Fall of the Law Writers
Politics / US Politics Mar 18, 2012 - 03:52 PM GMTBy: Stephen_Merrill
Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough." - Frédéric Bastiat, French Legislator
“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.” – US House Speaker Thomas B. Reed
“Fascism should be called corporatism because it is the perfect merger of power between the corporations and the state.” – Benito Mussolini, Prime Minister
“There is a lot of ruin in a nation.” - Adam Smith, Free Market Advocate
One of two masters over people’s lives is created by what is known as “the law”. Does the law empower the government decree on almost all matters? Or does the law empower the citizens to mostly lead their own lives in liberty with individual responsibility?
Frederic Bastiat’s work in 19th Century France, “The Law” (1850), defined this choice of state versus liberty exactly. His works should be the first reading for law school seekers and elective candidates.
Bastiat celebrated the great success of the US Constitution so far, but found two great faults in 19th Century American liberty, slavery and federal taxation: Faults he thought threatened the future of freedom in the United States. One fault in large part led to the greatest trauma in US history, the War Between the States, 1861-1864. The other great fault seen in American liberty, federal taxation, is proving to be as great a harm to the nation, now almost 200 years after Bastiat.
Since Bastiat’s time many nations adopted greater liberty in some ways, at least in words, if not fully in practice. After the fall of the Soviet Union it was thought liberty and democracy had won the war against totalitarianism. Political history was all but over.
Yet, long before that time, the Free World had become far less free than it had been prior to the 20th Century march to Keynesian statism in controlling economies. The extinction of the threat of worldwide communism made little difference for Western liberty in the end. The Western elite strengthened their grip on power solely for power’s sake. Now, more than twenty years after the Iron Curtain opened permanently, Western governments are more oppressive than before, more arrogant, more bought and sold than ever, their economies in general decline along with their middle class, a selfish aristocracy in place, even in America. An alarming police state presence is growing. It has all become “the law”.
How could this be? Why did America and Europe accelerate toward crony statism at the very time liberty finally appeared to be on the fast track globally?
Does this mean there is no interrupting the long sharp curve toward economies dominated by Washington and Berlin?
Sadly, the answer to the latter question for now appears to be yes, quite certainly. Nothing in the rigged Western electoral and legislative system is likely to moderate the hold the present law writers wield over our lives. All of the main players in politics in the West are still on the same page. All are committed to preservation of the behemoth privilege-welfare-warfare-counterfeit state. At the same time Western citizens are impoverished intellectually by their state-controlled, faulty education, maybe the single greatest factor lending to stability. By far most citizens tend to believe whatever the law-writers pronounce, patriots all, it is still thought.
The instinct of movers and shakers is always to pull on the reigns of control in times of stress, never to relax the reigns. Indeed, the law itself is proliferating again in these hard times as US House Speaker Thomas Reed lamented long ago. Endless new volumes of statutes and regulations flow from all legislatures and executives, many shockingly harmful to liberty, most wholly written by special interests as has become the common practice.
The establishment parties and the corporate media are already doing everything in their collective power to snuff out a sudden outbreak of liberty through the ballot box in the US. Honesty has little role in this effort. Liberty’s greatest messenger, the Ron Paul campaign, is treated by a slavish network media like an invading foreign enemy. Never has there been a US Presidential campaign as rife with voting fraud at the highest levels, almost all directed at the only national candidate in a generation proposing liberty as the only viable solution to our problems.
But how did the world end up in this place? Whatever happened to American style liberty and its great achievements, the example of US liberty?
American general liberty peaked near the turn of the last century. Statism in the United States advanced fitfully until the election of Woodrow Wilson, the President of Princeton University, in 1912 with only 42% of the national vote. Wilson’s first term in office brought our nation the creation of the Federal Reserve System and the federal income tax, along with alcohol prohibition. Wilson’s second term brought senseless involvement in WWI and the very beginning of America’s role as policeman and nation-builder for the world by perpetual warfare.
American liberty has been on the downslide since, sometimes at a fast pace. The curve toward greater collectivism has now been underway for 100 years. Liberty has lost ground in many small and many large ways.
There is a natural social momentum inducing inertia of sorts throughout human events. Like an ocean liner, there is typically no quick stopping, no fast u-turns, when it comes to societal change. Steaming directly ahead on the same general course is the preferred path by far, even when that course is proving to be disastrous.
Sometimes in human affairs it takes the ocean liner to begin sinking under the waves before revolutionary change in any new direction is possible. That is especially true when by far most of the people aboard the ship are steadily fed with propaganda about how things are just fine with the future bright, ala the hermit kingdom North Korea, comrade in domestic publicity with the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The future is not near as promising it turns out. Financial and currency implosion has proven one of the worst maladies that ever afflict a nation, though it is an old story of self-immolation. Indeed, no fiat currency has ever survived for very long and likely never will, given natural human frailties. http://dailyreckoning.com/fiat-currency/
A currency collapse and debt implosion is quite inevitable. Official counterfeiting, borrowing and spending all have pushed the pedal to the metal for some time with no end in sight. It is a live experiment in driving over a cliff at high speed. On the other hand, a rise in interest rates of only a few points due to sounder money will devastate the US budget and likely explode the US Treasury bond bubble, the last bubble of the US Federal Reserve. There is no possible escape for the law-writers short of world war.
