Exclusive Interview
Thomas Woods, Jr. on Libertarianism Versus the Catholic Church, Ron Paul's Presidential Chances and US State Secession
The Daily Bell is pleased to publish an interview with the distinguished libertarian scholar, Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Introduction: Dr. Woods is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is the author of nine books, including two New York Times bestsellers: Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. His other books include Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush (with Kevin R.C. Gutzman), Sacred Then and Sacred Now: The Return of the Old Latin Mass, 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, and The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy. His writing has appeared in dozens of popular and scholarly periodicals, including the American Historical Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Investor's Business Daily, Catholic Historical Review, Modern Age, American Studies, Intercollegiate Review, Catholic Social Science Review, Economic Affairs (U.K.), Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Inside the Vatican, Human Events and many more.
Daily Bell: Thanks for sitting down with us again. Let's jump right in. Do you think Ron Paul has a real chance to win the GOP presidential nomination?
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: It won't be easy, but it's less difficult to imagine a scenario in which he wins than it was even four or five months ago. An outright win in Iowa, which is a strong possibility, gives him momentum going into New Hampshire. At least a strong second-place showing there silences the doubters who hesitate to support him because they think he can't win. Now those are on board. The momentum builds further. Money pours in like crazy. It is not impossible.
I'll never forget, in 2008, reading articles about the GOP primary following John McCain's win in New Hampshire. Voters in states where the primary election had yet to be held were actually saying things like, "I don't like McCain but I guess I have to go vote for him." What? Why do you have to go vote for him? There are other candidates still in the race! What possible reason could you have for voting for someone just because he won the New Hampshire primary?
It's bizarre behavior, and apparently there's no getting rid of it. Might as well hope it can be used in our favor this time.
Daily Bell: Why is the United States involved in so many wars and military adventures today? Is this a function of the Pentagon, the power elite or Wall Street? Who wants these wars and why?
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: In the old days there was a much greater willingness to consider that something other than patriotism and "national security" might have a teensy weensy bit to do with why the pressure for war builds and becomes irresistible. In 1934, for example, H.C. Engelbrecht and F.C. Hanighen wrote their famous book Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry. In the ensuing decades it has been fashionable to reject the argument in that book – why, only a crank would think arms manufacturers might have a vested interest in military conflict! More often, the book's thesis is caricatured by people who have never read it. In recent years historian Hunt Tooley has rehabilitated and extended its thesis.
The fact is lots of people grow wealthy and powerful from war. Gen. Smedley Butler didn't say "War is a racket" for nothing. For some reason, though, people find it difficult to believe that one's material interests might lead him to support war, even though most people do not find it difficult at all to think one's material interests might lead him to support steel tariffs, sugar quotas, health-insurance mandates and so on.
In his useful book, Washington Rules, Andrew Bacevich, a contributing editor of The American Conservative, explained that the bipartisan foreign-policy consensus delivers
"profit, power, and privilege to a long list of beneficiaries: elected and appointed officials, corporate executives and corporate lobbyists, admirals and generals, functionaries staffing the national security apparatus, media personalities, and policy intellectuals from universities and research organizations. Each year the Pentagon expends hundreds of billions of dollars to raise and support U.S. military forces. This money lubricates American politics, filling campaign coffers and providing a source of largesse — jobs and contracts — for distribution to constituents. It provides lucrative "second careers" for retired U.S. military officers hired by weapons manufacturers or by consulting firms appropriately known as "Beltway Bandits." It funds the activities of think tanks that relentlessly advocate for policies guaranteed to fend off challenges to established conventions. "Military-industrial complex" no longer suffices to describe the congeries of interests profiting from and committed to preserving the national security status quo."
That is a shockingly candid statement but I think it describes the situation to a "t."
Incidentally, some people wonder whether oil may after all be overemphasized as a reason for US military involvement in the Middle East, since other countries are more reliant on Middle East oil than the US is. But whether or not the US itself needs the oil, the US government can use its control of important oil sources as a lever to bring pressure against other powers.
Daily Bell: What is the source of the religious commitment to a bellicose American foreign policy?
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: This deserves an extended response because although people know the Christian Right in the US favors supporting the Israeli government militarily, I think not so many people quite understand why.
According to the dispensationalist theology at the root of this, Christ came in order to bring a political kingdom to the Jewish people, to rule from the throne of David for one thousand years and to fulfill all the prophecies of the Old Testament. But Christ was rejected and crucified, thereby postponing the divine intervention.
