Official "I read something especially interesting or useful today" thread

[axiomata]

I thought I'd start this thread to allow us to quote book excerpts that seem especially poignant or related to current events. Ideally it should be from published material, not someone's blog entry from yesterday. Also, it should be something that most members likely haven't read.
________________________________________

I'll start off with something I read in Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism.

For a little context, basically Doherty quotes a creative response originally from 1964 to common criticism of libertarianism from the right, in this case from conservative leader William F, Buckley. The criticism is that though conservatives may agree with the theoretical principals of libertarianism, the fact is that the world is not libertarian, and the political problems that we must deal with-- though they originally may have formed as a result of un-libertarian principals, in order to get out of the fix, it will require more non-libertarian actions. In this case he was referring to war, but I think it could be accurately modified to fit economic crises as well. Buckley asks why his libertarian allies are having meetings discussing privatization of garbage removal when there are more serious issues of war and communism.


[William F.] Buckley mocked what he saw as the libertarians' effete and useless disengagement from the cold war, scoffing at them for shuffling off from serious geopolitics to their little intellectual seminars on demunicipalizing garbage removal.
In 1963, FEE board chairman E. W. Dykes, an Ohio architect, responded to this line of attack by taking Buckley's critique for a given and defending libertarians on those seemingly outrageous terms.

War is the culmination of the breaking of libertarian principles, not once, but thousands of times. We are challenged to jump in at this point and apply our principles to get out of the unholy mess, built up over years and years of error on errors. I suggest it would be a very little different challenge had he posed this proposition: "You are a second lieutenant. Your platoon is surrounded. Your ammunition is gone. Two of your squad leaders are dead, the third is severely wounded. Now, Mr. Libertarian, let's see you get out of this one with your little seminars.
My answer—"demunicipalize the garbage service."
Now wait, don't give me up as a nut yet. I have a point. That second lieutenant is a goner. And so is the prospect of a lasting peace until man learns WHY it is wrong to municipalize the garbage service. You can't apply libertarian principles to wrong things at their culmination and expect to make much sense. It is too fundamental. You have to start back at the very beginning and that is precisely what our little seminars are for. There are people who build for tomorrow; there are people who build for a year; there are people who look forward a generation—the libertarian, a part of the "remnant," takes the long view—he is looking forward to the time when war will be looked on as we now look on cannibalism, a thing of the past. . . . What do we do in our little seminars? We make the case for freedom which cannot coexist with interventionism. . . . Again I say: We will never end wars until we at least understand why the garbage service should be removed from the jurisdiction of the police force—that is, government. (260-1)

I especially like the last line.

[heavenlyboy34]

I can quote some Dostoevsky if you don't mind me posting interesting fiction excerpts. :cool:

[Dreamofunity]

I bought Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism a little bit ago, haven't been able to read it yet. I think I'll like it.

[RSLudlum]

Just a few highlighted sections from the first two books I grabbed off the shelf. ;)



Felix Morley, "Freedom and Federalism" (1959)


"A strongly centralized government is aided by political ignorance and apathy among its subjects. But the docile acceptance of paternalism spells morbidity for a federal system, which can only prosper if its self-governing localities take politics seriously. So there is cause for concern in the fact that so many Americans have come to regard their Federal Republic as a centralized democracy. And this concern is not lessened by noting that the communists describe their system as "democratic centralism," operated throught eh medium of "People's Democracies."

.......

"If the concept of the general will brings dictatorship in its train at home, the result in foreign relations is no less certainly a continuous threat of war. The nearest approach to unanimity in the thinking of any community is always found when an enemy is present or effectively portrayed. Therefore any abolute ruler is likely to bolster his position by telling his subjects that their security, for which he takes all responsibility, is threatened. Beyond that, the spokesman of the general will can do much to promote a crusading and missionizing fervor--to bring the truth to those with less enlightened government.

The leaders of this messianic movement may, of course, renounce all conquest or imperial design, in keeping with their always humanitarian announcements. This was Robespierre's attitude early in the French Revolution, as it was Lenin's when communism gained control of Russia. But, even when sincere, such restaint is likely to give way before the more dynamic position of a successor--a Napoleon or Stalin--who must be aggressive in order to establish his own repute. Thus international stability is doubly disturbed, not only by the danger of aggression, but by the feeling that "preventive war" may be the best way to overcome a threat that is psychological as well as physical in nature."

Those last two paragraphs are quite harrowing considering the past 8 Bush years now passed on to Obama.




