Two Economic visions for America and their Consequences

The questions that historians will muse over in future generations is, "How did the richest nation in the world, with the means to sustain its' prosperity for centuries, how did they squander and annihilate their entire wealth and position in the world, doing it in the span of only a few short decades?" Such madness is one of the wonders of the modern world.
And here's their answer they'll come up with--it is so obvious we won't need the distance of history to see it: the causal forces were many that brought the breath taking collapse of the Yankee Empire, but they were all primarily centered around a selfish, self-indulgent, cowardly, greedy, spineless, corrupt, ignorant, power hungry, depraved political class; a blind, and ideological leadership who, as the primary means of staying in power, spoiled and indulged the people with largess from their own money, stolen from them by the leaders in the form of taxes and inflation (the cruelest and most harmful, painful to the poor tax of all: the hidden tax).
The mechanism the politicians used to destroy America is commonly called "misallocation of wealth." Misallocation consumes and destroys wealth.
Proper allocation multiplies wealth.
It's the difference between eating your seed corn and planting it.
Eating your seed corn feeds you today but provides nothing for tomorrow, planting it multiplies it beyond measure.

Let's juxtapose that into the present situation.
Oblamer makes "the rich" pay their "fair share"--whatever the Hell that is.
Oblamer takes that money out of the private sector and misallocates it in order to buy votes from the non-productive.
This is tantamount to eating your seed corn.
What if Oblamer does not take the money, but leaves more and more wealth in the hands of "the rich?"

The rich then take the "seed corn," plant it (investment). It creates jobs for those who would have eaten the seed corn from the master's hand (Oblamer), and they have the dignity of being able to feed themselves, not just once, but for decades through this process of proper allocation of wealth.
The problem with this second scenario (in Oblamer's view) is that it does not secure the politician's power and increase the control of the government over the people. Proper allocation of wealth leaves the people too free, too independent, too confident in their own abilities.

Oblamer's thinking and methodology is the thinking of a slave master (which is what he African ancestors were, and many still are).
His subjects (supporters) are those who have abdicated their God given right to liberty for the security of the slave state.
The welfare, entitlement state is nothing more than institutionalized slavery, concocted to do nothing more than increase government control over the people.

In Oblamer's world of misallocation, wealth really is a zero sum game.
In the world of the entrepreneur and investor wealth is multiplied through growth.
What we are seeing at the moment and have been for some time is the welfare system devouring the seed corn that would have fed every one in the coming years. It will soon be all gone. Then what will we do?
I don't know how I can make this any cleared for your f**ked up collectivists.

Inside Job----an inside job?

I recently saw Inside Job--twice. I probably need to see it a few times more to really solidify my understanding of what exactly is being done (and not done), but I will share a few comments with you from my own perspective.

Now as preamble I want to say in my defense these comments are not knee jerk---nor are they "the Republican response"---for I am NOT a Republican by any stretch of the imagination. I'm writing this review because it is very, very important we rightly understand what happened.

To help you do just that I have a few things for you, dear reader. I believe these videos and talks can give you more real practical understanding and information about what really happened than Inside Job does.

The first thing to consider is the review of Inside Job on Lewrockwell.com by Jeffery Tucker. After seeing Inside Job twice and reading his review I can't see anything he got wrong or spoke of unfairly. He did, however, leave some important things unsaid, and I'll try to mention a few I consider important. Here is the link for the article.

http://blog.mises.org/16038/inside-job-a-look-at-the-heart-of-the-left/

It's a short article but, from my perspective and experience, it is accurate and more than fair.

Secondly, take the time to read David Stockman's speech linked here. http://mises.org/daily/5113/The-End-of-Sound-Money-and-the-Triumph-of-Crony-Capitalism

It is long, but it is excellent. This will help you grasp the real systemic causes of the collapse and who is responsible for what.

The third thing, a talk given by Peter Schiff, is a little over an hour, but it is very good for learning sound economic principles.

Schiff is an Austrian school economist who is a very successful business man, and highly principled. He, Dr. Ron Paul and Tom Woods were forecasting and warning about the collapse for years before it happened, and enduring the mockery of all the "court economists" of the Keynesian school that dominate present day thinking and the media.

This video is mostly of a talk Schiff gave in 2006 forecasting exactly what is going to happen as if he had foreseen it in a vision. And he is forecasting this before the masters of the housing mortgage industry--telling them, in essence, what idiots they are in regard to understanding economics and economic bubbles, and warning them they should short sell much of their holdings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj8rMwdQf6k

This is courage---going into the lion's den and telling him he is about to suffer great loss.

Schiff was right, his detractors were wrong, those who listened to him and acted accordingly did not suffer the losses others did.

It is so well documented that Schiff foresaw all this in detail as to be undeniable by any except, perhaps, the clinically insane.

Yet, Schiff is no mystic.

He simply knows, applies and runs his business on hard money and sound economic principles. Everything he does is rooted in fundamentals.

He knows what is going to happen because he really knows why it is happening, what is wrong and how to correct it. The Keynesians did not---so they missed it.

Yet, despite scores of video that can easily be found on youtube and many other sources showing Schiff repeatedly forecast and explained the roots of the problem that brought about the crash, the makers of Inside Job managed to completely ignore him, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Tom Woods or any number of others from the Mises Institute that could bring clarity and substance to the matter instead of impotent oblique accusations and innuendo.

