Great post. There's one amendment I'd make, because I think it's so important that it may be the way out of all this. The Constitution forbids STATES from coining money, issuing bills or making anything but gold and silver into a payment for debts. The Constitution was a coup by merchants and bankers to make sure the States didn't take back the power they had as colonies (pre-British Currency Act) to enable domestic trade with their own currency.
According to Ben Franklin, the Revolution was fought over this, because colonial scrip had ended poverty and enabled every person to take responsibility for their own subsistence. Gold and silver specie was exactly what they were against because it wanted to migrate back to England and destroyed the self-reliance of the States.
Shay's Rebellion tried to bring back State-issued scrip because farms were being repossessed for taxes while veterans weren't paid for their service because of a lack of specie. An intercepted message and banker-funded militia defeated them and they were given amnesty if they never ran for office or voted again. Then the merchant-bankers did the secret Annapolis meeting and decided to scrap the crowd-sourced Articles of Confederation and replace it with One Nation Under Gold.
I write a section about this in my book, and how "coin money" was taken literally so that the Federal Gov't can only make change while the cartel of bankers called the Fed (stealing the name along with the most essential function) creates the money.
Colonial scrip had collapsed because of overprinting. That collapse was the wake-up call that hard money was necessary. We're living proof of why it's dangerous to allow the bankers and politicians to collude to print -- they will ALWAYS find a reason.
With great respect for you and your analysis, it's more complicated than that. Ben Franklin's scrip couldn't be counterfeited because of things like a leaf imprint and other techniques. He also made sure that it was collected back in taxes and mortgages rather than just printing more, as some of the other colonies did. It was him being horrified at the poverty in Ireland, and telling England that they too could eliminate poorhouses and starvation that alarmed the bankers into outlawing it in the colonies. Suddenly, they were plunged into destitution, even with the same resources, labor and production as before, because they had no medium of exchange.
You may be referring to the Continental. As an act of war, the British did a massive counterfeit from a boat off NY and flooded the market. The specie loaned by Robert Morris may have 'saved' the US (although I'm seeing a LOT of articles this July 4th on the war being fought to preserve slavery and land theft) but he was repaid in land. Along with the repossessed farms of those who fought the war, all the homesteads in Appalachia (where I am now) were taken over as not having legal title and given to Morris, creating landless 'white trash.'
But with allowing the politicians and bankers to collude to print, I agree 100%. Money is a means of organizing labor in the interest of whoever prints it, it's the exclusive and most important privilege of gov't. If bankers create it, as they do entirely now, they're the real gov't and we ARE living proof of the results of that. Thanks for the personal reply!
Not that there's anything wrong with the analysis, the distinction between politician-as-arbiter and as ruler is an age-old one after all, but I cannot help find one aspect missing:
Liberties and rights (or privileges in the original sense, which didn't have negative connotations) are cultural and ethnic concepts. What is a given right, even a virtue or a duty to one people is anathema and heresy to another.
In a segregated world, this isn't really a problem: strangers have their strange ways at home, and find yours equally strange. But in a "melting pot/fruit salad"-type cosmopolitan (or globalist as it is called today, despite the idea being from when modernism, capitalism and industialism ran rampant right up until 1914) society, someone else must be the arbiter of these rights etc, as culture cannot be that without also being racist.
Which leaves either corporate capitalism, where we are all equals as consumer/producers, or the state where we are all equal as taxable voting subjects, and neither can allow anything running counter to that generic and generalised condition, lest the corporate state be guilty of racially and culturally based favouritism and bias.
Rights and liberties work just fine when it's one people, one nation. Ten peoples in one nation means either that one of them lords it over the others imposing its cultural values as objective ones, or that an allegedly neutral unbiased state uses force to safegueard all the different peoples indidvidual idiosyncracies. The empiric examples of homogenous societies are Sweden up until the early 1990s, Japan, Korea, and such; the multicultural examples are nations such as Lebanon, Israel, USA post 2000, and Jugoslavia.
And in any type of democracy, it becomes necessary for the political class and all their functionaires to make sure that all loyalty is to the political system as such, not any outcomes, nor any cultural traditions or even religious ones if they may be counter to the values spouted by the political nomenklatura. Otherwise, the most populous group's traditions and mores will become the majority's through use of capital/state soft coercion. Pandering and triangulation only lasts so far until you must acquiesce to the majority. Or rig the vote. Or move as much as possible of the decisionmaking process beyond the actual reach of the elected, such as using the scapegoat "international agreements".
