Libera Voce

How to Kill a Republic

The US Constitution is not what governs the people, but what governs those who govern the people.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C. S. Lewis

There are two political systems that are often confused and assumed to mean the same thing; Democracy and Republic. To compound that problem in the US, the two main political parties have adopted these words as their political labels.

There have been many Republics and Democracies in history, and while they share some similarities, it is the differences that matter more. In a Republic, there are immutable rights established meant to assure liberty. In a Democracy the majority has limitless power over the minority. This is the essential and existential difference wherein one political system protects rights, and the other subjects them to political mandate.

In The Declaration of Independence man’s rights are stated first, and then that a government is created to secure those rights. Jefferson based much of what he wrote on the political treatises of John Locke regarding the equality of all men and their fundamental and inalienable natural rights of life, liberty, and property. Locke also stated that while these are the natural rights of man, nature did not provide the means to create laws to establish and secure those rights, nor to protect them or to adjudicate disputes among men arising from them; Locke stated that this was the purpose of government.

We are all familiar with the process through which we arrived at our constitution, starting with the Articles of Confederation, which proved inadequate to the task; it only provided for a Congress consisting of State representatives, which exercised all functions of the national government, empowered to pass, execute and adjudicate laws; there was no separation of powers or checks-and-balances, not a very good system for the preservation of liberty.

The Constitutional Convention was called to amend the Articles of Confederation to address these problems; however, the delegates choose instead to create what we know as the US Constitution. The concept of three branches of government and their separation of powers was derived from the French political philosopher Montesquieu, and used by John Adams in composing the Massachusetts state constitution, which formed the basis for the same in the US Constitution.

As John Adams wrote “The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people, and every blessing of society depend so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice, that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both should be checks upon that.” This is another essential element of a Republic, providing not only a separation of powers but a system of checks-and-balances.

The proposed new Constitution was eventually ratified by the required majority of nine of the thirteen states in 1788 but only after the Massachusetts Compromise was adopted which required the inclusion of expressed rights, which were eventually adopted in 1791 as the first ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights.

Now having said all this, what is not always appreciated is that the US Constitution is not what governs the people of the United States of America. The US is not a Democracy but a Republic, and its constitution is a document intended to preserve the rights of the people by creating a government to do so. The US Constitution is not what governs the people, but what governs those who govern the people.

In a Democracy, one’s liberties can be mandated out of existence as happened to Socrates in Athens. Deemed a threat for his moral positions that might doesn’t make right, he was sentenced to death. On the other hand, even in an oligarchy as the ancient Rome Republic was, outspoken critics such as Cato and Cicero were not subject to the mob as was Socrates, although both eventually fell in harm’s way when that Republic fell with them; lessons learned….maybe.

What the Founders understood and wanted was to assure that liberty is not something government can exercise power over, but something it has no power to control. Much is often said about what the Founders intended, which at best is assumptive even though they left ample writings regarding this, but what is definitive is what the constitution says. There will always be interpretations, but the meaning of the words in the constitution is that of the time in which it was written, just as the meaning of the words of an amendment to the constitution is that of the time in which it was written.

The failure of the constitution to address slavery, a word that it didn’t even contain until 1865, was not only a moral failure on the part of the Founders, but created circumstances that nearly destroyed the Republic. That failure does not diminish its value as a protection of liberty, as it was for the Civil Rights Movement and remains so today.

Proposals that rights need to be “regulated” are presented as safeguards, when in fact they are a subterfuge to diminish rights; to propose such things is to expand power, but acceptance is an admission that the burden of liberty is too much to bear, the ultimate surrender of self. Such proposals are often incremental or peripheral, eroding liberty away over time and at the edges; unfortunately there are those that seem content to accept them like poisons that make them least sick, seldom questioning why they should take poison at all.

We often hear that in life we need to be prepared to compromise, to negotiate for an outcome that enables a mutually beneficial result. This is a valid practice in a transactional process such as business and in the settlement of civil disputes, but not regarding the rights of individuals, no matter how small a minority, and there’s no smaller a minority than the individual.

There is no guarantee in a Republic, no matter how clear and strong its constitutional foundation, against corruption. Often in political science we see comparative analyses between the US Republic and the Roman Republic. In some respects this is a valid thesis as the Roman Republic was also formed by a revolt against monarchy, had a written constitution, and a representative system of government. Unfortunately the US Republic has shown that it also has, like the Roman Republic, tendencies to oligarchy and ochlocracy, which have also led to a warfare and welfare state. We can only hope that the process will redirect away from the ultimate decent to totalitarianism as was the case with Rome.

There is another less known political phenomenon, not actually a system in the same sense as discussed above, but accurately descriptive called Kleptocracy, which is a government of corrupt leaders that use their power to exploit a nation’s people and resources for their personal wealth and political power. It’s closely allied with Democracy in that it can manipulate majority rule to this purpose. To do so with a Republic, you first need to insinuate Democracy into the fabric of a Republic’s institutions.

