got tied into the governmental system because that system has power. And government is all too happy to get more power and control. The control over money allows the State to implement an "inflation tax." The president of the Mises Institute, Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., has as a result said that the central bank is "[t]he heart of the modern state." If you understand the economics of money and the outcome of statist intervention on money, then you understand the modern state.

The justifications for the existence of the U.S. Fed can only be described as hilarious: for example, the idea that the Fed "fights" inflation. But its very nature is inflation. Since the creation of the Fed, over 95 percent of the value of the dollar has been lost. Not exactly a "fighter!" "Not worth a Continental," comes to mind. Then there is the claim that the Fed stops business cycles. Again, its very nature is business cycles. We have business cycles all the time. Right now we are in one.

Perhaps it should be also quickly noted that the Fed, as many suggest, is not a "private" bank. What is needed is a private free market in the banking industry, not more of the same. The Fed was created and established by the government, it is maintained by government, the officials in the Fed are largely appointed by the government, etc. A "Fed" could not exist if it were truly private. Competition would drive it out of business in a blink of an eye by hyperinflation over the production of worthless pieces of paper, which cannot be money without monopolistic government aggression and force.

Those that favor either no government or a very small, decentralized government must then work for the separation of State and money. This means an end to central banking and an end to fractional reserve banking. It means a return to a free market commodity money. It means an end to the house of cards we have now. It means an end to artificial bubbles generating booms-and-busts in the economy. No central plan is needed to move back to a free market of money and banking. A free market is the lack of a central plan. Accordingly, what needs to be done is the elimination of legal tender laws, the allowance of man to be free to choose his money, deregulation, and, ultimately, the abolition of the Federal Reserve. (In a manner of speaking, the inverse of "Gresham's Law" would occur.) For a guide to follow, we can turn to the recommendations of Rep. Ron Paul, a scholar in the economics of monetary issues and author of Gold, Peace, and Prosperity and The Case for Gold. In times like ours, seeking fiscal sanity is more important than ever.

"Man cannot turn back the clock" might be the reply some men have to the idea of returning to a money of free market capitalism. But, to quote the great Richard M. Weaver, "I'm not turning it back; I'm setting it right."

References: I'm just striving to stand on the shoulders of giants. Hopefully I balanced the content in this blog entry successfully. Any shortcomings are my own. Above quotes of Rothbard's comes from, respectively, What Has Government Done to Our Money?, The Case Against the Fed, "Taking Money Back," and America's Great Depression. On egalitarianism, see his Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature.

A number of essays and books have shaped by understanding of monetary issues (and my understanding is still being shaped). For those new to this subject, the first and best book to read is What Has Government Done to Our Money?. It is beautifully and clearly written. See the layman populist essay "Taking Money Back." Listen to this mp3 Rothbard lecture. And be sure to read his "Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure." Besides Rothbard, Bob Murphy provides a reading list here. Read "What You Should Know About Inflation" by Henry Hazlitt. Take a look at "The Business Cycle" in Jim Cox's The Concise Guide to Economics. See Hans Hoppe's "Banking, Nation States, and International Politics" and "How is Fiat Money Possible?." For something light and entertaining (although, slightly off topic), see "The Economics of Star Trek or What is Good for Business?" by Dmitry Chernikov.

If you just stumbled into The Paleo Blog and know little to nothing about economics, then the best book to read is Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and then, if you are still interested, read Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan. Thomas DiLorenzo provides a more historical perspective on the importance of economic freedom in his great How Capitalism Saved America. I highly recommend it. For something a bit more advanced, but still short in size, see An Introduction to Austrian Economics by Thomas Taylor. 

Conservative traditionalist Russell Kirk, who no doubt were alive today would be called an "unpatriotic conservative" by the likes of National Review and The Weekly Standard, wrote this good piece in 1946 for The South Atlantic Quarterly on the subject of conscription. Kirk's essay is impressive.

Another gentleman, a man admired by Kirk, was Robert Taft of the Old Right. By the way, he is someone who has a modern day admirer and follower even, his name is Ron Paul----why, maybe you have heard of him. Read Taft's article on conscription here.

The final thing wished to be pointed out in this blog entry is a newly republished book that has come out of the Ludwig von Mises Institute's "Student Series." A book that was co-authored by no less than the founder of Human Events. It is called The Merchants of Death by H.C. Engelbrecht and F.C. Hanighen. But. . ., those two were also probably "unpatriotic conservatives." Next! Old Right? What Old Right?

