Libera Voce

“People who pride themselves on their ‘complexity’ and deride others for being ‘simplistic’ should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.” Thomas Sowell (Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays)

According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2022, Americans have become very skeptical of what they hear and read from mass and social media, placing the US with the lowest credibility among the nations studied at 26%; this is understandable given the dominance of “Advocacy Journalism”, a reporting philosophy for the profession to move beyond accuracy to truth. The simple question that then arises is how do you get to the truth if you bypass accuracy? Whatever happened to the simple Walter Cronkite creed of “And that’s the way it is.”

The faults of modern journalism are a result of, and not the cause for, our societal decline; the simplest explanation as to the cause is a cultural shift that prioritizes subjective feelings over objective facts. This leads to all sorts of conflicts as logic and reason can no longer serve in the interests of civil discourse. Everything becomes the subject of what someone finds offensive regardless of the facts, such to an extreme that, as the famous author Christopher Hitchens lamented, “I’m very depressed how in this country you can be told ‘That’s offensive’ as though those two words constitute an argument.”

This syndrome of hysteria and irrationality has been labeled “Wokeness”, which is kind of odd as it appears more like sleepwalking into oblivion. I have read in various articles that things like “Critical Race Theory”, “Modern Monetary Theory”, “Intersectionality” and “Gender Identity” are very complex concepts that are beyond the understanding of simple people and require a re-education due to the prejudices and misconceptions inherent in Western Civilization; does this mean that concepts like liberty, reason and other shared and sensible values are to be denied because they are offensive to someone?

Recently I heard a phrase coined by Doctor Phillip McGraw, a clinical psychologist, known more popularly as Dr. Phil, i.e., “Tyranny of the Fringe”; he was addressing how this minority of “influencers”, “experts”, whatever name you wish, dominate mass and social media with their “narratives” rather than facts. Intelligent people need facts, not doctrines; the less we get of the former and the more we get of the latter, the less informed we actually are.

The simplest explanation for whatever happens is usually the correct one, provided it’s supported by the facts, not opinion; it’s not complicated. Walter Cronkite always maintained the highest level of integrity by reporting the facts regardless of the consequences, advising journalists that, “In the end, no matter what ideologies or causes motivate journalists, nobody will put faith in us if we fail to get the story right.”

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” Vladimir Lenin. 

Over the past few weeks, we have had an assassination attempt, a political coup, and abuse and betrayal of an ally. We certainly are living in interesting times, but are we seeing these things as they are or as we are being told they are? If we look objectively at these events, we will be driven crazy by what they actually represent; well, crazy is better than stupid, so we should not be listening to those talking heads in a political galaxy far away from the reality in which we live.

We know very little about the assassination attempt on Trump other than who to blame, which we are told is the Secret Service. While it’s true that the agency in charge of this candidate’s security screwed up badly, that tells us little about the assassination itself. We know the who, and the how, but we don’t know the why, i.e., the motive, which would tell us whether or not others may have been involved. Think about why that is, especially with the shooter’s electronic devices in FBI possession. Whether or not a conspiracy is involved has not been determined, but the lack of transparency by both the Secret Service and the FBI serves to promote that perception.

Then we have Joe Biden quitting the presidential campaign, something he repeatedly swore he would never do. We are told that he was with family and close advisers when he decided to do so, and he later explained that he did so to save democracy. When political language consists of such vague references you know you’re being played. When someone can’t control reality, they talk about it the way they want you to see it. The reality is that being forced to resign is the same as being terminated; Biden didn’t quit, he was dumped, so what we have here is a political coup.

The regime change was deemed necessary by the leaders of the DNC because the party would lose power; who the power brokers are has been speculated, but the obvious beneficiary is Kamala Harris, a blatant sycophant of the wealthy and influential people in the progressive faction of the Democratic Party. This is such an obvious act of power grabbing that many Democrats are calling it out as illegal; what was the point of the primary or the upcoming convention if Biden’s delegates just roll over in a coronation?

While both of the above events are extremely disturbing, neither were successful; Trump is alive and Harris enters the race for president with some really bad baggage to carry. It was all too obvious that Joe Biden was fading fast, not just mentally but physically, although that hardly excuses the way he was treated; Harris would likely have been nominated, but the way this is happening is more like what we see in Russia and China.

Harris’ excused her absence yesterday as President of the Senate during a state visit by the leader of an ally because she had a speaking engagement at a sorority convention! It would take an unbelievable suspension of intelligence to not see what she did as a repudiation of Israel, a blatant act of anti-Semitism. The Hamas supporters protesting Netanyahu’s speaking to Congress was an exercise of free speech, but Harris’ absence was a dereliction of duty, and a betrayal of an ally.