This corruption must come from within as this method is not overt as that would appear treasonous as if supporting a foreign agenda. It must also be incremental so as not to appear radical, and evolutionary as if it were a natural progression of development, replacing what is now deemed no longer valid or applicable to current circumstances.

In reality it is not that circumstances have changed so much as people’s perceptions, and they are easier to influence than the immutable principles of liberty. The slogans used to do so have varied over time, the current one being social justice, best described by Fredric Hayek as “The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal.” Contrary to that is the idea of liberty in which true justice does not allow some people to have rights that are created by denying other people their rights, in essence the rule of law.

The US Judicial Branch of government as John Adams stated is a separate and independent institution, the guardians of liberty against any acts of the other branches contrary to the constitution; members take an oath, similar to all those in government to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;…” It is not an ambiguous oath, and it does not allow for interpretations as to what the constitution is but as it is. Regarding rights, thankfully the first ten amendments were added despite early objections as to their need based on the Constitution’s expressed powers. There was a sense of foresight in that based on the Founders’ experience with power and its tendency to corrupt, and their aversion to democracy’s tendency for mob rule over the rule of law.

It is clear from the construction of government under the constitution that the Founders did not find democracy accommodative to liberty, but a corruption to rule by the will of the people as a threat to liberty. Therefore, the government created was constrained or limited in its powers in order to best protect against violations of the rights of individuals.

With the growing emphasis on the popular vote, elections today appear more as a poll taken on policy than a process of representative selection. The principle of democracy suggests that collective decisions according to the will of the majority are now more relevant than the principles of liberty found in the constitution, which is the basis of our Republic.

The two major political parties in the US have abandoned the principles of our constitution in a dangerous polarization war for power. What we have as a choice in the upcoming election is Allende ala Biden versus Peron ala Trump, two versions of the same disease putting our Republic on life support, and providing the prognosis for a future with the lesser of two evils; essentially, pick your poison.

The Welfare State

The indebtedness of a nation is an impoverishment if its people, not a manifestation of justice.

“The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” Frederic Bastiat, 19^th C French economist.

Every new law to create yet another entitlement is the result of some fabricated right at the expense of another’s rights. Rights are not a zero sum game, some transactional exercise, but are those things that define what it means to own oneself.

What is taking all of what someone produces with their own labor called? The answer is slavery. What do you call taking a portion of what someone produces with their own labor? Would that be proportional slavery? If you say no, you have a paradox; at what point is the proportion taken not slavery? Whether legalized by a dictator’s decree or a democratic mandate, taking reduces people to slavery, making them chattel of the state.

While no one overtly proposes slavery as a means to create welfare, there are those that propose taking the fruits of another’s labor in order to provide for the “common good”, an ambiguous term that reduces people to a collective entity that must be protected from, well themselves. This patronizing concept is another example of power lust, a twin to the Warfare State and just as insidious.

It does not matter what altruistic goal is proposed, the eventual outcome has always proven the same as over time the Welfare State will evolve into a dystopia we know as totalitarianism; this is the empirical lesson of history, and cloaking it in terms of invented rights will not prevent the conclusion. Taking under such disingenuous systems like Democratic Socialism is justified under the pretense that you have a say in the matter, which is a delusion and another case of democracy not being a safeguard for liberty.

Consider the popular platitude called “social justice” as a justification for the Welfare State. My concept of justice is that I keep what I earn, and you do the same; if that is not so, then how much of what I earn is yours, and why is that called justice? If taking the fruits of one’s labor without their consent is not theft, then it would follow that all thieves have to do is form a government to legalize it….wait a minute….OK, I get it.

Often the misconception of such rights evolves from the misunderstanding of opportunity; it is true for example that those born into a rich family have an advantage in opportunities, but that does not represent an injustice any more than a speedier runner in a track meet. No one who is blessed with an accident of birth in wealth or speed should ever be punished for their good fortune as such is luck in life. Likewise those that have had success in pursuing an opportunity are no less entitled to their rights than those that have failed; opportunity does not guarantee success, only risk.

These are seemingly axiomatic realities, yet they are dismissed by advocates for the Welfare State because they represent obstacles for the “common good”. Should you remind them that liberty includes the right to the pursuit of happiness, they will denounce you as selfish as that’s just another example of capitalist oppression. Should you counter with the argument that it’s the entrepreneur who takes the risk, creates the jobs, bears the costs of failure and if successful creates the wealth that grows the economy, you will be told that you are an outdated reactionary as that economic system is no longer functional because in government we have the means to grow the economy without the risk of failure. Should you point out to them that this has never worked, be prepared to be shouted down as an enemy of progress and equality. What caused this Bizzaro World of a new American culture?