In plain language, since as you say one should be able to keep it simple and short: can't mix and match lotsa' different breeds without having a top dog with the biggest baddest bite.
As i see it: A Bully with Dementia is in The White House and he’s mad because his approval rating continues to plummet because we’re not quite as stupid and gullible as his arrogance leaves him to believe. Our politicians don’t care that we are on the edge of a Cliff because the consequences of going over said precipice will have no bearing on them. They can easily survive this. We will be left with The Rich, the Upper Middle Class and the Poor. At 70, I’m ready to March on Washington. It is all unacceptable.
Up to a point we could live with the CoV craziness, but the result has affected our pocketbooks. The increase in prices has become in your face obvious thus exposing the bad policies of added energy restriction. Not even the greens fully anticipated what their prescription would create. Once they achieved a level of power, they took the dive whole hog. They couldn't accept the trend lines that had been forming.
Sadly pulling the plug on energy has happened at a very bad time. The CoV pandemic caused limitations on economics that needed to be adsorbed and leveled out. Those effects plus the energy shortages have created an economic effect that will set the world back years. Worse, those in charge seem to not fully understand the damage nor the belt tightening that will be needed.
Those Dutch farmers are quite angry. We are all beginning to understand that the return to 1890 as required will not be pleasant, even if they think it possible.
One energy analysis put it bluntly, there has been on the order of one trillion dollars not invested in activities related to fossil fuel production and distribution, something from which recovery is not possible.
The future is dark and cold, before even considering the end of this "interglacial."
I think this is one of the best posts from you since I've been reading your work. Excellent. Although it may be difficult (especially for those who have ignored the signs over the last decade or more and haven't done anything to prepare themselves financially, and in every other way) we do still have a lot of power to catapult these politicians back to their referee position by simply ignoring them. I'm amazed sometimes even here on Substack when I see so many people who claims to love liberty but are looking for someone else to provide said liberty by rising up as a great leader or passing a law to "make" liberty happen instead of doing what they have the power to do already: claim liberty for yourself! Make it happen for yourself! Live it in your everyday life. Ignore the politicians, the rules, edicts and mandates you know are flat wrong and be willing to suffer a bit for doing so. 56 people signed the declaration of independence and every one of them knew they could quite possibly be signing their own death sentence. And they did it anyway! Oh if we would all just grasp a little bit of the courage those 56 people had.
This is the solution, but it is too simple to appeal to most people. We have been taught that the way to create change is to write letters to congressmen and take to the streets. Our models are Gandhi and King. This type of activism only works if (a) the government is basically good, and (b) politicians are afraid of us. Obviously neither of these conditions hold.
“Secession”, the deliberate withdrawal of our bodies and minds from the poison of mainstream life, is the only viable form of combat today.
Thank you! It's hard to know exactly how much time I should spend explaining the reasoning behind liberty-based politics, because I know a lot of people here could probably explain it to me and I feel like that's time sort of wasted.
On the other hand, I want to be able to give people an 'entryway' into seeing why we support the things we do -- often because it's exactly the opposite of why they think we support something. (ie gun control 'you hate minorities!' - but minorities have the most to gain from gun rights, for obvious reasons)
I appreciate your posts. They're easy to understand and you don't overcomplicate the issues. At the same time you don't oversimplify difficult topics either. Don't sell yourself short, even if some here (of whom I am not, haha) could explain liberty to you, all of us need refreshers from time to time.
I believe you have captured the essence of his success. Liberty versus Authority only gets complicated at the extreme edges. In those cases, the expensive approach is the cheapest: allow the 50 states to set their own rules, see which ones work, and others will adopt them. In states that don't adopt them, vote out the rulers.
Yep! This is why it's important that each level of government 'police' the one under it. The federal government should ensure all states are upholding all the rights of all the citizens, the states should ensure all counties are upholding all the rights of all the citizens, and counties should ensure all cities are upholding all the rights of all the citizens.
Smaller government doesn't NECESSARILY mean better. Local governments can tryannize as well. But with smaller government, 1) the initial harm is reduced to a local area and 2) it's easier to fix the problem.
No, just one where they have the power to stop the violations of rights. If Speed Trap USA is a glorified money-making scheme, the county or state should have the power to abolish the city. If Alabama tries to reinstitute slavery, the federal government should have the power to send in national guard or somebody similar to restore the rights of the people.
Ed Hoculi could ensure that you weren't cheating on the field, but he didn't tell you what plays to call or how to run the locker room.
Edit: Changed rights to powers because government doesn't have rights.
