Tag Archives: United States

The Gold Standard: Protector of Individual Liberty and Economic Prosperity

vs.

The idea of a constitution and/or written legislation to secure individual rights so beloved by conservatives and among many libertarians has proven to be a myth. The US Constitution and all those that have been written and ratified in its wake throughout the world have done little to protect individual liberties or keep a check on State largesse. Instead, in the American case, the Constitution created a powerful central government which eliminated much of the sovereignty and independence that the individual states possessed under the Articles of Confederation.

While the US Constitution contains a “Bill of Rights,” the interpreter of those rights and protections thereof is the very entity which has enumerated them. It is only natural that decisions on whether, or if such rights have been violated will be in favor of the state. Moreover, nearly every amendment which has come in the wake of the Bill of Rights, has augmented federal power at the expense of the individual states and that of property owners.

History has shown the steady erosion of individual rights and the creation of “new rights” and entitlements (education, health care, employment, etc.) which have occurred under constitutional rule. Instead of limitation on government power, constitutions have given cover for the vast expansion of taxation, regulation, debt, and money creation.

While taxation has always been a facet of constitutional governments, it has been the advent of central banking and with it the elimination of the gold standard which has provided the means for the state to become such an omnipresent force in everyday life. Irredeemable fiat paper money issued by central banks has also led to the entrenchment of political parties which has allowed these elites to create and subsidize dependency groups which, in turn, repeatedly vote to keep the political class in office.

Without the ability to create money and credit, the many bureaucracies, regulations, and laws could neither be created or enforced. This would mean that the vast and powerful security and surveillance agencies could not exist or would be far less intrusive than they currently are. With commodity money, debt creation would have to be repaid in gold, not monetized as it is currently done through the issuance of paper currency.

Just as important, it would have been next to impossible for the two world wars to have been fought and carried to their unimaginable destructive ends. None of the populations involved would have put up with the level of taxation necessary to wage such costly undertakings. Few of the wars which followed (most of which have been instigated by the US) could have taken place without central banking. Nor could the level of “defense” spending – currently at a whopping $717 billion for fiscal year 2018 – be financed if the US was on a commodity standard.*

Under a gold standard, governments would have to rely on taxation alone. Since citizens directly feel the effects of taxation, there is a “natural level” that it can be raised. Punitive tax rates usually lead to a backlash and potential social insurrection which strike fear in the hearts of political elites.

Recent projections by the Congressional Budget Office again demonstrate that constitutional government provides little restraint on spending.

If present trends continue, the federal government will spend more on its interest serving its debt than it spends on the military, Medicare, or children’s programs. It is also expected that next year’s interest on the debt will be some $390 billion, up an astonishing 50 percent from 2017.** And, for the entire fiscal year of 2018, the gross national debt surged by $1.271 trillion, to a mind-boggling $21.52 trillion.***

At one time, economists used to speak of the pernicious effects that “crowding out” had on an economy. Since the onset of the “bubble era,” talk about deficits has almost dropped out of financial discussions. Yet, the reality remains the same: public spending and borrowing divert scarce resources away from private capital markets to unproductive wasteful government projects and endeavors.

For those who seek a reduction in State power, defense of individual rights, and economic prosperity, the re-establishment of a monetary order based on the precious metals is the most efficacious path to take. Such a social system would not require elaborate legislation or fancy proclamations of man’s inalienable rights, but simply a return to honest money – gold!

*Amanda Macias, “Trump Gives $717 Billion Defense Bill a Green Light. Here’s What the Pentagon is Poised to Get.” CNBC.com 14 August 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/13/trump-signs-717-billion-defense-bill.html

**Nelson D. Schwartz, “As Debt Rises, the Government Will Soon Spend More on Interest Than on the Military.” The New York Times. 25 September 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/business/economy/us-government-debt-interest.html

***Tyler Durden, “US Gross National Debt Soars $1.27 Trillion in Fiscal 2018, Hits $21.5 Trillion.” Zero Hedge. 2 October 2018. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-02/us-gross-national-debt-soars-127-trillion-fiscal-2018-hits-215-trillion

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

The United States of Terror!

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Two recent articles* have again demonstrated that the greatest “terrorist” entity on earth is not the bogymen – Russia, China, Iran, North Korea – so often portrayed by Western presstitudes and the American government, but the United States itself! Ever since World War II, the US has been the most militaristic, far surpassing all of the Communist and dictatorial regimes combined.

Some startling and rarely reported facts:

Currently, the US drops on someone or something a deadly explosive once every12 minutes

W. Bush’s military dropped 70,000 bombs on five different nations during his murderous regime

Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Barrack Obomber, launched 100,000 bombs on seven countries

Funding this mass murder is a reportedly $21 trillion (!) that is unaccounted for in the Pentagon’s coffers

Despite all of the “America First” bluster at the start of the Trump Administration, little has changed but, in fact, things have escalated. While G.W. Bush in his wicked eight years dropped over 24 bombs per day and his successor upped that total to 34 bombs per day, the current Bomber-in-Chief has, in his first year in office, averaged 121 bombs per day! For the initial year of his Presidency, 44,000 bombs were dropped on people and lands despite the fact that the US is not officially at war with a single country!

Despite these grisly statistics, which are hardly ever reported by the mainstream press, the military industrial complex and the controlled Western media outlets have propagated the lie of “precision bombing.” Precision bombing has been trumpeted to minimize the effect of US aggression to the public that only true belligerents are targeted and not innocents.

When US bombing is reported by the press, the actual casualties and property damage are never accurately given. The most notorious example of this mendacity was the coverage of Bush II’s Iraq war. “The US and its allies ruthlessly carpet-bombed Iraq,” a UN report acknowledged, “reducing it from ‘a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society’ to a ‘pre-industrial age nation.’”

Later accounts of what actually happened showed that “only seven percent of the 88,500 tons of bombs and missiles devastating Iraq were ‘precision weapons.’”

Yet, it is hypocritical US policy makers that call certain regimes “rogue” and/or “terrorist” while their own defense budget is set at $700 billion to increase next year by $16 billion. Yes, more taxes extorted from the public for the pulverization of peoples and their homes across the globe!

Even if these statistics were of common knowledge, do not look for things to change. The majority of the American public loves its military and government and has been conditioned to overlook and accept nearly all of its military engagements and the propaganda that attempts to justify them.

What must change is ideology which, at one time, was strongly anti-interventionist, but gradually became pro-war. Through education, the press, books, and the electronic media, the intelligentsia was able to manipulate public opinion. Americans began to glorify war under the guise of spreading democracy and “freedom” to everyone, whether they wanted it or not.

Under current ideological conditions, a reversal of thinking to a non-interventionist foreign policy is not likely. The only way that the nation’s rampaging foreign policy will be checked is through an economic collapse or a severe dollar crisis, the latter of which would end the greenback’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

If America no longer has the means to fund its military around the world, its imperialism will quickly come to an end. It is extremely burdensome on a domestic economy to maintain a global empire and one that is actively engaged in costly military operations. If the nation’s economy severely contracts or the dollar can no longer be printed with impunity, the bombing of other peoples and political involvement in overseas affairs would have to cease, or be drastically curtailed. A historical example of this is Great Britain after WWII.

As it stands now, only financial calamity will bring down the world’s foremost terrorist state. If such a scenario comes about, the US may become the recipient of the destruction, loss of life, and mayhem it has unleashed upon the world.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

*Tyler Durden, “America’s Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes, and No One is Talking About it.” Zero Hedge, 6 June 2018, *https://antoniusaquinas.com https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-22/trumps-military-drops-bomb-every-12-minutes-and-no-one-talking-about-it

Tyler Durden, Debunking the Persistent Myth of U.S. Precision Bombing,” Zero Hedge. 23 June 2018, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-23/debunking-persistent-myth-us-precision-bombing

The Fed’s “Inflation Target” is Impoverishing American Workers

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Powell Fed Chair Jerome Powell apparently doesn’t see the pernicious effects of inflation

At one time, the Federal Reserve’s sole mandate was to maintain stable prices and to “fight inflation.” To the Fed, the financial press, and most everyone else “inflation” means rising prices instead of its original and true definition as an increase in the money supply. Rising prices are a consequence – a very painful consequence – of money printing.

Naturally, the Fed and all other central bankers prefer the definition of inflation as a rise in prices which insidiously hides the fact that they, being the issuers of currency, are the real culprit for increased prices.

Be that as it may, the common understanding of inflation as rising prices has always been seen as pernicious and destructive to an economy and living standards. In the perverted world of modern economics, however, the idea of inflation as an intrinsic evil has been turned on its head and monetary authorities the world over now have “inflation targets” which they hope to attain.

America’s central bank is right in line with this lunacy, as it has been reported that at the Fed’s “May minutes” it wants “a temporary period of inflation modestly above 2 percent [which] would be consistent with the Committee’s symmetric inflation objective.”* Translated into understandable verbiage, the Fed wants everyone to pay at least 2% higher prices for the goods they buy.

Yes, by some crazed thinking US monetary officials believe that consumers paying higher prices is somehow good for economic activity and standards of living! Of course, anyone with a modicum of sense can see that this is absurd and that those who espouse such policy should be laughed at and summarily locked up in an asylum! Yet, this is now standard policy, not just with the Fed, but with the ECU and other central banks.

