Responding to Michael Smith. Roosevelt's economics were worse than mediocre. His economic distortion of resource allocations, before the war, were so bad, it caused the economy to have a depression within a depression beginning 1937. His language proved he had no idea what caused the contraction. A text book example of the opposite is the 1920-21 depression, which the C.P.I. fell further and faster than any time in the 1930's, yet the economy recovered within a year and a half, because of nonintervention. If Keynesian economics were true then 1920-21 depression should have been much worse.
Regarding climate, the Holocene Epoch is still progressing. Ancient tree rings show in addition to Native Americans annual burns, redwood forests before Europeans, burned every 6 to 25 years, in conjunction with La Nina. Fires now are more destructive from more people and bad policy. The "97% of scientists agree" statement is misleading. That figure is originally 97 percent of 33 percent of the total, from "Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature". "Renowned" Michael Mann can easily be disregarded by looking at unaltered graphs and data (realclimatscience.com). Can we be better stewards? Of course!
Whenever there is a gun massacre, statists inevitably respond that its time to repeal the Second Amendment. The idea is that if the Second Amendment is gone, so will be the right to own guns in the United States.
There is just one big problem with that position: Its wrong. The Second Amendment, like the First Amendment, doesnt give anyone any rights. Instead, it prohibits the federal government from infringing on rights that are natural and God-given and that preexist government.
The Declaration of Independence sets forth the essential principles. Every person (i.e., not just American citizens) is endowed by nature or God with fundamental rights. These include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Thus, given that peoples rights are natural and God-given, they preexist government. The rights come first and the government comes second.
What is the purpose of government? The Declaration answers the question: The purpose of government is to protect the existence and exercise of peoples natural, God-given rights.
That was the reason for calling the federal government into existence with the U.S. Constitutionto protect peoples natural, God-given rights that preexisted the federal government.
A big potential problem arises: The possibility, even likelihood, that the government itself will end up infringing or even destroying peoples rights. That possibility deeply concerned our American ancestors. They were convinced that government itself, not some foreign entity, constituted the biggest threat to their freedom, privacy, property, and pursuit of happiness. Thats why they were not terribly enthusiastic about approving the Constitution. If they hadnt approved it, the United States would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, under which the national government didnt even have the power to tax people.
The American people finally decided to go along with the deal. The biggest argument that finally sold it to them was that the U.S. Constitution, which called the federal government into existence, strictly limited the powers of the federal government to those few powers that were enumerated in the document. Those enumerated powers did not include the power to infringe or destroy peoples natural, God-given rights rights, again, that preexisted the federal government.
Thus, even without the Bill of Rights, the federal government had no legitimate authority to control what people read or what people owned, including books and guns. Thats because these rights preexisted the government and because the Constitution did not give the federal government the power to infringe on these preexisting rights.
In fact, if the government did infringe on peoples natural, God-given rights, it would be violating the very reason that people call governments into existence to protect the existence and the exercise of their rights.
So why then was the Bill of Rights necessary? In a technical sense, it wasnt. Since the powers delegated to the federal government were enumerated in the Constitution and since the delegated powers did not include the powers to control what people read or owned (including books and guns), the Bill of Rights was essentially superfluous.
In fact, some people even argued that by enumerating some rights in the Bill of Rights, that might be construed to mean that those were the only rights that were being protected. Thats why the Ninth Amendment was enacted to point out that that was not the intention.
The reason the Bill of Rights was enacted was because of the deep concern that our American ancestors had about the threat that the new federal government would pose to their rights and liberties. They believed that this government their government would inevitably end up doing what every other government in history has done destroy there rights.
Thats why they enacted the Bill of Rights to hammer the message home that the American people were expressly prohibiting the federal government from traveling the road to tyranny that all other governments in history had travelled.
But notice something important about the Bill of Rights: It gives no one any rights. Instead, it prohibits the federal government from infringing or destroying rights that already exist. it really should have been called a Bill of Prohibitions rather than a Bill of Rights.
Thus, people dont have the right to own guns because of the Second Amendment, just as people dont have the right of free speech because of the First Amendment. Peoples natural, God-given rights preexist government. They exist whether the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the federal government are there or not.
What happens when a government infringes or destroys the rights of the people? The Declaration of Independence gives us the answer: It is the right of the people to alter or even abolish the government and institute new government whose powers are limited to its legitimate function. Thats a right that every American living today should keep in mind.
Nazism was a coupling of "left" and "right". To say progressivism doesn't fit the definition of Nazism is like saying the Democrats never had "Klanbake". Progressives loved the fascist economy in the 1920's through 1930's, dreaming of the day when the business cycle was eliminated. Progressive era market intervention necessitated further interventions because measures fail to achieve desired goals. More interventions ensue, establishing our corporatism.
Most mistake, as Marxists do, Nazism as only "right". National Socialism was not capitalism. Private ownership of means of production was in name only. Substantive ownership was the government's. Wage and price controls from 1933 to the war, were socialist ideals enacted with the help of militarism. Surplus value be damned!
The ancestors of the National Socialists economic model, J.G. Fichte, J.K. Rodbertus, and F. Lassalle were fathers of socialism. Socialist intellectuals J. Plenge, W. Sombart, and P. Lensch praised the collectivist WW1 economy and provided the leading ideas for the German Youth Movement between the wars, and for the masters of National Socialism, O. Spengler, A. Moeller van den Bruck, and F. Zimmermann, to fuse socialism with nationalism using militarism.