I'm a firm believer that if you can't explain something in simple terms, you don't really know it. You notice the BS blowards in the credentialed class can spend two minutes answering a question without saying anything -- that's to cover up the fact they can't actually answer the question because they don't really understand the matter at hand.
This is why the elite are so desperate to control speech -- the 'peons' keep blowing the 'experts' out of the water any time we're allowed to speak.
Ugh I so agree. They've also taken over all the "conservative" news outlets. I can barely stand to watch Fox News now. On the first day that child vacs were approved, one of their breathless reporters was reporting on site as child victims were given the jab. It was sick.
The sports analogy also reveals some fundamental differences about what kinds of games (and lives and governments) people want. Some people, call them men (and women who think like men) want straightforward competition with earned winners and losers, and indeed prefer refs who play a minor role focused on serious infractions of the few fixed rules. Some people, call them women (and men who think like women), want romantic competition, where everyone can win, or at least no-one loses. They support refs and other officials who (micro-)manage the play, including changing the rules in order to achieve a kinder outcome.
Yep, this is plenty sexist, but just compare the broadcasts of, say, NFL games from last century with olympic competitions, especially events like figure skating, today. And then correlate to the dominant (and targeted) viewer demographics. And after that, correlate to political styles and policy preferences and voter demographics.
I do feel sometimes as though some of our politicians overdosed on the originals or reruns of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. How else would they have learned to speak like world domination cartoon villains?
The nakedness of it is just so astounding to me. I can admire, while despising, a truly capable villain. But in the Age of Tawdriness it's almost too grim to satirize.
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Great post. There's one amendment I'd make, because I think it's so important that it may be the way out of all this. The Constitution forbids STATES from coining money, issuing bills or making anything but gold and silver into a payment for debts. The Constitution was a coup by merchants and bankers to make sure the States didn't take back the power they had as colonies (pre-British Currency Act) to enable domestic trade with their own currency.
According to Ben Franklin, the Revolution was fought over this, because colonial scrip had ended poverty and enabled every person to take responsibility for their own subsistence. Gold and silver specie was exactly what they were against because it wanted to migrate back to England and destroyed the self-reliance of the States.
Shay's Rebellion tried to bring back State-issued scrip because farms were being repossessed for taxes while veterans weren't paid for their service because of a lack of specie. An intercepted message and banker-funded militia defeated them and they were given amnesty if they never ran for office or voted again. Then the merchant-bankers did the secret Annapolis meeting and decided to scrap the crowd-sourced Articles of Confederation and replace it with One Nation Under Gold.
I write a section about this in my book, and how "coin money" was taken literally so that the Federal Gov't can only make change while the cartel of bankers called the Fed (stealing the name along with the most essential function) creates the money.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Dismantle-Empire-2020-Vision/dp/1733347607/
Colonial scrip had collapsed because of overprinting. That collapse was the wake-up call that hard money was necessary. We're living proof of why it's dangerous to allow the bankers and politicians to collude to print -- they will ALWAYS find a reason.
With great respect for you and your analysis, it's more complicated than that. Ben Franklin's scrip couldn't be counterfeited because of things like a leaf imprint and other techniques. He also made sure that it was collected back in taxes and mortgages rather than just printing more, as some of the other colonies did. It was him being horrified at the poverty in Ireland, and telling England that they too could eliminate poorhouses and starvation that alarmed the bankers into outlawing it in the colonies. Suddenly, they were plunged into destitution, even with the same resources, labor and production as before, because they had no medium of exchange.
You may be referring to the Continental. As an act of war, the British did a massive counterfeit from a boat off NY and flooded the market. The specie loaned by Robert Morris may have 'saved' the US (although I'm seeing a LOT of articles this July 4th on the war being fought to preserve slavery and land theft) but he was repaid in land. Along with the repossessed farms of those who fought the war, all the homesteads in Appalachia (where I am now) were taken over as not having legal title and given to Morris, creating landless 'white trash.'
But with allowing the politicians and bankers to collude to print, I agree 100%. Money is a means of organizing labor in the interest of whoever prints it, it's the exclusive and most important privilege of gov't. If bankers create it, as they do entirely now, they're the real gov't and we ARE living proof of the results of that. Thanks for the personal reply!
Great read!
Not that there's anything wrong with the analysis, the distinction between politician-as-arbiter and as ruler is an age-old one after all, but I cannot help find one aspect missing:
Liberties and rights (or privileges in the original sense, which didn't have negative connotations) are cultural and ethnic concepts. What is a given right, even a virtue or a duty to one people is anathema and heresy to another.