The baneful consequence of this economic quackery is being felt by American workers as admitted by the Labor Department. Instead of spurring expansion, inflation is eating into and depressing wages:

For workers in ‘production and

nonsupervisory” positions, the value

of the average paycheck has actually

declined in the past year. For those

workers, average ‘real wages’ – a

measure of pay that takes inflation

into account fell – from $22.62 in

May 2017 to $22.59 in May of 2018.*

While the decline in nominal wages is not significant, the manner in which the government now calculates inflation has been skewed to understate its impact. Under the previous calculation, the current US inflation rate is probably closer to 5%.

Wage stagnation is not new. Average real wages peaked more than 40 years ago and have fallen in real terms ever since. Not surprisingly, the drop in wages in real terms began soon after the US went off the last vestiges of the gold standard in 1971.

As sound theory has long ago demonstrated, the idea of economic growth through money printing is absurd. Increases in living standards and real wages can only come about through savings, investment, and capital accumulation. Workers who have superior tools and equipment are obviously more productive than those that do not. Yet, capital goods have to be produced and production takes place over time. Savings allow for the production process.

The level of wages are also closely linked to savings. The greater savings an economy has enables entrepreneurs to bid for workers and increase wage rates. This is how wages rise – competition for labor among businessmen pushes up wage rates. The more savings entrepreneurs have, the higher they can bid for employees.

How and why wage rates rise and how employment is created had been understood by economists of yesteryear. Today, however, the profession is dominated by “inflationists” and monetary cranks who believe that nearly every economic problem can be solved by the printing press. Anyone who holds such ideas cannot be taken seriously.

While the Federal Reserve may think an inflation target will create prosperity, the reality for real wages is quite the opposite. The laws of economic science have not been repealed. An inflation target will lead to the impoverishment of not just workers, but lower living standards for all.

inflation target.jpg

*Jeff Stein and Andrew van Dam, “For the Biggest Group of American Workers, Wages Aren’t Just Flat. They’re Falling.” The Washington Post. 16 June 2018 A10.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

Only Economic Collapse Will Bring Down the American Empire

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trump syria

The Bomber-in-Chief announces air attacks on Syria

Despite the vehement pleas and letter-writing campaigns by a significant portion of his political base including notable media personalities such as Tucker Carlson against military action in Syria, President Trump committed what looks like political suicide by ordering air strikes on Friday evening. The bombing, thankfully, appeared to have been thwarted by Syrian air defenses, nor, as of this date, has the insane American, British and French action led to a wider conflagration.

As of yet, no doubt due to Divine Intervention, WWIII has not erupted and although the ramifications of the attack will reverberate for weeks to come, what is clear is that President Trump is now firmly in the clutches of the neocons, Israel, and the American Deep State, all of who are the direct beneficiaries of the wanton attack on the Assad regime.

A good portion of Trump’s base is rightfully enraged by the action, which will dash any hope of it coming to his aid if future impeachment proceedings are commenced over the Mueller investigation. Many of Trump’s supporters have been seething ever since he signed off on the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending package in March and his continued failure to start construction on a border wall.

Talk about shooting one’s self in the foot!

Whether President Trump survives until 2020 or is replaced in the interim by neocon Mike Pence, American foreign policy will, in all likelihood, continue its bellicose ways. Ever since WWI, which the current Bomber-in-Chief mentioned in his address announcing the air strikes, America has been an interventionist, destructive, and murderous empire.

The reason for this is that the nation’s ideology had changed where it had once trumpeted the ideas of non-intervention and peace (except, of course, for the people of the South during their heroic attempt at independence) to those that glorified empire and war, largely based on the British model which, ironically, was the system that America seceded from in 1776. By the time of WWI (actually the disgraceful Spanish-American War), the ideals of non-intervention, peace, free trade, and hard money had been gradually replaced by those of empire, central banking, war, and debt.

Until there is a change in ideology, it is unlikely that the US will refrain from its interventionist foreign policy. And, typically, social change comes after men’s minds have been convinced of a different paradigm which, of course, does not happen overnight.

Like the British Empire before it, the only way the US will stop its murderous ways will be from economic collapse or a severe financial panic which threatens or ends the US dollar’s status as the world reserve currency.

Candidate Trump may have been the last hope of an American Firster who had the wherewithal to attain the Presidency. Although not an ideologue, Trump spoke of getting along with Russia, disengaging from the Middle East, and backing out of, or making NATO members pay for their own “defense.” These qualities faded once elected and the ominous talk about scuttling the Iranian arms deal and spending more on the military were pushed ahead.

After WWII, Britain had simply exhausted itself with its insane participation in the world wars and could no longer maintain its empire. Britain’s ideology did not change, but reality stepped in: it simply did not have the capacity (wealth) to fund a world-wide empire. It had squandered its resources and men on the battlefields of Europe.

