America is a nation divided against itself.

There are few people in America who follow politics who would disagree with this statement. We are divided by class, by race, by religion, by sex and our preference for whom we might sleep with; We are divided by nominal labels such as liberal, conservative, democrat and republican. We are divided on our outlook on social issues ranging from the paying of reparations for the ancestors of slaves to whether abortion is murder or simply another medical procedure. We are a nation fractured and fracturing along all fronts.

There are a few values that have attained near universality, but they are not the stuff of a binding societal glue. We have accepted that the purpose of the political process is to elect leaders who share our own broad world view, and trust that they will go about imposing our moral view on the rest of the populace, and failing a legislative route to this end, we trust that they’ll appoint individuals to positions in the judiciary who will enforce our view of morality in contravention of a legislative repudiation.

Most political divisions in this country are a function of the complementary beliefs that the purpose of legislation is to impose the will of the majority upon the recalcitrant minority, and that the supreme court is properly the final arbiter of issues where competing versions of morality butt against one another. We have abandoned our first principles - that the purpose of government was only to achieve the protection of the liberties of all people - in favor of a near omnipotent institution of government who has the power to enforce the social and moral viewpoint of the winners of the electoral lottery upon the losers, while periodically alternating which side has an opportunity to wield the reigns of intellectual hegemony.

Thomas Jefferson understood the dangers of allowing every matter on which men might have differences to be settled from the seat of power of a central government overseeing a nation as broad and disparate as the United States. “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” (Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821)



Jefferson foresaw the fate that awaited our nation if the general populace ever lost their understanding of and zeal for liberty. “Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction; to wit: by consolidation first and then corruption, its necessary consequence. The engine of consolidation will be the Federal judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments.” (Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821)

We have come to the end of the road that Jefferson feared we’d some day travel. Americans in general have no better understanding of what liberty means than they have of the finer points of quantum physics. We have allowed politicians and agenda-driven interest groups to tell us that liberty means universal health care, low emission vehicles, preserving traditional mores dictating who may or may not be married and eradicating the traffic of illicit drugs; In short, the people have forgotten what liberty means. The politicians have either forgotten, never knew or are purposefully acting in opposition to liberty for their own self-interest and personal enrichment. Whatever the explanation, it doesn’t speak well of the political state of our nation, and doesn’t offer much hope to those interested in protecting freedom and staving off totalitarianism.

The genius of the American experiment was it’s limited scope - It did not require acquiesence to the moral or practical view of our peers - it only required a desire to be free from the infringement of our own right to self-determination and a pledge to allow to every man that same protection. It was a premise of government that all men could coalesce around.

We have lost our way. Freedom has become a meaningless construct, as proponents of every diverse idea under the sun seek to impose their view upon their peers through the apparatus of federal power. Without the universal adoption of their own view, they cannot feel free.

We have abandoned the premise of government that allowed a near universal acceptance of it’s legitimacy, and through this has become illegitimate, no longer resting on the consent of the governed. Every 4 years, half of the eligible population fights a token war against marginally different partisans; each side points to the illegitimacy of the government when their side fails to carry the day. Coupled with the non-participating population, that means that at any given point, nearly 3/4 of the population doesn’t support the legitimacy of the federal government. We no longer have a government resting on the consent of the governed; it instead rests on their complacency.

In a fitting homage to the glorious wisdom of allowing the state to have purview in every possible area of life, the Children’s Aid Society (Canada’s state appointed group who get to give parenting techniques the up or down vote) has really taken the cake:

On May 30, Leduc picked Victoria up from school, where she’s enrolled in an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) class with several boys around the same age. When Leduc returned home, there was an urgent call asking her to return to the Livingstone Street East school.

Frightened, Leduc rushed back to the school. She and Victoria entered a room where they were met by the principal, the vice-principal and the teacher.

Leduc said they advised her that Victoria’s educational assistant (EA) had visited a psychic, who said a youngster whose name started with “V” was being sexually abused by a man between 23 and 26 years old. Leduc was also handed a list of recent behaviours exhibited by her daughter.

School principal Brian Tremain — who referred phone calls seeking comment to the board — advised Leduc that the CAS had been contacted.

Do we really want to have the state determining the best way to protect children (as if they have a clue how to go about it), in contravention of the will of parents? If you’ve got kids in public school, be very afraid. The schools are becoming Orwellian purveyors of propaganda, and are doing a great job of getting kids to ‘inform’ the ‘authorities’ of the idiosyncrasies of parents. Who knew that the East German idea of employing children to root out their parent’s unorthodox thoughts would catch fire in the self-professed bastion of freedom?