The apparent enemy of this twisted phenomenon is liberty because it’s only a guarantee of equality before the law; in all other things liberty provides for each individual the right to exercise their free will. In truth that can result in a chaotic situation as there is no guarantee that people will choose what we may objectively judge to be the right choice for them, only that they are the only ones who have the right to choose what they judge to be in their own interests.

The alternative is to not allow them liberty and make their choices for them; the fact that this is the essence of slavery is lost in the pursuit of this equality in all things, creating rights for every aspect of life. To do this requires the force of law, and the enemies of liberty are united in that agenda; doing so ignores the fact that if force is required to promote your ideal, then there is an inherent and fatal flaw with that ideal as compulsion is not compassion, it’s authoritarianism.

It has been argued that the constitution mandates welfare based on its stated purpose. The reference made is actually in the preamble, which the Supreme Court correctly made clear is not an independent source of rights, and further that “general welfare” means the good of all citizens, and not an open-ended mandate for Congress, and that the only good that applies to all citizens is freedom, and that government’s proper role is the protection of that freedom.

So how then to fund the government for these protections of freedom without a taking of the fruits of one’s labor? As the Constitution actually forbade direct income taxes (except during crises such as the Civil War, but then suspended) prior to the 16^th Amendment, the US utilized tariffs, sales taxes, customs duties, excise taxes, land sales, and fees with which it managed to do so. Except in times of war, the US balanced its budget up to 1901, but ran in the red nearly every year since. The indebtedness of a nation is an impoverishment if its people, not a manifestation of justice.

The Warfare State

“…to get power you need a crisis…”

“Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Indeed, it is a part of the general patterns of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.”

Can you guess the author of the above quote? While it’s insightful to know who said this, he would agree I’m sure that it’s more important to understand the message; to understand that we need to work backwards, starting with the phrase regarding the fear of peace. Why would anyone fear peace, especially the leaders of our country?

Power is the currency of politicians who are not exactly working to the benefit of their constituents but for their own advancement. For them, crisis is not a problem, it’s an opportunity. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s Chief-of-Staff, once advised “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Can you imagine in the absence of any crisis what such politicians would do? You don’t need imagination, just observation – they would create one.

This phenomenon is not something new; try the Spanish American War, followed soon thereafter by US entry into the Great War, which in effect was the cause of WWII, which led to the Korean War, then the Viet Nam War, then the Iraqi Wars, and the never ending Afghanistan War. Wars are expensive, so little wonder that Ron Paul once observed that “It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.” If you’re politicians playing this bloody game, you need a big bank, and so the Federal Reserve is there for you.

The author of the opening quote was Five Star General Douglas McArthur, who served in all the above wars through to and including the Korean War. He was one of only five generals to ever rise to the rank of General of the Army, clearly a man we can rely on to know what he’s talking about.

So how did a republic devolve into a statist organism capable of manipulating such a carefully crafted balance of power, designed to prevent the realization of such a distorted vision of purpose from peaceful productivity to a war machine? It was an evolutionary process, so it did take time. It can be argued that the root of this evil was sown in the immoral neglect allowing slavery to continue despite our revolution against tyranny, eventually leading to the ultimate crisis of the Civil War, out of which ashes emerged a different nation whose political structure was tragically altered toward more centralized power, ironically the key development for statism to repress the very liberty for which the war was fought.

In his famous 1952 article entitled “The Rise of Empire” Garet Garrett, American journalist, outlined what he called the “Hallmarks of Empire”, summarized as the dominance of executive power, subordination of domestic policy to foreign policy, ascendancy of the military, development of foreign satellite or proxy regimes, and vaunting and fear.

While the above have become obvious in our current politics it is the last that illustrates the tragic end game of The Warfare State. It’s about a nation whose leaders spun and sold the illusion of a manifest destiny but now finds itself a victim of its own misguided policy, having become the world’s policeman at the expense of its own liberty, security and economic wellbeing.

While it was not inevitable that our Republic would descend into imperialism, it is obvious that it has. Until Americans realize that Statism thrives on war, whereas a truly free country thrives on peace and prosperity, we are doomed to endless wars. These wars are sold to us like Crusades where sold to Christian Europe to free the Holy Land, when in fact it was all about looting and pillage; now it’s really about things like oil, preservation of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, spreading democracy, throw in an occasional humanitarian cause, nation building, catering to despotic allies…….any interventionist cause and fabricated crisis that provides the opportunity to grab more power.

Interventionism is bred into both of our major political parties although their methods at times differ as some work toward the Welfare State to harvest their power, a topic for another post; regardless of their labels and methods these politicians are the same, so to get power you need a crisis, and if there isn’t one create it, if there is one don’t let it go to waste.