Instead, they include an extreme leftist like George Soros, presenting him as if he is a benevolent, harmless grandfatherly figure. But the reality is that Soros is a man who would like to see liberty in America destroyed and totalitarian government officially instituted---a man who was and may still be subject to arrest in England for the role he played in basically destroying the value of the pound sterling.

They deceptively present Soros as innocent, congenial and avuncular, but avoid speaking with his ex-partner in the Quantum Fund, Jim Rogers.(Rogers, like Soros, has made billions in investment, but unlike Soros, is an advocate of Austrian economics. And, by the way, Rogers is not wanted in England for any sort of crime––which is perhaps why he was not interviewed).

I can only conclude they avoided interviewing all the economists and investors who are rooted in Austrian economics (even though they were primarily the ones who were right about virtually every thing) for one reason: they knew the answers and explanations the Austrians would give would not fit the maker's of Inside Job ideological perspective. They were, therefore, avoided COMPLETELY!

They managed to avoid interviewing Tom Woods. Dr. Woods has impeccable credentials and has laid out how the crash all happened in his well written and well researched book, Meltdown. Unfortunately, he is another of those pesky Austrians and so did not get an invite to the party.

Once I considered all the usual leftist suspects that were interviewed as if they were unbiased, authoritative sources, and all good people who were avoided by the makers of Inside Job, I began to ask myself, "Is this really a documentary that is trying to explain and help us understand how it really happened???" The more I thought about it, the more I weighed the evidence, the more I was tempted to ask, "Could it possibly be that Inside Job....is...an inside job?"

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For those who know little or nothing about the debate between hard money economists with fiat money economists, between the Austrian school and the Keynesians, and how drastically the adoption of Keynesian economics by America and the abandonment of the gold standard in 1972 has affected our wealth, our property and our liberty, Inside Job seems to confirm in shocking and vivid colour the very horrible thing they would like to believe---- the rich are incurably greedy and can only be controlled by endless reams of government regulations and controls enforced by a whole battalion of bureaucrats.

I am convinced this impression the makers of Inside Job want to leave is a false one that misses the point altogether.

Schiff's view, on the other hand, is correct--for he was right year after year when many of those being interviewed in Inside Job were laughing at him on television business programs and saying every thing was going to be great.

They, now, should be on a steady diet of crow pacing an 8 by10 cell. But instead the very ones that caused all this have been promoted to higher and more powerful positions rather than being where they justly belong: prison.

It is not insignificant to note that, to-date, after four years, not a single person has been arrested and tried much less convicted.

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If you're not familiar with the Federal Reserve, its' creation in 1913 and you really don't know what the Fed is, you lack the background needed to make sense of much of what I've said to this point.

Most people, even very smart people, have no idea where our money comes from and how it is "created"---and how it now represents debt not wealth. They also have no idea how the Fed influences and even coerces behavior in the markets--especially investment banking.

I certainly did not, but I do now at least grasp some of the basics---and I most certainly don't consider myself in the class of the "very smart"---or even the reasonably intelligent. So, if I understand it then it can't be all that hard to grasp. The reason most of us don't is because the information is not readily available--you have to dig it out--you have to know where to look. You'll seldom if ever find it in a college class room or a high school text book. You'll never hear it on TV from one of the "court economists."

I was shocked once I found out--I couldn't believe it. I thought it was just conspiracy BS--that's how amazing it really is. But it's true. You can, if you care to, get quickly educated on the basics of what the Fed is, who created it, how it works and why it was desired by both the political and banking class by listening to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu_VqX6J93k

If you don't understand this you'll not be able to make ultimate sense of what has happened.

G. Edward Griffin, who speaks in this video, is a warrior for freedom and a brave and courageous man; a man of great and unimpeachable integrity. Hearing this video is learning about the Federal Reserve from the horse's mouth--he wrote the book on it.

In my opinion, understanding the Federal Reserve's relation to the American Economy is the beginning of wisdom...a wisdom that I believe is lacking in the makers of Inside Job--who, it seems to me, are only interested in getting the viewer to do what most of them already want to do: hate the rich and enlarge the power and control of centralized government to a full-blown Soviet-style bureaucracy.

To that I only have two comments in the form of questions.

1. Who is it that assures us that while the rich business men are devils the powerful politicians will be angels?

2. Who will oversee the overseers---and oversee the overseers who oversee the overseers, in a reductio ad absurdum?

Perhaps we should have a nation of mutual spying, where every one oversees every one else?

This would create one of the most powerful conditions for totalitarian governments controlling the people: paranoia.

The Obama administration is carrying on the Bush administration tradition of doing that very thing--and, I think they're doing a better job as they are increasing spying on people on every level and they're getting all set up to use the IRS as the weapon par excellence against enemies and detractors from the policies of the regime.

My sense is the perils of real failure, and real collapse, and real loss that exist in free markets where no bailouts can be expected and none will be given is the best and fairest of all overseers to keep the monsters of human avarice and concupiscence in check. Nothing, of course, will do it perfectly. But these are the best and fairest means I know...and it makes We the People the stars of the Republic, NOT the Investment bankers and the politicians--both of whom tend to be imperialists.

One thing is for sure: the moral hazard created by the government's promise to subsidize private losses suffered by some special entities with public money has encouraged daring and risk taking to the point of madness, rather than put any real check on them or given us any real economic security and stability.

Every time the government meddles or intrudes the results are always counterproductive.