Here is the description:

Here is the archtype of all post-World War I revisionism of a particular variety: the hunt for the people who made the big bucks off the killing machine. The Merchants of Death was, in many ways, the manifesto of a generation of people who swore there would not be and could not be another.

But here is the kicker: it was co-authored by the founder of Human Events, the conservative weekly. So this is no left-wing screed against profiteering. It is a careful and subtle, but still passionate, attack on those who would use government to profit themselves at the expense of other people's lives and property.

Here is a sample of the ideological orientation: "The arms industry did not create the war system. On the contrary, the war system created the arms industry.... All constitutions in the world vest the war-making power in the government or in the representatives of the people. The root of the trouble, therefore, goes far deeper than the arms industry. It lies in the prevailing temper of peoples toward nationalism, militarism, and war, in the civilization which forms this temper and prevents any drastic and radical change. Only when this underlying basis of the war system is altered, will war and its concomitant, the arms industry, pass out of existence."

Thus is this book a wonderful example of what Rothbard called the "Old Right" in its best form. The book not only makes the case against the war machine. It provides a scintillating history of war profiteering, one authoritative enough for citation and academic study. One can see how this book had such a powerful effect.

Why re-release this book now? The war profiteers are making money as never before. They are benefiting from conflict as never before. Everything in this book has not only come to pass but as been made worse by a million times. So this treatise is more necessary than ever.

Again, this is the real heritage of the American right.

338 pages, paperback, 2007

[I have a habit for going a bit on a tangent, but sometimes for the good. In this free-riding entry I go over a few of the lessons that really should have been seen as it relates to 9/11/01 and where we are today. I also explain the logic behind the rise of fascism, from the frame of reference of the State, and how that applies to today's department of homeland "security." I also briefly talk about the democratization of war. I am sure there are several articles and blog entires online on 9/11, my focus might be somewhat more unique in the areas I chose to focus and zero-in on.]

“It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morale – as Albert Jay Nock once phrased it – of an 'army on the march.'”
--- Murray N. Rothbard; War, Peace, and the State

***

Six years later, where are we today?

For one thing, it does not feel that it has been that long. The government and its ever-willing media make the tragic affair feel like it was merely two or perhaps three years ago. They exploit the event as much as possible for their gain, to further encroach on the liberties of the American people, and not to mention to further encroach on the liberties of other peoples of the world. Sept 11 was nothing more, for the government, than a pretext to thrust the agenda of neoconservative global hegemony, the expansion of the warfare-welfare state, and the domestic police state.

Robert Higgs is the author of Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government. War really is the Health of the State, as Randolph Bourne said in an uncompleted essay. History has never failed to show otherwise, as people like Dr. Higgs have shown.. It is in times of crisis and war that State power explodes. Since democratic government is all about rallying people to its causes under the illusion that “‘we’ the people” are the government, the State will do its best to meliorate its hold of power in times when people are most likely to rally together.

Many of men often talk about a so-termed “New World Order” or a “World Government,” but I exhort to those individuals that this is not entirely accurate. The powers that be see they, themselves, as the global controllers of the United States (Empire). They see themselves as the power holders. It is not as if they want to hand over power to the United Nations, unless they themselves control it. Ditto goes for the idea of a “North American Union.” Even if it be they in charge, this should not diminish any of our views of what that would mean and entail, to those truly concerned about freedom. Clearly this is of a most dangerous scenario, because it is a growth function of democratic government to mass centralize in this fashion----to centralize in a way that no classical monarchy could ever.

This is not just some cooked up rhetoric about neoconservatism and those that subscribe to this ideological creed, though. Mr. James Bovard makes the point in his excellent latest book, Attention Deficit Democracy, that the parallels of speech and written word to dictators like Benito Mussolini and neoconservative Bill Kristol, who the late Sam Francis called the “neoconservative sex god,” is very clear and vivid. There need be no dramatic hyperbole. Kristol, for example, in 1996 spoke of how the U.S. should exploit its "military supremacy and moral confidence" to achieve "benevolent global hegemony." (What is "benevolent" about that, I am unsure.) Or take William Buckley, who has called for (his very words) "a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores" to fight the Soviet Union-------only this attitude or view did not end after the Cold War.. Today, like it or not, this is what conservatism means in the modern world.