(I am aware that the referenced incident happened in Canada - but similar stories abound in the good ole’ US of A)

If you hold any positions out of the mainstream (believe in creation, oppose group rights or ‘diversity’ for it’s own sake, advocate for small government), you should be concerned that the state has become the final arbiter of all things related to children. There are already those out there who argue that teaching children that creationism is correct is akin to child abuse. Do we really want these people (public school teachers, aides, administrators) superimposing their own judgment for those of parents, and reporting parents to the gestapo?

Makes me glad that all of my kids are going to be home-schooled.

(Editorial note - this entry began as a reply to a post in our forums, but has been co-opted for entry here. To follow the full conversation, visit here.)

None of the ‘War on Terror’ stuff is cut and dried, and good people can (and do) have disagreements. With all of the disinformation put out there, it is difficult to sift out the reality of the situation.

If there are terrorists who seek to harm us, I want them dead. That doesn’t explain our invasion of Iraq, and the deposing of the leader we propped up for 30 years. Even though he was clearly not a benevolent leader, I cannot remember being ashamed to be an American as profoundly as I was the day he was hanged. He walked to the gallows like a man while the Wahabists taunted him, and we bear the responsibility for it. If the standard of punishment for trampling on the rights of citizens and killing people were to be applied similarly in Washington, we couldn’t carry out the necessary hangings in a month. Hm…. maybe we can learn a thing or two from them….. [/incendiary rhetoric]



This administration makes no distinction between the terrorist slimes who carry out 9-11 type events, and the indigenous forces that resist being occupied, claiming the prerogative to imprison both indefinitely and without independent review, designating them ‘terrorists’. To them, anyone who resists American designs for regional hegemony are terrorists.



The validity of that viewpoint simply breaks down on closer inspection. Were martial law declared here, and troops sent into neighborhoods to suppress the exercise of rights and to subjugate the people, you’d see a whole new class of ‘terrorists’ defined - and it’s likely that I’d be on that list (oh jeesh…. if I wasn’t on some watch list before, I probably am now….). The concept of blowback isn’t some magical construct that can be debunked - it is simply a description of human nature. If you invade a person’s home and neighborhood, he is likely to be unhappy about that, and to want the invaders to go away. The stronger among that group will likely take covert action to win back the freedom over his home. That doesn’t make him a terrorist, and in fact gives him a better claim to the holy mantle of the spirit of the American revolution than the train wreck in Washington.

“Is not the State an idol? Is it not like any graven image into which men have read supernatural powers and superhuman capacities? The State can feed us when we are hungry, heal us when we are ill; it can raise wages and lower prices, even at the same time; it can educate our children without cost; it can provide us against the contingencies of old age and amuse us when we are bored; it can give us electricity by passing laws and improve the game of baseball by regulation. What cannot the State do for us if only we have faith in it? And we have faith. No creed in the history of the world ever captured the hearts and minds of men as has the modern creed of Statism.”

-Frank Chodorov

I spent a little time sharpening my rhetoric this weekend - as has become my habit for a few hours over the weekends of late - in a few of my favorite internet haunts where I’ve often found intellectual stimulation. The topic turned to religion. It is not the stated subject matter of these particular sites, and as is usual when the topic comes up in the wild, the reactions ran the gamut from sneering condescension to outright mockery.

It seems that most people who fancy themselves intellectual can’t be bothered with eternal questions (which is certainly their prerogative); unfortunately, it seems that close to a plurality - if this unscientific enumeration is to be trusted - are not satisfied with simply heaping scorn. They must silence any voice who would suggest that the religious have a right to our ‘foolishness’. They reject summarily that they have no interest or right to prevent us from passing on our beliefs to our children; They would support the right of every possible stripe of reprobate plying their own brand of debauchery, so long as they join in the mantra: “God is dead, and we have killed him”; but against the professing Christian, they will not cease to rage.

The foolishness of man perverteth his way: and his heart fretteth against the LORD.
Proverbs 19:3

Every man has faith; there is no escaping this conclusion. We place our faith in different constructs, but it is all faith. I have examined the rational arguments in favor of a divine creator, and coupled with my own faith, have settled in my mind that there is a God - even Jehovah, the God of the Bible.

My opponents of this weekend, despite their great protestations, are also long in the tooth on faith. They have faith where science has no answers. They simply choose to invest that faith in unprovable theories - in many cases theories they do not understand or even begin to fathom the implications of - they place their faith on the only construct they can in the face of a failure of their methodology, that being in man generally, and in their own intellect in particular.

They have blind faith in ’science’; and in government; and in the dogma that there is nothing after this. They demand adherence to ’science’ when it is not science; and obedience to a benevolent government who they’d have examine the beliefs of all citizens to size up whether their orthodoxy is acceptable; and will accept anything from either of the icons of the faith, without any litmus test, so long as they can avoid being bothered with knowing there are those who walk among us who don’t share their own secular brand of faith.