But there’s so much more about this event that should be a far greater concern than Harris’ behavior.  Not only were there others in her party that snubbed the Israeli PM, but there is a history of it going even further back than the Hamas massacre of October 7^th. Compare the various receptions of Zelensky of Ukraine, a gushing display of political virtue signally for essentially a foreign regime with no treaty with or security interest for the US, with that afforded Netanyahu. As I said in my 06/20/23 post “Revolutionary Acts”, Ukraine is hardly a democracy, nor is Zelensky a beacon of liberty. The known Nazi Ukrainian oligarchs Ihor Kolomoisky and Mykola Zlochevsky are the main source of funds for the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, control Burisma, funded and directed Zelensky’s presidential campaign, and own the media conglomerate that made him famous. Zelensky has declared all other political parties illegal but his own, and controls Ukraine’s media.

The Biden administration has given Ukraine $107B to fight Russia, while conditionally giving Israel $12.5B to fight Hamas. Iran and their proxy Hamas espouse the very ideals of the Nazis, especially when it comes to Jews; what we have in Ukraine is a Neo-Nazi regime being funded with American taxpayer money. The American people should not accept a situation where we are being played as Nazi collaborators while betraying the one ally we have in the region.

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” George Orwell

“It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself.” Latin Proverb

The author of the above quote is unknown; given the behavior of the candidates from the two major parties, we certainly do not have anyone capable of ruling themselves. Dwight Eisenhower once said that “The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.” Given the history of these two contenders for America’s top leadership, integrity is not their strong point. Both Trump and Harris have a disturbing record of draconian autocracy.

To add to this sad situation, we have the slight-of-hand with Joe Biden “quitting” the race; while he explained his reasons a week later, it was not at all convincing especially because he swore many times that he would never quit. The power brokers in his party have been calling for Biden to step down ever since the debate a few weeks back; these are the same people who previously rejected every report of his cognitive decline as “fake news”. Biden did not resign, he was dumped; his party’s leaders feared that he would lose, and the threat of losing power is a stronger motivation for the elite than saving democracy.

It was inevitable that Biden was not going to be able to continue, and that Harris would take his place, which creates a unique problem for the DNC, i.e., either have a real convention for the nomination, or conduct a coronation; the former could make for more of a circus, the latter more of a coup. Regardless of which way it plays out it will serve to help Trump; if the Democratic Party either conducts another 1968 Chicago Convention or by-passes a democratic process to make Kamala their candidate, they will facture the party.

It is inevitable that democracy leads to the least common denominator, and so we are faced with a choice of Trump versus Harris; it is indisputable that a republic represents the best protection of liberty, yet here we are with Ben Franklin’s response to the question, what kind of government do we have, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Ben Franklin was being both humorous and ominous with that response; on the one hand the question was silly as it is for the people to protect the republic, yet on the other hand they have the ability to lose it.

Both major parties say they represent a revolution; what we need to be wary of is what happens with the revolution after this election; perhaps it is inevitable that, as George Orwell said, “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” We need to stop wasting our votes on these two major parties that have proven that their only objective is power; take the opportunity this election provides in voting for a third-party candidate that best represents your principles and remember that an unprincipled vote is the only wasted vote.

“We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.” Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson

Not one delegate to the Constitutional Convention ever claimed that the Constitution was perfect, but all claimed that they had serious issues with it and made those concerns public when presented to the people for ratification.  Some delegates were so opposed to ratification that they refused to sign it. Many of these concerns were about not having enough safeguards against government expanding powers beyond those enumerated. The reason for these concerns, and the limitations and/or balance of powers as structured in the Constitution, were based on the simple fact that no one is infallible.

In a recorded discussion between Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer, two men of different political party affiliation, they had total agreement on the simple fact that the role of the Supreme Court was to preserve, protect and interpret the Constitution, and to judge whether the laws passed by Congress and the judgements of others in cases brought before it were in accordance with the Constitution. Despite how much things may have changed in America since the ratification of the Constitution, the role of the Supreme Court has not.

Throughout US history, the Supreme Court has been criticized by political factions in opposition to their decisions; some civilly, but all too often inappropriately, especially when the criticism is not about the merits of the decision, but directed at the justices themselves. Such conduct is demeaning, not because the justices are incapable of error, but because it reduces the dialogue to malicious defamation rather than about the issues the decision addressed.

The recent criticisms of the immunity decision are examples of such willful ignorance or boorish partisan bias. The decision included the following from Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion in anticipation of partisan hyperbole:

“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive. The President therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy, or party.”

What became apparent following the decision was the willful ignorance and partisan bias by both the Trump and Biden campaigns, both claiming that it provided the president immunity from any action he may have committed. The majority opinion as summated by Roberts said no such thing, and in fact made clear that official acts were only those duties, responsibilities and powers as enumerated in the Constitution; this was ignored by both sides of the issue.  Regardless, the justices who provided both the majority and minority opinions were verbally assaulted, ignoring the fact that for the first time in US history, SCOTUS provided a decision regarding immunity for the actions of those in government. 