Security and Transportation

Government’s supposed job, which people say needs a monopoly over a geographical territory (but, interestingly and paradoxically, it is suggested by nearly everyone that there not need be a monopoly over the entire world, contra their logic that would suggest that), is of “protection.” Of course, government failed miserably on 9-11. It monopolized security in regards to airports and airliners. Its control gutted airliners to look after their own interests. Interests of which they have a direct and immediate concern about, unlike government which only has an indirect and secondary (at best!) concern about. They were not allowed to do the things they would have otherwise been allowed to do. Government’s banning of the airliners possessing a gun for protection is a clear example. There is a direct concern for private enterprise to protect their paying customers and to continue to do that for new potential customers. They have to respond to the free market and guard against the possibility of losses; chief among them would be the possibility of hijacking. Instead, government took this transportation industry off the gird of the market, so to speak. Failure was not punished, as in what happens to a free market enterprise that fails, but instead the State was rewarded with more power and control. Imagine, from this, the incentive system that the State has! It is of no accident that so-called government provided “services” are the areas of life that are the worst.

One of the lessons that should have been figured out with the events of Sept 11th, 2001 is that government provided “security” is not security at all! What should have been demanded is that the government get out of the business altogether.  All that has been “gained” with government getting even more involved in security is airport authoritarianism.

This does not only go for the governmental operations in the area of transportation and the security thereof. The State’s myopia fills all of the diverse departments that are supposed to “protect” us. All of them did not accomplish the task and made us all the more vulnerable. Instead of being deprived of funding, they were only expanded. Even new departments were created to add to the mess after 9/11. Departments, that for all obviousness, are nothing but pork. Today’s so-called conservatives, one thought, are supposed to condemn such government projects. The matter is entirely different, of course, and they gladly cheer on the most extravagant (in ugliness) of government programs.

Homeland “Security”

As Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo writes in “The Fatherland Protection Racket,” the pork projects that fill the department of Homeland “Security” are so visibly pork that one wonders why there is hardly the outrage against this department that there ought to be. Believing that this department “protects” us is delusional. (More on this later.)

The Rise and Reason of Fascism

Individuals qua government officials who seek power via political contra economic means, motivated by the same basic interests and desires as all other men, while at the same time under the identical economic laws and limitations, understand that the best way to facilitate government power is not through socialism. Socialism’s bankruptcy only produces bankrupt states. The former Soviet Union, while internally aggressive and oppressive to the people under it, had only consequently weak hosts to live parasitically on. This explains why, relatively speaking, the former Soviet Union was never as imperialistic or aggressive, outside of “its” territory, as the United States, which is (relatively) internally less aggressive or classically liberal. Such states, as the U.S., will therefore tend to turn into empires. The record only bears this out for today’s empire (the U.S.) and ones past.

Thus, with the above acknowledged, such political individuals will try to “harness” the abundance of wealth that is created under the “engine” of society, i.e. of capitalism. This will generally turn capitalism, under statist conditions, into fascism (i.e., anti-capitalism). In such a case, the alliance between big government and big business is amplified and enlarged. Mythical attacks in which left-liberals have against capitalism for being nothing more than fascism is utterly nonsense then, because there is a clear and definitive difference between the political versus the economic means for an individual to obtain wealth: one of taking (stealing and coercion, i.e. political) or mobbing out competition (closing the door for competition via coercive regulations, i.e. political) and the other of producing wealth (production and voluntarism, i.e. economic). Fascism is the only natural course for Leviathan Statism. One has to actually abolish the idea of coercive and monopolistic “protection” and socialist (state provided) “law and order” to get rid of the natural flow of statism and accordingly its flow to the rise of fascism.

(People will take the easier or shortest route, after all. The man that is offered $X dollars by the government will take it. The man that is offered to regulate his competitor out of business will have the urge and strong desire to take it. There is no polylogism or polyeconomic analysis for men directly working in government, either. No wishful thinking by even non-Austrian analysis can change that.)

This explains the reason of the existence of such departments as Homeland “Security” and why they are heavily protected against those who call for it to be destroyed. It also applies as well to the entire military-industrial complex.

Homeland “Security” Continued

What has the “Fatherland Protection Racket” brought? Far from protection, it is another racket of fascism. To quote DiLorenzo:

As for the pork, a few examples will give you the flavor of how out-of-control it has become:
* Boeing was given a five-year, $1.37 billion contract to equip U.S. airports with "bomb screening devices" that experts say are "laughingly ineffective."
* Northrop Grumman "landed a $350 million contract to construct a DHS data network.
* "First-responder training facilities are springing up like toadstools after a rainstorm. The Nevada Test Site . . . which trains 3,000 fire fighters, paramedics, and policemen annually, is slated to quintuple that number as the DHS money rolls in."
* The new Hampshire town of Bennington, population 1, 272, spent part of its Homeland Security grant to buy chemical weapons suits – just in case bin Laden chose Bennington as his next maximum impact target.
* Local police departments in New Hampshire will get access to "satellite television channels that transmit continuous news," courtesy of a DHS grant.
* Colchester, Vermont, population 18,000, received a DHS grant to purchase a "search-and-rescue vehicle" that "can bore through concrete and search for victims in collapsed buildings."
* Thanks to the influence of Dick Cheney, "Wyoming receives more money per capita than any other state in homeland security grants."
* And naturally, "a non-state – the District of Columbia – is far and away the biggest recipient of homeland security grants per capita," receiving more than twice as much as Dick Cheney’s home state.
* Citgo, Conoco-Phillips, and Shell received tens of millions of dollars in DHS grants for "refiner security," something they are very well equipped to finance themselves.
* The former mayor of Washington, D.C., Sharon Pratt, received a no-bid "bioterrorism consulting contract" for $236,000.
* Forty "young people" in Washington, D.C. were paid by a DHS grant to "rap and dance about emergency preparedness."

This is the reality of such wasteful programs----programs that have nothing to do with “protecting” us. From one perspective, this can be viewed as a slap in the face to the families that suffered because of the event of 9/11. They were obviously looking to the government (even if it be misguided) for the role of actually cleaning house and setting up a system of real protection. Instead, what they got was this neo-con abomination.

(See Also: “The Security-Industrial-Congressional Complex (SICC)” by Robert Higgs)

Such government programs can never do the job of protection. The torpor of such programs can only be worse with their expansion or the implementation of additional departments (programs). Providing security, like all other goods and services, is under the reality of scarcity. The direction or allocation of any good or service can never be directed or allocated under statist conditions because there is no rational way to do so. There are no prices; no profit--loss; and so forth. Resources require as a requisite markets and by definition they are absent under statist conditions. Hence, production will always by necessity be irrational; up to the whims of government officials. There will always be “too much” or “too little” of production, with a constant state of flux between the two, and shades of the two in regards to the various tasks that these programs are supposedly designed for. Nor is there competition. The production of security, then, will be one of ever decreasing service and production, while at the same time increased costs. Instead of a Soviet Union-like government program for the allocation of food, which resulted in chaotic conditions; there will be, mutatis mutandis, these conditions for protection and security.

Osama bin Laden and Terrorism

Six years of the government supposedly going after Osama bin Laden and catching him “dead or alive,” has proven fruitless. Allegedly he was the mastermind of the event, but instead of the government putting its resources in trying to capture him; government officials have diverted their limited resources to even more reckless actions of interventionism, and have incited more levels of hate and anger against the U.S. Resources were diverted into Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and has only contributed to the problems, and possibility of another attack. It has made the region more unstable, and, unlike the propaganda from the neoconservatives, the ground is not being “transformed” into peace and light void of terrorism (so far from!), but, instead, is being filled with the squalid atmosphere much friendly for terrorism and its growth.

Government politicians, officials, and the neoconservatives working in their various “think”-tanks are once again setting the stage, before our very own eyes, for another aggressive, interventionist, and nation-“building” war in the Middle East. Although, it is hard for me to personally put down odds on such an event, others with far more knowledge than I, like Pat Buchanan, believe that the odds are sadly quite high. (Read “Phase III of Bush's War.“) Thus, far from learning from experience and history, the setting of the stage for another potential war, this time with Iran, is in the works! It is true when they say that the only thing we learn from history, is that we do not learn from it. To call this administration and President Bush mad is to put it mildly.

