My Predictions for 2015
All Liberties In America Today Are Under
Siege
By Ron Paul
January 11, 2015 "ICH"
- If Americans were honest with themselves
they would acknowledge that the Republic is
no more. We now live in a police state. If
we do not recognize and resist this
development, freedom and prosperity for all
Americans will continue to deteriorate. All
liberties in America today are under siege.
It didn’t happen overnight. It took many
years of neglect for our liberties to be
given away so casually for a promise of
security from the politicians. The tragic
part is that the more security was promised
— physical and economic — the less liberty
was protected.
With cradle-to-grave welfare protecting all
citizens from any mistakes and a perpetual
global war on terrorism, which a majority of
Americans were convinced was absolutely
necessary for our survival, our security and
prosperity has been sacrificed.
It was all based on lies and ignorance. Many
came to believe that their best interests
were served by giving up a little freedom
now and then to gain a better life.
The trap was set. At the beginning of a
cycle that systematically undermines liberty
with delusions of easy prosperity, the
change may actually seem to be beneficial to
a few. But to me that’s like excusing
embezzlement as a road to leisure and wealth
— eventually payment and punishment always
come due. One cannot escape the fact that a
society’s wealth cannot be sustained or
increased without work and productive
effort. Yes, some criminal elements can
benefit for a while, but reality always sets
in.
Reality is now setting in for America and
for that matter for most of the world. The
piper will get his due even if “the
children” have to suffer. The deception of
promising “success” has lasted for quite a
while. It was accomplished by
ever-increasing taxes, deficits, borrowing,
and printing press money. In the meantime
the policing powers of the federal
government were systematically and
significantly expanded. No one cared much,
as there seemed to be enough “gravy” for the
rich, the poor, the politicians, and the
bureaucrats.
Warfare/Welfare State Requires
Police Control
As the size of government grew and
cracks in the system became readily
apparent, a federal police force was needed
to regulate our lives and the economy, as
well as to protect us from ourselves and
make sure the redistribution of a shrinking
economic pie was “fair” to all. Central
economic planning requires an economic
police force to monitor every transaction of
all Americans. Special interests were quick
to get governments to regulate everything we
put in our bodies: food, medications, and
even politically correct ideas. IRS
employees soon needed to carry guns to
maximize revenue collections.
The global commitment to perpetual war,
though present for decades, exploded in size
and scope after 9/11. If there weren’t
enough economic reasons to monitor
everything we did, fanatics used the excuse
of national security to condition the
American people to accept total surveillance
of all by the NSA, the TSA, FISA courts, the
CIA, and the FBI. The people even became
sympathetic to our government’s policy of
torture.
To keep the people obedient to statism that
originated at the federal level of
government, control of education was
required. It is now recognized that central
control of education has actually ruined
education, while costs have skyrocketed.
National control of medical care has brought
a similar result. This has meant more money
for bureaucrats, as well as drug, insurance,
and health management companies, and less
money for medical care. Constantly more
police are required to run our lives at
greater costs while providing less benefit.
“Nationalizing” both medical care and
education has provided a great incentive to
increase the policing powers of the federal
government.
The predictable poverty that results from
such a terrible system is now upon us and is
a strong motivation for the militarization
of local police as part of the expansion of
the national police state. Temporary and
perceived benefits of government overreach
and expanded policing powers end up becoming
the real problem. By the time it is
understood that these “benefits” are
artificial, government power and special
interests have gained control of a system
designed to serve them and not the people
the programs were purported to help. The
victims are left hanging and taught that too
much freedom is the source of the problem,
prompting even more support for the policing
power of the state.
Today the failure of central economic
planning and of the US as world policeman is
everywhere to be found. This is especially
noticeable in the police war on the
lawbreakers — real and unreal — in America.
The failures of social and economic policy
of the past 50 years have led to a mounting
friction between the local police and the
rights of the people. Local police have been
militarized and have become an integral part
of the national police state. A police
culture that accepts the principle of
initiating unjustified violence against
citizens has become a serious problem.
The news is constant. If it’s not Ferguson,
it’s New York City. If not New York City,
it’s Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland. And I
believe the violence in our cities is only
in its early stages. We had a taste of the
conflict in the 1960s, but the fundamental
values of equal justice and economic
opportunity have receded further from
reality. Failing to understand why the past
50 years of government expansion to
eradicate poverty has only worsened the
conditions of our cities will guarantee that
the violent conflicts we see erupting today
will only get worse.
Fight for Equal Protection Distorted
by 'War on Poverty'
Fifty years ago, as a result of
Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership in a
plea for equal justice, LBJ declared war on
poverty. Poverty was seen at that time as
the major contributing factor in the plight
of those living in the inner city. King’s
dream was to make sure all people will be
judged by the “content of their character”
and not by “the color of their skin.” Good
advice, but it was never followed. Residual
racism remains, but the excuse for every
shortcoming in the failed cities is said to
be due to the color of one’s skin.
The very expensive war on poverty has after
50 years only made matters worse,
compounding the problems of poverty and
inflation while hurting most of the people
the “war” was supposed to help. Currently
our government spends over $1 trillion per
year on anti-poverty programs. Over the past
50 years, over $16 trillion was spent, i.e.,
wasted. And yet poverty and dire economic
conditions remain the major factor in the
violence that persists, which incites or
gives the police the excuse to overreact to
maintain order. The plans and expectations
for the war on poverty must have been
seriously flawed.
Although the degree of poverty is different
for the various races in the United States,
all categories — Asian, white, Hispanic, and
black — have had a steady increase in real
median income from 1964 until the year 2000,
when the first of many bubbles started
bursting. In all four race categories
incomes are lower since then. With the
economy moving into the next stage of
liquidation of bad investment and debt, we
should expect this trend to continue.
Economic setbacks and a decrease in real
income are not limited to blacks in the
inner city. The setback for the young has
been dramatically worse than for the older
generations, aggravating the problem of
violent crime in our cities.
The “progress” of the early years of the war
on poverty is understandable because the
payment that always must be paid was
delayed. The deficits and the borrowing and
printing of money were unsustainable. It
should not be difficult to understand that
the welfare benefits, the bloated
government, the excessive salaries, and the
promised pensions for thousands of
nonproductive bureaucrats in Detroit would
lead to bankruptcy. The benefits had to be
reduced. If policies don’t change and the
politicians continue to be elected by wild
promises, the disaster will continue. How
can the provocateurs blame racism for the
plight of the middle class in Detroit?
We must get people to reject flawed economic
policy if we want a real war on poverty.
LBJ’s war on poverty was no more successful
than his Vietnam War — or any war since, for
that matter. A national government that can
print money as needed to finance
extraordinary extravagance can function
longer than a city, state, or private
entity, but it too must eventually “file for
bankruptcy” albeit in a different fashion.
As we are now seeing, the bankruptcy of a
nation also involves poverty for many. This
situation will continue to worsen. Since
poverty is a major contributing factor to
the violence of excessive police
militarization, some fundamentals must be
understood. The economic theories of Paul
Samuelson, Paul Krugman, John Maynard
Keynes, and all those who claim to know how
to “regulate” the economy to benefit the
poor, must be challenged and abandoned.
So far reality has not yet set in. The poor
grow in numbers as the middle class shrinks
and the privileged class that benefits from
government spending and government control
of the monetary system thrives. The
political demagogues and the authoritarians
feed the flames of resentment that develop
between the rich and the poor as class
warfare and racial strife take over. They
care little and understand less what liberty
is all about — the more chaos there is, the
more laws they seek to pass.
The Victimized Inner Cities
This social disruption has
motivated the enthusiastic growth and
militarization of our local police
departments. The law and order crowd thrives
on excessive laws and regulations that no US
citizen can escape. The out-of-control war
on drugs is the worst part, and it generates
the greatest danger in poverty-ridden areas
via out-of-control police. It is estimated
that these conditions have generated up to
80,000 SWAT raids per year in the United
States. Most are in poor neighborhoods and
involve black homes and businesses being hit
disproportionately. This involves a high
percentage of no-knock attacks. As can be
expected many totally innocent people are
killed in the process. Property damage is
routine and compensation is rare. The
routine use of civil forfeiture of property
has become an abomination, totally out of
control, which significantly contributes to
the chaos. It should not be a surprise to
see resentment building up against the
police under these conditions. The violent
reaction against local merchants in
retaliation for police actions further
aggravates the situation —hardly a recipe
for a safe neighborhood.
Though poverty and excessive laws associated
with the war on drugs are significant
factors in the conflicts that are routine in
the inner-city, the overreaction by both
sides continues to make the situation much
worse. As a result, policing in general is
out of control, and anything suggesting
racial confrontation leads to rioting,
looting, and property destruction. Civil
liberties are ignored by the police, and the
private property of innocent bystanders is
disregarded by those resenting police
violence. When police overreact and unfairly
enforce the law, it elicits a violent
reaction from those on the receiving end.
This only escalates the problem. It’s an
invitation for outside provocateurs to rush
in and aggravate the racial tensions — all
the while never trying to understand the
real reasons behind police militarization
and the cause of poverty.
The military-industrial complex now
systematically lobbies to provide to local
police departments the newest and most
sophisticated weaponry — just as they sell
weapons to the United States government to
fight undeclared wars overseas. Drug laws
are pushed by many corporate interests as
well. Pharmaceutical companies, alcohol
companies, and private prison systems all
support of the insane war on drugs. The
victims are the poor who suffer with a
messed up economy and have no easy access to
jobs. A natural temptation is to become a
drug dealer. Violent activities arising from
the drug war making drug transactions a
criminal undertaking create demand in
communities for strict law enforcement.
Why do the race baiters have so much success
in making this type of conflict a racial
problem alone? Unfortunately many of them
make a living off stirring up trouble. If
the situation were understood in terms of
police brutality and poverty, the evening
news would be dramatically different.
Turning it into strictly a racial conflict
narrows the discussion, and the idea of
responsibility for one’s action no longer
needs to be discussed.