What the Hell is the difference whether we experience the loss of our money and property directly through bank failures or those same losses through the inflation created by government to bailout those very same entities with tax payer monies through borrowing from the Chinese?

At least if we experienced loss directly through bank failure the corrupt entity would have gone down and the market would be cleared for better managed companies. But with bailouts these failing institutions become zombie companies buttressed and sustained by government with borrowed money WE the People must pay back-----these companies get caught in the cold rain and We the People get pneumonia.

Look at it this way, if you were a tight rope walker instead of a CEO, which conditions would tempt you more to perform your most difficult and risky maneuvers on the high wire; with the (tax-payer funded) net, or without the (tax-payer funded) net?

The assurance of the bailout for those "too big to fail" IS nothing more than a classic instance of moral hazard.

A free market economy would not have this. Foolishness and foolhardiness is not greeted with bailouts and promotions in free markets, but failure and loss.

Yet, such an answer to the makers of Inside Job cannot even be found in the furthest reaches of their universe. What we are left with is the endless escalation of the disastrous cycle of bailouts and regulations, while the bankers and politicians promote each other with knowing winks. And this, they seem to strongly imply, is a solution...and it is. But only for the bankers and the politicians.

These are perilous times in every way, and it is important to find out who and where the real villains are. It is important that we understand things to the point that when we hear something or speak of something we know whether what is being talked about is an effect or a cause.

The source of all this folly is not Wall St., but Washington. That is where the cleaning of house must begin, for that is where the power is. Washington power is why lobbyists come there rather than politicians going to Wall St.. Politicians wanted it that way.

What we see from Wall St. is merely the effect. The cause, the source, is Washington and its darling, the Fed--for that is where the power really is.

I never heard it said better than the quote from Willie Stark in All the King's Men. To the assertion that the oil men in Louisiana will stop him from doing what he has proposed Penn Warren has him respond:

"They ain't got the power.

The power is in the hands of the powerless, and they've given it to ME."

Drones of the drones

Why is it that some pathetic people are so impoverished in their souls that they can't feel "whole," that they can't feel like their lives have any worth or meaning, unless they are intruding into the lives of other people and trying to control them by any number of repulsive means: bribery, extortion, coercion, fear mongering, and threats, etc?

These drones represent a horrible new technology--facilitating both more federal military adventurism abroad and unconstitutional surveillance at home with, what was the "Newt's" phrase?..."Plausible deniability?" With the NDAA as legal justification and these drones as the means you might as well find a mirror and kiss your sweet privacy good bye--and maybe even your freedom and your life.But the horrors don't stop there.

Every piece of nightmarish technology America has developed, from the A bomb to these drones, have fallen into the hands of others--and have become tools that can be used against the American citizen. Our government has developed weapons that make one man more lethal than a whole company of soldiers with conventional weapons. Such destructive weapons are evil, I don't give a fiddler's damn whose hands they are in. But it is clear, the very weapons the twisted imaginations of our military have come up with, and spent beaucoup tax $$ to develop, are the very weapons, in the hands of terrorists, that can and will be used to imperil the lives of US citizens.

The point: we have been forced by taxation, whether direct or in the form of the inflation (resulting from the printing of fiat money), to pay for the very weapons that will be used to kill us by the hundreds--maybe even the thousands.Our leaders and our military, far from protecting us and defending us, are the very means by which we are increasingly endangered.And while a terrorist is here using one of our stealth weapons against us, where will our military be? Where it always is: 1500 miles away supporting and defending the investments of the special interests.

Ain't freedom freaking grand!

Southern Slavery compared to Centralized government

The following is my response to an epistle I recently received defending centralized government. Here is the epistle in its entirety:

I don't want to get in a crazy debate, but, I am almost certain that the two guys you quote (Spooner and Livingston), most likely did not have their families subjugated, sold, mutilated for trying to free themselves and treated like just a piece of meat. I am sure, as you said before, that some slave owners may have cared for their subjects, just as I do love and treat my dog very, very well, but to compare taxation and government centralization to slavery is sick -- little different that comparing our Japanese internment camps (super shameful) to the Nazi concentration camps. While they had similar purposes, their methodology and end result were quite different...

for reference, Spooner and Livingston's quotes he cites are as follows:

"The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals. No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle --- but only in degree --- between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure." – Lysander Spooner (Nineteenth-Century lawyer, abolitionist, entrepreneur)

"A war of coercion was Lincoln's creation and he had to violently subvert the Constitution to carry it out. His purpose? To establish a centralized state."
Donald Livingston, prof. of philosophy, Emory University

Now, here is my response to my friend:

Thank you so much for that thoughtful and well presented response. There is no need to spark a huge, protracted debate. It should suffice to look at the facts as born out by history.

To begin with, I insist there is a vast difference between formal chattel slavery and the de facto slavery that is the result of increasingly centralized government power and its ability to dictate every aspect of our lives, including the power to take, by force, increasing amounts of the fruit of our labor to redistribute as the ruling elites see fit.

Spooner said the difference was one of degree. It is the difference between formally declared total slavery of a certain class and informal, de facto partial slavery of all. I disagree. The difference is more than quantitative. The difference is qualitative, centralized, autocratic government being MUCH worse, and I shall try to prove it here.

Regarding centralized power of government taken to its logical conclusion and slavery taken to its logical conclusion I glean the following from recent history:

Let us first acknowledge that slavery, as an institution, can only exist under the aegis of government power and approval.