Terrorist organizations are stronger than before because of all of this. Indeed, as Mr. Scott Horton writes at AntiWar.com, the concept of the mass of people (a complete democratic construct of reasoning, especially in wartime) in the Middle East hating our (decreasing) freedoms is nonsensical. The increase of hatred of larger bulks of people is tied with our interventionism. They set their aims for the United States and not Switzerland or Sweden. The very first conflicts were directly involving U.S. presence; not attacks on the shores of the United States. Indeed, writes Horton, “Ayatollah Khomeini spent the 1980's railing against American culture and the entire region yawned. Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, kept his pitch straight and to the point – and it worked.” [Emphasis mine.] Bin Laden's focus has been on occupation. For example, his 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places...”

The focus was, as Horton writes in his important article, on {1} bases in Saudi Arabia; {2} support for Israel (a bizarre neoconservative love affair, clinging to the love of the totalitarian form of government known as democracy); {3} no-fly zone bombings and trade sanctions, killing hundreds of thousands of people (the monster Janet Reno said it was “worth it” on TV); {4} direct support to the various dictators in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, etc.; {5} control and manipulation of the prices of oil; and {6} giving support to Russia, China and India in their wars against Muslims.

And as Mr. Horton says, “by studying every single individual suicide bomber on Earth between 1980 and 2004 – the one characteristic that all suicide bombers have in common is the presence of foreign combat forces in their country – not Islam.”

U.S. Imperialism

State wars are unjust and immoral. And will always be that. The State, despite all of the rhetoric to hide the real nature of this institution, is nothing but a “bandit gang writ large.” And as Russell Kirk wrote, "there is no tyranny more onerous than military life."

It requires quite a large leap to see how so many “anti”-abortion folks (I myself am no fan of abortion, as you could guess) are so pro-war, who give the State a complete and utter pass in literally butchering so many innocent civilians, including children and women, caught in the bombardment. How any mind, any sense of decency could do that is thankfully, thank God, beyond me. I agree with Mr. Jeffrey Tucker, “I have nothing in common with these people [the mainstream conservative of today]!” (See also “The Violence of Conservatism.”) Maybe there is something in the Republican kool-aid?

In the claimed mission to bring justice after 9/11, a majority of the U.S. government’s killings have been against innocent bystanders (“collateral damage”). In today’s “progressed” age of the democratization of war, has come the melting pot of togetherness in favor above and over the “dark ages” of making a distinction in war between combatants and noncombatants. Surely the numbers of murdered civilians by the U.S. government surpass the number of al-Qaeda. The majority of its killings have not be directed against those involved with the planning and implementation of 9/11. (And torture, is, well, A-OK too. And its use is far from being a few tinny incidents. Nor is Bush administration unconnected with its implementation.)

Of course, mentioning this in our democratic age of nationalism and left-neocon state worship is completely taboo and absolutely forbidden. Thanks go to the embodiment and exemplifier of this transition in the leftist and egalitarian French Revolution, what traditional conservative monarchist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) called a “sadistic sex orgy.” This transformation of war brought us such war crimes as the dropping of atomic weapons in World War II, where today, wrote Richard Weaver, "the word 'noncombatant' [has] almost [reduced] to meaninglessness."

Democracy and a Wilsonian foreign policy go hand-in-hand. It is the ideological cousin of democracy. So ignorant are today's conservatives, who cheer on any and all wars, of their own foundation of thought, that Russell Kirk's words on Wilsonianism is lost:

The political wisdom of the Federalists and Burke was diluted, in Wilson, by a dose of doctrinaire liberalism. In the hour of criss liberal abstraction prevailed over conservative prudence.

According to Kirk, one of the main principles of conservatism is prudence. It is obviously lost today.

Civil Liberties & Power

This would take an entire new entry to go through everything here, but I find it humorous how the conservative of today claim to be for economic liberty, but see civil liberties as fundamentally different. Government that invades us economically is bad, but government that invades us in our privacy is somehow not bad or relatively not as bad. As if they be two separate issues or birds, detached from property rights! (Talk about polylogism!)