In a segregated world, this isn't really a problem: strangers have their strange ways at home, and find yours equally strange. But in a "melting pot/fruit salad"-type cosmopolitan (or globalist as it is called today, despite the idea being from when modernism, capitalism and industialism ran rampant right up until 1914) society, someone else must be the arbiter of these rights etc, as culture cannot be that without also being racist.
Which leaves either corporate capitalism, where we are all equals as consumer/producers, or the state where we are all equal as taxable voting subjects, and neither can allow anything running counter to that generic and generalised condition, lest the corporate state be guilty of racially and culturally based favouritism and bias.
Rights and liberties work just fine when it's one people, one nation. Ten peoples in one nation means either that one of them lords it over the others imposing its cultural values as objective ones, or that an allegedly neutral unbiased state uses force to safegueard all the different peoples indidvidual idiosyncracies. The empiric examples of homogenous societies are Sweden up until the early 1990s, Japan, Korea, and such; the multicultural examples are nations such as Lebanon, Israel, USA post 2000, and Jugoslavia.
And in any type of democracy, it becomes necessary for the political class and all their functionaires to make sure that all loyalty is to the political system as such, not any outcomes, nor any cultural traditions or even religious ones if they may be counter to the values spouted by the political nomenklatura. Otherwise, the most populous group's traditions and mores will become the majority's through use of capital/state soft coercion. Pandering and triangulation only lasts so far until you must acquiesce to the majority. Or rig the vote. Or move as much as possible of the decisionmaking process beyond the actual reach of the elected, such as using the scapegoat "international agreements".
In plain language, since as you say one should be able to keep it simple and short: can't mix and match lotsa' different breeds without having a top dog with the biggest baddest bite.
canada is doomed
Okay, this was a most excellent article. You can take the rest of the month off and I wouldn't complain. 🎯🎯🎯🎯
As i see it: A Bully with Dementia is in The White House and he’s mad because his approval rating continues to plummet because we’re not quite as stupid and gullible as his arrogance leaves him to believe. Our politicians don’t care that we are on the edge of a Cliff because the consequences of going over said precipice will have no bearing on them. They can easily survive this. We will be left with The Rich, the Upper Middle Class and the Poor. At 70, I’m ready to March on Washington. It is all unacceptable.
King Brandon’s fixes: 1) blame Russia
2) offer no other solutions
3) see #1
Let’s Go Brandon! 🤪
Let's go Brandon, I agree!
Up to a point we could live with the CoV craziness, but the result has affected our pocketbooks. The increase in prices has become in your face obvious thus exposing the bad policies of added energy restriction. Not even the greens fully anticipated what their prescription would create. Once they achieved a level of power, they took the dive whole hog. They couldn't accept the trend lines that had been forming.
Sadly pulling the plug on energy has happened at a very bad time. The CoV pandemic caused limitations on economics that needed to be adsorbed and leveled out. Those effects plus the energy shortages have created an economic effect that will set the world back years. Worse, those in charge seem to not fully understand the damage nor the belt tightening that will be needed.
I was already running long so I didn't mention the protests in the Netherlands, but they are EPIC.
https://twitter.com/TheMarieOakes/status/1542190883243802627
Those Dutch farmers are quite angry. We are all beginning to understand that the return to 1890 as required will not be pleasant, even if they think it possible.
Before candles, what did socialists use for light?
Electricity.
We are headed there frighteningly quick!
One energy analysis put it bluntly, there has been on the order of one trillion dollars not invested in activities related to fossil fuel production and distribution, something from which recovery is not possible.
The future is dark and cold, before even considering the end of this "interglacial."
I think this is one of the best posts from you since I've been reading your work. Excellent. Although it may be difficult (especially for those who have ignored the signs over the last decade or more and haven't done anything to prepare themselves financially, and in every other way) we do still have a lot of power to catapult these politicians back to their referee position by simply ignoring them. I'm amazed sometimes even here on Substack when I see so many people who claims to love liberty but are looking for someone else to provide said liberty by rising up as a great leader or passing a law to "make" liberty happen instead of doing what they have the power to do already: claim liberty for yourself! Make it happen for yourself! Live it in your everyday life. Ignore the politicians, the rules, edicts and mandates you know are flat wrong and be willing to suffer a bit for doing so. 56 people signed the declaration of independence and every one of them knew they could quite possibly be signing their own death sentence. And they did it anyway! Oh if we would all just grasp a little bit of the courage those 56 people had.
The single most powerful word: NO
Claim liberty for yourself!