The immunity decision is a very foundational one and not to be confused by the political factions twisting it to their partisan bias. The fact that the only reference in the Constitution about immunity was in regards to the rights of the people was due to the Framers not imagining that sometime in the future there would be such a polarized political environment that people would no longer even bother to read the Constitution but rely on the echo chamber of partisan narratives. The decision is not only about enumerated powers, but the very reason for the separation and balance of powers as James Madison described:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Albert Einstein.

One of the main issues the “Framers of the Constitution” had to address was to write it in such a way as to avoid arcane or legalistic text as its passage depended so much on what the citizens of the new republic understood and agreed with; the issue came down to communication, i.e., keeping it simple. The Framers understood that simplicity provided for a perception of trust in contrast to complexity and ambiguity which provided for a perception of deceit. Constitutional scholars estimated that the reading level required to read and understand the US Constitution is approximately 8^th – 11^th grade, yet only 23% of Americans have read it; the US Constitution is not a difficult document to read, but is a difficult document to change, which are two things that do not endear it to politicians.

The “Framers of the Constitution” were James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. Madison wrote most of the constitution; all three were authors of the “Federalist Papers”, a publication of essays in support of ratification of the new constitution. When the Continental Convention was called by the Confederation Congress in 1787, the agenda issued for discussion was state versus federal powers, executive powers, representation, commerce, and slavery.

There was a presumption in that agenda regarding executive powers as the Articles of Confederation had no such thing, and the convention was called to address amendments, not to create a new constitution. How that issue was overcome is unclear as the discussions were held in strict confidence and without record, except of course for the new constitution itself. Over time some delegates wrote about what was discussed, and while accounts vary, it was obvious that the “Framers” not only convinced the delegates to consider a new constitution but were tasked to write it.

Except regarding the rights of citizens, the word “immunity” does not appear in the Constitution. When SCOTUS decided to hear the case regarding Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, the only precedent was the 1982 case of Nixon v. Fitzgerald; the court ruled that the president has absolute immunity from civil damages arising from the conduct of their duties, but did not mention criminal charges. What had to be addressed then was what executive duties, responsibilities and powers were as enumerated in the Constitution regarding the actions of a president; it was like an open book test as those things are addressed in Article II. There’s not a lot of such things as the very idea of an executive was troubling to many delegates, so these are limited.

There are 119 pages in the decision, 52 of which consists of the majority opinion by Roberts, and concurring opinions from Thomas and Barret. The dissenting opinion by Sotomayor is 67 pages; apparently someone didn’t get the “keep it simple” memo. The most informative part of the majority opinion, and frankly the part that could have been all that was necessary, came from Roberts:

“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive. The President therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy, or party.”

Of the criticisms of the decision, there are two that stand out as cases of either failed reading comprehension, or a failure to have read it at all; one is the phrase “official acts” and the other that the president now had immunity from prosecution of criminal acts. The criticism about the phrase “official acts” is that it does not appear in the Constitution; true, the phrase does not appear in the Constitution, but the case here regards immunity for criminal acts. It is not the function of SCOTUS to conduct a trail; their job is guardians and interpreters of the Constitution. In order to decide what actions the president is immune from, they must ground their decision on what the Constitution says the President is permitted to do.

There was another aspect of the case and the decision that does not appear to have received much attention; as Roberts pointed out, subjecting presidential actions to prosecution based on allegations of criminal intent that has yet to be charged, is contrary to the due process protections in the Constitution, and in conflict with the foundational separation-of-powers.

This decision is not a win for Trump as the hysteria in the press would have us believe. Trump is not now immune from criminal prosecution as the only immunity he or any president now has according to this decision is for actions committed in accordance with the executive duties, responsibilities, and powers as enumerated in the Constitution; inciting to riot or conspiring for a fabrication of votes do not qualify. The fact that some of the Trump cases involving such criminal acts are now delayed is for the trail courts and prosecutors to address.

“People who pride themselves on their “complexity” and deride others for being “simplistic” should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.” Thomas Sowell

“Imagine being on the wrong side of history while it repeats itself; it’s like failing an open book test.” Anonymous

Students took over universities with organized protests, sometimes violent, that shut down classes; some professors joined the activists and administrators did little to nothing about it. Jewish students and professors were intimidated, sometimes physically attacked, and were barred from campuses. The naked anti-Semitism in the nation’s universities exploded; it seemed as though the hard work of years cultivating an academic society of hate was on display.  It was all too well-planned and organized to be something spontaneous, rather more like a reaction to some staged event, all of which should have been rejected for the barbaric autocracy and racism it represented.