When things go against them, I am usually likened to a suicide bomber (and this weekend was no exception), for no other reason than that I refuse to cede any ground on my belief in a holy God who created everything and will judge us all. What they fail to see is that only one side of our point/counterpoint exercise is demanding that the other side abandon their perspective, demanding orthodoxy over reason, and threatening the heretics with sanction. What they are suggesting is a modern inquisition - it is not enough to deem believers foolish; we must be kept quiet.

I believe the day is coming when they’ll get their wish. Children will be universally owned by the state, as an extension of owning the parent; they will do away with the independent thinking cultivated in home schools and church-run enterprises; they will demand orthodoxy to the tenants of the faith by fiat; and it will be within their grasp to have the whole world join them: “God is dead, and we have killed him”.

I mean no offense to my atheist friends (of which I have many) and readers. I simply ask that you not demand that I accept your world view. If mine is foolishness, then be satisfied that untenable ideas always collapse under their own weight, and leave me to my foolishness - my faith. And I’ll promise to give you wide berth in the exercise of your own faith.

Obama has a problem. It is one he shares with McCain, and 98% (I might be optimistically low here) of politicians in Washington: Their underlying political philosophies are intellectually and morally bankrupt.

They all share a common thread - they believe in the supremacy of the will of the majority over the will of individuals. In this manner, Obama, McCain, and the two parties they front represent only slightly different stripes of tyranny.

Obama would join us all in a suicide pact of sorts, putting vitality to the marxist maxim ‘from each according to his ability; to each according to his need’. He sees no problem with confiscating the belongings of one to give to another because they ‘need’ the stolen items, as need is defined by bureaucrats. In his world view, it is acceptable to use force to make participation in this suicide pact mandatory, because the needs of the collective outweigh the rights of individuals to avoid such a pact.

To be sure, Obama wouldn’t be implementing an income tax upon people who are not used to it - but he makes no bones about going after those whom he deems to not be paying their fair share. If we take him at his word, I would not be affected directly by his proposals - I do not make $250,000 a year - and might even benefit in a nominal manner. But I consider it no benefit to have men with guns stealing from others so that they might give it to me. He has no apparent qualms about the underlying premise - that the government has a right to the possessions of it’s citizens, and in fact, a fundamental right to it that the individual doesn’t have. The government may demand any portion of my income, as they alone control the marginal tax rates, and raise them as they see fit. Were that portion demanded to be 100%, what would it change? As an individual, am I protected from the long arm of the government taking all that I have? On what grounds can I protest? If the government deems that it ‘needs’ 100% of the fruits of my labor, I am without recourse. If they may take a tenth or a third or half morally, why does taking all of the results of my personal productivity become immoral?

Obama and his peers have a serious problem. Their bankrupt, immoral beliefs are demonstrably immoral and bankrupt, and a revolution is afoot in this country to say no more. His philosophy of government has as it’s underlying premise that the individual and his productive capacity are assets of the state, a particularly problematic phenomenon in a land that pays lip service to the concept of liberty.
May it come quickly, and may we sweep away the horde of state worshipers who feed at the teet on the fruits of our labors, coerced from us under the threat of violence to our persons. People are waking up - more and more each and every day. Are you awake?

I am actively looking for a handful of writers who would be willing to join the team and write on an ad hoc basis for the Free Market Commentary.

There are no production expectations - you write when you have something to say - so there is no pressure.

Writers should have an understanding of free market economics and personal liberty (though not necessarily a scholarly understanding - we want people who talk like other people, not just eggheads like me), and a passion for rolling back the forces that seek to subjugate men.

If you’d be willing to contribute - again, whenever you see fit and have the time - drop me an email at mty@circpros.com, or better yet - sign up for the forum and send me a message using the board’s mail system (my user name is micah).

Freedom needs willing advocates - are you willing to be her advocate?

A very troubling article appears in today’s IHT. It seems that there is no end of dupes and cynics willing to hand over our right to free speech so that they might force men to employ civility in their discourse, and to censure thoughts and words they find inconvenient.

It is absolutely appalling that anyone would want to allow government to regulate what opinions one might hold, and how they might advocate their beliefs.

It is no surprise that practitioners of government, the great usurper of liberty, would covet the power to eliminate dissent of all kinds. It is surprising that most people fail to understand the fundamental nature of this most critical right, and that the author of this piece purposefully takes no position on bald-faced tyranny being suggested as a preferable replacement for liberty.

You have a right to believe any ridiculous thing that enters your perverse mind - including thinking that ‘hate-speech’ must be eliminated at the cost of my god-given right to speak my mind. Try and implement these policies, and you will bring the rage of free people down upon you. My fundamental rights will not be abridged because you, in ignorance, find stifling beliefs you find inconvenient to be expedient.