The race factor seems to stir up the
emotions. Mob-like responses can be
achieved, which further inflames the
situation. Out of control police and an
entire segment of our population taught that
responsibility for one’s actions is a
negative are a volatile mix.
Justice under the law requires that people
cannot be punished or rewarded because of
the color of their skin, but unfortunately
King’s claim that only a person’s character
counts is forgotten.
The entitlement mentality is a source of
much anger and misunderstanding. It leads
people who see themselves as victims to one
conclusion: they are entitled to be taken
care of. They believe that more government
transfer payments are the solution. They
claim that they deserve to be taken care of
and that, if they are not, there’s trouble
to be had — which only opens the door to
more police overreactions.
There is agreement with my contention that
poverty is a big problem and the source of
much trouble. Therefore, it is said, someone
must take care of it. If one trillion
dollars per year doesn’t do the job, then
make it $2 trillion. If the war on poverty’s
$16 trillion hasn’t worked, make it $32
trillion. This sentiment reflects the
entitlement mentality that has taught many
that some people have a “right” to
government handouts and that the rich must
pay. This is an idea that is deeply flawed,
and it stirs up class warfare on top of
racial animosities and police brutality.
The blanket demand that all wealthy
individuals owe support to the poor through
government welfare programs is not an
example of equal justice under the law. It
is an example of egalitarianism gone awry.
Welfare, which is the use of force to
transfer wealth from one group to another,
is based on a moral principle of equality
that in fact is not moral and does not work.
The wealthy special interests, such as
banks, the military-industrial complex, the
medical industry, the drug industry, and
many other corporatists, quickly gain
control of the system. Crumbs may be thrown
to the poor, but the principle of wealth
transfer is hijacked and used for corporate
and foreign welfare instead of wealth
transfers to the poor.
Many people do indeed gain wealth unfairly
with today’s system, which adds to the envy
shared by many and especially the poor. But
this is a problem that is not solved by
indiscriminately placing blame on successful
businesses. The result would be the country
and the whole world becoming poorer while
resentment rises. Honest profits of
successful entrepreneurs are quite different
than profits of the corporate elite who gain
control of the government and, as a
consequence, accumulate obscene wealth by
“robbing” the middle class. To blame and
destroy those who make an honest living by
satisfying consumers without the use of
special benefits from the government is
destructive to liberty and wealth.
Reforms that are driven by envy of
successful people making an honest living
will not address the problem of poverty.
Poverty is actually made worse by an
aggressive sense of victimization.
Many factors are involved in the crisis of
our cities, including the following:
Police brutality,
militarization of the police, excessive
laws, courts and law enforcement efforts
ignoring the principles of equal
justice,
Racism that exists to
some degree on both sides of the
conflict,
Rampant crime reflecting
structural poverty,
Absence of an
understanding of the difference between
earned and stolen wealth,
Race baiting,
The entitlement
mentality, self-reliance not being a
goal for many, and the breakdown of the
family unit,
The war on drugs, and
The lack of economic
understanding regarding the Federal
Reserve, taxes, welfare, economic
consequences of constant war, deficits,
and excessive government spending.
True satisfaction comes from productive
effort and self-reliance and not from a
government transferring wealth in an effort
to bring about an egalitarian society. The
absence of an understanding of the
nonaggression principle makes it difficult
for positive reforms to develop.
Unfortunately hypocrisy has come to equal
“common sense.” Placing confidence in people
who thrive on wielding government power and
who spend a lifetime using it to benefit
special interests is not a wise policy.
The people have too little confidence that
most problems can be solved in a voluntary
manner in a society that cherishes civil
liberties. There’s never an admission that
government problem-solving doesn’t work.
Government-created problems are a road to
poverty and resentment. Too many people
believe that “free stuff” from the
government can solve our problems. They
mistakenly believe that deficits don’t
matter and that wealth can come from a
printing press.
The recent high profile episodes of racial
conflict involving police killings and the
violence in some neighborhoods have been a
fertile environment for the demagogues and
those who thrive on racial conflict.
Some have suggested that sensitivity
training for all police personnel should be
required, to teach proper ways to deal with
the public. Though there’s a lot of
extenuating circumstances that provoke
overreaction by the police, I’m not
optimistic that the problem will be helped
much by sensitivity training. Retraining the
police won’t touch the complex problems that
pit the police against the victims of
complex social conditions generated by hate,
violence and bad economic policies. The high
profile episodes of police violence and
overreaction are a consequence of conditions
that in many ways were generated by
government policy.
If social engineering intended to produce
economic equality fails, more of the same
cannot possibly be the solution. Seeking and
promoting equal justice has nothing to do
with welfare redistribution. On the
contrary: equal justice requires the end of
welfare redistribution. Redistribution is a
process that is always destined to help a
small minority, whether in an economy like
ours that endorses central economic planning
or in one run by radical fascists or
communists. While advocates claim that it’s
the duty of government to pursue economic
equality, all efforts fail to achieve that
goal, while gutting the principle of equal
justice.
The Rich Are Getting Richer, But
Why?