The above account is not about the recent American student protests at US universities; it is a summary of the experiences of various professors and students at German universities in 1932-33, such as Peter Drucker, an Austrian born economist and lecturer at Frankfurt University, whose experience of what happened there convinced him to leave Germany; he immigrated to the US where he became a successful management consultant, educator and author. The Nazis knew that if they were to be successful in undermining the cultural heritage of Western Civilization, they had to reduce education to indoctrination; after all, it wasn’t called the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” because of its allegiance to objective scholarship and freedom of conscience. They also needed a scapegoat to promote hatred and deflect criticism, and what better one to focus on than the ready-at-hand anti-Semitism in Europe.

Mark Twain was very clever when he said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, it just rhymes.” The similarities of what happened in 1932-33 Germany and 2023-24 America are rhyming all too well. While the Congressional hearings of university administrators regarding anti-Semitism were informative, it was a case of too little, too late; the recent attack on the congregation for Sabbath services at the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles by Palestinian supporters clearly illustrates the root cause and purpose of these protests. It was not the first, and likely not the last example of Nazism with those groups.

The anonymous quote with the title of this post is an accurate observation of how people may inexplicably tend to ignore the obvious, a case of willful ignorance or intellectual cowardice; regardless of which it is, neither of these protests were something that happened overnight. The protests in support of terrorists are a product of a festering hatred not only toward Jews and Israel, but also America.

What is called liberalism today grew out of a political and societal shift that began in the early 20^th century away from the very principles from which its name is derived. The term originated during the Enlightenment of the 18^th century, also known as the “Age of Reason”, an intellectual movement against superstition, autocracy, and blind faith; to distinguish it from 20^th century liberalism, it is often called “Classical Liberalism”. The name “liberal” derived from the word “liberty” as promoted by such political philosophers like Locke, Smith, Montesquieu, and Mills. Classical Liberalism espoused free trade, laissez-faire economics, consent of the governed, and a constitutionally limited government; power and compulsion were tyrannical traits to be abandoned in favor of a civil society.

This is not meant to be a post about the history of liberalism, but it is essential to understand the nature of the protests that arose out of the October 7^th massacre by Hamas, as those protests were a reaction to a staged event. Whatever vestiges remain of Classical Liberalism in America have long been the target of tyrannical movements such as Nazism, Communism, and more recently Islamic Fundamentalism; what Lenin called proponents of 20^th century liberalism as “useful idiots” can be aptly ascribed to the progressives that spawned the protests in support of the Palestinian terrorists. For the Islamic Jihadists that support terrorism, Israel is a symbol of Western Civilization imposed on an Islamic world, and supported by the US, a nation that is perceived as the last man standing for Classical Liberalism; if only that were true.

“Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.” Antisthenes, ancient Greek philosopher

“The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies.” Aldrich Ames

Ames was a CIA agent found guilty of being a Russian spy; what he said about betrayal explains where it comes from and eventually why someone like him would do so. It’s something that everyone has or is likely to experience at some point in their lives. Back on 01/08/21 I wrote a post titled “Trust” which is added to this one as trust is the result of a bond in human relationships; it is a fragile thing as it takes much to establish it, but one act of betrayal to destroy it.

Two days earlier to that post we had the January 6^th riots at the capital, so an easy target about betrayal in that post was Trump; now over three years later we have had another president in Biden who has proven to also be undeserving of our trust, yet absurdly we are now given a choice between him and Trump as our next president. American politics has become a “Theatre of the Absurd”, a form of plays in post-war culture where everything seems meaningless, full of illogical plots and lacking coherent dialog.

We are plagued with the results of what is called “Progressivism”, “Progressive Conservatism”, “Corporatism”, “Populism”, etc., which are actually regressive political and social phenomena; much of the cause goes to the destruction of trust, such to the degree that many Americans no longer rely on the principles of liberty as a guide for common cause. Our trust has been betrayed by the lies perpetuated by our political, social and cultural leadership. While much of Nietzsche’s philosophy is nihilistic, he was a very keen observer of human behavior, and when it came to trust said “I’m not upset that you lied to me. I am upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

Betrayal means the loss of trust and those in whom you placed that trust; when that happens on a societal level, we can see the growth of tribalistic behavior like partisan politics, which is corrosive to a healthy civil society. What follows is the 01/08/21 post referenced above.

Trust

“In God we trust, all others pay cash.” Jean Shepherd

I first read this line, not from Jean Sheperd’s famous book, but from a fortune cookie. I thought it was a very humorous and timely coincidence as it was shortly after I came back from Europe during the turmoil created by Richard Nixon when he took the dollar off the gold standard. I was caught with dollar denominated travelers checks in countries whose trust in the dollar was sorely shaken. It seemed that overnight what they perceived as the last great money was divorced from the very source of its being, even though the reality was that it had happened decades before. I paid dearly for that perception as the exchange rates and fees soared. It was not a pleasant experience but a great lesson in the meaning of trust.

My friends told me to read Sheperd’s book, which I did; it wasn’t really all that great, a collection of fictional stories the author had previously told on radio.  I subsequently learned that the title was in fact not original as it was a borrowed phrase commonly used in early 20C America about the lack of trust in credit and checks. It was a play on the words “In God We Trust” found on US currency starting soon after the Civil War, both on coin and paper; it’s still used today, just take out any money on you and there it is.