This is the solution, but it is too simple to appeal to most people. We have been taught that the way to create change is to write letters to congressmen and take to the streets. Our models are Gandhi and King. This type of activism only works if (a) the government is basically good, and (b) politicians are afraid of us. Obviously neither of these conditions hold.
“Secession”, the deliberate withdrawal of our bodies and minds from the poison of mainstream life, is the only viable form of combat today.
Thank you! It's hard to know exactly how much time I should spend explaining the reasoning behind liberty-based politics, because I know a lot of people here could probably explain it to me and I feel like that's time sort of wasted.
On the other hand, I want to be able to give people an 'entryway' into seeing why we support the things we do -- often because it's exactly the opposite of why they think we support something. (ie gun control 'you hate minorities!' - but minorities have the most to gain from gun rights, for obvious reasons)
You never go wrong with fundamentals. Even for the veterans, it’s a useful review.
I appreciate your posts. They're easy to understand and you don't overcomplicate the issues. At the same time you don't oversimplify difficult topics either. Don't sell yourself short, even if some here (of whom I am not, haha) could explain liberty to you, all of us need refreshers from time to time.
I believe you have captured the essence of his success. Liberty versus Authority only gets complicated at the extreme edges. In those cases, the expensive approach is the cheapest: allow the 50 states to set their own rules, see which ones work, and others will adopt them. In states that don't adopt them, vote out the rulers.
Yep! This is why it's important that each level of government 'police' the one under it. The federal government should ensure all states are upholding all the rights of all the citizens, the states should ensure all counties are upholding all the rights of all the citizens, and counties should ensure all cities are upholding all the rights of all the citizens.
Smaller government doesn't NECESSARILY mean better. Local governments can tryannize as well. But with smaller government, 1) the initial harm is reduced to a local area and 2) it's easier to fix the problem.
I have to assume you're not endorsing a provincial arrangement wherein the Central Government directly governs the provinces.
No, just one where they have the power to stop the violations of rights. If Speed Trap USA is a glorified money-making scheme, the county or state should have the power to abolish the city. If Alabama tries to reinstitute slavery, the federal government should have the power to send in national guard or somebody similar to restore the rights of the people.
Ed Hoculi could ensure that you weren't cheating on the field, but he didn't tell you what plays to call or how to run the locker room.
Edit: Changed rights to powers because government doesn't have rights.
I'm a firm believer that if you can't explain something in simple terms, you don't really know it. You notice the BS blowards in the credentialed class can spend two minutes answering a question without saying anything -- that's to cover up the fact they can't actually answer the question because they don't really understand the matter at hand.
This is why the elite are so desperate to control speech -- the 'peons' keep blowing the 'experts' out of the water any time we're allowed to speak.
Pharma have captured both sides of the aisle. It won't matter who you vote for as long as the likes of Mitch McConnell are there
Ugh I so agree. They've also taken over all the "conservative" news outlets. I can barely stand to watch Fox News now. On the first day that child vacs were approved, one of their breathless reporters was reporting on site as child victims were given the jab. It was sick.
In theory there should be a new set of anti-pharma politicians ready to sweep into office.
They will need to be removed in 5-10 years for being bought as well.
Ain't that the truth! If not sooner. Lol.
The sports analogy also reveals some fundamental differences about what kinds of games (and lives and governments) people want. Some people, call them men (and women who think like men) want straightforward competition with earned winners and losers, and indeed prefer refs who play a minor role focused on serious infractions of the few fixed rules. Some people, call them women (and men who think like women), want romantic competition, where everyone can win, or at least no-one loses. They support refs and other officials who (micro-)manage the play, including changing the rules in order to achieve a kinder outcome.
Yep, this is plenty sexist, but just compare the broadcasts of, say, NFL games from last century with olympic competitions, especially events like figure skating, today. And then correlate to the dominant (and targeted) viewer demographics. And after that, correlate to political styles and policy preferences and voter demographics.
Liberal World Order....
He's saying he hates national sovereignty, in other words, a globalist who hates his country. An enemy domestic
I do feel sometimes as though some of our politicians overdosed on the originals or reruns of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. How else would they have learned to speak like world domination cartoon villains?
So weird that they never have to sacrifice anything to bring about their vision.........
i'm pretty sick of anyone with a "vision" and the ego to think his "vision" should be imposed on me
The nakedness of it is just so astounding to me. I can admire, while despising, a truly capable villain. But in the Age of Tawdriness it's almost too grim to satirize.
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
― Frank Zappa
None of our current crop of "public intellectuals" hold a candle to him.