Under an authoritarian regime,
those in power take care of themselves. This
always leads to poverty and discrepancy in
wealth distribution. Eventually the social
strife that is predictable leads to an
overthrow of the government. The Soviet
communist leaders never suffered from want,
but even they were routed when the people in
the Soviet system decided that they had had
enough.
We must realize that we are not exempt from
a breakdown of our system. The strife that
we are witnessing is a reflection of a
growing number of people who are recognizing
the discrepancy between rich and poor, the
weak and the powerful, Wall Street and Main
Street. The courts are obviously failing at
meting out justice fairly and impartially.
Money and race have a lot to do with how
arrests, convictions, and incarcerations are
carried out. That provides motivation for
some people to become angry and violently
strike out against anyone who appears to
have more than they do.
While the courts fail to follow the rules of
equal justice, those who react violently
believe that attacking almost anyone is
justifiable in seeking what they claim is
justice. Talk of the 99 percent and one
percent is not just sloganeering. It reveals
a problem generated by government and a
situation in which some people believe that
they have a “right” to be taken care of
rather than just a right to live in a free
and just society where all persons are
treated equally under the law.
Indeed the rich are getting richer and the
poor poorer. The extreme current inequality
is not a consequence of free markets and
true liberty. Rather it results from the
welfare state that, as always, morphs into a
system that provides excesses for the
powerful few. Better management of the
welfare system does not help. That only
changes the types of authoritarians in
charge. Both political parties are financed
by Wall Street, the big banks, and the
military-industrial complex. Getting rich by
being part of the government class is the
problem. Wealth achieved by hard work is
quite a bit different. Opening the door to
this opportunity is achievable by following
the principle of life, liberty, and
property.
The economic interventionist system under
which we live today rewards those who
benefit from government economic planning by
the Federal Reserve, access to government
contracts, and targeted special regulations
to help one group over the other. The
insiders benefit during the bubble phase of
the business cycle and are the first ones in
line for the bailouts. The poor, for whom
welfare is supposedly designed to help and
for whom the politicians justify the
spending, end up with the crumbs while the
Wall Street/banking elites thrive in good
times and bad. There are two problems. First
is conceding the principle that government
has the moral authority to redistribute
wealth. Second is believing the
redistribution will be managed wisely and
without corruption.
All government management ends up being
unwise, corrupt, and wasteful. The money
interests inevitably prevail. Belief that
“good” bureaucrats and politicians can be
found to manage the economy and achieve
equity in distribution is a dream that
always ends up a nightmare. To make even a
modest attempt at this goal requires
government to use aggression against one
group for the benefit of another. This
authority must be denied to government. We
must limit the government’s role to
protecting equal justice in defense of life,
liberty, and property.
Currently the political system in America
and in most of the rest of the world is not
motivated to seek this limited goal for
government. Thus the move toward unfair
concentration of wealth in the few and a
dramatic increase in the number of people
living in poverty as the middle class
shrinks. Since there is little understanding
of the economic system that is a major
contributing factor to the economic
problems, it can be expected to exacerbate
social and class conflict. The killing of
Michael Brown in Ferguson plus many similar
incidents are signs of a serious economic
and political crisis that is not limited to
police brutality and runaway violence.
Police brutality and militarization may well
induce a violent event far beyond what we
have seen in Ferguson. It also can serve as
an excuse. But it is not the root cause of
turmoil. The real cause is poverty, the
entitlement mentality, and the breakdown of
the rule of law. Moral decay and the
national police state are the real culprits.
More police with improved training will not
do much to deal with this growing conflict.
Bowing to entitlement demands from the
“victims” will not be helpful in a bankrupt
system. We have too many police, too many
laws, and too much exemption of government
officials from the crimes they commit. Both
adding police and increasing entitlements
involve expanding the role of government in
an effort to solve problems that too much
government has already caused. Government
can only be expanded by diminishing the
people’s liberty. This problem can only be
ended by maximizing liberty and getting
people to realize that self-reliance, hard
work, and the absence of coercive force by
individuals and government is the only way
to reverse the downward trend from which we
are suffering.
The battle will no longer be to get the
government to pick sides in a conflict
between rich and poor, black and white,
young and old, or the lawless police versus
the lawless demands of entitlement
recipients demanding their “fair share.”
There has to be an understanding that
productive effort and self-reliance on the
part of everyone is required for a free
society to thrive.
Our Liberties Under Attack
The economic and moral decay of
American society is reflected in the loss of
liberties. This problem affects all
Americans and not just the poor in the inner
city. Gradual erosion of personal and
economic liberty has proceeded for a
century. The loss of our liberty has sharply
accelerated since the 9/11 attacks. We have
done to ourselves what no foreign enemy
could have possibly accomplished.
Government surveillance provides the state
with information that enables it to know our
every move. The protection of the Fourth
Amendment is gone. Many Americans are
comfortable with the sacrifice of liberty
for safety and accept the notion that
government’s key responsibility is to keep
us safe. It’s a nice dream but the truth is
it can’t do it. One thing for sure: if it
tries, it will do so at the expense of
liberty.
Welfare, for the rich or poor, cannot exist
without the sacrifice of the principal of
property ownership. Though it always starts
small and justified for the “needy,” the
principle of wealth transfer incentivizes
the special interests and the rich to obtain
benefit at the expense of the poor. This
occurs in all societies and inevitably grows
to a point where the production of wealth is
diminished and the system collapses. This is
what we are witnessing today.
The growth of the state necessitates
government surveillance of all our financial
transactions to enhance the collection of
tax revenues. Because there is never enough
money for the “do-gooders,” the tactics of
the tax collectors have become more vicious.
Violation of our liberties is excused by the
majority in order to ensure that all people
“pay their fair share.” When conditions
deteriorate, capital controls are imposed to
prevent moving assets out of the country.
Our monstrous tax code reflects the
hundred-years development of our income tax
system and is one of the greatest
invitations for our “caring” government to
pursue the impossible goal of the fair
distribution of all wealth.
The vicious drug war, which dates from the
early 1970s, provides another excuse for
knowing everything about everybody at all
times. Its selling point is to keep people
safe from themselves. Pursuing this
principle guarantees that liberty will be
decimated in the process. It invites the
government’s interference in our spiritual
and intellectual well-being. What one reads
and believes becomes of interest to the
manipulators who want to care for us for our
own good. And they never rest from seeking
this goal.
This concession to the state invites
controls on everything we put into our
bodies: what we eat, drink, or inhale. It
takes a lot of bureaucrats, politicians, and
money to manage the process. The people, we
have been told, are “too stupid” to make
their own decisions about their own lives.
We are to believe that politicians who
invite themselves to rule over us are
all-wise and that we should be thankful to
sacrifice our liberty for this “service.”
Authoritarians actually believe that we
should be grateful to them for all the good
things that they do for us. We must remember
that if the people don’t rebel against a
police state it only grows in size and
becomes more ruthless.
In addition to all these trends — which
includes the federal government monopolizing
and administering medical care and education
— government surveillance becomes the
darling of the gurus who love the technology
that allows the government to know our every
move, every day, without limits.
With the disaster of 9/11, an existing
acceptance of government monitoring, along
with technological advances, helped allow a
new age to be ushered in that makes the
horrors of George Orwell’s 1984 look less
threatening by comparison.
The Federal Government’s War on Us
Tolerance is a favorable trait when
it means acting without aggression toward
others, but tolerance of the monster that
has evolved in our government is not good.
Instead of adding more government agencies
to spy on the American people, we should be
talking about eliminating the ones we have,
at a cost the American taxpayers of over $80
billion per year.
We have lived with the global war on
terrorism for over 13 years now, and the
threat of terrorist attacks against
Americans and American allies is worse than
ever. Though a global threat exists, the
greatest dangers for American citizens here
at home have been caused by our own
government. Our government’s attacks on our
liberties have been overwhelming and worse
than anything any foreign power has ever
done.
It’s the federal government that leads the
charge in all our domestic wars, which, in
addition to the global war on terrorism,
include the war on drugs, taxpayers, and
poverty, all of which contribute to the
constant war on our privacy. Today every
American is a suspect. Our president has
established a policy that an American
citizen can be assassinated without even
being charged with a crime. The national
police are made up of over 100,000
bureaucrats and police officials who carry
guns to enforce federal law on the American
citizens. The Founders and our Constitution
intended that policing powers would be the
responsibility of the individual states.
That was forgotten a long time ago.
Not only do employees of agencies like the
CIA, FBI, and BATF carry guns, employees of
OSHA, EPA, Fish and Wildlife, and many other
agencies enforcing regulations do so as
well. The notion of total homeland security
being provided by a heavily armed Department
of Homeland Security was foreign to America
up until just recently. Today, whether it’s
riots in our cities or chaos after a
national disaster like a hurricane, the Feds
are there taking charge over all local
officials and property owners, . It
shouldn’t surprise us that our local police
departments have become an arm of a runaway
federal police mentality that mimics an
army.
The Founders did not even want a standing
army. They wanted only a militia. Today we
endure, at the expense of our liberties, a
national police force armed like an invading
military force. We are destined to see a
continued escalation of violence in our
cities as the internal conflicts grow.
Instead of the police quelling the violence,
they unfortunately have become part of it.
It’s evident we have a national police force
harassing the people and failing to protect
liberty and property. It fails to quell
riots while. Too often it incites them. We
are also stuck with a huge “standing” army,
marching around the world and engaged to
some degree in over 150 countries, “making
the world safe for democracy” and serving as
a private police force for American
corporations overseas.
The US Empire: Who Does it Serve?
When Obama announced a shift in
geopolitical interest to the Far East —– to
keep an eye on China —– one TV anchor
pointed out that the move seems quite
logical since we have a lot of “business
interests” in the region. It is, in fact,
far from logical if one looks at the tragic
mess US government interventionism has
caused in the Middle East and the conflict
the US government is stirring up with Russia
over Ukraine.