If that sounds like gang talk, well it is; listen to a Polish lawyer, author, and political philosopher who went through the pain of living under such a gang and working for the liberation from one of the biggest imperial powers in Europe known as the USSR. “What makes the difference between a gang and a state is the belief that there is a difference between a gang and a state.” Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Like Manna From Heaven

Manna is an illusion, and like all illusions it passes with time.

Manna, depending on one’s beliefs was either a biblical event, or a metaphor about God providing sustenance for the Israelites in their time of need. Today we’ve all heard the term helicopter money, a metaphor about money seemingly dropped from above, falling as if it’s Manna from Heaven.

The reality is a bit more sobering. The most useful tool for the Feds and the UST was actually invented about 570 years ago; it’s called the printing press. It was not thought of as a magical tool to create money, but one to better disseminate knowledge, which shows you how dishonest governments can be, like drug addicts pretending they don’t have an addiction.

There are many measures and definitions of the “money supply”, and they differ in some respects among economists and from country to country, but we will use the following for simplicity and clarity in what we are measuring and comparing.

MB, the monetary base, is equivalent to the actual sum of currency held by the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve as defined by all banks and other depository institutions in their accounts at the Federal Reserve.

M0 is equivalent to the coins and paper currency held by the public, i.e. outside of the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve banks and the vaults of depository institutions, in circulation plus any deposits which can be converted into cash.

M1 is equivalent to M0 plus checkable or demand and other deposits of the public held at commercial banks, savings and loans associations, savings banks, credit unions and similar items like traveler’s checks.

M2 is equivalent to M1 plus money market funds and deposits, certificates of deposit and other time deposits, but excludes long-term deposits like retirement accounts.

M3 is equivalent to M2 plus long-term deposits like retirement accounts.

As you may imagine, much of this money in the broader supply categories is not actually physical, but virtual as in digital form. Given that all currencies in the world are now “fiat”, i.e. money by decree, you get one layer of imaginary money on top of another; that’s another topic to be addressed separately. For now let’s just keep it simple and compare the MB and the M1 over the short period of December 2019 to July 2020.

In December 2019, the MB was $3.40T, where as in July 2020 it’s $4.70T, a 38% increase. In December 2019, the M1 was $3.98T, where as in July 2020 it’s $5.33T, a 34% increase. Please note that these amounts are staggeringly higher than just a decade before, so those printing presses were really working hard!

Are we fooled into thinking that the “public” as noted in the M1 definition was suddenly blessed with a magical 34% increase in wealth? Nice try, but we can’t be that dumb….can we?

While manna maybe a literary anachronism, there are people that sincerely believe this bloated monetary policy is something necessary to provide the American people sustenance in a time of need. After all, isn’t that what we hear from our politicians, corporate leaders, financial gurus, so called economic experts and the bobble head media? Yes, for the most part sadly it is, but therein is the problem because while it may be a quick fix for debt addiction, it’s a sure way to impoverish a nation in the long run, only now the long run is getting closer by the millions. As of this month, the debt of the US exceeds its GDP, and will likely grow ever more beyond that; obviously that can’t be sustainable.

Critics have rightfully expressed concern that this policy of monetizing debt is a fool’s game, one that has never worked as empirically evident historically and in current times; it only perpetuates but does not solve the problem anymore than a drug addict ignoring the fact that the end game will be far worse than the pain of kicking the habit.

Don’t expect the critics to have any impression on either major political party; they are both intent on buying votes with more printing press stupidity, intoxicated with the cheap liquor of fake money; apparently the only thing they learn from history is how to avoid learning anything from history.

So then what is the solution? There’s no denying that it would be painful, froth with severe withdrawal symptoms. Shrinking the money supply will tighten credit, raising interest rates, as it did under Volker a few decades ago. There will be bankruptcies as the zombie companies and over indebted individuals face insolvency. Governments will need to become fiscally responsible, balancing budgets as their source of funds is reduced to taxation, a politically toxic alternative, not to mention economically counterproductive to recovery.

Which brings us to the ultimate natural control mechanism for preventing the Fed and the UST doing the same thing all over again assuming the above solution is engaged, i.e. a monetary standard, whether gold or some equivalent. Along with that, we need to shut down the Fed; it has been nothing more than a tool for the cronyism of government and business, particularly Wall Street, creating ever more inequality economically, the enemy of a true free market.

I can hear the snickers of the elitist power brokers in our moribund institutions dismissing such radical ideas as impractical or outdated; what they may or may not realize is that if it doesn’t happen the old fashion way, there is an alternative that will happen anyway as the world has come to accept cryptocurrencies. It’s just a matter of time before this technological revolution of digital gold, which like its physical twin can’t be manipulated, will dump fiat currencies on the trash heap of counterfeit money.

Manna is an illusion, and like all illusions it passes with time.

# LikeMannaFromHeaven

Silence of the Damned

With so much protests going on about us, why is there relative silence about the suppression of free speech? Such silence will surely damn America like a cancer causing the destruction of our cultural and social values. As Mark Twain said “The truth hurts but silence kills.”

What is it about Edward Snowden that scares the NSA so much? After all, what he released seven years ago is already in the public domain, and much of it disclosed what should be deemed illegal activities by that organization to begin with. He was a true whistle blower, and the American people should embrace him as a hero, not a traitor. His actions were a protest against our government’s obscene surveillance and invasions of privacy of Americans. I think exposing that scares those that are up to no good.

Amazingly Trump is considering pardoning Snowden. That is likely motivation due to his feud with the intelligence community regarding his dealings with Russia and the Ukraine, but you take whatever good comes along and pardoning Snowden would be a good thing.

Snowden had supporters in Congress, such as Ron Paul, who stated “My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal, or confirm, that the US Government views you and me as the enemy.” That’s a chilling insight we need to seriously consider.

Snowden was charged under, among other statutes, the Espionage Act of 1917. That was a shameful law that was meant to silence protest about the US entry into the Great War; the most shameful episode was the acquiescence of the Supreme Court in Schenck v. United States. Schenck was protesting through the distribution of pamphlets, the same publication medium as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense during the American Revolution. The Courts twisted logic in finding against Schenck was a repudiation of free speech if there ever was one. We currently face a tsunami of forces against free speech.

Politically we face the likely revision to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Oddly enough the original purpose of that legislation was to restrict free speech on the internet that was deemed “obscene”, but it also included this section which protected social media as an open public platform against law suits about what someone may publish that anyone found offensive. Now both Democrats and Republicans want to change that as they seek to silence free voices that may criticize them.

Academically there’s the very troubling phenomenon on college campuses where opinions expressed by students and faculty that fellow students and teachers find offensive often results in censorship, suspension, firing and expulsion. How can institutions of higher learning not support free expression, the very essence of intellectual development?

Socially, we are not doing much better. Consider for a moment the Antifa movement, which openly espouses that the very concept of free speech is a tool of “liberal” suppression. The term liberal here does not refer to a political spectrum of modern politics but that of the Enlightenment. That the acronym Antifa stands for Anti-Fascism is another Bizzaro World reversal of our times. Also be aware of the “woke” movement which seeks to suppress any free expression that someone finds “threatening”; well there’s a slippery slope that can’t lead to anything good.

The mass media has not been very helpful here; they are supposed to represent an essential element of democracy as a free press but in fact have deteriorated into political advocacy contrary to objective journalism. This failure aids in polarization and provides an open door for interference from bad actors like Russian and Chinese agents. The effectiveness of those actions increases in the absence of reliable information.

Soon we will see political debates as a lead up to the 2020 elections. It’s troubling that both major parties are actively working to prevent the inclusion of third party candidates, even initiating law suits in that effort. This is not an encouraging development in support of free speech. Americans have a right to hear from all those seeking public office and a true democratic process requires an informed electorate.

Regardless of your political position, keep in mind that free of speech is the foundation of liberty which provides you with the right to even have a political position. A lack of support for free speech is a silence that will damn that right to an empty phrase.

Panicdemic

It’s been a while since I last posted on my blog, but it has been time well spent catching up on so many things I should have done well before the pandemic, as I’m sure is the same for many of you.

I hope you are all doing well, and that includes not panicking over COVID19; the real pandemic that it causes is stress. As my long time doctor has told me, the ultimate cause of poor health long term is stress.

While I don’t believe our administration for a moment regarding this pandemic, I find all those that are indulging in panic, especially the talking heads in politics and the media, to be irresponsible, causing undue stress.

We need to keep our eye on the long run, an aide to which is a look back in history. Consider a century ago when the worst pandemic of modern times, known as the Spanish Flu, hit the world just as the Great War came to an end – timing is everything.

The world population at that time was about 1.8B. Total cases are estimated at about 500M, and deaths at about 50M. This provides some perspective given an infection rate of 27.7% and a mortality rate of 10% of cases, equivalent to 2.7% of the world population; staggering statistics.

Not to minimize COVID19, but comparatively we currently have a world population of 7.8B; as of today total infections are at 14.3M, and deaths at 603K. That’s an infection rate of .18%, and a mortality rate of 4.3% of cases, equivalent to .0077% of the world population. This mortality rate is close to SARS, while MERS was a staggering 34.4%.