The so-called "Church age," established from Christ's crucifixion up to the moment of the rapture (more on which is below), was in this view not prophesied in the Old Testament at all. Thus dispensationalists refer to Church history as the "great parenthesis." It is a long pause in God's relationship with the Jews, which to the dispensationalist is the central drama of human existence.
Eventually – we do not know when – Christ will come and "rapture" the Christians into heaven, at which point He will return once again to dealing with the Jews. The rapture will be followed by a seven-year tribulation and the appearance of the Antichrist. The Battle of Armageddon will occur, Christ will return (His third coming), the conversion of all Israel will take place, and the millennium bypassed at Christ's first coming will at last be established.
Since the Jewish people are at the center of salvation history, and since none of the prophets could have foretold the coming of the Church (which was, after all, the unanticipated great parenthesis in God's salvific plan), none of the Old Testament prophecies can be taken in anything other than a purely literal and physical sense. Since a number of Old Testament prophecies have not yet been literally fulfilled, such fulfillment is destined to occur at some point in the future. Thus, for example, since the land of God's promise stretched from the Nile to the Euphrates, these must someday become the borders of Israel.
These views would not have been recognized by Christians before the nineteenth century. Orthodox belief held that the Old Testament foreshadowed the New, with its prophecies and promises having been fulfilled in a spiritual rather than a physical sense in the coming of Christ and the establishment of the Church. The "seed of Abraham," according to traditional Christian belief, is to be understood in a spiritual rather than a racial or nationalistic sense. "They who are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham" (Gal. 3:7). "And if you be Christ's, then you are the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise" (Gal. 3:29).
This is not to say that the idea of a Jewish national homeland established by human effort is incompatible with traditional Christian belief – one might support such an effort for various humanitarian and other reasons – but only that it is not mandated by it. Nor is the bellicose foreign policy of most of the Christian Right any necessary part of the Christian worldview.
(The rendition of dispensationalism I've given helps to account for the centrality of Israel and the Jewish people in the drama of salvation history according to some Christians, which in turn accounts for the unconditional support for the Israeli government. On the other hand, some dispensationalists contend that their views do not require such support, given that in their view Israel will be around forever regardless of what man does.)
Daily Bell: You are a Catholic scholar. What do you think of the recent suggestion by a policy arm of the Church about the positives inherent in world government?
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: I wasn't particularly thrilled about it, needless to say. Oddly enough, part of the document attributed the world's economic problems to financial bubbles created by excessive money growth – an important insight. The rest of the document then seems to think more of the same, except with an additional layer of bureaucracy added, is just what the world needs now.
When the recent document was issued, NPR asked me to write a 500-word commentary. That's frustratingly brief but I did it. I wrote a longer piece about similar concerns regarding Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in Veritate.
I've written quite a bit on Catholic social teaching and tried to answer some of the previously unexamined questions it raises from a pro-capitalist point of view. One of the problems with documents like this is that although much of what is said in them does not bind Catholics – obviously there can be no official Catholic position on how to recapitalize banks – it does put Catholics in an awkward position. This is wholly unnecessary.
I've discussed this sort of thing in greater detail in my book, The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, which can be read by Catholics and non-Catholics alike who are interested in an introduction to Austrian (free-market) economics.
Daily Bell: Do you believe the resurgence of free-market thinking in the last few years will continue to grow? Or will the likely coming depression put a damper on it?
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: I am certain it will keep growing. Ron Paul has given Austrian economics enough energy and visibility that it will continue to grow in influence in the coming years, at which point it will grow still further on the basis of its own momentum. And if the economy worsens, people looking for answers will continue to find the Austrian School, as they did in the wake of the recent financial crisis.
Daily Bell: Is Keynesianism dead? What will it take to kill it?
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: A lot of people assumed it was dead quite some time ago, but it has emerged with renewed strength over the past several years. It's hard to kill in part because it seems non-falsifiable: if its policy prescriptions fail to bring economic relief, the reason is said to be not the policy itself but the fact that it was not applied with sufficient gusto. At that point, one has no choice but to fall back on economic theory in the fight against Keynesianism.
I can see two things that could finish it forever.