Winston Churchill destroyer of the British Empire

The US is headed in the same direction, which is what both Russia and China are counting on. Its crushing debt burden, costly wars, and out-of-control spending are sapping its productive capacity, which the military industrial complex taps to sustain itself.

The US’ enemies have based their strategies on this. In reference to the US’ involvement in the Afghanistan quagmire, Osama bin Laden reportedly said:

We, alongside the mujahideen, bled Russia for 10

years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to

withdraw in defeat . . . So we are continuing this

policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.*

Osama Bin Laden

The question that remains is when will a collapse occur or at least another crisis like in 2008 take place? The warning signs abound. The most pressing is the exploding US deficit which has soared in March to $209 billion. In 2007, the entire deficit for the year was less than $200 billion!

The collapse of the US economy is unavoidable, however, it is not “if” but “when.” For world peace, it had better be sooner than later.

*Brian Whitaker, “Al-Qaida is Bleeding US to Bankruptcy, Bin Laden Claims.” The Guardian, 3 November 2004. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/03/usa.alqaida

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

Heaven Forbid Peace Should Break Out Between the US and North Korea!

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US bombing Korea

Hamhung, North Korea, June 30, 1950

As long as the US Empire can be funded and maintained on the backs of its taxpaying public, the chance of de-escalation of tensions not only on the Korean peninsula, but throughout the world are practically nil. And, as long as the nation’s current interventionist ideology holds sway, it will only be through a financial meltdown that the US’s role as global policeman will come to a much-needed end.

The most recent example of the world’s biggest bully escalating matters is its on-again, off-again badgering of North Korea. In contrast to Western/CIA media reports, the November 28 launch of what appears to be an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-15, was not unprovoked. Instead, the North Korean test firing was in response to the unexpected announcement of further US/South Korean military drills to take place starting on December 4. The exercises are, in part, to show off the latest mass murdering “product” of America’s military industrial complex, the USF-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet.

Before the latest launch, the Kim Jong Un regime had not fired a missile for two months and was in discussions with other intermediaries about how tensions could be lessened on the Korean peninsula. For the bellicose US, however, not even an uneasy “truce” can be tolerated. The next American scheduled drill was not to take place until the spring of 2018, yet, while negotiations were taking place, the US abruptly, and to the outrage of everyone involved, renewed exercises. Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, explains:

We have been working with Pyongyang. Then,

all of a sudden two weeks after the United States

had sent us the signal [about readiness to dialogue],

they announced unscheduled drills in December.

there is an impression that they were deliberately

provoking [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un to

make him break the pause and gave in to their

provocations.*

This, of course, is not the first time that the US has acted with duplicity in foreign matters. Its barbaric dealing with two Middle Eastern strongmen (Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi) are grisly examples of what happens to those who run afoul of the US Empire, especially those who do not possesses a nuclear deterrent.

North Korea, too, has witnessed the wanton destructive capabilities of the American military during the so called “police action” of the early 1950s:

The US Air Force estimated that North Korea’s

destruction was proportionally greater than that

of Japan’s in the Second World War. . . . American

planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea . . .

including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to

503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific

theatre of WWII.**

The loss of life was, to say the least, catastrophic as 10% of the population, some 3 million people, perished due mostly to American bombing while the destruction of property was equally brutal. “By the end of the war,” North Korean sources assert, “only two modern buildings remained standing in Pyongyang.”***

Is it any wonder that the North Korean leadership gets a little antsy when the US scramble its jets. It does not want a repetition of the holocaust inflicted on it by the merciless American Air Force.

Of course, these inconvenient facts are rarely if ever spoken about in the Western media, academia, and certainly not by war-mongering politicos like U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. They are simply ignorant of history or pretend not to know.

The US Empire only accepts peace if it favors its interests. For the Korean Peninsula that means that Kim Jong Un must disband his nuclear program. Such a move, however, would mean a premature death to Un and the eventual carpet bombing of his country. The North Korean strongman will do no such thing.

The Trump Administration may huff and puff all it wants and enact greater sanctions on the North, but unless it wants to risk a nuclear confrontation that may spread into a general world war, it has little options.

Instead of another round of destabilizing military maneuvers, maybe President Trump and his foreign policy team should try to engage in genuine negotiations to bring about an equitable solution to the matter.

Why not “give peace a chance?”