While we can contribute the lower rates to better disease protocols, clearly COVID19 is the lesser of the modern era viral epidemics; here are some things to consider that fed in to this panic:

Much of the early market sell-off came from large institutional investors like pensions, hedge funds, and investment banks, which represent the majority of investment and employ algorithmic trading platforms that automatically move with headline news. We saw this before with MERS and SARS, two earlier Coronas, but not to this extent; that the media creates headlines that can cause such panic was clear.
It didn’t help that the FED cut rates drastically as that only added to the panic. Besides, I doubt interest rate cuts cure diseases, has not really helped economically except to keep Zombie companies afloat a little longer, lower debt service for the Federal Government, and feeds Wall Street frenzies, but this definitely hits fixed incomes really hard and does little for the average American worker.
Stimulus programs sound good, but only work short term and ultimately cause capital dislocations away from productivity; the long results will definitely cause panic.
The Fed’s practice of monetizing debt will only extend the recovery period as it did with QE in the 2008 Financial Crisis; professing an “all-in” policy is actually a sign of panic, essentially admitting that all you can do is react to whatever comes about, which is no policy at all.
It only adds to the panic to hear people discount concerns based on false and irrelevant information in the face of simple statistical evidence. When Trump said that he didn’t know that people could die from a virus, it was very disconcerting to find out his own grandfather did! This kind of stuff from the leadership level does not instill confidence.
Medical experts and history tell us that COVID19, which is particularly contagious, will spread out everywhere, which is true, it’s what viruses do, so I have little faith in containment plans; they may help “flatten the curve” in the short term, but ultimately this virus will run its course.
What we need is testing, which not only provides reliable statistical information, but critical analyses and medical protocols for treatments and to help develop a vaccine. Would you believe that with all their hype the media failed to report what MIT published, i.e. that the FDA had initially disallowed local laboratories to conduct testing and required specimens to be sent to the CDC? Finally under intense congressional pressure with the release of MIT’s report the FDA relented on February 29th and changed this policy. What was the FDA thinking getting in the way of medical science? Dumb question right, it’s what they do.
The predictions by experts of millions of Americans dying from COVID19 caused some states to lockdown businesses, depriving many from livelihoods without which they could not live; such panic mongering is even more lethal than the virus itself, but why do we not hear more about the gross miscalculations?
The hyperbole about vaccine development is causing both euphoria and panic; we need a measured analysis for some clarity on this critical issue.

The list goes on, but I will follow what my doctor of 40 years told me – keep clean, keep good health habits, follow hygienic protocols and don’t panic as that creates stress that will definitely make you sick…..and live your life.

And from my financial advisor, don’t look at your retirement plans for about a year, that will definitely stress you out.

The Balkanization of America

We must acknowledge and respect our differences, not ridicule them from partisan perspectives.

Why is there increasing noise in social media about the topic of secession? In order to discuss secession itself, we need to understand this question and the answer; that can be difficult given all that “noise”, and the fact that civil discourse is absent from any debate, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored.

Let’s not get hung up on the simplistic notion that this is just another crisis of the Age of Trump; this goes back much further than the current administration. The list of significant such movements in the US is about a dozen and range geographically across the country from Vermont to Hawaii. The impetus for such movements range from cultural, social, political and economic issues, and support secessions of counties within states all the way to groups of states seceding from the Union.

A common theme is the reaction to the imposition of culture, laws and attitudes dictated from above, meaning not representative of a particular local area. The “above” is perceived as Washington DC, i.e. the Federal Government. The imposition resented comes from the politically elite in the urban areas of the Northeast and Pacific Coast.

The resulting social and political dynamic reviving and driving these movements is polarization. With the advent of social media, these movements have grown and the synergy created with technology back feeds into even more support; it’s like a chimeric growth with an indeterminate evolution, but decidedly alienating.

So this in turn leads to the issue of secession itself, an issue that we assumed was settled with the Civil War. However, from a constitutional perspective, that may be only an assumption. The Constitution provides a clear path for a territory to become a state of the Union, but is silent on the issue of secession. That curious fact has been explained variously by many scholars, but not conclusively.

Foremost against secession we have the Supreme Court 1869 ruling in Texas v. White; the case was about US bond sales and redemptions by Texas during the Civil War, and not specifically about Texas’ right to secede from the Union. However the case presented the Supreme Court with an opportunity, so it ruled that the sale was illegal because it occurred at the time of secession, which in turn it deemed illegal stating that the Constitution did not permit states to unilaterally secede from the United States. That is true as the Constitution says nothing about secession, so unilateral or not, permission or prohibition, it is not addressed.

Some scholars have argued that the court should have gone further as it did not address the fact that the Constitution did not speak against secession. Obviously, having just had a bloody civil war about secession and with the South still under Reconstruction governance, the court found itself compelled to take a stand against secession or put the entire outcome in jeopardy. However, by not addressing the issue of the Constitution’s silence on secession, it lost the opportunity to resolve that issue in regards to powers not expressed and therefore reserved to the States.

Regardless of which way you may argue the issue, it remains that the Constitution to this day is silent on secession, does not provide an expressed power, and has not had an amendment to resolve that. On that basis those promoting the right of secession make their case.