The first is an academic strategy. Gary North calls for this at KeynesProject.com. We need a systematic dismantling of the Keynesian system, piece by piece. Henry Hazlitt refuted Keynes' General Theory line by line in his The Failure of the "New Economics," it's true, but he is so relentless in his line-by-line refutation that I've always felt the big-picture aspect was missing.
We need the work either of a single great thinker and scholar or, more likely, the collaborative effort of a team of scholars, each with a devastating case to make in a particular Keynesian subfield. Finish the job. Do what F.A. Hayek should have done in the 1930s but didn't.
Second, major fiscal and economic difficulties will tend to damage the reigning paradigm. No one can seriously pretend that what is coming is the Austrians' fault. That's the devastating double-edged sword of condemning us for being "fringe" or "out of the mainstream." If that's true, then whatever happens can't be blamed on us – we're out on the "fringe" without any influence, remember? We should be prepared to capitalize on this.
Daily Bell: Could some states begin to take a real look at secession, state sovereignty and Tenth Amendment actions if the economy continues to worsen?
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: Ron Paul has been saying we should expect de facto nullification when the real crisis comes and the federal government has trouble paying its bills. It will be harder for it to intimidate the states into doing its bidding. At that point, they may garner the courage to take a real and long-overdue stand against Washington.
Filling in for Peter Schiff on his radio show not long ago, I asked Pat Buchanan how likely he thought it was, on a scale of one to ten, that secession might be seriously entertained sometime over the course of the next several generations, given the scope of the problems the country is sure to face. He said 8 or 9. But he was thinking in terms of the American Southwest, which will increasingly be culturally Mexican, so that's a different scenario from the one you're describing.
Students of recent world history would be advised not to rule out a possible outcome just because it seems unlikely or "out of the mainstream" (ooh, beware!) today.
Daily Bell: What's your latest book and when is it scheduled to come out?
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: That's it for books from me for a while. I've written five books (and edited a book of essays) in the past five years: 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask, Who Killed the Constitution? (with Kevin Gutzman), Meltdown (on the financial crisis; foreword by Ron Paul), Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century (see my Interview with a Zombie promo video), Back on the Road to Serfdom and, most recently, Rollback.
Rollback makes a pretty relentless case against just about everything the federal government does, from the regulatory apparatus to the military-industrial complex, the war on drugs, economic "stimulus," the Federal Reserve, and on and on. It could have been called "Everything Should Be Abolished, And Here's Why."
Daily Bell: Finally, after the 2012 election what actions and tactics should most freedom advocates consider to best defend liberty and advance our freedoms against Washington over the next four years?
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: I speculate about this a bit in the final chapter of Rollback. My answer would be a little bit of everything. Acquaint yourself with ideas you might have disparaged or indeed never have heard of in the past: jury nullification, agorism, the Free State Project, you name it.
Daily Bell: Any publications you want to bring to our attention?
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: Not a publication but a website. I get a lot of people who enjoy reading my books and who want to know more about American history, or who wish they knew more about economics – both out of natural curiosity and to refute the bad guys – and don't really know where to start.
My site, organized into courses you can view at your convenience, will teach US history, European history and economics. You can watch everything in video or you can put audio files on your iPod. Some of the videos will feature me teaching, and I'll be joined by several other professors you can trust, including Kevin Gutzman, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution. And you can ask us questions in our discussion forums.
It's by far the most important thing I have done. Please keep an eye on my personal site, TomWoods.com, where I'll be announcing it.
Daily Bell: Thanks for sitting down with us.
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: My pleasure.
Thanks to Thomas Woods for another fascinating interview. We wish him good luck with his new project. Likewise, we wish Dr. Gary North the best of luck with The Keynes Project, which Mr. Woods mentions and that seems like a great idea.
We weren't aware of the Keynes Project but we looked it up and found it at GaryNorth.com. He calls the larger effort, which has yet to get underway, "A Critical Analysis of the Economics of John Maynard Keynes from an Austrian School Perspective." Here's something from the introduction:
John Maynard Keynes was the most influential economist of the twentieth century. This speaks poorly of the twentieth century. In October 2009, I wrote an article for Lew Rockwell in which I outlined a plan to refute Keynes, line by line. Austrian economists are not found on major university campuses. I wrote it for a younger, untenured academic economist at some private college or obscure university who is willing to devote his career to the task. I still hope such a person takes up my challenge.