There is no possible speech a man can utter more odious than attempts by the state to make men espouse something other than what he in good conscience believes, under the threat of violence for having the temerity to have beliefs not shared by the majority.

Monday was largely anti-climactic with the indexes finishing mixed. The internal makeup of today’s action wasn’t bullish, and I saw several CNBC commentators noting that today. Given my disdain for the general POV of CNBC in the generic, it has me wondering if I should reassess my bearish bias……



For now, I keep my bias. If CNBC gets on the bear wagon - I’m going long.

In the Financial Times this morning, Timothy Geithner, President of the New York Fed, calls for a global system of regulation for banks.

Geithner says:

“At present the Fed has broad responsibility for financial stability not matched by direct authority and the consequences of the actions we have taken in this crisis make it more important that we close that gap.”

This is a power grab of unprecedented scope, and would represent the first step in the codifying a global system of financial command and control.

If you’re in the ‘Government is good and benevolent’ camp, then you’re probably thinking - ‘about time they had the power to overcome the issues endemic to a system with disparate laws, regulations and capital requirements’.

I wouldn’t share that outlook.

Globalizing the banking system would give bankers and regulators more control over the global economy. That isn’t really disputed by anyone. The salient question is - why would we want to give bankers and bureaucrats more control over the world’s economy? Is it the excellent job they’ve done administrating things collectively over the national banking systems they oversee?

Allowing such an Orwellian construct to arise would effectively wrest monetary policy from the hands of individual nation states, and hand control over to internationalists and elitists with little loyalty to any nation state, and with no democratic checks. This cannot happen without a global system of government following in short order. You cannot have a supranational banking system without a corresponding political power to regulate the banks and a relatively homogenous framework of governments.

Centralization of power in fewer and fewer hands is not a positive development, but it won’t be too difficult to convince the ignorant populace that such a system is the way to recover from and avoid a future calamity such as the one we are on the cusp of. Most people will accept any broad evil if they are convinced that they themselves will benefit.

Anyone who doubts the dire nature of the outlook for the global economy should think about why Geithner would be out front-running this idea. Why now? Is he speaking off-the-cuff, or is this a trial balloon, vetted and approved at the highest levels of our financial system? I think you’d be safe to assume that Geithner doesn’t write an op-ed for the FT without vetting his commentary first. And this isn’t an action undertaken flippantly. At the very least, the seeds for an absolute catastrophe must be present. This isn’t a tweak - this is laying the groundwork for what lies ahead of us.

If you aren’t worried, I’d argue that you should be.

Geltner continues:

Since last summer, we have lived through a severe and complex financial crisis. Why was the financial system so fragile? What can be done to make the system more resilient in the future?

The world experienced a financial boom. The boom fed demand for risk. Products were created to meet that demand, including risky, complicated mortgages. Many assets were financed with significant leverage and liquidity risk and many of the world’s largest financial institutions got themselves too exposed to the risk of a global downturn. The amount of long-term illiquid assets financed with short-term liabilities made the system vulnerable to a classic type of run. As concern about risk increased, investors pulled back, triggering a self-reinforcing cycle of forced liquidation of assets, higher margin requirements, increased volatility.

What Geithner forgets, or rather hopes that we’ll forget, is that this ‘financial boom’ that ‘created… demand’ was a direct result of bad monetary policy. Effective interest rates were less than zero for about three years, and that creates a situation where commercial banks have a great incentive to push debt without a rigid regard for the real risks they undertook, and it encourages malinvestment by businesses and banks who have access to the free capital in the beginning stages of the inflating money supply.

Instituting a centralized global system only exacerbates the problem. We’d have all our eggs in the same basket, and the next time we played this same game, there would be no area of the globe immune from the problems that the US central banker’s loose monetary policy and the suckers who bought all of the dubious financial instruments “created to meet that demand” have brought us too.

The idea that the problems we face currently in the world’s economic system are a result of too little centralization would make me laugh if the consequences of Geithner’s proposal weren’t so dire. We would be entrusting control over our money and banking, and by direct extension, our freedoms - to a world full of despots, communists and robber barons.

The Fed has no power but to inflate, and inflation is the great destroyer of the wealth of the working people. The only restraining influence is that if other nations don’t coordinate these inflationary policies, the consequences are dire and obvious. Allowing a centralized authority to have the power to force coordination is a recipe for disaster for everyone except the interests who have long pressed for a fascist system that is global in it’s scope. Once they get their way, there is no longer a restraining influence on the power of the inflators to ply their trade.

The Federal Reserve in specific, and central banks in general have failed miserably throughout all of history, and every time they fail, we reward them with more power. One of these days, we’ll learn that the failure of centralized authority is not a reason to further centralize authority. Or at least I hope we will.



More on this topic later.