But what does this word trust actually mean? What is the concept behind a word we use so often in our lives and in so many contexts? What is it about this word that carries such a sacred respect in human relationships, whether personal, commercial or political?

Basically it comes down to faith in someone else to do what they say they will do based purely on what you know from prior experience. This means that trust has to be earned, not taken for granted, but built on actions, not just words. That kind of experience forms a bond, and we call that trust.

This applies in the context of all human relationships, and is the essence of how trust is built. A cop trusts his partner because they’ve been through experiences where they each had each other’s backs, with business partners who have weathered the unknowns of enterprise, of husbands and wives getting through the good and bad times together, and of citizens united in the history of their nation’s trials to survive whatever the world throws at them. The common thread here is that you can rely on each other to remain loyal to one another because you have created a bond of trust.

That is not some vague or esoteric concept, it is an existential reality based on actions, not words.  You know it and rely on it not because someone says so but because someone does so. Nothing is more sacred in human relationships, no matter your race, color, creed, politics or economic class, simply no matter what.

So why is it now that there is so much distrust in our culture and society today? Well think of the opposite of trust, and the logical conclusion is because our faith in each other has been betrayed; the essence of human experience is now fear and hate, hardly conducive in creating good faith in each other, in building that bond of trust. However, it works just fine in polarizing Americans in to opposing camps; the result is the inability to look beyond differences in order to find common cause.  This has happened before in our history, and it ultimately led to the Civil War. 

Up until recently, this was a “culture war”, facilitated by failed politics and news bias, exponentially accelerated by the technology of social media. We drowned out the opposition, even going so far as to violate our own heritage of free speech, casting the “opposition” with toxic labels, drowning out all those who we found tainted with an irredeemable sin of being different.

Then the inevitable happened.  First we saw the destruction of our cities with riots, burning, looting, armed conflict and death. We thought things couldn’t get worse, but then yesterday happened with an assault our own government, the Capital of our country, a violent riot over the outcome of an election.  We are stunned, sickened, confused as to how such a state of affairs in the world’s oldest Republic could come to pass.

I don’t say this callously, but really, what did we expect? If we come to a state of distrust in each other, then we come to a point where hate and fear break the bonds that tie, and that break as we have seen throughout history turns violent. Today we hear all about the search for those to blame.  Trump is an easy target, and despite his empty words today, deserves no respect from any American, as he was the match that lit the fuse.  However, Trump, while the immediate cause with his rants about voting fraud, is not the real cause, but a result of a trust long gone.

It’s like looking at a great tree hundreds of years old felled by lightning, and finding that its heartwood is a rotted core, the lifeblood of its existence succumbed to its own destruction. Think carefully before you dismiss this as anything less than true, and then think of your fellow Americans and ask yourself why, from whatever political or social or cultural beliefs you have, you fear or hate those that don’t share them. Consider if you support any form of censorship against whoever expresses contrary beliefs or repression of any protest against your point of view. If you find that you support such things, then understand you are in breach of good faith and lack the trust in liberty that should be our common cause.

Hopefully the nucleus of your own personal lives remains in a state of faith in that essential trust, but unless you’re living under a rock, you can’t avoid the lack of trust there is in our society, including in our government. The word polarization is more a result than a cause; you have to first define the reasons for such a phenomenon before you can point to the cause, and without doing that, we can’t get back to a union of common cause where we can trust each other regardless of our race, color, creed, politics, economic class, simply no matter what, no excuses, just good faith and respect for each other based on what we do, not what we say.

The violent riots in our cities and the recent attacks on the nation’s capital with their destruction of life and property attest to this basic lack of trust. This goes back long before Trump.  While he took advantage of this lack of trust, he himself was a result, not the cause. In truth, he is so shallow a narcissistic moron to be the cause of anything, a product of the horrors of distrust developed over time.

Remember Trump’s taunts about the “Deep State” and his pledges to “Drain the Swamp”?  Those are not new buzz words coined by his campaign speech writers; they’re terms used going back at least a century ago. Consider all the lies perpetrated on Americans about why we should get involved in foreign conflicts like the Great War, Viet Nam, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Yemen….and who knows what’s next. Consider the fallacies about the creation of the Federal Reserve that funds these atrocities through slight-of-hand financial engineering, defrauding Americans of their wealth.  Consider the great social enterprises of the “New Deal”, the “Great Society” and other such boondoggles that have wasted our resources. Consider the “Quantitative Easing” that financially engineered our wealth to the already wealthy, the cronyism of the marriage between business and government; what betrayals of trust!

No, Trump was a result, a demon created by betrayal, and that demon then played Americans in to believing that he was a savior form all that, while in reality he was just another charlatan selling the same old trash, an elixir to cure all simply because we should trust him; empty words, with the only action being a reaction of violence, and with bad people on both sides.

