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Recently
by Thomas DiLorenzo: Club
Fed: Where Fantasies Are a Way of Life
On this
Memorial Day it is appropriate to memorialize a number of long-dead
American institutions (RIP). The first would be the main principles
of the Declaration of Independence, beginning with the notion that
governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The Lincoln administration destroyed that principle long ago when
it responded to the withdrawal of consent by eleven Southern states
by waging total war on their civilian populations for four long
years, killing as many as 400,000 Southerners according to the latest
research, while bombing, burning, and looting Southern cities and
towns.
The Declaration
of Independence also declared in its closing paragraphs that the
states were "free and independent" of any other government.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! At the time, "free and independent
states" meant that Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, etc.
were considered to be free and independent states in the same sense
that Great Britain, France and Spain were free and independent states.
Treason in
the U.S. Constitution is defined as "only" levying war
upon the states, or giving aid and comfort to THEIR enemies. This
of course is exactly what the Lincoln regime did, while redefining
treason to mean exactly the opposite of what it means in the Constitution:
opposition to the federal government.
The notion
of "limited constitutional government" is also long dead,
thanks to the victorious Hamiltonian nationalists in American politics.
It was Hamilton himself who invented the notion of "implied
powers" of the Constitution almost before the ink was dry on
the original document. In Hamiltonian language, "implied"
means "unlimited." Jefferson believed that the Constitution
could "bind" the government in "chains." His
nemesis Hamilton was of the opposite opinion that the Constitution
could be used to rubber stamp anything and everything the central
government ever wanted to do as long as it was "properly"
interpreted by slick, conniving lawyers like himself (or by fellow
nationalists like John Marshall or Abraham Lincoln). Hamilton's
view has prevailed, as was proven for the millionth time by Chief
Justice John Roberts when he declared the Obamacare mandate to be
a "tax" and therefore constitutional despite the fact
that Obamacare's proponents argued before the Supreme Court
that the mandate was NOT a tax.
Also dead is
the notion that there is such a thing as personal liberty - at least
in the eyes of the federal government. The government now claims
to have a "right" to spy on every citizen without a search
warrant, to monitor the mails, bank accounts and emails, to grope
and sexually assault each and every citizen passing through an airport,
and even to murder American citizens with drones, on American soil,
in the name of "security."
What's left
of America's market economy is controlled, regulated, regimented,
and suffocated by more than two hundred years of accumulated government
bureaucracy. American businesses are regulated by more than 80,000
pages of fine print regulations in The Federal Register;
by dozens of federal regulatory agencies whose agents often carry
firearms to enforce their edicts against the citizens; and by hundreds
of other state and local government regulatory bureaucracies that
attempt to regulate and tax all aspects of business life. There
are even local government taxes on the air above "public"
sidewalks if occupied by a commercial enterprise. It is all a part
of government's relentless, never-ending war on capitalism and freedom.
Almost twenty-five
years after the worldwide collapse of socialism the American regime
has embraced socialist central planning with tremendous zeal. The
primary vehicle for the American version of Soviet central planning
is the Federal Reserve Board, which claims "authority"
to control, regulate, and regiment all aspects of financial markets.
It is devoted to destroying market interest rates, which are a necessary
ingredient for real capitalism to exist, and believes in the "fatal
conceit" of a centrally-planned economy. Its head, the bearded
Ben Bernanke, even looks a lot like Lenin.
Also gone are
the days when American politicians would be praised with words like
"he kept us out of war" or took seriously Thomas Jefferson's
warnings about "entangling alliances" with foreign countries.
The new foreign policy mantra is: "Do As We Say, Or We Will
Invade and Occupy Your Country and Murder Your Citizens by the Hundreds
of Thousands." "Soldiers" are not defenders of American
freedom but paid murderers for the state. Endless military intervention
all around the world has made life more dangerous and more
insecure for Americans by creating endless enemies who resent it
when other countries invade, bomb, and destroy their homelands.
Nothing has been more destructive of American freedom than the state
itself and its military-industrial-congressional complex. War is
the health of the state, and an expanded state is always and everywhere
the enemy of personal freedom.
Governments
at all levels have been very busy for a very long time destroying
American freedom and prosperity. A single day could never be long
enough to memorialize all of our lost freedoms, but I guess one
has to start somewhere.
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