*”Russian FM Reveals First Victims in Case of War on Korean Peninsula.” Sputnik News. 2 December 2017. https://sputniknews.com/asia/201712021059640205-russia-provocations-korea-war/

**Charles K. Armstrong, “The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950-1960.” The Asian-Pacific Journal. http://apjjf.org/-Charles-K.-Armstrong/3460/article.html

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

Francis: The Pope of Perversity

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Last week, the purported head of the Catholic Church, Jorge Bergoglio, a.k.a. Pope Francis, popped off once again about the supposed danger of global warming to mankind. “Pope Francis” called climate change “one of the most worrisome phenomena that humanity is facing” while those who hold dissimilar views on the subject have “perverse attitudes.”*

It is interesting that Bergoglio used the term “perverse” to describe those who might see climate change as a hoax being used by global elitists to further enslave humanity. Webster’s New World Dictionary, 2nd college edition defines perverse in the following way:

deviating from what is considered right and good; wrong improper, etc. or corrupt, wicked, etc; perverted.

persisting in error or fault; stubbornly contrary.

obstinately disobedient or difficult; intractable.

characterized by or resulting from obstinacy or contrariness

It would be difficult to find a better term for Bergoglio and his wretched papacy than “perverse.”

It is apparent to any semi-cognizant person that Jorge Bergoglio, who has uttered a stream of mind-boggling heresies and has engaged in numerous scandalous activities, is not Catholic. Not only is it impossible for a manifest heretic to be pope, but Bergoglio’s papacy is invalid since he was neither ordained a priest or consecrated as a bishop in the traditional, Apostolic rite, but instead was given orders created after the Second Vatican Anti-Council, 1962-65.

If this was not bad enough, Bergoglio who was “elected,” in part, to clean up the Church’s abominable and still ongoing pedophile scandal has done virtually nothing to oust the perverts, rapists, and enablers involved in the child holocaust, but has “perversely” promoted a number of these deviants into high-ranking Vatican positions!

Bergoglio has sought to change two millennium of Church teaching, some of which goes contrary to the very words of Christ Himself, on marriage, divorce, and sodomy. Moreover, he has continued, like his post-Vatican II predecessors, to add novelties and make changes to the Church’s ancient liturgy and practices, most of which have been condemned by earlier popes and councils.

Despite all of this, Bergoglio has had the audacity to castigate those who do not go along with the phony baloney notion of climate change. He not only has lost all moral authority to do so, but, like many of the climate change hustlers, Bergoglio has no scientific credentials to make such pronouncements one way or the other. Nor does the office that he illegitimately occupies possess jurisdiction in this field.

The post-Vatican II popes have turned the august Chair of St. Peter into a pulpit for all sorts of crazed liberal causes with Bergoglio being the most radical of its proponents. Another favorite of the Argentine heretic is his championing of mass migration unto European shores.

That Bergoglio has been allowed to not only remain in office, but has not been challenged when he utters such nonsense shows the low degree of knowledge of the faith that exists among most Catholics. Popes have very limited authority and are only “infallible” in very specific theological areas. This is why popes of the past never wrote books, issued statements or made speeches on social issues. They are supposed to preach the Gospel.

The attainment of the sublime virtues contained in the Beatitudes as the goal of Christian living has under Bergoglio been replaced with a Leftist creed of social activism that includes climate change, mass migration, and income redistribution. Such a transformation is the very antithesis of what the office that he holds was originally constituted to accomplish.

Bergoglio’s support for global warming demonstrates again that the Catholic Church is now an organ of the New World Order. Politics, control, and social engineering are the tenets of the New Faith while the spiritual well being of souls is an afterthought. It is a rarity when “Pope Francis” ever preaches on Christian themes, and when he does it is usually laced with heresies, confusion and downright lies.

If any institution should be free of perversity, it is the Catholic Church and that its current head is the embodiment of it shows the depths upon which that organization has sunk. When Bergoglio and his crowd are either silenced or replaced, fraudulent ideas like global warming will become regrettable memories of a distant past.

*Nicole Winfield, “Pope Rebukes Climate Deniers as ‘Perverse’ in Bonn Message.” Associated Press. 16 November 2017

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

What President Trump and the West Can Learn from China

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Trump Trip China

Instead of a demonstration of its overwhelming military might intended to intimidate tiny North Korea and pressure China to lean on its defiant communist neighbor, President Trump and the West should try to learn a few things from China.

The President’s trip to the Far East came on the heels of the completion of China’s 19^th National Congress where the current president, Xi Jinping, has cunningly positioned himself as China’s unchallenged leader. In an address at the opening of the Congress, Xi cautioned that the country faced “challenges” that are “extremely grim” yet, despite these, the nation’s future is “extremely bright.”*

While Western politicos and pundits bemoan the lack of political pluralism that exists within China and President Trump complained about bad trade “deals,” they miss an important factor as to why China has transformed itself from a socialist basket case some three decades ago into an economic powerhouse which now boasts over a third of the world’s billionaires!

China’s economic ascendancy can be attributed not only to the implementation of market reforms in the 1990s, but also its lack of “political competition.” As a one-party state, resources, time, energy, and capital are not allowed to be channeled into wasteful political processes, but instead are used and “invested” in wealth-creation activities – construction, factories, plants, equipment, research, technology – all of which leads to more and cheaper consumer goods.