Voltaire in a letter to Rosseau concerning Rosseau's "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality amoung Men":

" I have Sir recieved your new book against the human race...No one has ever employed so much wit in trying to make us beasts. One longs to go on four paws when one reads your book but personally it is sixty years since I lost the habit and I feel it is impossible me to resume it.
;)

Voltaire on Monarchy and Republics, and 'patriotism':

'Philosophical Dictionary' (Fatherland) 1764
"But which of the two is to be preferred for a country—a monarchy or a republic? The question has been agitated for four thousand years. Ask the rich, and they will tell you an aristocracy; ask the people, and they will reply a democracy; kings alone prefer royalty. Why, then, is almost all the earth governed by monarchs? Put that question to the rats who proposed to hang a bell around the cat’s neck."


Correspondence June 20, 1777
"Provided Marcus Aurelius is monarch; for otherwise, what difference does it make to a poor man whether he is devoured by a lion or by a hundred rats!

The Ignorant Philosopher
"War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not color his crime with the pretext of justice"

'Philosophical Dictionary' (Rights) 1764
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished who kill not in large companies, and to the sound of trumpets; it is the rule.

[RSLudlum]

Here's another that's quite interesting that I read today.


Alexis de Tocqueville "Democracy In America" Vol. II (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm#2HCH0020)

Book 1, Chapter XX (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm#2HCH0020)

The historians who live in democratic ages are not only prone to assign a great cause to every incident, but they are also given to connect incidents together, so as to deduce a system from them...To their minds it is not enough to show what events have occurred: they would fain show that events could not have occurred otherwise. They take a nation arrived at a certain stage of its history, and they affirm that it could not but follow the track which brought it thither. It is easier to make such an assertion than to show by what means the nation might have adopted a better course...

In perusing the historical volumes which our age has produced, it would seem that man is utterly powerless over himself and over all around him. The historians of antiquity taught how to command: those of our time teach only how to obey; in their writings the author often appears great, but humanity is always diminutive. If this doctrine of necessity, which is so attractive to those who write history in democratic ages, passes from authors to their readers, till it infects the whole mass of the community and gets possession of the public mind, it will soon paralyze the activity of modern society, and reduce Christians to the level of the Turks. I would moreover observe, that such principles are peculiarly dangerous at the period at which we are arrived. Our contemporaries are but too prone to doubt of the human free-will, because each of them feels himself confined on every side by his own weakness; but they are still willing to acknowledge the strength and independence of men united in society. Let not this principle be lost sight of; for the great object in our time is to raise the faculties of men, not to complete their prostration.

[brandon]

I actually took the time to sit down and decipher much of Victor Aguilar's work last night. Most of it is really rather impressive and interesting. The guy comes off as kind of an anti social jerk, but his work is great.

http://www.axiomaticeconomics.com/

Especially check out this:
Gold does not have intrinsic value (http://www.axiomaticeconomics.com/golden_calf.php)

[disorderlyvision]

I have done this with a few books recently, and have posted them elsewhere, so I might as well post them here too. Lots of good stuff....

The Law – Frederic Bastiat (1850)

“The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.”

“No one would have any argument with government, provided that his person was respected, his labor was free, and the fruits of his labor were protected against all unjust attack.”

“The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect.”

“The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy.”

“Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.”

“Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain – and since labor is pain in itself – it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.”

“It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.”

“No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”

“There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are ‘just’ because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.”

“If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is boldly said that ‘you are a dangerous innovator, a utopian, a theorist, a subversive; you would shatter the foundations upon which society rests.’”

“As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose – that it may violate property instead of protecting it – then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.”

“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.”

“Above all if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no small task.”

“You would use the law to oppose socialism? But it is upon the law that socialism itself relies. Socialist desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon…For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes (police), and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.”

“This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it:
1. The few plunder the many.
2. Everybody plunders everybody.
3. Nobody plunders anybody.
We must make our choice among limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three…No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs.”

“A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.”

“Mr. de Lamartine once wrote to me thusly: ‘Your doctrine is only half of my program. You have stopped at liberty; I go on to fraternity.’ I answered him: ‘The second half of your program will destroy the first.’”

“I use it in its scientific acceptance – as expressing the idea opposite to that of property. When a portion of wealth is transferred from one person who owns it – without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud – to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.”

“Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens or other classes have been forced to send it in… With this in mind, examine the protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works. You will find that they are always based on legal plunder, organized injustice.”

“You say: ‘Here are persons who are lacking morality or religion,’ and you turn to the law. But law is force. And need I point out what a violent and futile effort it is to use force in the matters of morality and religion?”