So how do we fix this absence of trust? No more words, we need action, but before action, we need the right ideas on which to act.  Do we have that, not just in the new administration, but in ourselves to stop doing the same old thing, over and over again, voting in the same kind of politicians who keep selling us ideas that we should know are so ludicrous, so fundamentally flawed and contrary to every tenet of liberty and justice?

It is far harder to build trust after a betrayal than when first starting on any kind of relationship.  Take for instance a fiduciary relationship, such as what the US government is supposed to have with its citizens. It is a unique relationship in that the trustor and the beneficiary are one and the same, i.e. the American people. The trustee is the US government. Without going into all the various facets of this relationship with the Federal Reserve, US Treasury, Congress, etc., suffice it to say that by any standard of performance of fiduciary responsibility that trust has been betrayed.  We, the people of the US, are in debt that exceeds that of any nation in the history of the world. Our currency over the last century has been devalued to the point that it now takes a dollar for what a nickel used to buy. The financial and monetary manipulations of government have created a huge wealth and income gap favoring the elites of corporatism. If such things happened in the private sector, we would see headlines similar to the Madoff scandal.

Take the trust we place in government to act in the best interest and wellbeing of its citizens and in good faith among nations to respect their sovereignty and explain then the endless wars killing so many of our youth and innocent civilians of the countries we attack. How can such inhumanity not be a betrayal of trust?

Consider our constitution and the oath those in government take to support and defend it, and then look at the brazen violations by our elected officials and you should not wonder at the loss of trust Americans feel about their government.

What we need from our future administrations is not just an assurance that we can rely on them to act in good faith to restore our trust in government, but actions that show the character, ability, strength, and perseverance to restore our confidence that each and every individual American, regardless of race, color, creed, politics and economic class, will be treated the same, with respect for the liberties guaranteed them under the constitution; that is the bond that creates the trust needed for a nation to be at peace with itself. After all, when you get down to the essential human experience, like Billy Joel said, it’s simply a matter of trust.

(jif.betrayal.trust.06.24.24+01.08.21)

“The contest for the ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.” Daniel Webster

With all the news about executive orders, you will not find anything in the US Constitution about them. What you will find in the constitution is that the executive branch exists to enforce the laws, not to create them. It is clear from the records of the times, principally the Federalists Papers, that after just having successfully revolted against a monarchy, people were very distrustful of anything to do with an executive in government. In fact, the Articles of Confederation did not provide for one but did vest administrative powers with Congress. The Founders’ concerns with executive authority were well founded as history has shown.

From the beginning the president communicated with those in the executive branch through directives, or orders, for those in that branch of government; since the president was the commander-in-chief of both the military and the administration, you obeyed such orders because they came from your boss. However, that was not the case for those in the other branches of government, or for the people. Making laws, or adjudicating the constitutionality of laws, are powers not vested in the executive branch as the separation of powers is a constitutional foundation.

Over time, presidents have attempted to make law with their executive orders, unconstitutionally but unfortunately at times successfully. FDR was the biggest abuser of executive orders, issuing a record 3,721 of them, such as funding the Manhattan Project, the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, the confiscation of American’s gold, and various orders creating new government departments. There have been presidents who issued executive orders that are considered morally imperative, such as Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation, Truman with the desegregation of the US military, and Eisenhower employing the National Guard for school desegregation; while they all had the best of intentions, they should have been executive proposals for bills to become laws, which soon thereafter was the case. The danger of any executive order circumventing the role of Congress as the legislative branch creates a slippery slope that gave us Truman barring gays and lesbians from government jobs, Ford pardoning Nixon, and Bush creating the department of Homeland Security.

This practice has manifest itself by degrees, starting with the revolution known as “Jacksonian Democracy”, a clear contradiction in terms given Jackson’s relentless assault on the constitution as if he were king; it progressed to the point that should the authors of the US Constitution and the Federalist Papers see what the executive branch has evolved to today, they would hardly recognize the government they created. This slow malignant growth of the executive branch to a near despotic level illustrates a revolution that Orwell spoke to in 1984 when he wrote that “Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” Some of the best historical examples of this in the early 20^th century were in Russia, Spain, Germany, Japan, and Italy, none of which ended well.

More recently Trump issued 220 executive orders, and Biden 353; in some cases, legal challenges have reached the Supreme Court, and some have been rejected. There are also cases where presidents have revoked a predecessor’s executive orders with their own, such as Ford with FDR’s gold confiscation, and Biden with Trump’s immigration orders; this creates a political war of pens, as issuing your own executive order revoking past executive orders does not make either anymore constitutional, even if done with good intentions.  Recently I had a discussion with a UK libertarian who maintains that the only difference between the UK monarchy and the US presidency is one king is hereditary while the other is elected. He quoted F. A. Harper with “It is of little importance whether a dictator gained his power by accident of birth, by force, or by the vote of the people.” I’m still working on a rebuttal; what I’m hoping for is that the Supreme Court gets a case that provides the opportunity for a ruling that any presidential order that attempts to create law is unconstitutional, and therefore null and void.