Taken all together, we have a Balkanization of America. I chose that phrase based on its definition, i.e. a geopolitical term for the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or uncooperative with one another. The term evolved during the many periods of fragmentation of the Balkans from the time of the Byzantine Empire’s collapse to that of the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

Well by definition we certainly have Balkanization going on in America today, and the current economic collapse will only exacerbate the underlying causes even further. It is difficult to separate the growing polarization from this issue as therein lay both the cause and the possible solution.

Let’s start with the simple premise that when developing policies of governance, especially for a country as large and diverse as America, we can’t take an approach that one size fits all; by definition it can’t work in governance any more than in shoe making since no matter what you’re excluding more people than you are serving.

Government works best to serve the people when it operates at the most localized level to the people involved, i.e. state and county, city and town. This is how the US was originally constructed through the constitution and therein lies the way to understand how polarization starts and grows to the extremes we have today.

With the growth of the Federal government, specifically its assumptions of powers despite restrictions within the Constitution, we have conflict through intervention in areas of governance that belong at the state and local levels, an assumption of powers never intended even by the Federalists and certainly feared by Jeffersonians. It is this growth of the Federal Government and its attendant powers that is the underlying cause of the alienation tearing the Republic apart.

Knowing the problem and its cause informs us for a solution. We need to face and collegially embrace the fact that we are a union of various States, each representing its own unique history, culture, social and political characteristics. We must acknowledge and respect our differences, not ridicule them from partisan perspectives. We must embrace our common values, chiefly our respect for individual freedom as guaranteed by the Constitution, the rule of law and the protection of individual lives, liberties and private properties. There should be no more debate about the Bill of Rights; it was the one thing that enabled the ratification of the Constitution, thanks to the insistence of the New England states, the birth place of the Revolution.

This means an existential shift in the direction of our political institutions away from nationalistic agendas to localized prerogatives; for a truly civil society, when it comes to government, less is truly more.

This should not be dismissed as wishful thinking as this is what our Republic is based on, what the Revolution was fought for, and what the Civil War was intended to preserve. If we do not do these things, polarization will only get worse and we will face the inevitable prospect of Balkanization.

#balkanizationamerica

Looking For America

It was the late 60’s. It was a time of strife, a time of the civil rights and anti-war movements, a time that tore at the fabric of American society, raising conflict between patriotism and moral indignation, racism and rights, older and younger generations; it was a time of turbulence.

In such an environment a bunch of us CCNY college kids embarked on an adventure that in looking back bordered on insanity. One summer we took off in seriously challenged cars, with little resources, on a journey across America. There was no real plan accept a general route to go South, then Northwest, then Southwest, then North again along the Pacific coast, and then East toward home. This caravan of young devil-may-care wanders sometimes split up, often got lost, but always kept the faith that this journey was the right path, the way to better know our country. We were city kids who knew nothing beyond our home, but we had a desire to understand a country that in many ways baffled us.

Some nearly four months and 15,000 miles later we definitely had different perspectives, but perhaps were even more baffled than before. How, we wondered, was this country held together? The diversity, complexity and sometimes contradictions of such a huge place seemed as if we had passed through different countries. However, through it all we also felt a commonality with everyone we met, seldom experiencing hostility of any kind.

Looking at all the polarization, conflict and violence in the country today, I would not now take that journey again. The bridges that would not burn then are now destroyed as the country devolves into one cataclysmic event after another, a dystopia so prevalent that I don’t know if I could find that America of my youth again. The strife for civil rights, a movement so established as non-violent, principled in liberty and equality before the law by people like Martin Luther King Jr., has been replaced with demagogues calling for the violence plaguing many cities and towns across the country, met by various white supremacists just waiting for an excuse to exacerbate the situation in to even more hate and violence.

Maybe it’s the maturation into family and parenthood, but I suspect that even if I was not blessed with any of that, I wouldn’t do it again. It’s not the lack of a sense of adventure as that has thankfully never left me. In recent years past my wife and I would travel to Europe, rent a car and found the best way to get to know another country is to get lost in it.

Rather it’s a sense of loss that the America I knew in my youth is gone, and likely will not be coming back anytime soon. It’s not just that things have changed that disturbs me, but that people seem lost. I hear complaints from my generation that millennials have no sense of purpose, just entitlement. But these are our children who we sent to universities, exploding the higher education population exponentially, but we never bothered to understand that we created institutions that provided the corrosive misconceptions that led to a state of delusion, negativity and hostility. Understanding that helps explain what Mark Twain meant when he said “I was educated once; it took me years to get over it.”

While there are many elements to the devolution of American society, its roots are as old as the nation itself. That the Founders began without living up to the very principles they espoused was evident in the existence of slavery, a delusion that would inevitably cause a bloody Civil War and social conflict to this day. The miseducation that racism is just if in the interest of a greater good it is a means to equality is also a delusion, a denial that evil regardless of intent is still evil.