Having said that, lets look at the particular form of slavery Messrs. Livingston and Spooner were most familiar with: southern slavery.

The record shows Southern slave owners treated their slaves very well in America.

Why?

Set aside the Christian aspect of American society at that time: Slaves were expensive.

It took over 10 years before a slave owner could break even on his purchase. Considering this fact, a slave owner would be a fool to abuse a slave and do things that tear down his health. According to records left of food purchases and housing, everything indicates most slaves actually had a higher caloric intake than the owners, they worked far fewer hours than the wage slaves in the northern factories trying to keep body and soul together. AND the slave owners took care of the elderly slaves who could not work, and much, much more.

But I'm not here to defend slavery in any way. My only point is when you buy something that is costly you take care of it because it is in your self interest to do so--and the facts of southern slavery bear that out. You can find that from the scientific study of records left regarding southern slavery. It was recorded in a book called Time on the Cross.

But here is my point:

Let's compare Southern slavery, where the historical record reveals slaves were very humanely treated for the most part (especially compared to the dehumanizing factory work in northern sweat shops); let's compare Southern slavery to 20th century totalitarian, centralized government, which you seem to approve.

Again, we don't have to theorize about this, we have well documented facts.

Southern slavery; a largely humane form of institutionalized slavery, where even the non-productive elderly were care for.

20th century totalitarian government; the conservative estimate is over 262,000,000 citizens killed by their own rulers--not to mention the servile misery of the millions that survived the death squads of the ruling elites. (Of course, the 20th century did not end the killing of citizens by their rulers--the killing goes on to this day, with no end in sight. In fact, the 20th century did not begin the killing. The killing of citizens by the modern state began under the autocrat, Lincoln. To this day the US government has killed more of its citizens that all the other countries have in all the wars we've fought combined.)

Let's throw in another stat, just to give a little more depth to the comparison:

20th century wars: around 44,000,000 killed in war.

You do the math.

My calculator figures it this way when I compare the three: Southern slavery is preferred, and a state of war is even better than being a citizen under the iron hand of totalitarian government, because people are obviously safer during war.

Now, as I see it, Southern slavery is very similar to what we have here as national policy dictated by the federal government elites today. And Totalitarian 20th century style centralized, autocratic power is where we're headed, thanks in great part to those who foolishly do not fear handing over all power to government.

Spooner and Livingston both see clearly the logical conclusion of the increasing absolutizing and concentrating of government power, as born out by the actual results of history. Apparently, you were absent the day that was discussed by your history professor. Or maybe he was a Marxist and skipped over those facts.

Finally, let me share this concluding thought for your reflection and serious consideration:

Institutionalized slavery is a bad thing--as almost all Americans recognized even during the time of slavery. Many, north and south, wanted to end it, but could not agree just how to do it. The way we did end if was the worst of all possibilities, except for the solution of extermination.

Extermination was to come later with 20th century totalitarian government which usurped and consolidate all power.

Totalitarians like Marx, Hitler and Mussoliin, did, however, express a great admiration for Lincoln his consolidating power in the Presidency and his abrogation of the Constitution: another historical fact lovers of totalitarian government conveniently forget. But I digress.

Please, now. Focus on this part, for it is the very most important point of all those I've hoped to make in responding to you:

The difference between institutionalized slavery and centralized government is this:

Institutionalized slavery is limited in what it might do to the enslaved by the mores and values of the society in general and the laws of the land in specific. (It is also ended peacefully in the vast number of cases. The war we had in America was an exception, because slavery was just one among many excuses--consolidation was the real reason, as Livingston points out.)

Centralized government does not know these societal or legal limitations, but considers itself above the laws it imposes upon its citizens.

This is the point: one form of slavery is limited and can be ended peacefully. The other is not limited and is almost never ended peacefully. One is limited in its scope, and other is unlimited in it scope. Institutional slavery in a society where the motto is "right is might," eventually brings slavery to an end. The slavery in a modern centralized state where the motto is "might makes right" is unlimited in the means and scope of how it might treat its citizens.

The power of centralized government is limited in what it might do only by the imaginations and character of those who are in power.

Now, many claim that the atrocities we saw in the 20th century by autocratic rule and centralized government can never happen here. They can only say that being oblivious of our present situation.

Right now we have different laws and standards for our ruling elite than for us regular schleps who are part of the great unwashed herd of citizenry. Just look at all the laws broken by the criminal acts of Wall Street elites and government officials that lead to the financial collapse in 2008.

As of this date NOT ONE person has been convicted and sentenced to one day in prison. In fact, many leading government officials that encouraged the destructive policies have actually been promoted, even as they point the finger at all and every thing but themselves.

Our government pisses on the Constitution daily. The leaders constantly disregard it and do as they please.

In terms of civil law, our government does things as policy that would same bring about our arrest, imprisonment---and even execution: Our government bribes, steals, coerces, extorts, oppresses, threatens, invades and even murders its own citizens without due process of law--a flagrant nose-thumbing at the Constitution and the bill of rights and We the People.

Government employees who do these things such as Waco or Ruby Ridge get promotions instead of imprisonment.

A man who does not see this is a man who has drunk the kool aid of big government autocrats so long that he has forgotten what it is to be a free man in a free society.

My conclusion: Some people just have slavery in their blood. My people, from Wales, Ireland and Switzerland--we have fought oppression for fifteen hundred years BEFORE we came to the mountains of southeast Kentucky. We have freedom in our blood---and love our neighbor instead of loving our government.

One final point and I'm done:

We lovers of freedom and liberty are happy to leave the lovers of government alone, and even leave those who love their own slavery alone--The problem is, they won't leave us alone. They cannot. They must conscript us into their army of socialist slavery in order to carry out their collectivist schemes.

So we must fight here, just as we did there. If for no other reason, we fight that we and our children do not join the 262,000,000 souls that have gone before us as yet another statistic of the cruel and absolute power of the state.

tom

Response to a fellow Southron

Lynda wrote: "I think all this talk about the South leaving the US and becoming a separate nation is just plain unreal and makes no sense to me. I've been reading and listening to you all but I just think that is not giving the Southern people credit for our intelligence and hard work of making a contribution to our country."

Response I:
Lynda, here's my issue with your statement. I think you have the matter, as stated, standing on its head.

In the whole muddle and madness of the debate regarding secession one thing is clear: It is not southern partisans, but those who cannot separate their identity as Americans from the renegade, hostile, unconstitutional gang of thieves, corporatists and banksters in Washington who insult the intelligence of all Americans. It is those who teach others to acquiesce as they do, drink the government kool aid and get on the bandwagon to Uncle Sam's Plantation––it is those, and not southern partisans, who insult the intelligence of the Southern people.

You seem to be saying in order to be a patriotic American I must regard myself as joined at the hip with that THING in Washington. You seem to be saying I must support it in all its unconstitutional wars, frauds and policies clearly driven by elites and special interests to the great harm of We the People?

You mean to tell me that a true American must be, de facto, a mindless unionist; union no matter what? Even if union means bending the back to full blown socialism, communism, and total consolidation of all power in the presidency?--even if it means casting aside the appearance of having a constitution--even if it means accepting the lawlessness and arbitrariness of tyrannical, autocratic rule and complete centralized control of the entire populace? This is clearly where the present regime is headed, full steam. You mean we should embrace union even when it means these things?

Asking us to cling to union and Washington and asking us to accept and "work within" the abusive and lawless litany of things I just mentioned are not two different requests; they're one and the same thing. The list I gave is not some future 1984, it is a present, sorry reality.

The insult to intelligence of Southerners is to teach false history to their children, history filled at best with half-truths, history depriving them of the truth of their heritage; history designed to make them ashamed to be southern, ashamed of their ancestors, and telling them they must live a life as second class citizens, hanging their heads in perpetual penance, always being the suspect of bigotry and racism--and unable to prove themselves innocent--unable to have their message heard that all they want is to be let alone and have the dignity of their natural rights-which includes the rights of self-government.To intimate such things to Southerners is not just a supreme insult to our intelligence, but to our persons and the Imago Dei stamped upon our souls as well. To accept union is, ipso facto, to accept these slanders as truth, for one cannot embrace Washington and union without embracing them as the historical and cultural coin of the realm.

What is it we fight? We fight the cultural genocide poisoning the minds and hearts of our citizens in endless forms of propaganda--materialist propaganda spread by collectivists, by court historians, slickly presented to the ignorant and poorly schooled in their "mocumentaries" on the so-called History Channel. All Reich-approved to be sure, by those who would consolidate all power in the hands of a few, utterly disregard our Founding, our Constitution and our rights, and sell not only our birth right in liberty, but the very soil of our ancestors out from under our feet. (Government created core inflation is doing just that. War will not be necessary for foreign take over. Monetary collapse will do that without a shot being fired. Then the full-blown slavery will begin in earnest).

We deny that being a proud American requires union with this filth and corruption--this Treason posing as patriotism, this THING all decent humans should be ashamed of.

We believe people have a right to govern and rule their own lives, to live and be proud of their own culture and continue to grow and develop and appreciate the things that are good in it and correct the things that are bad as THEY see fit...all this being done by the free effort of honorable people, not by the corrupt and corrupting force of the crude and iron hand of government, enforced by the mindless military drones they send to invade the sovereign lands of sovereign peoples.

The monstrosity in Washington does not believe this. It believes you and I are below the state and the collective. They believe you are the servant of the government, not the other way around. And they couch this inversion of our great Revolution in pious sounding phrases like, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." To echo Ron Paul, I have a great fondness for the first part of that statement.

Their policies, their actions, their abuse of freedom and liberty, their constant trashing of the Constitution, their lawlessness and increasingly autocratic rule--these and many other like things form a virtual mountain of vindication for the secession of 1861. Resistance to these is why we fight.

Why do we persist in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds? Let me respond anecdotally.
Mother Teresa told a reporter who mocked her efforts of saving those on the Calcutta streets while thousands continued to die, "God did not call me to succeed. He just called me to be faithful."
Lott preached against the evils of Sodom, and no one listened. When asked why he persisted though it was plain no one would hear, Lott replied, "At first I preached to change them and thought they would. It has long been clear to me that they will not. I persist now, not to change them, but that so they will not change me."

These are some of the reasons we continue and do not give up hope--we KNOW we are the true Americans, we know we have the only authentically true American culture, we know we were and are the faithful ones to the Constitution, we are the principled ones and our cause is right and just.

Knowing that, it would be an immoral act to give up and become just another kool aid drinker--for those are the only two choices. There is no, as Aristotle would put it, middle way. There is no compromise with tyranny. To think one can work within its broken and corrupt system to reform that THING is a fool's errand. It is the apex of Quixotic madness. Washington will no more reform than Sodom would repent. It is a supreme insult to the intelligence of Southerners to continue to tell them reform is just around the corner of the next election cycle.

If we gave up the desire, longing and hope to separate ourselves from this irreformable evil it would be a betrayal of those who died a century and a half ago, of those who, since then, have persisted in upholding the meaning and rightness of the Southern cause, of those who have labored to rescue and preserve the whole truth; it would be a betrayal of ourselves and our consciences, and perhaps most importantly, a betrayal of our children and the generations that follow.

Barry Goldwater said extremism in the cause of liberty is no vice. Barry Goldwater was right.

We are not obstinate, we are not ignorant. Au contraire! We are simply unreconstructed. Stated another way, we cling to the American principle of self-determination and reject the centralizing force of the teleological principle underlying Lincoln's proposition nation: government enforced equality.

We rightly see the principle of equality for what it is: the false philanthropy the political tyrant uses to cloak the true reasons for his actions. As a principle, equality has been used in law to deconstruct the edifice of the Constitution one brick at a time, and philosophically to generated endless social revolution and to justify ceaseless and costly military adventurism all over the world.

Stated another way,"Ye shall know them by their fruits." So the Lord said. And what have been the fruits of government enforced equality, of Lincoln's teleological constitutionalism? These evils have cost We the People our liberty, our Constitution and countless amounts of blood and treasure--and FOR WHAT?!? For the enrichment of the ruling elites and increased consolidation of power in Washington, that's what: the very thing our Founding ancestors dreaded and feared most--the very thing they knew would be the death knell of our liberty.

It is an insult to our intelligence and an immoral suggestion to say we should give up and accept the present form of union as the inexorable and immutable existential fatalism of Americans. What claptrap, what utter asininity!

Response II:

Lynda, I really don't think you grasp what has been going on--I don't think you see the grotesque beast standing in the room that is the awful progeny of the union of the ménage á trois of the donkey and the elephant with Marxism. If only Joe McCarthy could see how right he was!

If there never had been a war between the states, if not one drop of Southern or Northern blood been shed, decent human beings everywhere would protest against what is being done to us in Washington and how their every move takes each and every one of us and our children deeper into penury and slavery. Decent people would be protesting against what this government has done and is doing to millions around the world in our name.

It doesn't take a Southerner to see this--I know, because millions who have no direct allegiance to the South are waking up to the horrible reality and beginning to see the government for what it has become--and they rightly hate what they see.

Any man who loves liberty cannot love this Great Imposture in Washington that has usurped our once glorious Republic. Sadly, not all men love liberty...

Response III:

Lynda, I believe what you and every American must answer, and answer with unflinching honesty is this:
Is the quintessential American principle that of "Union?"
Or is the quintessential American principle that of "Liberty?"

I believe the answer the Founders would give, with few exceptions, would be a resounding slam of fists upon the table of deliberation and a clarion cry of "Liberty! Liberty is our principle, Liberty, our sine qua non!"

What would our Founders say if they were faced with a reality that showed them that union was being perpetuated only at the continual loss of liberty? Who can doubt that they would stand with the great American poet, Robert Lee Frost, and say, "For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?"

Ask yourself, If, in union's checkered development, the central principle of liberty has been replaced with a foreign and even hostile metaphysic (equality) that has caused union to metastasize, so that its every development is an ever further abrogation of Liberty, can that union continue to be rationalized as truly American?

If those who have seized power carry the laws and the land further and further away from the vision of the Founders and ever closer to the tyranny and Jacobin madness of the French revolutionaries, can that government continue to be rationalized as truly good, as truly worthy of our wholehearted and unwavering support? Or should we desire and labor for separation from it?

What is patriotism? Loyalty to Union über alles? Or Loyalty to Liberty? Ask yourself these things and reflect long upon them. I don't think you ever have.

For a long time now the government and its leaders have been laboring day and night to make sure you never do.

S-1867

"What have the people become when they sit idly by and let this go forward without complete and total resistance? They have become slaves to the state, and they have become slaves voluntarily!"

Thoughts upon reading http://lewrockwell.com/barnett/barnett43.1.html

We all know that we suffer the consequences of our actions. Usually retribution comes swift and sure, especially to those of us not possessing of power or wealth.

Those who do possess such earthly goods are always able to use their power and wealth to shield them from consequences that flow from actions driven by their own stupidity, greed, malice or ignorance. Instead, the suffering is deflected to others, most usually others associated in some way with the malefactor.

If this is so with individuals who are rich, how much more will it not be the case with the institution that is the historical sine qua non for the consolidation of wealth and power: the Federal Government of the United States?!

The fact is, the failures of our leaders in specific, and our government in general, have already been repeatedly shunted off onto We the People.

The wars in the middle east were not caused by horrific government policy, but by the way We the People live–––our lifestyles; our economic woes have not been caused by the government's stupid restrictions, confiscatory taxation and costly, stifling regulations, but by We the People "getting a little bit lazy" in recent years. The evils of guns are not due to wrong-headed government policies and programs, but by We the People selling weapons irresponsibly to criminals and drug lords. (That, at least, was the scenario our so-called Justice Department hoped to create with Fast and Furious, to use it as an yet another excuse to take our guns from us and render us increasingly helpless before government might. (However, in the case of "Fast and Furious" there was just one little hitch: THEY got caught).

As future government schemes and policies increasingly fail, the blame will increasingly be put on us; We the People. Let there be no doubt about it. We the People will be made the scapegoats for the failure, folly and misadventures of an Obama administration or worse. And with blame always comes punishment--punishment the Federal Government will exact upon We the People. We the People, indeed, are to the Federal government what the whipping boy was to the British princes.

Once S-1867 is made into law, the stage will be set for the kind of military takeover and rein of terror analogous to what happened during the brutal rule of Argentina's military junta of the 1970s. In this period citizen after citizen vanished without a trace. But the American government will be like Argentina on steroids.

You say the NET can be used to call attention to our plight regarding the tyranny of the Federal leaders and the brutality of the military--our own sons and daughters shooting and killing us (like they have before), our own neighbors spying on us?

I say nonsense. The power is also being put in place to shut down the NET with the flick of a switch. Our Federal government is setting it all up so they can control every means of communication. Everything is being prepared to crush any kind of rebellion, and silence any kind of outcry as these incompetents visit brutality upon We the People; brutality that ought rightfully fall upon them. But let's face the cold facts. Even if a cry went out, who in the world would or could come to our rescue? Who would take on the military might of this government in a Quixotic effort to protect and defend us?

Brutal squads from the Federal government, analogous to those that terrorized Southerners for over a decade during Reconstruction, will be spread throughout the entire land. Paranoia will rein, because citizen won't trust citizen, and no one will know who and who isn't a government snitch and stool pigeon.

God help us. What we've seen up to now is only the beginnings of sorrows--sorrows flowing to We the People from where it historically always has: the People's own government.

Few reflect upon the truth that our government, due to its' brutal and unconstitutional invasion of the South, has killed more of its' own citizens than all other governments who have fought us combined. Stalin killed more Russians than Hitler---by far! Hitler killed more Germans than Stalin did! Mao killed more Chinese than any enemy in history, and Cambodia's government became the agents of intellectual genocide on its' own people.

History gives clear, clarion and unequivocal witness that the institution the people should fear the most is its' own government and its own rulers. It is not China or Iran that the American people should fear. We have little or nothing to fear from them. But we should fear greatly the rapacious beast that sits in our midst, hiding in plain sight on the banks of the Potomac river, in what was once a cesspool of a swamp. A swamp. How fitting! The swamp was drained to create the National Capital--but apparently the rats remained to infest what was built.

Count on the 2012 election to be the lowest, the dirtiest, the most violent and vicious since Lincoln's second election, which he clearly stole through military brutality and intimidation--especially in New York state.

We teeter on the precipice of an autocracy, tyrannical and vicious. And once it is officially declared the excuse will be that We the People have become disorderly, and autocratic power is needed as an "emergency" measure to restore order. Count on it! And count on the "emergency" to never end and the autocratic rule to never be rescinded.

The passage of this monstrosity, 1867, (we can thank John McCain for it and other horrific legislation) is a sad, sad day for American Liberty and freedom loving people every where. The loss and sorrow flowing from the consequences of this bill will be beyond the means of human telling to adequately communicate.

Many who are lovers of liberty and advocates of limited government rightly opined the election of Barack Obama. But when we reflect upon the nature of the legislation that John McCain has co-authored and promoted, it is clear that the choice of 2008 was no choice at all, much like the 2012 election will probably be---That is,unless We the People, for the first time since Grover Cleveland, are given a real choice: Ron Paul.

The Problem with Modern Liberalism

If the true problem with modern liberalism is to be properly understood, it is important to understand the classical standard that must be met if an act is to be considered virtuous (a truly good act).

An act can only be judged as virtuous if it meets all of the following criteria:

1. The act intended must be a good act.

2. The intent must be good.

3. The means used to achieve the act must also be good (it is not permitted to do evil that good may result).

4. The result must be good.

5. If any evil occurs as an effect of the act, the evil must be unintended and of lesser effect than the resulting good.

The Evils of modern liberalism result from the use of Corrupt Means

Modern Liberalism does not repeatedly fail because its goals and intent are not good, per se. They are often very good. Liberalism most often fails because it is driven by the immature; souls who lack both insight and patience to understand the true causes of a societal evil and devise a fitting plan or solution. As a result, they, in their haste, do not refrain from using means that are unlawful and/or unfitting.

Consequently, the resulting evil (collateral damage, if you will) is often much greater than the good achieved. In fact, the unfitting means may actually prevent the intended good from ever being achieved. Frédéric Bastiat points this out when he writes in his masterpiece, The Law, "Since the law organizes justice, the socialists ask why the law should not also be used to organize labor, education and religion."

Bastiat's answer is as clear as it is concise: "Because it [the law] could not organize labor, education and religion without destroying justice."

He continues,"We must remember that law is force, and that, consequently, the proper function of the law cannot lawfully extend beyond the proper functions of force."

In short, when the law operates beyond its lawful parameters it contradicts itself, creating great harm and falling short of the standard to which it holds others. The powerful who hold positions meant to preserve the law commonly do this, driven by their lust for more power. Thus they create a second standard of behavior for themselves and the institutions they run, a standard far below that which they hold others. The resulting evil is commonly known as "corruption."