The constitution makes clear that only Congress can declare war, but that did not happen in the case of either the Korean or Viet Nam wars. Then we have the War Powers Act of 1973, which created the guardrails for the executive branch regarding military action; it does not appear that it worked out very well as Congress did not issue a Declaration of War against Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, or Libya. The US military interventions in all those “conflicts” were based on political agendas and manipulations to circumvent constitutional requirements; abiding by them would have prevented many US casualties and those of the civilians of the countries we were supposedly helping.

Many presidents have used as justification for their unconstitutional behavior that they were acting under the duress of a crisis, as if an emergency relieves them of their oath to preserve and protect the constitution. Americans are presented with a choice of the lesser of two evils this coming November between two of the most flagrant recidivists of constitutional violations; one of these two grifters will get elected, or in other words, we’re guaranteed to get evil. Both Biden and Trump are products of a political environment of fear mongering with dire warnings about what will happen to our “democracy” if their opponent is elected. Both Biden and Trump talk about the orders they will enact to undo the harm the other has perpetrated. We got to this dangerous place because of partisan politics that has produced so much fear, something that Aristotle so concisely defined as “Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”

Fear is a political tool of tyrants to convince people that they need power to protect them from evil; unfortunately, history has shown that this can be effective, especially in volatile times. Americans need to understand this, and what Orwell said in 1984: “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.”

“A U.S. dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It’s a promissory note that doesn’t actually promise anything; it’s not backed by gold or silver.” P. J. O’Rourke

P. J. O’Rourke passed away in 2022. He was a NY Times bestselling author and well-known political satirist, and as you can tell from the above quote, not a fan of non-commodity currency. He understood that inflation is the inevitable consequence of any fiat currency as it is based on nothing more than the dictates of a corrupt government looking for a way to tax without having to go through an inconvenient and unpredictable legislative process. The dollar states that it’s a “Federal Reserve Note”; in other words, it represents debt, but as a fiat currency it has no redeemable value.

The British Pound is the oldest fiat currency at 93 years. The US dollar has been a fiat currency for 53 years. Historically, fiat currencies do not have a long life as the average is only 27 years. Over time both the pound and the dollar have depreciated enormously to the point of losing 95% of their purchasing power. Eventually, when fiat currencies cease to function as a store of value, people seek alternatives. The most trusted commodities as money for millennia have been gold and silver. While there are now cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, their long-term viability as money is yet to be determined; however, Bitcoin is non-inflationary as its algorithm ends at 21M Bitcoins, whereas it is painfully obvious given inflation that the dollar has no such limits.

Why should people accept the monopolistic government control over money to begin with? The answer is they shouldn’t since real money is a commodity, which makes it a medium of exchange and a store of value, which is how money came to exist to begin with. (Please see the post of 07/12/19 titled “Gold Myths” for the requirements for a commodity to be money.) Despite government decrees contrary to the nature of money, reality provides for a true appreciation for the decline of fiat currencies over time.

There have been various monetary standards since the invention of money around 600 BCE; some are simply direct coinage, others indirect as in the case of the US Dollar, a paper money redeemable in gold until 1933. At that time FDR unconstitutionally issued Executive Order 6102 making it illegal for Americans to own gold; he gave them 30 days to hand it over or face a ten-year prison term and/or a $10K fine. At the time of this confiscation, the gold price was fixed at $20.67/oz. Shortly thereafter, FDR’s administration declared that the price of gold was $35/oz. This provided the government with $105M compared with the $63M confiscated; however, this did little to shore up the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, and it seriously devalued the very dollar he disingenuously claimed he was protecting. Given the amount confiscated and the estimated amount of gold in circulation at the time of FDR’s decrees, historians estimate that about 80% of Americans ignored the order and retained their gold privately. 

In 1971, President Nixon declared the dollar off the gold standard altogether. In 1974 President Ford repealed FDR’s order making it legal for Americans to own gold. Since then, gold has appreciated against the dollar to the point where today it’s at $2,400/oz., an increase of 6,800%. Gold has not changed as an ounce of gold in 1933 is an ounce of gold today; what has changed is the dollar. This divorce from a gold standard enabled such a monetary inflation that makes the US Treasuries many countries hold worth less than what they bought them for, and the US policy of economic sanctions as a political weapon presents a threat to their sovereignty; coupled together the US Dollar, and its reserve status, have become less meaningful or attractive as time goes on.