The US and the West spend too much on elections, campaigns, polling, political consultation, etc., which diverts scarce resources away from the private wealth sectors of society. For example, in her last failed presidential campaign run, the Wicked Witch of Chappaqua alone spent over a half of billion dollars.

Under Western democratic pluralism, public debt and state spending have increased to unsustainable levels. In the US alone – history’s greatest debtor nation – the national debt is in excess of $20 trillion, while its total debt officially is $68 billion with a federal deficit (GAAP) running yearly at $5 ½ trillion.

Such staggering numbers are the result, in part, from political parties seeking public office and once elected exploiting their position to enrich themselves, their constituents, and create dependent classes among the ever shrinking productive segments of society.

China’s foreign policy – an extension of politics – has also been conducive for wealth creation. Instead of wasteful spending on military hardware, the maintenance of a far-flung global empire, and involvement in incessant wars, China has a rather meek military compared to its national income and has conducted a pretty much non-interventionist foreign policy – witness its diplomacy with North Korea.

The US is almost the polar opposite. It spends more on “defense” than the next eight countries combined.** Instead of the production of useful consumer goods, billions are siphoned off into the military/security industrial complex. Not only does this impoverish Americans at home, but it leads to never ending involvement in wars, conflicts, and disputes, most of which are created or exacerbated by US spy organizations.

Def spending

After meeting with Chinese leadership, President Trump tweeted:

I don’t blame China, I blame the incompetence

of past Admins for allowing China to take advantage

of the U.S. on trade leading up to a point where the

U.S. is losing $100’s of billions. How can you blame

China for taking advantage of people that had no clue?

I would’ve done the same!

Making better trade deals will not revitalize the moribund US economy. Instead, there should be less politicization of society and adoption of market reforms as China has done. The most important plank of such a policy would be the encouragement of real savings – not the creation of bank credit – through the normalization of interest rates. This would begin the arduous process of capital accumulation, the basis upon which any economy can be built.

Another sign of the divergence between the two is China’s continued push to make the yuan the world’s reserve currency with apparently some sort of gold backing to it. Contrarily, the Trump Administration has continued the same disastrous policies of its predecessors and has chosen a Janet Yellen clone to head the Federal Reserve with a continuation, no doubt, of the suppression of interest rates. On the other hand, China continues to import massive quantities of gold and encourages its citizens to own the yellow metal while the West is in the midst of a crypto currency mania, another fraudulent monetary scheme.

China’s economic miracle, while certainly impressive, would not look as astounding if Western economies had not been in a state of stagnation and decline over the past half century. It was not political liberalization that led to China’s phenomenal growth, but economic freedom which used to be a staple of Western life. The lesson that should be taken from President Trump’s trip is less politics domestically and more free markets.

*Chris Buckley, “Xi Jinping Opens China’s Party Congress, His Hold Tighter Than Ever.” The New York Times, 17 October 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/world/asia/xi-jinping-communist-party-china.html

**Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “US Defense Spending Compared to Other Countries.” 1 June 2017. https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

In Remembrance of the October Revolution

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Oct Rev

The Communist monster, Vladimir Lenin

This October marks the centennial anniversary of the Bolshevik takeover of Russia and the establishment of Soviet-style Communism which tragically, for the Russian people, would last for some seventy interminable years. Not only did the Soviet regime liquidate and imprison millions, but its idiotic system of central planning impoverished the country, turning it into an economic basket case, the effects of which continue to this day.

Just as bad, the Bolsheviks murdered the last Czar, Nicholas II and his family, brutally ending nearly five hundred years of monarchial rule of Russia. Within a year of the demise of the Russian aristocracy, two other of Europe’s venerable royal houses – Germany and Austria – met the same fate, all three casualties of their insane decision to participate in World War I. The end of the German Court and especially that of Austria came at the vengeful insistence of then President Woodrow Wilson, who brought the US into the conflict on the pledge to make the “world safe for democracy.”

The triumph of the Bolsheviks and the downfall of the German and Austrian monarchies ushered in the Age of Democracy as other Western constitutional republics at the time and in each passing year began to resemble and adopt features of their supposed Communist foe. As the 20^th century wore on, each Western nation state became more “democratic,” increasing their welfare/warfare state apparatus, imposing more and more radical egalitarian social and economic measures, and adopting greater amounts of economic planning mostly through central banking. Not only did economic activity become increasingly effected by monetary policy, but the central banks were instrumental in the eradication of the gold standard throughout the Western world.