“But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under providence.”

“Antiquity presents everywhere – in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome – the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their whims, thanks to the prestige of force and fraud.”

“And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? …In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism – including of course legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?”

“Persons are merely to be what the legislator wills them to be.”

“Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don’t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.”

“Clearly then, the conscience of the social democrats cannot permit persons to have any liberty because they believe that the nature of mankind tends always towards every kind of degradation and disaster. Thus, of course, the legislators must make plans for the people in order to save them from themselves…If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”

“They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.”

“Please understand that I do not dispute their right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose these plans on us by law – by force – and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes. I do not insist that the supporters of these various social schools of thought renounce their various ideas. I insist only that they renounce this one idea that they have in common: They need only to give up the idea of forcing us to acquiesce to their group and series, their socialized projects, their free-credit banks, there Greco-Roman concept of morality, and their commercial regulations. I ask only that we be permitted to decide upon these plans for ourselves; that we not be forced to accept them, directly or indirectly, if we find them to be contrary to our best interests or repugnant to our conscience.”

“If the law has a moral right to do this, why does it not, then, force these gentlemen to submit to my plans? Is it logical to suppose that nature has not given me sufficient imagination to dream up a utopia also? Should the law choose one fantasy amongst many, and put the organized force of government at its service only.”

“At whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.”

[disorderlyvision]

Life without Principle – Henry David Thoreau (1863)

“I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself.”

“The world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! ...I think there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.”

“Nevertheless, as I do not need the police of meaningless labor to regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praiseworthy in this fellow’s undertaking any more than in many an enterprise of our own or foreign governments, however amusing it may be to him or them, I prefer to finish my education at a different school.”

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”

“Yet I have been surprised when one has with confidence proposed to me, a grown man, to embark in some enterprise of his, as if I had absolutely nothing to do, my life having been a complete failure hitherto. What a doubtful compliment this to pay me!”

“The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put in office. One would suppose that they are rarely disappointed.”

“Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient.”

“I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.”

“It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers.”

“No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.”

“Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip.”

“You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.”

“I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.”

“Nations! What are nations? Tartars, and Huns, and Chinamen! Like insects, they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable.”

“We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.”

“America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave to an economical and moral tyrant.”

“The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.”

[disorderlyvision]

Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau (1849)

“ I heartily accept the motto, - That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, - That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”

“The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.”

“Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.”

“But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”

“But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”

“I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”

“Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.”

“A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers, in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and are commonly treated as enemies by it.”

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.”

“All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.”

“I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, cooperate with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless.”

“The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war.”

“Some are petitioning the state to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves – the union between themselves and the state, - and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury?”

“How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.”

“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

“I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.”

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

“…they do not know how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person.”

“A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then…”

“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution.”

“Is there not a sort of bloodshed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an ever lasting death. I see this blood flowing now.”

“For my own part, I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the state. But, if I deny the authority of the state when it presents its tax-bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.”

“It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the state than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.”

“I saw that the state was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my respect for it, and pitied it.”

“Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breath after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

“When I meet a government which says to me, ‘your money or your life,’ why should I be in haste to give it my money?”

“I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.”

“It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the state, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually.”

“The authority of government is still an impure one; to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.”

“There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.”

[disorderlyvision]

The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar – Murray N. Rothbard (1962)

“One would think that the world would tire of careening back and forth between the various disadvantages of fixed exchange rates with paper money, and fluctuating rates with paper money, and return to a classical, or still better, a 100 percent, gold standard.”

“Those of us who raised the alarm against the dangers of fractional-reserve banking were merely crying in the wilderness.”

“When the Roosevelt administration took us off the gold standard in 1933, the bulk of the nation’s economists opposed the move and advocated its speedy restoration. Now gold is considered an absurd anachronism, a relic of a tribal fetish.”

“We should keep in mind that money, in any market economy advanced beyond the stage of primitive barter, is the nerve center of the economic system. If, therefore, the state is able to gain unquestioned control over the unit of all accounts, the state will then be in a position to dominate the entire economic system, and the whole society.”

“For what is there to prevent government from creating money at its own desired pace and thereby benefiting itself and it favored citizens? …Furthermore, the historical record of governments can give no one confidence that they will not do precisely that – even to the extent of hyperinflation and chaotic breakdown of the currency.”

“No one prints dollars on the purely free market because there are, in fact, no dollars; there are only commodities…”

“How then did such names as ‘dollar’ and ‘peso’ originate and emerge in their own right as independent moneys? The answer is that these names invariably originated as names for units of weight of a money commodity, either gold or silver…’Dollar’ began as the generally applied name of an ounce weight of silver coined in the sixteenth century.”

“And even after a lengthy process of debasement, alteration, and manipulation of these weights until they more and more became separated names, they still remained names of units of weight of specie (hard money) until, in the United States, we went off the gold standard in 1933.”

“Economists, of course, admit that our modern national moneys emerged originally from gold and silver, but they are inclined to dismiss this process as a historical accident from which we have now been happily emancipated.”

“Hence, alone among goods, money depends for its use and demand on having a pre-existing purchasing power.”

“Indeed, if fiat money could not continue indefinitely, I would not have to come here to plead for its abolition.”

“The debacle of 1931-1933, when the world abandoned the gold standard, was not a sudden shift from gold weight to paper name; it was but the last step in a lengthy, complex process. It is important, not just for historical reasons but for framing public policy today, to analyze the logical steps in this transformation. Each stage of this process was caused by another act of government intervention.”

“One neglected point is that government minting is subject to the same flaws, inefficiencies, and tyranny over the consumer as every other government operation.”

“The natural tendency of the state is inflation.”

“Another device used over the years by governments was to persuade the public not to use gold in their daily transactions; to do so was scorned as an anachronism unsuited to the modern world. The yokel who didn’t trust banks became a common object of ridicule. In this way, gold was more and more confined to the banks and to use for very large transactions; this made it very much easier to go off the gold standard during the Great Depression, for then the public could be persuaded the only ones to suffer were a few selfish, antisocial, subtly unpatriotic gold hoarders. In fact, as early as the panic of 1819 the idea had spread that someone trying to redeem bank note in specie, that is, to redeem his own property, was a subversive citizen trying to wreck the banks and the entire economy; and by the 1930s it was thus easy to denounce gold hoarders as virtual traitors.”

“In my view, issuing promises to pay on demand in excess of the amount of goods on hand is simply fraud, and should be so considered by the legal system…In short, I believe that fractional-reserve banking is disastrous both for the morality and for the fundamental bases and institutions of the market economy.”

“This is but one example of what happens to jurisprudence when pragmatic considerations of ‘public policy’ supplant the search for principles of justice.”

“On the other hand, the holders of money substitutes most emphatically do have a legal claim to their own property at any time they choose to redeem it. The claims must then be fraudulent, since the bank could not possibly meet them all.”

“The major objection against 100 percent gold is that this would allegedly leave the economy with an inadequate money supply…These economists have not fully absorbed the great monetary lesson of classical economics: that the supply of money essentially does not matter. Money performs it function by being a medium of exchange; any change in its supply, therefore, will simply adjust itself in the purchasing power of the money unit, that is, in the amount of other goods that money will be able to buy.”

“In short, fluctuating fiat moneys are disintegrative of the very function of money itself.”

“Ultimately, the issue is a stark one: we can either return to gold or we can pursue the fiat path and return to barter. It is perhaps not hyperbole to say that civilization itself is at stake in our decision.”

“I therefore advocate as the soundest monetary system and the only one fully compatible with the free market and with the absence of force or fraud from any source a 100 percent gold standard. This is the only system compatible with the fullest preservation of the rights of property. It is the only system that ensures the end of inflation…”

“While this is undoubtedly a ‘radical’ program for this day and age, it is important to note briefly that this program is squarely in a great tradition: not only in the economic tradition of the classical economists and the currency school, but also in the American political tradition of the Jeffersonians and the Jacksonians. In essence, this was their program…they wrote in full and sophisticated knowledge of classical economics and were fully devoted to capitalism and the free market, which they believed were hampered and not aided by the institution of fractional-reserve banking.”

“The desired program may be summarized as follows:
1. Arrival of a 100 percent gold dollar.
2. Getting the gold stock out of the hands of the government and into the hands of the banks and the people, with the concomitant liquidation of the Federal Reserve System, and a legal 100 percent requirement for all demand claims.
3. The transfer of all note-issue functions from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to the private banks.
4. Freeing silver bullion and it representative in silver certificates from any fixed value in gold. In short, silver ounces and their warehouse receipts would fluctuate, as do all other commodities, on the market in terms of gold or dollars, thus giving us ‘parallel’ gold and silver moneys.
5. The eventual elimination of the term ‘dollar’ using only terms of weight such as ‘gold gram’ or ‘gold ounce.’ The ultimate goal would be the return to gold by every nation, at 100 percent of its particular currency, and the subsequent blending of all these national currencies into one unified world gold-gram unit…In such a world, there would be no exchange rates except between gold and silver, for national currency names would be abandoned for simple weights of gold, and all the world’s money would at long last be freed from government intervention.
6. Free private coinage of gold and silver.”


“For someone must propagate the truth in society, as opposed to what is politically expedient.”

[disorderlyvision]

“Walls in our Minds” – M.J. ‘Red’ Beckman (1990)

“The government is bankrupting our nation and our posterity is being taxed without representation. Promise breaking, vote stealing politicians have created a psycho-terrorist agency known as the IRS. Every productive American is held hostage by this un-American gang of extortionists. The fear generated by the IRS permeates our society, inhibiting and discouraging the production of goods and services.”

“These are the same politicians who did not tell us the truth about Pearl Harbor, Korea and Vietnam. They lied to us about the energy shortage, social security, and Watergate. They promised to balance the budget when they campaigned for public office and they broke that promise with bigger deficits. They gave us tax reform (better known as tax increases). We even trusted politicians with the education of our children. Why, oh why, do we continue to think politicians and government can be trusted?”

“We now have a government of, by and for politicians, bureaucrats, and special interests groups.”

“The lesson we need to learn, is that tyranny would be impossible without the Siamese twins called lies and belief. When a politician lies and the people believe, the nation and the people will pay a high price for the error.”

“If the twelve judges, sitting in the jury box, follow the instructions of the politician-lawyer in the black robe, have the twelve jurors been judges or have they been executioners? …Also remember that all Federal Judges are political appointees. A federal judgeship is a political plum handed out as a political pay-off. When a jury lets a politician-lawyer-judge control their jury vote, you have politician controlled government.”

“All of the debts, deficit, and decline which is clouding our future, are the result of giving politicians our Grand Jury and Trial (petit) Jury votes. If our form of government has been changed, it happened because we, the people, gave our most important votes to politicians.”

“If we vote for the lesser of two evils, we are still governed by evil.”

“The IRS did not get its power from the Congress, courts or the Presidency. It is registered voters, sitting as jurors, that are the source of power for the IRS.”

“The two distinct forms of patriotism are totally opposed to each other and can never peacefully coexist. True patriotism is people giving allegiance to their country. False patriotism is people giving allegiance to a government.”

“Politicians cannot control a government unless they have the allegiance of the people. This is why politicians try to convince people that nation and government are one and the same.”

“Our lawful government was subverted and changed because jurors gave their allegiance to government, rather than their country.”

“We have been taught, all our lives that our government was to be controlled by majority vote. The true patriot knows that politicians can control majorities with false information.”

“We have Americans who believe they are free because politicians told them they are free.”

“The federal individual income tax is an unconstitutional tax which was created to control people. Fear is the weapon used by tax collectors…”

“The year was 1800 and one of our U.S. Supreme Court Justices was presiding over a jury trial. Samuel Chase was the Judge and he instructed the jury saying, ‘he would decide the law and the jury would decide the facts.’ In other words, the Judge would explain the law to the jury and then the jury would decide if the defendant had violated the law as the Judge interpreted it. Samuel Chase found himself in a heap of trouble. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Bill of Impeachment against Judge Chase and the U.S. Senate had an impeachment trial. Judge Chase barely escaped impeachment by the Senate. He assured the Senate he knew the jury had the right to judge the law as well as the facts of a case…Judges, both Federal and State, now give the same instructions to juries that ended the career of Samuel Chase.”

“All of our lives we have been taught that we have a system of checks and balances. The Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches of government were to be checks against each other. We were never taught that the Grand Jury and Trial (petit) Jury are also separate powers with the responsibility to be a check against the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches. No one ever told us our jury votes were to protect and secure our inalienable rights!!”

“The juries are the ultimate enforcers of the Constitution for the United States of America.”

“When the jury refuses to enforce a politician created law, the people send a message to the lawmakers. We don’t seem to change anything with our votes on election day but our ‘not guilty’ votes, on juries, will make changes.”

“The courts protect the rights of murderers, rapist, bank robbers, and etc.; however, if an individual is involved in a controversy with government, the situation changes. The judges are paid with tax monies. This means every judge has a conflict of interest if government is involved.”

“The difference between our nation, and most others, is we can change our government without the violence and trauma of bloody revolution. We still have our second and third votes. Our lawful government was subverted when we allowed politicians the use of our jury votes. We can bring back our lawful government anytime we want by using our jury votes to enforce the Constitution and secure our inalienable rights.”

“There are only two forms of government – people control government or government controls people. It makes absolutely no difference what kind of label you attach. You can be controlled by a force labeled democracy, just as surely as you can be controlled by a force labeled communism.”