The belief that economics is a tool and not a natural phenomenon of human society creates the delusion that equality of means can be achieved through coercion, a misconception that capitalism is a cause as opposed to a result. As Milton Friedman once explained “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

There are other elements in the educational paradigm that have created in much of our society misconceptions of what liberty is, and a rejection of the humanism from which it arises. To believe in liberty is to believe that every individual has the right to pursue their own interests, even if you find those interests to be contrary to your own, or even to someone else’s interests. It is the freedom to even make your own mistakes as long as you accept the consequences.

This is what has changed from the America of my youth. But even more that just these misconceptions perhaps is the attitude that those that disagree with these delusions do not have in fact the right to do so. Gone is the spirit that you can disagree with what someone says, but defend their right to say it. This loss of belief in liberty was recently expressed well in a statement by the American economist Thomas Sowell on a recent tweet:

“Too many people today act as if no one can honestly disagree with them. If you have a difference of opinion with them, you are considered to be not merely in error, but in sin. You are a racists, a homophobe or whatever the villain of the day happens to be.”

Perhaps this is the main cause of our societal ills, the willingness to demonize, dismiss, and cancel someone because you feel threatened by something they represent or say. This polarization of Americans into competing camps of right-think, and the delusion that they have the right to use coercion to establish the dominance of their beliefs, either through violence such as what we see on the streets of our cities, or by political will through what we call democracy in voting politicians to power to legislate for your positons or against those of others, is the essence of anarchy and authoritarianism.

This growth of statism is a symptom of a society in trouble of losing its civility and sense of good will to its citizens, and yet it’s odd that you hear the opposite from those that propose that the state can be the solution. The late Murray Rothbard expressed this best when he said “Irony is a statist calling an anarchist a threat to society.”

What Americans need to do is take a big time out, readily doable in a pandemic, and get to a quiet place of mind and think about a positive approach to life, devoid of fear and its companion hate, to understand that the pursuit of happiness is a right, not a guarantee and never a justification to impose your beliefs on your fellow man. Perhaps then we can find America.

Democracy Is Not Liberty

If you disagree with this assertion, you need to understand that democracy is a political system, as in a form of government, whereas liberty is a state of human existence. Unfortunately any form of government, democratic or otherwise, can impose oppressive restrictions on liberty.

This is an important concept of political and sociological science; in the context of current American politics and society it’s an existential issue. No government actually gives you liberty as it’s something you are born with, and therefore no government, no matter its political system, has the right to take it away. Actually governments have no rights, only the powers its people give it, and therein lays the existential issue.

So apparently the political solution would be to protect against a government oppressing liberty, right? Better yet, define why government is even necessary to begin with; after all, if government is the main threat to liberty, the obvious solution is not to have one, right? Well anarchists have used that argument for millennia, but I believe that would also raise an existential issue, specifically how do you protect against coercive threats, external or internal, to liberty?

So to distill the many arguments for and against government we come down to the issue of coercion, which is inherently evil because by its very nature it seeks to reduce the individual to nothing more than a means to achieve the goals of someone else, like a thief or a group such as a political party.

Now take the last example since we are talking about politics and liberty. What difference does it make if the coercion is a product of a dictatorship or a democratic mandate? This is not an argument against government; it’s an argument against coercion. The true and only justification then for government is to protect all its citizens against coercion, both foreign and domestic. Using force against invasion of your country or invasion of your home is self-defense. A government that Initiates force against another country or its own citizens is therefore by definition oppressive.

In the democratic process it is assumed that the rule of the majority is necessarily a good thing, as it is and expression of freedom; that is a false positive in defense of liberty. If something is wrong, it does not become good because the majority say so. If the majority votes to entitle them to something they have not earned, then it is of necessity at the expense of someone else who has consequently lost that measure of liberty.

In a truly free society, the concept of what is a greater good is not a justification for the use of coercion, whether by dictate or mandate. Currently we are bombarded with the nonsensical proposition of social justice, an excuse for the use of coercion to create equality in all things; it is the most corrosive phenomenon against liberty, yet it is the sacred cow of those that consider themselves “Progressive”, an oxymoronic label considering it is actually regressive. Do Progressives realize that their proposition destroys liberty, the very essence of what it means to be human and an individual?

What does equality in the context of social justice even mean? If it means that we are all equal before the law, great; apparently that is not the case as it proposes that all humans are equal in all things. Such a concept is contrary to humanism; we are all individuals and not some homogenous entity. To reduce humanity to such sameness creates a dystopia antithetical to liberty.

Politically such a phenomenon, if enacted by mandate, proves Floyd Arthur Harper’s warning that “The citizens of a democracy have in their hands the tools by which to enslave themselves.”

Silence of the Damned

#Silence