Not only did Communism prove to be a disaster economically in Russia and everywhere else tried, but socialism had other debilitating effects. The quality of the population declined along with the numbers of ethnic Russians, a trend that ominously continues to this day. While ingenuity was stifled by the Soviet command economy, its culture, although never as advanced as Western Europe, became sterile and overshadowed by the heavy hand of the commissar. The only memorable literature produced during the period were accounts of the gulag and the repression of dissent. Music and the arts were similar cultural wastelands.

The West, too, as its nation states became more socialistic and egalitarian, witnessed retrogression in every aspect of society. The catastrophic drop off in the size of the native populations can largely be attributed to crazed feminism, where women were encouraged and given privileges to pursue careers and become “working moms,” which led to the phenomenon of the “dysfunctional family” and declines in the number of child births. Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains this effect in the American context:

In the U.S., . . . less than a century of full-blown

democracy has resulted in steadily increasing

moral degeneration, family and social disintegration,

and cultural decay in the form of continually rising

rates of divorce, illegitimacy, abortion, and crime.

As a result of an ever-expanding list of non-

discrimination – ‘affirmative action’ – laws and

nondiscriminatory, multicultural, egalitarian

immigration policies, every nook and cranny of

American society is affected by government

management and forced integration.*

Hoppe Demo 3

Hoppe’s seminal demolition of Democracy

A primary reason why the quality of Western life has crumbled so markedly has been the replacement of its “natural elites” with “political elites” via the democratic process. Every society is led by its leading individuals who through talent, hard work, brains, foresight, moral fortitude, fairness, and bravery come to the top and are looked to for guidance. Under democratic conditions, however, the natural elites have, in a sense, been “voted out” by the political class who, instead of out competing their rivals, secure their status by politics mostly through demagogy.

In Soviet Russia, the natural elites were ruthlessly purged by Lenin’s forces and over time any sort of advancement or achievement had to come via the Communist Party.

Despite the overwhelming failure of socialism, Western nation states continue to practice many of its features, a most notorious recent example being that of the passage of Obamacare, the first step on the road to universal health care in the US. America, itself, resembles more of a police state than ever before with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and the passage of draconian legislation such as the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The October Revolution should be remembered for what it was: the inauguration of mankind’s first total state. It, and the social system which it spawned, should be condemned by all those who seek prosperity and an advanced civilization.

*Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order. New Brunswick (U.S.A.): Transaction Publishers, 2001, p. xiii.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

A Constitutional Anniversary to Forget

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constitutionstupid

While not a jubilee year, last week marked the 230th anniversary of the US Constitution. Naturally, most of its devotees enthusiastically praised the document which by now is seen on a par with Holy Writ itself. An editorial from Investor’s Business Daily provides an example of such hagiography:

The Constitution’s beauty is that it not only delineates our rights

as Americans, but expressly limits and defines government’s ability

to interfere in our private lives. This equipoise between citizens’

duties, responsibilities and rights makes it the defining document

or our nation’s glorious freedom.

But America is wonderful largely because of the Constitution and

those who framed it . . . .

What we have is too precious to squander . . . .*

Most of the piece laments about the widespread ignorance of its sacred contents among the denizens in which it rules over and encourages the unlearned “to bone up a bit on your constitutional heritage . . . .” The editorial fails, as do most others on the Right, to understand that it is not a lack of knowledge of the Constitution’s contents among the populace which lies at the heart of America’s social, economic, and political problems, but the very document itself.

One of the main reasons why the Constitution continues to be so widely venerated is due to the deliberate distortion of history that its “founders” promoted and that generations of its sycophants have continued to perpetuate to this very day. The official narrative runs that the Constitution was enacted because of widespread popular support for a change to the supposed inadequacies and deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation.

This is a myth. Instead, the Constitution was a coup deliberately schemed by the leading political and mercantile classes to set up a powerful central government where ultimate authority rested in the national state. The use of the term “federal” to describe what was created in Philadelphia in those fateful days was a ruse much like the banksters and politicos used “Federal Reserve” to describe the central bank created in 1913. It was neither “federal” – a decentralized monetary order – nor a “reserve” of gold, but a monetary institution which could create money out of thin air and eventually eliminate the gold standard.

It was a similar political maneuver 230 years ago as a new American national state was established and touted as a decentralized form of government where power was evenly divided between state and national levels and between the different branches of the government itself – “separation of powers.” In actuality, however, the “federal system” was the elevation of central power at the expense of local authority which had previously existed. Section VI of the Constitution says it all:

The Constitution and the laws of the United States . . .

shall be the supreme law of the land; and the

judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the

Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

Elementary political science has shown and plain common sense knows that any person or institution given “supreme authority” will misuse and abuse such power. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely is an undeniable dictum of human nature. A truly decentralized system of governance would not contain a plank as “supreme law of the land” as part of its foundation. Instead, real federalism would be dispersed, as it existed in the past in such political arrangements as confederacies, leagues, and, certainly, under the much maligned feudal social order.

Even the Constitution’s celebrated Bill of Rights is flawed and has proven to be ineffective in protecting basic human freedoms. It is the federal government which enumerates and interprets what freedom individuals should possess. Thus, the meaning and extent of individual liberties will be in the hands of federal jurists and courts who will invariably rule on cases in favor of the state. The ensnaring of individual rights within the central government’s authority did away with the venerable common law which was a far greater defender of liberty than federal courts.

Just as important, the enactment of the Constitution, which brought all the individual states under it suzerainty, did away with one of the most significant checks on state power – “voting with one’s feet.” When there are multiple governing authorities, if one jurisdiction becomes too oppressive, its subjects can move to freer domains. This still happens on a local level as high tax and regulatory states such as California and New York have lost demographically to freer places like Nevada and Texas. Yet, from the Federal Leviathan there is no escape, except expatriation.

Unless and until Americans and all the other peoples of the Western world who live under constitutional rule recognize that it is the type of government which is the cause of most of the political turmoil, social unrest, and economic malaise which they face, there is no hope of turning things around.

*”Sturdy Constitution, ” Investor’s Business Daily, Week of September 18, 2017, A20.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

The United States of Hubris

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If anyone should have any questions about whether the United States of America is not the most aggressive, warlike, and terroristic nation on the face of the earth, its latest proposed action against the supposed rogue state of North Korea should allay any such doubts.

Last week, the US circulated a draft resolution which it intends to present to the UN Security Council that would give the American Navy and Air Force the power to interdict North Korean ships at sea to determine if they were transporting “weaponry material” or fuel and that US forces would be given “the right” to use “all necessary measures” to “enforce compliance.”*

Not surprisingly, Nikky Haley, the blood-thirsty and incompetent American Ambassador to the UN, has enthusiastically backed the resolution, utterly clueless of its ramifications if passed, the most horrific of which would be the igniting of WWIII. Trump’s selection of the neocon mouthpiece as UN Ambassador has been a disaster on several fronts: first, it was an early and quite telling sell out of his political base whom he promised an American First foreign policy of less belligerency and intervention. Second, Haley had no foreign policy experience and has made a fool of herself internationally on more than one occasion with her inane statements.

That the US is even considering such a provocative scheme once again shows the hubris which exists within its vast corridors of power. Any other country which would suggest such an audacious act would be rightly condemned, ostracized, and labeled as a rogue state. Yet, it is US lawmakers, policy wonks, and the CIA/NSA-directed American press corps that charge others (mostly those who do not kowtow to US dictates) of “terrorism.”

This year, as of yet, North Korea has not been responsible for a single death of a foreign national. Nor has the tiny communist state ever used a nuclear weapon against an enemy like the US did with its immoral and hellish destruction of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the conclusion of WWII.

On the other hand, since the start of the Trump Presidency, US-backed forces have been responsible for the deaths of some 3700 civilians in Mosul, Iraq.** This is not to mention its murderous armed strikes in Yemen and Afghanistan. Nor is American aggression limited to direct military action, but its arms supply sales to despots and its puppets has escalated tensions and makes conflicts that do break out much more brutal.

Fortunately, for the future of global peace, US hegemony is coming to an end. The nation is hopelessly broke while its welfare/warfare economy is beyond reform and faltering badly which means that when the inevitable collapse does happen, it will mean the end or a serious pull back of the Empire. A similar situation took place in Great Britain in 1945 after it took part in another senseless global conflict which liquidated the British Empire once and for all.

Any sober thinking realist would recognize the deteriorating societal and economic conditions at home, yet because of the collective hubris embedded in the political class, American bellicosity continues.

The last hope of changing US overseas affairs in a peaceful direction was Donald Trump who throughout the campaign spoke of an American First foreign policy which garnered widespread support. Within Trump’s foreign policy statements, however, there were many troubling ones: call for increased defense spending, “wiping out ISIS,” updating the nation’s nuclear arsenal, putting an end to the North Korean “problem.” The encouraging words about non-intervention and getting along with Russia were quickly scuttled while the militaristic side of Trump’s campaign rhetoric has won the day.

History is replete with examples of hubristic regimes which appeared invincible and everlasting, but quickly fall with severe and quite nasty retribution from their enemies. While the US goes about the world threatening, bombing, and destabilizing those it does not like, it too, possibly in the not too distant future, will face the deserved wrath of those it has humiliated and terrorized.

*David E. Sanger, “U.S. Seeks U.N. Consent to Interdict North Korean Ships.” New York Times. 6 September 2017.

**Adam Johnson, “Corporate Media Largely Silent on Trump’s Civilian Death Toll in Iraq.” Fair. 19 July 2017. http://fair.org/home/corporate-media-largely-silent-on-trumps-civilian-death-toll-in-iraq/

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com