How Liberals react to Liberal failure

When the good fails to be realized the modern liberal remains undaunted. Rather than admit and repent the corrupt use of means, he devises means even more unfitting as a "mid-course correction," that he hopes will bring things aright. This, of course, also fails. But undaunted the modern liberal continues to tinker with society, taking risks with the lives of millions, repeating the process, ad nauseam. This is insanity in action.

Self-proclaimed Conservatives acting like Liberals

Let's look at an example that might surprise some who call themselves conservatives. Rep. Michelle Bachmann says that if she becomes president she will promote and sign a bill saying that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Others are in favor of a law making English the language of the American Empire.

Protecting the institution of marriage is a good which all conservatives can and should embrace. A common language is important for many reasons. But the means to protect the institution of marriage as it has been historically known and practiced must be lawful--so says the true conservative, (aka the true Constitutionalist).

The problem with Rep. Bachmann's goal is her willingness to use the law to protect and defend a good that is beyond its scope and power. This unlawful means makes Rep. Bachmann's act a liberal and unconstitutional one.

True Republican Conservatism: Judge Bork and fidelity to the Law

Now, let's take a true conservative, like Judge Robert Bork. Judge Bork is a faithful Catholic. He, therefore, is personally categorically against abortion. Had he been appointed to the Supreme Court he would have voted to repeal Roe vs Wade, but not because he was personally against abortion. He would have voted for repeal because the Constitution does not give the Federal government the authority to make such a judgement. This matter, as Judge Bork has repeatedly pointed out, is a matter for the states.

One could almost be completely certain he would have the same opinion on the marriage issue. That is, if any governmental institution has the rightful authority to judge on language, or marriage or similar issues, it would be the states or the people of the states, with their unlimited and unenumerated Constitutional powers.

For Judge Bork the problem is not his opposition to the good desired, but the means used to achieve it. According to the law of the land only the states or the people of the states have authority to judge in these and similar areas. The judge, as a true conservative, refuses to make it legal to use the corrupt and lawless means to achieve a goal, even if that goal is a true good.

Lincoln, Modern Liberalism and Slavery

Finally, no one can deny that the goal of ending slavery was and is an indisputable good. But the horrific and unconstitutional means used by the Lincoln administration to accomplish it in America did not result in freedom. It resulted in the mere exchange of chattel slavery for political slavery--the slavery resulting when sovereign states and sovereign peoples are forced to remain in a relationship they despise and which they see as abusive and destructive to them as a sovereign people.

The central principle of the Declaration of Independence rejects the right of governments to subject a people against their will. The sovereign right to self-government and self-determination was the core justification for the American Revolution. When Lincoln used means contradictory to this principle, he began a process that reversed the victory of the colonists over Great Britain––a process that has once again enslaved Americans to a tyrannical, consolidated power: its' own government.

The political slavery resulting from the unconstitutional use of force by the Federal government has been much greater, more pervasive, more far reaching and much more destructive to liberty and than the chattel slavery we inherited from Great Britain.

The evil of political slavery was not the necessary price for ending chattel slavery. Political slavery was caused by the corrupt and lawless means used to achieve it: sectional hegemony and the subjugation of sovereign states and sovereign peoples to the brute force of centralized power--inhuman means clearly hostile to American Liberty.

Slavery came to an end around the world without the use of violence and force, save in only a few instances. In those instances where violence was used, slavery provided the excuse for the use of violence, but was not the real reason. The reason, in the case of America, was the desire of a few for all power to be consolidated in Washington.

The Southern States opposed such consolidation and were able to prevent it for the first seventy years of the Republic. Their subjugation was essential if northern consolidators were to achieve their goal. The war, carried out under the guise of the false philanthropy of ending slavery, was the means to that end.

The Sorry Results

Americans today are suffering in uncounted ways and their personal freedoms are in grave peril as a result of that consolidation...all flowing from the corrupt and lawless means used to end the evil of slavery.

We must commend the leaders then, because they did not hide the real reason for the means they used. The leaders stated again and again, before, during and after the war, their intent was to change the loyalty and fealty of the individual citizen from his family, his community, his region and state to exclusive devotion to the Federal government. Nationalism was to usurp patriotism. As Seward repeatedly stated, the desire of the Radical Republicans was "To make a man love his nation more than his state."

The ending of slavery was simply another means to weaken those sovereign forces that opposed a consolidated Empire, an Empire that was to be used by the few to achieve untold power and wealth for themselves at the expense of the liberty of the many.

Our present leaders and their "court historians", as apologists for the War, are not so forthright. They insist the exclusive intent of the Federal Government was to end slavery. They conveniently forget there was, within the Constitution, a peaceful and constitutional means to do so. Their blatant dishonesty reveals that they are even more corrupt than the schemers who brought about the war in 1861, and their corrupt puppet, Abraham Lincoln.

These are only a few of the horrible, profound and long-reaching effects of the use of corrupt and lawless means in order to achieve a particular good. These means in the modern world are all but ubiquitous. Few in power refrain from the use of such means.

As long as there are those in power, regardless of their political label, who believe the ends justify the means and do not shirk from their use, the erosion of our liberties will continue unabated. That is why I am supporting Ron Paul for president, and not faux conservatives like Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum, both of whom would abuse the power of the office of the presidency to accomplish that which is beyond the scope of the authority of the Federal government, as defined and limited by the law of the land: The Constitution of the United States of America.