“Did we learn lies, or did we learn truth, to get our diploma?”

“The IRS is the agency created by politicians to make war against anyone who would resist the actions of bureaucrats and politicians. People, who recognize tyranny, will refuse to finance their own destruction.”

“People, who have researched the law, KNOW that only non-resident aliens are required to file form 1040.”

“It is quite generally known by the public that the IRS is an arbitrary, vindictive, obnoxious, arrogant, incompetent, inconsistent, oppressive, belligerent and totally un-American gang of extortionists.”

“Tax protest is our American political heritage. It was tax protestors who formed our two greatest documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for the United States of America. Our first four presidents were notorious tax protestors who were criminals under the laws of England.”

[disorderlyvision]

Freedom Loyalty Dissent – Henry Steele Commager

Part 1: The Necessity of Freedom

“Freedom of speech and of the press – that is, freedom of inquiry, criticism, and dissent – are guaranteed in state and federal constitution now over a century and a half old. It is a sobering fact, however, that each generation has to vindicate these freedoms anew, and for itself. Yet this is not wholly a misfortune; one might almost see in it provincial wisdom. For there are risks in taking things for granted, risks not only of failure to appreciate them but of failure to understand them. Freedoms vindicated anew are more precious than those achieved without effort, and only those who are required to justify freedom can fully understand it.”

“…what we are no in danger of forgetting that government derives its power from men; that rights of life and liberty are inalienable; that these rights not something the government graciously confers upon men, but things no government can take away from men.”

“…after all neither the Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790’s nor the Sedition and Espionage Acts of the First World War were held void by the courts.”

“If the perversion of our freedom depends upon the courts then we are, indeed, lost, for in the long run neither courts nor Constitution can save us from our own errors, follies, or wickedness.”

“Increasingly we look to men, ideas, and institutions not from the point of view of how they work, but from the point of view of how they ought to work if they conformed to our a priori ideas about them.”

“Thus we judge loyalty not by conduct but by gestures and ceremonies. Our political and constitutional processes are coming to be a vulgar competition in eloquence about loyalty and rhetoric about patriotism.”

“What, then, are the practical consequences of the attack upon independence of thought, nonconformity, dissent, which is now gathering momentum everywhere in the land...The first and most obvious consequence is that we shall arrive, sooner or later, at an official orthodoxy or – to use the current term – loyalty.”

“If you are going to penalize disloyalty, you must first determine what loyalty is; if you are going to silence nonconformity, you must determine what conformity is – and to what it conforms.”

“If you are going to dismiss men from office or from teaching posts for membership in subversive organizations, you must eventually draw up a list not only of those that are subversive but of those that are patriotic. If you are going to silence dangerous ideas you must establish what ideas are safe. To whom shall we entrust these great and delicate tasks?”

“The second consequence of penalizing nonconformity, originality, and independence is a very practical one, and it is one whose effects are already being felt in many quarters. It is simply this: first-rate men and women will not and cannot work under conditions fixed by those who are afraid of ideas.”

“A third consequence of the demand for conformity grows out of the first two. It is the development in this country of the kind of society in which freedom of inquiry does not flourish, in which criticism does not flourish, in which originality does not flourish.”

“We do not encourage dissent for sentimental reasons; we encourage dissent because we cannot live without it.”

“We must use all our resources and use them wisely. And of all our resources, the richest are in the minds and the spirits of free men.”

Part II – The Necessity of Experimentation

“From the beginning, too, our own history was rooted in dissent. The decision to leave England for the New World, the decision to break with community, even with the state was a manifestation of an adventurous and experimental attitude.”

“…all these were expressions of the adventurous pioneering spirit which we celebrate today – but not by imitation.”

“It insisted that the states were originally sovereign, had never surrendered their sovereignty, and thus remained sovereign, and that as sovereignty was absolute, the states had all sovereignty and the United States none.”
“It is not difficult to understand the yearning for security that has come over us, but if we suppose that we can achieve security by resort to the familiar, the traditional, the dogmatic, the absolute, we delude ourselves. If we suppose that we can somehow exact guarantees from history or from God, we delude ourselves.”

“...we assume that these words are expressions of thought when they are for the most part declarations of intellectual bankruptcy.”

“That our grade and high schools fail to educate will readily be admitted, nor will it be denied that they have failed to produce that urbane, civilized, and open-minded citizenry which is the ideal of most educators…If I should attempt to state the explanation in a single sentence, it would be this: that in America we have required our schools to perform many functions aside from the academic…If I were to state the extenuating circumstance in a single sentence it would be this: that our schools faithfully reflect our own society, and that a society which rewards motion-picture stars more highly than scholars or scientists, and features football games on the front page of its paper, can scarcely expect its schools to inculcate different standards and values.”

Part III – Free Enterprise in Ideas

“”Liberty is enlisted in strange armies, pressed into service for curious causes, and as we listen to some of the arguments for censorship or exclusion or suppression, all in the name of liberty, we are reminded irresistibly of Madame Roland’s cry on the scaffold, ‘Liberty, what crimes are done in thy name!”

“A nation that silences or intimidates original minds is left only with unoriginal minds and cannot hope to hold its own in the competition of peace or of war.”

“All but the most thoughtless or the most ignorant know that unless education is free the minds of the next generation will be enslaved.”

“The simple fact is that the kind of society that cherishes academic freedom is the kind that gets the best teachers and scholars and students, and the kind that tries to control what teachers may teach or students learn is the kind that ends up with mediocre teachers and mediocre students.”

“The fact is censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion, incapable, that is, of doing an honest or intelligent job, and thus guarantees a steady intellectual decline.”

“Theory may mislead us; experience must be our guide.”

“The search for subversives results in the intimidation of the independent, the original, the imaginative, and the experimental minded…In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience. In the long run it will create a generation not only deprived of liberty but incapable of enjoying liberty.”

“The most powerful argument against the censorship of textbooks and the elimination of ‘un-American’ ideas or of anything critical of the ‘American spirit of private enterprise’ is that such censorship will guarantee the elimination of textbooks with any ideas at all. The compelling argument against the purging of libraries is that if the kind of people who believe in purges have their way and work their will, our libraries will cease to be centers of light and learning and become instead instruments of party or church or class, or depositories of literature whose only merit is its innocuousness…The decisive argument against the kind of censorship of radio and motion-picture performers that we are now witnessing is that it will leave us, in the end, with programs devoid of ideas and performers devoid of originality or of courage to apply originality.”

“In every case it is society that is the loser. Our society can doubtless afford to lose the benefits of ideas or character in any one instance, but the cumulative costs of the intimidation of thoughtful and critical men and women is something no society can afford.”

“A society that applies doctrinaire notions to social conduct will find itself in the end the prisoner of its own doctrines.”

“A society that discourages experiment will find that without experiment there can be no progress and that without progress, there is regress. A society that attempts to put education and science and scholarship in strait jackets will find that in strait jackets there can be no movement, and that the result will be intellectual atrophy.”

Part IV – Guilt by Association?

“Yet no more pernicious doctrine has ever found its way into American law or into popular acceptance than this doctrine of guilt by association. It is pernicious in principle, in application, and in consequences. It is based on fear and suspicion, on ignorance and bigotry, on arrogance and vanity. It is designed not to save us or strengthen us, but to subvert vital parts of our democracy and of our constitutional system.”

“It is time we see this doctrine of guilt by association for what it is: not a useful device for detecting subversion, but a device for subverting our constitutional principles and practices, for destroying our constitutional guarantees, and for corrupting our faith in ourselves and in our fellow men.”

Part V – Who is Loyal to America?

“For increasingly Congress is concerned with the eradication of disloyalty and the defense of Americanism, and scarcely a day passes that some Congressman does not treat us to exhortations and admonitions, impassioned appeals and eloquent declamations…and scarcely a day passes that the outlines of the new loyalty and the new Americanism are not etched more sharply in public policy. And this is what is significant – the emergence of new patterns of Americanism and of loyalty, patterns radically different from those which have long been traditional.”

“What is the new loyalty? It is, above all, conformity. It is uncritical and unquestioning acceptance of America as it is – the political institutions, the social relationships, the economic practices.”

“The concept of loyalty is a false one. It is narrow and restrictive, denies freedom of thought and of conscience, and is irremediably stained by private and selfish considerations.”

“True loyalty may require, in fact, what appears to the naïve to be disloyalty.”

“The effort to equate loyalty with conformity is misguided because it assumes that there is a fixed content to loyalty and that this can be determined and defined. But loyalty is a principle, and eludes definition except in its own terms. It is devotion to the best interests of the commonwealth, and may require hostility to the particular policies which the government pursues, the particular practices which the economy undertakes, and the particular institutions which society maintains. ‘If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation,’ said the Supreme Court in the Barnett flag-salute case, ‘it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception they do not now occur to us.’”

“We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past – Jefferson and Paine, Emerson and Thoreau – while we silence the rebels of the present...(quoting Theodore Parker) ‘Our whole history is treason; our blood was attainted before we were born; our creeds are infidelity to the mother church; our constitution, treason to our fatherland. What of that? Though all the governors in the world bid us commit treason against man, and set the example, let us never submit.’”

[disorderlyvision]

The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many – Noam Chomsky (1993)

“There was also a tremendous expansion of unregulated capital in the world. In 1971, Nixon dismantled the Bretton Woods system, thereby deregulating currencies. That, and a number of other changes, tremendously expanded the amount of unregulated capital in the world, and accelerated what’s called the globalization or internationalization of the economy.”

“There are two important consequences of globalization. First, it extends the third world model to industrial countries…The second consequence has to do with governing structures. Throughout history, the structures of government have tended to coalesce around other forms of power, primarily around economic power. So when you have national economies, you get national states. We now have an international economy and we’re moving towards an international state – which means, finally, an international executive.”

“Not only that, but the general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.”

“When someone says America is in for a long period of decline, we have to decide what we mean by ‘America.’ If we mean the geographical area of the United States, I’m sure that’s right. There has been decline and there will be further decline. The country is acquiring many of the characteristics of a Third World society. But if we’re talking about US-based corporations, then it’s probably not right. In fact, the indications are to the contrary.”

“The borrowing was used for enrichment of the rich – for consumption, financial manipulation, and speculation. All of these are very harmful to the economy.”

“The government has for years relied on a propaganda system that denies these truths.”

“Propaganda aside, the population is, by comparative standards, pretty individualistic and kind of dissident and doesn’t take orders very well, so it’s not going to be easy to sell state industrial policy to people. These cultural factors are significant.”

“…what might happen if the administration gets any funny ideas about taking some of their own rhetoric seriously?”

“The United States is so deeply in hock to the international financial community that they have a lock on US policy. If something happens here that the bondholders don’t like and will cut down their short-term profit, they’ll just start withdrawing from the US bond market.”

“The concentration of power in such structures means that everything in the ideological or political domains is sharply constrained. It’s not totally controlled, by any means, but it’s sharply constrained. Those are just the facts.”

“(NAFTA) Its general effect will be to drive life down to the lowest level while keeping profits high.”

“The public hasn’t the foggiest idea what’s going on. In fact, they can’t know. One reason is that NAFTA is effectively a secret – it’s an executive agreement that isn’t publicly available.”

“The committee pointed out that although treaty advocates said it won’t hurt many American workers, maybe just unskilled workers, their definition of ‘unskilled worker’ would include 70% of the workforce.”

“Bush (first one) put it pretty honestly in his farewell address when he explained why we intervened in Somalia and not Bosnia. What it comes down to is that in Bosnia somebody might shoot at us. In Somalia it’s just a bunch of teenaged kids. We figure thirty thousand Marines can handle that.”

“That required what was called a ‘nuclear umbrella’ – powerful strategic weapons to intimidate everybody, so that conventional forces could be an instrument of political power.”

“In a situation of occupation or domination, the occupier, the dominant power, has to justify what it’s doing. There is only one way to do it – become a racist. You have to blame the victim. Once you become a raving racist in self-defense, you’ve lost your capacity to understand what’s happening.”

“When you have your boot on someone’s neck, you have to justify it. The justification has to be their depravity.”

“But you really have to think through the talk about nonviolence. Sure, everybody’s in favor of nonviolence rather than violence, but under what conditions and when? Is it an absolute principle?”

“But I agree, you can’t get away from the fact that there are sharp differences in power which in fact are ultimately rooted in the economic system.” (social class)

“On the other hand, it’s certainly worth overcoming the other forms of oppression. For people’s lives, racism and sexism may be much worse than class oppression. When a kid was lynched in the South, that was worse than being paid low wages. So when we talk about the roots of the system of oppression, that can’t be spelled out simply in terms of suffering. Suffering is an independent dimension, and you want to overcome suffering.”

“If you want to create a humane world, you change the circumstances.”

“Ultimately the governors, the rulers, can only rule if they control opinion – no matter how many guns they have.”

“There’s a constant battle between people who refuse to accept domination and injustice and those who are trying to force people to accept them.”

[axiomata]

Bump with another on-the-money quote.

This one is from John T. Flynn's 1944 book As We Go Marching, available for download over at mises.org (http://blog.mises.org/5772/as-we-go-marching-by-john-t-flynn/).


Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans who have been working to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing billions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our nation’s greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination, all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers, with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society.