The central banks of many nations have been buying large quantities of gold over the last few years, principally China and India, who also encourage their citizens to buy gold. There are two principal reasons for their rush to do so, one being the huge monetary inflation of the world’s reserve currency, i.e. the US dollar, and the other being the sanctions utilized as part of US foreign policy, freezing the US Dollar assets of any country it holds in disfavor, virtually a confiscation of a sovereign country’s wealth. While these reasons are accountable for the modern-day gold rush, the question is what will these countries do with all that gold?

There are about 212K metric tons of gold in the world, about 60% of which is jewelry and other precious artifacts held privately. Then there’s about 22% held as coins and bullion, also held privately. The balance is held by sovereign state central banks. Currently the United States government holds about 8K metric tons in gold reserves, the largest in the world, representing about 45% of all central bank gold reserves. With that kind of leverage, why would the US maintain a fiat currency that is near the end of its useful life as a store of value? Why the dichotomy between these two policies, especially with some of the world’s central banks on a gold buying spree and making it obvious that they are moving to replace the dollar as a reserve currency?

The answer to these questions is that fiat currency provides government central banks with control over how much “money” is printed, and that means control over an economy. If a currency is based on a commodity, it becomes money, the issuance of which is limited by the amount of that commodity underwriting its value and redeemable to the holder of that currency. Fiat currency is based on nothing more than the creditworthiness of the issuing government; how much creditworthiness does the US have with $35T in debt, the largest in the history of any nation, and with no plan to pay the debt down with other than selling more debt and printing more dollars?

“An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense that gold and economic freedom are inseparable.” Alan Greenspan

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” Henry Ford

The most important question about anything is to ask why. The answers to who, what, when and where are information that is important but why is the hardest to answer; it is also the answer that will most likely lead to understanding the truth. Anyone who has had children knows that their most common question is “Why?”; parents who become frustrated with this most incessant question of childhood, sometimes posed as a challenge to what children are told, need to be careful because the question requires them to think beyond the ready “Because I told you so!”.

The why is about the reason that someone did something or how to understand behavior. The news, both mass and social media, reports everything in the world, but so often provides little to nothing about the why; amazingly, you hear few providing facts that can inform us as to the reason. What we hear in place of the reason is all too often opinion posturing as facts; whether the issue is inflation, abortion, immigration, free speech or any other flashpoint topic, the news will provide commentary in editorial context, depending on the partisanship of the source.

This is not a new phenomenon considering Mark Twain once observed that “If you don’t read the newspapers you are uninformed. If you do read them you are misinformed.”Given the absence of reliable journalism, thinking people are left with little that would lead them to understand the why of the matter and must therefore use their common sense and experience to guide them to the most likely reasons.

An example of this is abortion; whether someone is a “pro-choice” or “pro-life” advocate is less important than the reason they chose so. The odd thing about the various narratives each side provides about the Dobbs Decision is the absence of the decision itself; it returned the decisions on abortion back to the States, which according to the constitution is the people. However, why government is still involved in regulating an individual’s rights is not questioned by either side of the argument. What we hear from the pro-choice advocates is that it deprived women of their rights under Roe, and from the pro-life advocates is it respected states’ rights; neither reference why this is so.

It was not until 1821 that any state made abortion illegal, while other states allowed it under certain regulations. The failure of Roe was its dependency on the medical science of viability, which is both subjective and variable. The Roe decision should have been based solely on the IX Amendment that states that no one can be deprived “…of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Our constitution is based on the humanism of natural law which guarantees each individual life, liberty, and property; clearly you own your own body, which makes any issue regarding a person’s decisions about it not subject to debate, or lockdowns, or forced vaccinations, or forced pregnancies. Such laws are in violation of a person’s rights and therefore subject to constitutional review and rejection; that is exactly what is now happening as people bring action against states that have passed restrictive abortion laws.

If governments respected this essential humanism and constitutional protection of rights, there would be no grounds for such militant advocacies; it is government medleying which causes the huge political, cultural, and social divide. Polls show that most people do not consider abortion a major issue anymore and see immigration and the economy far greater concerns. So why do governments focus so much on abortion? One reason is religious advocacy, but that consideration conflicts with the first amendment. The less apparent but more viable reason is the political imperative that saw government seize unconstitutional powers during covid that brought on lockdowns, forced vaccinations and all sorts of interventions. If government can dictate medical regulation which is in direct conflict with constitutional rights, it can dictate anything…and they have.

One way to get around the constitution is to call something other than what it is; such is the case with student loan “forgiveness”. In reality it is a transfer of a debt to others, in this case those that did not take the loan, but now have the burden for its payment. While the Supreme Court correctly determined that this was unconstitutional, the Biden administration continues to try a workaround; in this case the why is an apparent attempt to seek favor with those of the electorate that would benefit from such an obvious and corrupt vote grabbing scheme.

If people focused more on the why, they would be less prone to lose their way in trying to understand the reasons about what’s going on. They would more likely come to better conclusions than relying on partisan narratives; this is important for business, science, and society in general as it creates the greatest potential for getting to the truth.

“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.” Bernard Baruch