Old-fashioned colonialism was deemed
necessary by various European powers to
secure natural resources along with control
over sea lanes and markets for selling
manufactured goods. European-style
colonialism — supporting a mercantilistic
economy — came to be seen as politically
unrealistic and unnecessary. When free-trade
principles were utilized, colonialism did
not die; it only changed form. Mercantilism
in various forms and degrees drove trade
policies of nations with strong economies
and militaries. Though the United States is
the world’s military powerhouse, controls
the oceans and airspace, and has a presence
in the four corners of the earth, few people
refer to America as a colonial power. But in
many ways it is, which has prompted our
interests in oil and mineral rich countries.
We are frequently involved in choosing the
“elected” leaders, as well as hand-picking
dictators, in many countries as well. This
is not exactly what the Founders had
advised.
International militarization of our policies
is just as dangerous to our liberties and
economy as is the domestic policy that
drives our authoritarian governments to
regulate our every move. We are now subject
to an out-of-control domestic police force
while the US military maintains our Empire
overseas.
The “one percenters,” generally speaking,
are internationalists who are not champions
of individual liberty and free trade. They
are supporters of managed trade and
international institutions like the WTO
where the interests of the one percent can
influence the rulings that frequently have
little to do with advancing advertised goals
of low tariffs and free trade.
The international monetary system is a
powerful tool for the select few. Easy
credit, government guarantees, and generous
contracts are a great benefit to those in
charge. Non-compliant nations, or any
country that is deemed unfriendly, can be
punished with severe sanctions without moral
or economic justification. US corporations
benefit from our military presence
worldwide. The military-industrial complex
profits not only by selling weapons to the
US government, but also by being the world’s
chief arms provider.
It is a fact that many weapons we send into
areas such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria
frequently end up in the hands of our
enemies. ISIS obtaining US weapons led to
the US military then taking action to
destroy the weapons. The military-industrial
complex is immediately available to replace
the weapons while earning generous profits.
This is great if you happen to be an insider
manufacturing or selling these weapons. It
is quite a lucrative business, all at the
expense of the American taxpayer.
The United States military presence around
the world provides a “private” police force
to protect US and other international
companies against any local resistance or
leaders that turn unfriendly. Our military
presence overseas has nothing to do with
protecting our freedoms and defending our
Constitution. Those are lies and are used
for the purpose of gaining the support of
the American people for wars that should
never have been fought. After long periods
of tragic losses and expense, the American
people generally wake up and realize what
has happened. But what we need to do is wake
the American people up earlier and get them
to realize that the resistance has to be
heard from the people when the government is
preparing for war, not after the
war has begun or even ended.
Military personnel are idolized, and, if any
one raises a question on whether or not all
soldiers are universally “heroes,” that
person is accused of being unpatriotic,
un-American, and unsupportive of the troops.
In fact, the real heroes are the ones who
expose the truth and refuse to fight foreign
wars for the international corporations.
Disengaging our troops from around the world
and refusing to defend American
neocolonialism is pursuing a course
compatible with the qualities that Americans
claim to stand for.
Liberty at home is never enhanced by war
abroad. Preemptive wars are especially
antagonistic to the goals of peace,
commerce, and honest friendship. War “is the
health of the state,” it has been said, and
the state is the enemy of liberty. Wars
overseas justify the wars at home against
the American people. It is expected that
liberties will be sacrificed when a country
is at war. Pro-war neoconservatives are
blatantly honest by arguing that for freedom
to exist the sacrifice of liberty is
required. This admission is truly
discouraging. It hardly makes sense that
voluntarily sacrificing liberty is
worthwhile, if the goal is to preserve
liberty. Time is short to reverse this
trend.
Not only are our policies destructive to
liberty, the economic costs are prohibitive.
So far the bills have not been paid, but
they are rapidly coming due. Both the deeply
flawed policy of military interventionism
abroad and the failed errors of central
economic planning at home are now
threatening our liberties and our general
welfare. The recent breakout of violence in
our cities between police on one side and
people who have been thrust into the
stagnation of poverty as a consequence of
bad government social and economic policy on
the other side should not be a mystery if
one could see the forest for the trees.
Economic problems are “blowback” and
unintended consequences of well-meaning
welfare programs that have been usurped by
the powerful special interests demanding
benefits off the top.
Yes, it’s tempting to believe the falsehoods
of economists who claim that transferring
wealth for fairness sake is beneficial, but
history shows that it never works. The same
humanitarians argue that all spending is
crucial and beneficial, deficits don’t
matter, borrowing is good, and taxing is the
equalizer. If government still comes up
short they say just turn on the printing
presses. That is the philosophy we have been
living with for 85 years, and the evidence
is now in. It is clear to most Americans
that these policies have not worked. Yet
they are not ready to concede that it is
less government and more freedom that is the
solution.
The obsession with continuing all the same
policies has increased our poverty,
increased violence between the classes, and
lowered the standard of living for all
except the elite one percent. And worst of
all, the sacrifice of liberty was for
naught. Losing both liberty and the right to
truly own property undermines the ability to
create wealth. When this process gets
out-of-control the economy goes into a death
spiral, in the beginning of which we
currently find ourselves. Without a
correction to the basic understanding of the
proper role of government, the downward
spiral will continue.
Blowback All Around: We Are Less
Safe
Economic blowback and unintended
consequences is one thing, but blowback from
our needless and aggressive policies around
the world is another, and every bit as
dangerous. As we find ourselves increasingly
engaged economically and militarily around
the world, we can expect many more attacks
on American interests. With so many military
personnel abroad, they will be the easiest
targets to be hit. But attacks similar in
nature to the 9/11 attacks will remain a
threat to our homeland. We will not be
attacked because we are free and rich. The
attacks will come from angry people who have
had friends and relatives killed by
America’s careless and often vicious use of
our military force in their countries.
It is not that difficult to feel resentment
against a country that comes thousands of
miles from home and bombs, invades, and
punishes with sanctions, other countries
that have never initiated force against it.
As long as our foreign policy remains the
same we can expect serious blowback attacks
— and for them to increase in number as our
prowess is diminished. Economic factors will
determine this, and the loss of dollar
hegemony will aggravate the situation.
The US government’s foolishness in foreign
affairs has plagued us for 100 years. The
escalation of our presence around the world
since 9/11 continues. It is a policy
“bubble” of gigantic proportions. This
“bubble” of intervention is about to burst.
Any serious look at our last 13 years of
intervention around the world should
convince all skeptics of how foolish,
dangerous, and expensive it has been. The US
operates with an attitude that it has the
power and therefore the responsibility to be
involved in deciding almost every foreign
leader, whether elected or appointed as a
dictator.
We have been engaged in picking and
financing political factions in revolts in
countries including Egypt, Libya, Pakistan,
Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria,
Ukraine, Somalia, Nigeria, the Philippines,
Liberia, Georgia, Haiti, and Lebanon.
These involvements impose a huge tax and
inflation burden on the American people.
Trillions of dollars have been spent, and
the debt continues to mount. The abject
failure of our efforts in Iraq and
Afghanistan elicits a loud call from the
neoconservatives for more money, troops,
weapons, and bombs, with zero hope of a
successful mission. ISIS, now considered our
greatest threat, is not even a country, but
our occupation and destruction in the region
motivates even a ragtag bunch to expel
foreign forces from their homeland. ISIS has
rallied enormous support and resources to
undermine our allies in the region. That
assessment is difficult, of course, since
it’s hard for anyone to identify exactly who
our allies are and distinguish them from our
avowed enemies.
US foreign policy has helped create the
disastrous situation in Syria. We declared
that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad had to
go. We supported rebel factions. We armed
them. They turned on us and used their
American weapons against us with an amazing
resistance headed by the ruthless ISIS, an
outgrowth of al-Qaeda. It’s quite an irony
that ISIS is well entrenched in northern
Iraq, since before we decided to invade Iraq
and kill Saddam Hussein no al-Qaeda were
present in Iraq. Now the neocons are getting
their way and American forces are returning
with reinforcements and weapons to save
Baghdad from the jihadists.
No one can make this stuff up. It’s too
bizarre for fiction. Unfortunately, with the
help of the media and our government, the
American people have remained oblivious to
the stupidity of our policies of the past 13
years. A day will come though when the full
cost of this policy is dumped on the
American people. Then they will get the
message. Then it will be too late to
gracefully exit and restore sanity without
cataclysmic changes being forced on us. The
major challenge will be the survival of our
liberties.
What to expect in 2015?
Foreign Affairs
More American troops will be sent
overseas to places like Iraq, Afghanistan,
Syria, and Ukraine. There will be no
military victories to brag about. More
American military personnel will be killed
in 2015 than in 2014. Military contractors
will be used in growing numbers and their
casualties will not be counted as military
casualties.
The Ukraine civil war will not end, and the
United States will be further bogged down in
this conflict. Relations with Russia will
continue to deteriorate. The neocons in
Congress will gain even more influence over
our foreign policy. Punishing sanctions will
continue to be made more severe and push
Russia further into China’s sphere of
influence. Gold will gain credibility as we
isolate the Russians from the financial
markets.
Sanctions on Russia will alienate Europe
against the United States. The British oil
industry will suffer from the “conspiracy”
of the US and Saudi Arabia to drive oil
prices down to punish Russia.
The military-industrial complex will
continue to thrive and make even more money
with the greater influence of the neocons in
the new Congress. Supplemental budgets for
the military should be expected, along with
covert assistance and additional foreign aid
to finance the management of our Empire.
Our enemies’ strength will grow and prompt
even more abuse of American citizens’
privacy and free expression. We should not
be surprised if there is a reigniting of the
conflict in the Balkans. The first of the
color revolutions in 2000 in Serbia can
hardly be claimed a permanent victory.
Generally, bombs from outsiders don’t solve
internal problems. Those problems must
eventually be solved from within a country
rather than from outside interference.
The US and NATO announced that the 13 year
war in Afghanistan has ended. There has been
neither the pretense of "Mission
Accomplished" nor an admission of outright
failure, along with an exodus. In reality
the war has not ended and instead will
continue for a long time. No victory for US
policy is possible. The conflict will
actually spread and increase in intensity
since our goals are undefinable and
therefore the war is un-winnable.