So, the prospect of general breakdown and sudden chaos in the West remains far greater than the chance of general rebellion. One or the other is certain to become the release valve for decades of selfish misrule, sometime soon. The crisis has already advanced to the point where Western citizens hold personal and national debt that total on average middling six figures per person USD. It is debt that obviously cannot be repaid beyond a fraction. Yet, the political and financial system relies entirely on the mirage these debts will somehow be repaid nearly in full. The shocking truth of general default will only be recognized when the limit of paper money intoxication worldwide is reached for the first time in human history.
It will then be a revolution amid chaos suddenly pushed onto the peoples of the world. It is a drama that has played out many times before, but never before on such a scale. The ocean liner’s hull has rotted away this time. The liner’s course is among uncharted, jagged rocks. Even temporary fixes have proven quite problematic. The crew and passengers are soon to be left to their own devices in life rafts hopefully, no matter the blindfolded rhetoric still spouting from the doomed law writers and their minions.
It is not just a time of worry and likely chaos though. There is also a positive prospect to social breakdown amid a currency collapse depression everywhere.
After all, revolution may be about the only way for engulfing walls of laws to finally be brought to their end. Experience shows bringing much greater liberty through peaceful change seldom is successful for long.
The best example of slow movement from tyranny to a republic, Great Britain, has yet to reach anyway near a state of general liberty anytime and is presently leaping to the collective along with the rest of Europe. The British Parliament holds all power imaginable, as always since the King receded from absolute power.
China has allowed a mixture of capitalism to flourish for forty years, but the brutal grip of China’s law writing autocrats remains essentially undiminished and quite complete. The crony billionaires in China have as short a leach on their power as all other Chinese citizens do. The Gulag still beckons for all of China.
Though it may be the sole chance for a true outbreak of liberty, it is the unusual revolution sadly that ends in far greater liberty for the people. Frankly, by far most re-orderings of society end with the forces of authoritarian rule taking hold anew; a fresh elite coming into place. Emperor Napoleon’s reign was the product of the French Revolution, for instance, along with 13,000% inflation. The brutal Russian czars were replaced by Stalinist terror. The hyperinflation chaos of post WWI Germany led to the reign of Hitler. The liberated Roman Empire in Europe descended into the Dark Ages.
The experience of the American Revolution and its long aftermath is very much the exception from times of fundamental change. If only the liberty philosophers of the Enlightenment were to grace the world today!
It has proven impossible thus far for this author to cite a national revolution by internal implosion where much greater liberty clearly prevailed and endured as a consequence, as it did in a different kind of revolution in the United States. Russia has plainly lost its recent chance at greater liberty from social implosion.
Nonetheless, having much greater liberty prevail in the coming revolution amid chaos is the only path to a positive future. It is what every thinking person should be striving for now, even before the harshest privations arrive.
So, the world awaits a monetary and fiscal crackup that simple arithmetic and the pages of history foretell with certainty. It will be a revolution with many different struggles and results. The present old guard will pass from power, many in violence possibly. But many, many groups will look to seize anew the role of law writers to crazily begin the suffocating process again.
In our present world few consider general liberty as a possible basis of civic life. It does not enter the minds of the vast majority of citizens. They have been conditioned throughout their lifetime to collectivist rule. They believe societal salvation does lie in writing the law in just the right way, forever as necessary, perfect oppression. This basic, consuming misconception has not been jarred in any general way yet by the onset of the Greatest Depression.
The forces of liberty will though have their chance to influence the brave, new future. In the United States there is the past example of liberty for most people beginning from the nation’s founding. Given back its intended meaning, the US Constitution would work as well in liberty’s service today as it did for the longest time. This, of course, could only happen with the complete removal from power of the present law writers and their vulture enablers. That event anyway is highly likely from the coming Soviet-style Western implosion. The fact election theft to evade liberty is becoming the norm in the US seems to firmly rule out any general change in the role of law in the right direction, at least prior to a shattering breakdown. The walls of consuming federal laws will fall, almost on their own, before liberty can truly have its moment. Large cracks in the wall are visible all around.
The Ron Paul movement is proving the deftness and guile free thinkers do muster in political maneuvering, even on an uneven playing field. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were no saints toward King George. The movement is proving the intense loyalty greater liberty attracts from capable, moral people determined to help everyone become the master of their own lives, by far the best state for humanity. For the first time in living memory many, many, many bright people know that empowered corporatism has been the downfall of the nation and must be replaced. The present law writers and their network of self-interested supporters are quickly losing all credibility in the intellectual struggle for the future. Most of the powerful will be falling far down from their present high perches when the US Dollar goes over the cliff. The paper money empire is coming to its end, the very source of corporatist power.