Go far enough left or right and you end up the same place, totalitarianism.
- Fiscal Sanity1
Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic
Americans . . . who are convinced that the present economic
system is washed up . . . and who wish to commit this coun-
try to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the
affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management
of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of
great national banker and investor, borrowing billions every
year and spending them on all sorts of projects through
which such a government can paralyze opposition and com-
mand public support; marshaling great armies and navies at
crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation
for war which will become our greatest industry; and adding
to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning,
regeneration, and domination all to be done under the
authority of a powerfully centralized government in which
the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress
reduced to the role of a debating society. There is your fas-
cist. And the sooner America realizes this dreadful fact the
sooner it will arm itself to make an end of American fascism
masquerading under the guise of the champion of democracy.
As we survey the whole scene in Italy, therefore, we may now name all the essential ingredients of fascism. It is a form of social organization
1. In which the government acknowledges no restraint upon its powerstotalitarianism.
2. In which this unrestrained government is managed by a dictator the leadership principle.
3. In which the government is organized to operate the capitalist system and enable it to function-under an immense bureaucracy.
4. In which the economic society is organized on the syndicalist model, that is by producing groups formed into craft and professional categories under supervision of the state.
5. In which the government and the syndicalist organizations operate the capitalist society on the planned, autarchial principle.
6. In which the government holds itself responsible to provide the nation with adequate purchasing power by public spending and
borrowing.
7. In which militarism is used as a conscious mechanism of government spending, and
8. In which imperialism is included as a policy inevitably flowing from militarism as well as other elements of fascism.
Wherever you find a nation using all of these devices you will know that this is a fascist nation.
- John T. Flynn
..."the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God,.... the lust for domination lords it over its princes as over the nations it subjugates;....justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.....the State, then, is a result of sin and an expression of sin. Like sickness, death and all the tribulations of this world, it is an outcome or product of the Fall. More strictly, it is a result of the change wrought in human nature and on the human will by the Fall. The State is not, as it had been for Plato and Aristotle, a natural part of human life or a natural forum for the development and expression of the human character and potential. It is an unnatural supervention upon the created order".....
-Saint Augustine
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers," who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
- Lord Keynes
I'm glad you are passionate. Watch the you tube links (above), and read the books someday. Not everybody wants to hoard and exploit, and you know to allocate your resources better than me. Best to you.
"...the passion for equality made vain the hope for freedom."
all free:
https://mises.org/system/tdf/The%20Roosevelt%20Myth_2.pdf?file=1&type=document
https://mises.org/system/tdf/Americas%20Great%20Depression_3.pdf?file=1&type=document
https://mises.org/system/tdf/As%20We%20Go%20Marching_2.pdf?file=1&type=document
http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
https://fee.org/media/14951/thelaw.pdf
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/09/GreatMythsOfTheGreatDepression.pdf
https://mises.org/system/tdf/Liberalism%20In%20the%20Classical%20Tradition_3.pdf?file=1&type=document
http://www.sagaciousnewsnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/The-Creature-from-Jekyll-Island-by-G.-Edward-Griffin.pdf
Take the time someday to read the books/ links.
See what the progressives were saying about the fascists, particularly Mussolini in the 1920's
The crackpot Mises was able to correctly foresee the fall of the German Mark, and the 1929 crash.
So...
Actually when money flows freely strife diminishes greatly. You have it backwards. Voluntary exchange is the only way scarce resources find there highest valued use. Not by coercion, from private or government means.
The intervention of capital free flow with government and private business cronyism(corporatism), and the monetary system of constant inflation, which in America were both made dominant from the progressives (right and left) has made the separation between big losers and big winners far greater than the free market. (see links if reading isn't an option)
So applying that today would involve letting the market, which is you and me and everyone making individual economic decisions based on individual time preferences and experiences, determine interest rates. Then stop the FED and commercial banks from fractional reserve banking, or if they do and have a run they go bankrupt. Letting all citizens keep 100% of what they earn and direct as much or little funds as they see fit to any government or private agency as they want. Give power back to the people and stop promoting envy warfare. Yes, the global bubbles created from monetary inflation would collapse (which they will anyway), the faster the capital structure can go back to savings and production instead of debt and consumption the better. That transition would only be slowed by intervention in the name of "stability".
As far as basing the well being of humanity on economic terms. Obviously you have to give something of yourself, your brawn, your brain, to make the necessary things available to live. The energy you put out to make the necessary things is part of you; it is you. Therefore, when you cause these things to exist, your title to yourself, your labor, is extended to these things. You have a right to them simply because you have a right to life. That is the moral basis of the right of property(income). Freedom of disposition is the substance of property(income) rights.
If whatever you produce is taken by somebody else, and though a good part of it is returned to you, in the way of sustenance, medical care, housing, yet under the law you cannot dispose of your output, you become a SLAVE.
It is silly, then, to prate human rights being superior to property/income rights, because the right to ownership is traceable to the right to life, which is certainly inherent in the human being. Property rights are in fact human rights, something marxists/fascists/progressives don't want to accept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWk6AXQnh4s
Re: “Politics as unusual”
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding…