Glenn Greenwald's "Most Important Issue"

I read Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon.com  almost everyday.  It is refreshing to see topics that most media ignore.  It is also nice to read an intelligent, well thought out article, and Greenwald does this with the best of them.  

Recently I came across an article written by Jeremy Scahill(see below post), documenting torture at Guantanamo that is still taking place under the Obama administration.  While this may be of no surprise, it is important.  You may remember that President Obama on his first days in office wrote a series of executive orders, among them was one that banned "enhanced interrogations"(a.k.a. torture) of detainees.  This article painstakingly documents how torture is still the norm or SOP(standard operating procedure) of Gitmo.  If this is the case, then CIA black sites are most likely still in operation.  The media, and the base of supporters who elected Obama, seem to be ignoring this issue.  Maybe they think if they ignore it it will go away.  

I am simply amazed that a blogger like Greenwald who has been covering Gitmo and related executive abuses for so long could simply not mention this report.  All this at a time when the national media was debating what should be done with the detainees after closing Gitmo.  The president announced a new system of "preventative detention" which is the equivalent to thought crime.  Still not a word about this report or it's implications to future thought criminals.  

Greenwald, who i admire, often suggests folks write congressmen and pressure Obama and others on issues that are important to the future of this country.  So after a week or so of reading Greenwald's work and seeing no mention of this report, I was prompted by his often given advice of applying pressure to those who I wanted to influence.  I wrote a few lines in the "comment" section of his blog, inquiring about why he has not yet discussed it and what he thought.  After a few other commenter's suggested I write my own blog (how little they know), I finally came across Greenwald's response.  And Here it is:

"There is never any such thing as The Most Important Issue. There are always many important issues. People who don't move beyond the adolescent stage of self-absorption always think that whatever issue they are most interested in at any given moment is, by definition, the Most Important Issue.

Every week, there are a whole slew of extremely important issues I never write a word about. For one thing, like everyone else, I only have a finite amount of time and energy and can't write about every important issue. I can't possibly write about all the important issues.

Beyond that, there is a whole slew of reasons why I may not write about even a very important issue: maybe I'm not aware of it; maybe I have nothing worth saying about it; maybe I'm ambivalent about it; maybe I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough to write about it; maybe I think others are already writing everything there is to say about it; maybe I think there are more constructive ways to spend my time; maybe the topic just doesn't interest me much; maybe I'm not in the mood to write about it, etc. etc.

Imagine if I had spent last week writing about this Gitmo issue instead of what I wrote about -- how many people would be here saying: "Obama proposes indefinite detention and you have nothing to say about it??? Are you in the tank now for Obama?" -- or: "Obama nominates someone who is going to be on the court for the next 30 years and could swing the balance of power on all executive power issues and you have nothing to say???," etc.

No matter what issues I choose to write about, there will always be people who think that the issues I selected are unimportant and that I'm ignoring the Most Important Issue. I appreciate -- and rely on -- constructive suggestions about what topics to cover. I frequently follow those. But I don't appreciate petulant complaints that the topic I choose to write about -- the one that is interesting or important to me - isn't interesting to someone else. Who cares? There are 43 million blogs on the Internet. When the bloggers who I read focus on something that doesn't interest me, I just go read something else. I don't write to them telling them to focus on what interests me instead." -- G. Greenwald

My response:

Glenn

Your Blog is always pointing out what others write, and how they ignore blatant hypocrisy. You have repeatedly praised Obama's executive order banning the use of "enhanced interrogation". You always say you will judge Obama on his action not his words.

You did judge him on his words...granted it was his written word. Now it has come to light that the actions taken are contradictory to the words. NOT a peep from you.

This is just important to me...I am self absorbed. Well, you have no one to thank but yourself. You turned me on to this stuff. Pretending that this is just a minor issue that only concerns me is simply not the case. Your own writing shows how important this issue is. If these orders are nothing more then for show, then what things do you have left to point to to praise Obama?

I thought i let it go yesterday,then i read you ranting response about how

"Imagine if I had spent last week writing about this Gitmo issue instead of what I wrote about -- how many people would be here saying: "Obama proposes indefinite detention and you have nothing to say about it???"

well imagine you write about indefinite detention and fail to mention that those detained may be tortured!

Talk about hypocrisy....you then write:

"But I don't appreciate petulant complaints that the topic I choose to write about -- the one that is interesting or important to me - isn't interesting to someone else."

You do this to others all the time. I can't count the amount of post you have done where you are breaking down what others have written and complained about the content. Your rant is obviously searching for a good reason to avoid the topic.

Make it about me..not about the issue.

"I may not write about even a very important issue: maybe I'm not aware of it; maybe I have nothing worth saying about it; maybe I'm ambivalent about it; maybe I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough to write about it; maybe I think others are already writing everything there is to say about it; maybe I think there are more constructive ways to spend my time; maybe the topic just doesn't interest me much; maybe I'm not in the mood to write about it, etc. etc."

How does any of those above reasons apply to this issue? You mean to tell me that your not aware of this? Or ambivalent to it? If this is truly your reasons for not addressing this issue...maybe it is time to read another blog.

and to all you "leave Glenn alone, get your own blog" types...

I will and I do"

--Jeff Avitabile

Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama

The 'Black Shirts' of Guantanamo routinely terrorize prisoners, breaking bones, gouging eyes, squeezing testicles, and 'dousing' them with chemicals.

by Jeremy Scahill

As the Obama administration continues to fight the release of some 2,000 photos that graphically document U.S. military abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo. Among them: "blows to [the] testicles;" "detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;" being "inoculated ... through injection with 'a disease for dog cysts;'" the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred "under the authority of American military personnel" and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals.

read the rest of the article

An Open Letter to Chuck Norris

by Glenn Jacobs


Dear Chuck,

Like so many others, I have a great deal of respect for what you have accomplished in your life. You are the epitome of the American Dream; rising from a troubled childhood to the heights of international celebrity. While you and I may not agree on many political issues, I believe that you are sincere in your concern for the future of the American republic.

However, I think you miss the mark with your support of the Fair Tax. Yes, the current federal income tax system is immoral, invasive, and represents a form of slavery (resting on the premise that individuals are not entitled to the fruit of their labor), but eliminating one tax and replacing it with another is never a good idea.

Besides, we have bigger fish to fry. While taxes are certainly an important issue, it is not the taxes we see that are our greatest worry at this point. The tax we should be concerned about is the one that we don’t see.

As long as the Federal Reserve System retains the monopoly power to issue currency, it really doesn’t matter what the tax system is. Theoretically, the Fed can print all the money the government needs and we will be taxed through the loss of purchasing power of the dollar. This is going to become more and more evident as the federal government grows to unprecedented proportions. The crisis that we are witnessing now pales when compared to the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. The only way for the government to deal with them is to inflate the debt away.

The Fed is an unconstitutional institution. According to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress is empowered to "coin money and regulate the value thereof." In 1913, Congress delegated that authority to the Fed. This action in itself is questionable as it would seem that a constitutional amendment would be required for Congress to delegate authority with which it is specifically vested.

The issue, however, is even bigger than that. It is no accident that these powers were included in a clause which grants Congress the authority to "fix the standard of weights and measures." That is because the dollar itself is not money; it is a measure of money. Money, according to the Framers, was gold and silver. Congress is simply empowered to standardize the dollar as a measure of precious metal – traditionally, 1/20 of an ounce of gold. 

In other words, the Constitution does not grant Congress the power to create money or to regulate the value of the dollar by manipulating the money supply. The power which the Fed claims to posses under congressional mandate – the power to create money – never existed in the first place.

As Thomas Jefferson predicted, the Fed’s monopoly on the issuance of currency is enslaving America. Most insidiously of all, we are being enslaved with our own productivity. The law has been perverted into an instrument of plunder. All these bailouts are really reverse wealth redistribution as taxpayer money is lavished on political capitalists. In addition, the Fed is backstopping trillions of dollars of losses in the commercial banking sector. Where are the Fed and the government getting all this money? What the government cannot expropriate or borrow will be created out of thin air by the Fed, expanding the money supply and ultimately causing price inflation.

Inflation is most pernicious tax of all. It destroys savings by devaluing the monetary unit. It distorts the price signals on which entrepreneurs rely to make decisions about how best to meet customer demand, choking the economy with waste and inefficiencies. It punishes the poor since they receive the new money only after prices have already risen, if they receive the new money at all. And worst of all, very few realize who is to blame for these problems.

Inflation is the politician’s best friend. It allows him to promise his constituents all sorts of goodies seemingly for free. When the bill comes due in the form of higher prices, the politician can blame greedy businessmen or OPEC sheiks. In reality, the trail leads back to the government profligacy.

Some will say that the Fed is an independent agency and is therefore not subject to political caprice. Balderdash. The Fed works closely with the President to implement monetary policy. In addition, the folks at the Fed are people just like you and me. Who wants to take the blame when the economy takes a downturn as it inevitably will if the Fed contracts the money supply? Why not just keep the printing presses cranking and let your successor deal with the consequences? That is what Alan Greenspan did and he was heralded as a god; don’t you think that that may have gone to his head? 

The problem with central banking is not whether the central bank is run by private interests or the government. The problem is that it is controlled by people, people who answer to political pressure and not market forces. For this reason (as well as many others), central planning never works. The Fed – America’s central bank – is simply central planning under a different name.

The only way for the American people to restore their freedom is to take back control over their money. We must eliminate legal tender laws and break the Fed’s monopoly on currency. If the government is going to be involved in monetary affairs at all, we must reinstate a gold standard in order to limit its ability to inflate.

Chuck, you have never backed down from a fight, and this fight will be an epic. The people who think that they run this country are not just going to give up. Just like Nicholas Biddle, they will do everything possible to stay in power, even threatening to destroy the economy. The truth is that the economy is being destroyed right now and the only way to save it is to allow the free market to work.

There is a movement in America which, although it is still in its nascent stages, is causing the Establishment to tremble. It is a movement which promises to smash the shackles of the central bank and liberate Americans from the clutches of power-mad politicians and their corporate cronies.

Chuck, forget about the Fair Tax and add your voice to our battle cry.

END THE FED!!



March 21, 2009

Glenn Jacobs [send him mail] is the actor and wrestler Kane. Visit his blog.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given. 

We Are the 'Enemy of the State'

From its very infancy, our government has made a vital part of its existence the theft of property that belongs to others and the demonization of those who would resist, or those who see the state for what it really is. From the American Indian to the veterans who have fought the state’s illegal wars, resistance to, or speaking out against the criminality of the state will bring down the full force of the state’s wrath, up to and including elimination.

Henry Clay, whose protégé was Abraham Lincoln, said of the American Indian, " The Indians' disappearance from the human family will be no great loss to the world. I do not think them, as a race, worth preserving." Clay saw the Indian as an impediment to the desires of the state: acquisition of the lands possessed by the American Indian.

Clay’s beliefs and political goals led to the forced relocation of Cherokees from the mountains of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia to Oklahoma during the winter of 1838. Over 20,000 Cherokees were dragged from their homes, which were then plundered and burned. They were force marched, most of them barefooted, to Oklahoma during the dead of winter. Over 4,000 Cherokees died on this march. To the Cherokees it became known as the "Trail of Tears."

Abraham Lincoln would instigate, promote, and conduct a war that would consume the lives of more than 600,000 Americans. The purpose of the war was not to abolish slavery, as is claimed by idolaters of the state, but to secure the property of citizens of the South, a confiscatory seizure of their monies known as the Morrill Tariff. Lincoln would reveal his intention to invade the South to secure these monies and his lack of concern for slavery in his First Inaugural Address.

continue reading this artical....

"Francisco's Money Speech"

The following is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, byAyn Rand.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."

Newspapers Subsidies

So guess who is gonna be lining up for their share of the bailout? Tribune Media, The New York Times and other giant newspapers. It turns out that they are in horrible financial shape. Of course they wont really talk to much about that, but it turns out that newspaper subscriptions are at an all time low. Huh, strange. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that by the time I get my morning gazette, I have seen the news on my favorite 24 hour cable news station, but I have also read about it all over the web, including an obligatory trip to Wikipedia (no one wants the truth anymore) and probably blogged about it. Plus when I watch the TV news there is no reading involved and if I do read it on the web then I don't have to worry about getting nasty newsprint on my fingers. Now, I will say for disciplining the dog (Sorry Harley) nothing works better then a good old fashioned New York Post but that's about it.

So I say either adapt, or die. Its Darwin at its finest. Now, I know that's cold but I believe that giving money to these media companies is a very dangerous idea. I mean these are the people who are molding public opinion. Do you really feel comfortable with trusting our politicians to honestly and fairly dispense tax payers money to these companies? I surely do not. A bailout would essentially create state owned newspapers. Sounds a little scary doesn't it? Also the newspapers would be afraid to criticize whomever was in elected office out of fear that they would not receive government funding. It would makes today's slanted news look like campaign commercials.

What you need to understand about newspapers, tv news shows and online media outlets is that they like Walmart are a business. The more people that buy their papers, and watch their programs and visit their websites, the more money they make. Think about it, you really think that news people are above sensationalizing stories for ratings. Dan Rather passed off a fake story about President Bush during his reelection campaign. It was a disgrace and ended up costing Dan his career (and rightfully so). So do you really think that these people can be trusted with taking money from the government and not being biased in the process? They are the ones who are rooting for disaster anyway. Ironically the worse things get, the better it will be for them. That means they are rooting against us, rooting against America. Kind of puts a chill down your spine. After all they have tremendous influence over what we think and how we act and yet they benefit from our downfall? Yikes.

So I will say what I always say, I believe in a free market. I dont believe that we should be bailing anybody out. Sink or swim, thats what I always say. If you are unable to make it, then you have been extincted. Time to evolve into something that works.

The Forgotten Right

 by Tom Mullen

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”

– John Adams (1787)[1]

It is starting to become apparent to even the most disinterested observer that something much bigger than even a worldwide recession is happening. The seeds of revolution have taken root. Iceland led the way by taking to the streets to force regime change through peaceful demonstration. The French are currently protesting en masse against their government’s bailout of the banking system. One would be naïve to think that these are isolated incidents. It is apparent that these are just early warning signs of a worldwide cauldron that is about to boil over, catalyzed by the financial and economic cataclysm that will plunge untold millions into poverty and desperation.

While I applaud the peaceful demonstrations going on in France and Iceland, I also recognize that they are premature. As did Americans in the last election cycle, these Europeans are demanding “change.” However, also like Americans in the last election cycle, they have failed to first answer the crucial questions, “From what? To what?” They have not looked within to assess who they are, what their society is, and what they want it to be. Therefore, they run the risk of simply replacing one oppressive tyranny for another.

Likewise, we will never regain our freedom in America until we address the fundamental problem in our society. I say “the problem,” because at the root of all of what we perceive as a myriad of problems, including the police state, the welfare state, the warfare state, the military industrial complex, the Wall Street oligopoly, the high cost of healthcare and education – everything – there is one philosophical problem that ultimately leads to them all: the repudiation of property rights.

It is likely difficult for most 21st century Americans to absorb this statement, based upon the fact that they have been told now for generations that property is about greed, that accumulating property is oppression, or even that “property is theft.” However, let us look back at the philosophers who inspired our founders and see what they have to say about property. Of course, as I have written here, the primary philosophical basis for the American Revolution came from Locke. What did Locke have to say about the purpose of government?

““The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.”[2]

Certainly this statement must be startling to most 21st century Americans, who believe that they are supposed to look to their government to fight unemployment, manage the economy, ensure access to healthcare, promote democracy abroad, and pursue a myriad of other ends outside of protecting property. Surely, Locke has over-emphasized property rights here, has he not? Certainly he is alone in his simplistic assessment of the role of government, is he not?

He is not. In seeking guidance on how to construct our government, the American founders also looked to the ancients, particularly the Roman Republic. There, we find Cicero writing,

“For the chief purpose in the establishment of constitutional state and municipal governments was that individual property rights might be secured. For, although it was by Nature's guidance that men were drawn together into communities, it was in the hope of safeguarding their possessions that they sought the protection of cities.”[3] [emphasis added]

The conditioned response of Americans today is to view these ideas as a defense of one class of people at the expense of another. We have been trained to associate “property” as a concern of the “property class,” or in more common American terms, “the haves,” as opposed to the “have nots.” This is a great deception that has lead directly to our ruin. In fact, it is the poor and those of modest means for whom property rights are most important. It is they who, not possessing significant material wealth, must all the more jealously guard the property that they do have. In the end, however, we are all property owners when one considers the most fundamental, most important property of all: our labor itself.

We learn from Locke that all property has its roots in labor. In order to survive, man must work to produce the means of his survival. This is true for people no matter what their financial circumstances. The doctor, the lawyer, the construction worker, the janitor – yes, even the Wall Street financier – must sell his efforts to his fellow man in order to acquire the means of his survival. Therefore, whoever has control over the individual’s labor has control over the individual’s life, and control over the individual’s future. If I steal all of your possessions, you can acquire more. However, if I appropriate your labor, I own all of the property you can ever or will ever acquire. This is an undeniable reality that we have lost sight of, to our peril.

America was founded upon the idea that each individual had an unqualified right to the fruits of his labor.[4] This more than anything was what the founders meant when they spoke the word “liberty.” It was the extent to which this right was respected that made America different than every other society in history, before or since. This was the great secret that made America the engine of prosperity and innovation that it was. This is what made America the land of opportunity to change one’s lot in life. It was this right that gave birth to the American dream.

However, we no longer hold this right up above all others. Instead, we have become a society that is based upon competing groups seeking to plunder each other via the force of government. The rich plunder their neighbors with corporate bailouts, subsidies, and regulatory fascism. The middle class plunder their neighbors with Social Security, Medicare, and criminal unions. The poor are forced to accept legal plunder that they do not want and which provides them with the most miserable quality of life, when the stolen capital that underwrites it could employ them all if it weren’t seized from its rightful owners. Of course, these examples are only the tip of the iceberg; there is much, much more. Virtually every political movement in America is based upon a promise to provide its followers with other people’s property.

This scenario is neither unprecedented nor has it been unrecognized by the great lights of liberty. Bastiat wrote,

“Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.”[5]

This vision of Bastiat’s has become reality in America. However, it cannot go on forever. Fortunately for humanity, a society based upon legal plunder is ultimately unsustainable. Just as respect for property rights provides the means to prosperity, violation of them leads to poverty and want. As force replaces voluntary exchange, productivity decreases, and subsequently more force is required to plunder even more. This cycle repeats until society is reduced to an authoritarian nightmare, the first signs of which are becoming apparent in the former “land of the free.” If the people wake up, the nightmare can end. If they continue to slumber, the nightmare can get much, much worse.

This is the great truth that we must rediscover before any revolution can be successful. Before we commit to “change,” we must answer the questions, “From what? To What?” The answers to those questions must be “from a nation of looters to a nation of free individuals who acquire property in the only civilized manner: via voluntary exchange." We must reject the use of force as the means to pursue our happiness, and renew our faith in freedom. Once this great work has been accomplished, let the revolution begin.

Check out Tom Mullen’s new book, A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America. Right Here!

[1] Adams, John A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787)
[2] Locke Second Treatise Ch. IX, Sec. 124
[3]Cicero, Marcus Tullius De Officiis Book II Chapter XXI
[4] “Individuals” who were included in the system. Of course, the founders recognized but did not remedy the obvious contradiction to this inherent in slavery.
[5] Bastiat, Frederic, The Law