Sanity will not return to US leaders until
our financial system collapses — an event
for which they are feverishly working
Domestic issues
An honest
assessment of the economy will not reveal
any significant improvement in 2015.
Inflation will continue to plague us,
possibly even with the government-rigged CPI
figures showing an increase. But the true
inflation of the Fed’s credit creation, as
well as the subsequent mal- investment and
the various bubbles bursting will
accelerate. Debt in all categories will
continue to increase at unsustainable rates.
The Fed will not permit interest rates to
rise — at least on purpose. Eventually the
market will demand that rates do rise,
however.
Tax revenues will continue to rise, aiding
the policy of the government spending the
people’s money rather than those who earned
it. Regulations, even with (or maybe
especially with) a Republican Congress will
continue to increase and make the Federal
Register more incomprehensible. Friction
between the middle class and the one
percent, many of whom are living off
government privileges, will escalate further
and be reflected in confrontations
especially in the large cities. Financial
currency controls will continue to expand
especially with cross-border transactions.
Blowback and unintended consequences from
our sanctions and foreign policy in general
will continue to threaten our domestic
security and our economy, as well as our
liberties.
Relations with Cuba will be improved with
the president’s effort to resume diplomatic
relations, but the radicals and
isolationists who oppose free trade will
place roadblocks in the way and slow the
process.
A major geopolitical or economic event,
greater than the crisis of 2008, is fast
approaching. The precipitating event will be
a surprise to the majority of politicians
and economists. There are many “next shoe to
drop” possibilities, and one could happen
any time or any place.
Wall Street will be protected, and the
trillions of dollars of big banks
derivatives will be absorbed by the Fed, the
FDIC, and ultimately by the American
taxpayers in the next financial crisis.
There’s no doubt the poor will get poorer
and the rich richer until the spirit of
revolution in the people calls a halt to the
systematic destruction of freedom in
America.
Conclusion: Toward a Peaceful
Revolution
Authoritarianism has overtaken our
economic system as the welfare mentality
takes over at every level of government.
Once the initiation of force by government
is accepted by the people, even minimally,
it escalates and involves every aspect of
society. The only question that remains is
just who gets to wield the power to
distribute the largess to their friends and
chosen beneficiaries. It’s a recipe for
steady growth of the government at the
expense of liberties, even if official
documents and laws written to limit
government power are in place. Planting even
small seeds of monopoly power in the hands
of a few people in government, whether
democratically elected or not, will always
metastasize like a cancer. This was
Jefferson’s concern when he advised that
“[t]he tree of liberty must be refreshed
from time to time.” He believed the people
must warn the rulers that taking up arms
against the government is legitimate if the
government fails to protect the people’s
liberty.
This should be a consideration. But if the
spirit of liberty is not alive and well in
the hearts and minds of the people, violence
alone against the government will not be a
solution. History has shown that, more often
than not, people who rebel against abusive
governments, whether run by kings or modern
day dictators, do not gain much —
overthrowing one dictator and replacing him
with another just as bad.
A clear understanding of the nature and
source of liberty is required for
revolutions to be beneficial. Restraining
the few who thrive on the use of force to
rule over us is the challenge. Fortunately
they are outnumbered by those who would
choose liberty yet lack the will to
challenge the humanitarian monsters who gain
support from naive and apathetic citizens.
All positive revolutions must be philosophic
in nature to make a difference. Violence
alone achieves nothing.
Before we can actually restore our
liberties, we most likely will have to
become a lot less free and much poorer. This
is sad since correct and workable answers
are available to us if only the people
understood them and demanded liberty and
honesty, rather than being dependent on
excessive government power and believing the
false promises of politicians.
Even with the problems we face today and the
bleak outlook for the coming year there’s
much to encourage us. During this next year
there will be the continuation of many more
people recognizing the failure of government
to create peace and prosperity. More
widespread understanding of this truth is
required in order to bring about a
successful revolution.
The freedom movement, especially with many
young people involved, will grow in numbers
and influence.
Current monetary policy and the Federal
Reserve will continue to lose credibility,
especially with the next bailout. Although
“too big to fail” will stay in place, it
will further alienate Main Street America
causing it to rebel against the system.
The real problem of course is that too many
“stupid people” are IN our government and
have high visibility on the major TV
networks. There will be plenty of people,
not officially associated with government,
who will rebel against various governments
around the world. The sentiments supporting
secession, jury nullification, nullification
of federal laws by state legislatures, and a
drive for more independence from larger
governments will continue.
We should not be discouraged. Enlightenment
is not nearly as difficult to achieve as it
was before the breakthrough with Internet
communications occurred. Besides we must
remember that “an idea whose time has come”
cannot be stopped by armies, demagogues,
politicians, or even Fox News or MSNBC. The
time has come for the ideas of liberty to
prevail. I smell progress. Let’s make 2015 a
fun year for LIBERTY.
Copyright © 2014 by
RonPaul Institute.
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