In the United States the fallen gentry will be ending a long reign in cultural power. The combination of Wall Street money, an overly powerful Congress and Ivy League type attendance fueled advancing American collectivist ideology for a century, more and more laws and taxes for everyone forever. The belief that society’s betters do know best and should write the law for the citizen’s benefit has dominated US politics back to the time of Woodrow Wilson. The creature from Jekyll Island was spawned in the very first year of the Wilson Administration. It was Morgan Stanley’s founder who loaded The Lusitania with tons of weapons headed for the British war effort as Wilson tried to stir the drums or war.
But at the founding of the “progressive” movement in the United States though, economics actually took a back seat to new, modern ideas on the human being overall, all concepts invented by the brilliant few. Writers like Stanford President David Starr Jordan and Dr. Paul Popenoe helped found the worldwide eugenics movement, how to best to deal with society’s burdensome many while developing a master race of humans based on modern science.
The Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute funded the movement with zest. It was believed to be the logical extension of Darwinism. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_depopu64.htm It was the human being reduced to the lab animal.
The eugenics movement eventually met its fruition with Hitler’s Germany. Thankfully, the concept remains thoroughly discredited still today. Even this massive error in moral judgment though failed to derail the reign of progressive thought in the West during post-WWII and beyond.
What did happen is that European and elite Eastern thought lurched from favoring the oppressor to favoring society’s “victims”. Progressive thought sliced and diced society by law into a field of warring factions, rich against poor, woman against man, customer against business, African against European, debtor against saver, non-believer against believer. The modern state conveniently becomes the all-powerful, arbitrary referee of all disputes between the factions in this endless game of reprisal.
Further, the modern citizen is to be treated by government itself just like everyone else exactly, at least in theory, democracy’s dogmatism. That is now to say citizens are all to be treated with equal generosity from the public treasury. Morality is replaced by “values”. Family is replaced by official subsidies. “The Rifleman” is replaced by “The Simpsons”. Success in the marketplace is replaced by federal spending.
When the curve reached the point of government providing something for quite literally nothing with no moral qualification applying, the Western nations were well on the way to doom. That idea’s fruition has found its end point too: with the mega-trillion dollar Wall Street and Square Mile bailout of the rich worldwide over the past four years. So, the West is well into moral bankruptcy as well.
The Western ruling class, no longer a largely hereditary club as in the late 19th Century, still today shares the same halls of learning and power at different stages of life. They are steeped in the creed of the paternalistic, wise state guiding the masses in most ways, the Ivy League’s Burden. The scale of liberty is narrowly channeled in this elite club to the meaningless differences and rivalries between Republicans and Democrats, between the Labor Party and the Conservative Party. Almost all club members engage in the ruse mindlessly, especially the media chattering class.
Middling Syndicate Colleagues
Ivy League inspired collectivism became the master of lives in the 20th Century primarily through the odd religion of Keynsian economics. John Maynard Keynes was a man of Eton, school of the British elite. Keynes’ central belief in state manipulation of the marketplace and official counterfeiting for the rich has been accepted within American elite thought since the 1930’s FDR Administration. The world monetary system turned entirely to tyranny and fraud with the complete abandonment of the US dollar gold standard in 1971 by FDR soul-mate President Richard Nixon.
The power elite in the US remain keen on the duty of government to do just about anything someone believes needs being done, especially with the right sum of donations and a proper spin for the legislative system. Big money rules all. It is called American democracy. It is now “the law”, in the mold of Dictator Benito Mussolini.
The mindless television talking heads remain smug on the eastern monopoly on political thought. To a person those allowed to remain on air stubbornly refuse to confront the idea that all of their Ivy League lifelong beliefs on politics and economics are just another face of fascism, another utterly failed social experiment. How could the chosen few possibly be so completely wrong about everything so important?
In the end though, markets and people cannot be controlled forever. Given the present maniacal course, the collapse will be sudden and the shock and disgrace in the halls of power quite complete.
Because there is an eventual end to ruin, even to great nations, as Adam Smith noted long ago.
What has proven fatal to America’s system of privilege is the same hubris that doomed the Romans, the British Empire and the Soviet Union. It is the belief that people across continents can be controlled and directed to their greater benefit by the grand ideas of the times, expressed through empire. In other words, power does not corrupt hearts.
But power does corrupt hearts. The concentration of power over a century has thoroughly corrupted many, many Western institutions. The always fatal vice immediately responsible for the coming Western system-wide collapse is a quite common one spouting from this main malady. Paper fiat money is serving as the final dose of hemlock once again for a morally debased political order.
So, liberty’s struggle remains under severe fire, even mortal threat, just as the chance of lasting victory is arriving anew. Where will the cycle end this time? Can the Gary Johnson Presidential Campaign in the fall attract The Ron Paul Revolution and give liberty a fighting chance in 2012? Will the chaos of the Euro implosion allow European nations to finally break free of the stranglehold of their law writers?
Or will the cycle that started with the Enlightenment be ended finally by a victorious set of law writers?
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” Aldous Huxley, 1959
Mr. Merrill is the editor of the Alaska Freedom News. http://FreedomNews.US
© 2012 Copyright Stephen Merrill,- All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.
© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.