Restriction of power or "limited" government is a foreign idea to President Bush and neoconservatives. If it be Bush using “sticky notes” a.k.a. signing statements, to rewrite a law to whatever suits his command and fancy, or the power to declare martial law. Or we could be talking about warrantless wiretapping for our “protection.” Habeas corpus, a constitutional right? Well, not according to the Bush administration. . . . . Who will protect us from these so-called "protectors!?" (So-called "protectors" who will even take the guns away from people, and practically put into place a police state, during a crisis, à la New Orleans.) Suffice to say, the record of abuses is long. All I can recommend is for people to buy a couple of books by James Bovard, who does such good work in this department.

Is There More to the Story?

I personally do not believe 9/11 was a complete “inside job” by the government. I have not seen evidence to convince me of that. However, interesting anomalies and questions have arisen. They should be looked into. Debate is healthy and it should be encouraged and not censored. Also, all of the records that government has should be released on the matter. When government creates a black void, that void will be filled with conspiracy theories----some maybe correct or partially correct or completely false.

I certainly, however, do not say that we should support the official story that government has spoon-fed us. Instead of white-wash commissions and other sorry excuses, government should be demanded to open up the books, at the very least.

Is there more to the story? Yes, there is a very good chance that there is more to the story. My guess it is more in the “middle ground.” Only one who is badly informed (kiddy cons) about government and history would think that there could not be more to the story. See Robert Higgs' "Another 9/11 – in a Long Series."

[Word War II is case-in-point. President Franklin Roosevelt promised (in the politician’s dictionary it has a different meaning) the American people that he would be "neutral" and stay out of the war, but behind the scenes did everything he could to get into it. Moreover, the U.S. and Britain government decoded their marine code (JN-25), monitoring the coming Pearl Harbor attack. While fascist FDR promised not to get involved and respect the put-into place Neutrality acts, he was engaged in a kind of "cold war" with Japan. {Supporting China, by selling them military equipment (so much for neutrality); increasing naval military outfits; renouncing U.S.-Japan Commercial Treaty of 1911; implementing an embargo and freezing assets (in particular oil, something much needed----a very provocative act asking for trouble); allowing U.S. pilots in the China air force; etc. The U.S. crippled Japan. Either they would have to give up, talk with the U.S. (an impossibility with FDR not allowing talks), or attack.}]

[In this sense, WWII was not much different compared to WWI. Wilson, too, did everything he could do to get involved. Of course, the ideological war of spreading democracy, maybe something we should take note of today, back-fired completely. Hitler could never have arisen if it not for Wilson.]

See FDR, Pearl Harbor and the U.N. by John V. Denson

2001 . . . 2007

Six years later, we are ever more vulnerable, helpless, and defenseless. Anyone, if they wanted, could just walk through the artificially created open borders. Airport security is not only a shamble, but a laughing stock. Terrorists, six years later, are ever larger in number, have increased support from the Middle East public, and are ever more capable in engaging in terrorist acts (indeed numbers have skyrocketed in the Middle East). Killing and bloodshed is also, obviously, higher than ever. The U.S. government continues on its expansion of imperialistic actions. Needless to say, or at least it should be needless to say today, it has just been an utter disgrace. This is not even to mention the atrophy of liberties at home.

I agree with what former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter says, it is not so much that the American people are waking up, but that we are not winning. The American people, far from tired of empire, only are against it if it appears to be failing. How much government intrusions into our lives, families, churches, and communities will the American people stand? And how much innocent bloodshed will the American people stand? With presidents from Wilson to FDR to Bush, I think we know the answer. To quote the great Joseph Sobran: "Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves."

***

Being generally on the pessimistic side when it comes to political matters (one must remember that there is more to life than politics), there still may be some hope that things may change. The cycle of relatively great freedom to tyranny is cyclical. States rise and fall. Civilizations rise and fall. My personal feeling is that the only possibility of the U.S. empire ending is in bankruptcy, joining the rest of the bankrupt empires of past in history. And then the cycle starts again. However, one thing to note is that during a major economic crisis (even catastrophic ones) an even more despotic government can emerge, as the ignorant and power-seeking erroneously fault the free market for the dilemma. But, then again, capitalism might win out. The more complex and diversified the market becomes, the more it requires social peace free of coercion. (But will the State allow capitalism to get that far? Capitalism is no longer capitalism today.) Well, history will judge. I hope Ron Paul is a sign.

Steve Sailer on “How Carlos Slim, World’s Richest Monopolist, Provokes And Profits From The Mexodus.”

Interesting read. Click here to view article.