Having written this, Gary North tells us he's shifted focus and now conceives of The Keynes Project as a model for a "joint effort." He suggests focusing on Keynes' 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, and indicates he intends to put up a blog site where participants can "discuss specific research issues in forums, submit articles or links to articles, and establish off-site communications with other participants."
Hope he gets it up and running. Once it's online, perhaps we'll write more about it. As Thomas Woods knows, education is more important than ever, and the Internet provides a platform to promote ideas that did not have a chance to be disseminated in the 20th century.
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Posted by tawny on 12/12/11 01:31 PM
Yes - govt. and big mega business POSTURE to be different and distinct; and like some vaudeville routine or pair of street grifters, they can as part of their routine, finger one another as 'the problem'. So there may be hearings - token hearings, token punishments, wrists slapped, maybe one or two selected scapegoats thrown to the wolves or 'sanctioned'.
But it is an old routine. Govt. is Wall Street is govt. is Big Business, (Monsanto, Big Pharma, the Nuclear Power industry, of course the big banks etc... . when people get riled, then the govt. half of the duo will go through some charade of 'investigating' and maybe some other token actions/punishments to make it seem that the problem is being addressed and guilty parties punished.
With all the recent huge bail-outs of the Wall Street 'too big to fails' - do we need any more smoking guns to tell us the obvious - that behind the facade, the two are, to all intents and purposes, one. Partners in crime: the rip-off (of the working people, whose labor is the source of all wealth) of all time.
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Posted by flying_pig on 12/12/11 01:21 PM
"The only reason people are unable to reason properly is that they were abused as kids by stories about Santa Claus!"
I know. That would explain a lot. Let's all be atheists and then we shall be libertarians... or Marxists? Who knows?
You think I am part of the problem - the reason why people are unable to see the brilliant shining light of your "libertarian" philosophy? Well, take a look in the mirror, buddy. Your arguments are based on correlations, and are Scientistic. They deny the very essence of human action, free will and independent thought.
Dealing with emotional reactions is an acquired skill. In fact, this skill is easier to acquire later in life. Your belief in human beings as automatons bound by ritual and habit is the very type of thing that enslaves humanity forever in imaginary mental chains.
@Weebley : Yes, I am from the distant past. Sadly, I have changed. Things happened on this website that caused me to change.
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Posted by tawny on 12/12/11 01:07 PM
Re private justice... thinking about it brought to mind one of my favorite books, Twain's Huckleberry Finn. I was thinking about the feud that Huck described, between two families, and how it dragged on and on, getting bigger, as another person from family A was ambushed and murdered by Family B, which then ambushed and killed 2 more family A members... etc. Hatfields and McCoys stuff. Also think of the lynchings of blacks when the KKK took matters into their own hands. Also the gang wars (Mafia, organized crime).
And the dueling culture got to the point of extreme absurdity, snowballing, to the point that slighter and slighter insults because grounds for a duel.
This is not a picture of a good solution to anything. Maybe you can present some more positive real world, not hypothetical, good results of private justice at work.
Of course, as mentioned, organized crime gives us yet another example of 'private justice.'
As, indeed, does the CIA - the 'official' and 'sanctioned' arm of organized crime.
Basically there are no easy answers; the best answers were generated by our country's founders and put into the Constitution. But they warned that we would have to be vigilant and educated or it would be deja vu all over again - which it has been, with bells on.
A more workable solution to the problem of 'crime and punishment' - more practical than 'private justice' - which seems unrealistic on its face - would be trying to move to smaller governing bodies/units - small enough that the doings of government can actually be overseen and influenced by the people (political units not much bigger than counties).
But getting there (or anywhere) from here seems increasingly to be a remote possibility; and the situation in the world today does give ample mute testimony to the hard cold truth that there are no easy answers and that we are in a heap o' trouble.
My point remains - the distinction that you attempt to draw between govt. and the private sector - big business - simply no longer exists. We are in the grip of a two-headed monster.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Re private justice... thinking about it brought to mind one of my favorite books, Twain's Huckleberry Finn. I was thinking about the feud that Huck described, between two families, and how it dragged on and on, getting bigger, as another person from family A was ambushed and murdered by Family B, which then ambushed and killed 2 more family A members... etc. Hatfields and McCoys stuff. Also think of the lynchings of blacks when the KKK took matters into their own hands. Also the gang wars (Mafia, organized crime).
DB: There are 4-5 million prisoners in America alone. Many of them are innocent. A number of them are raped, abused even murdered. What is it about this system that is in any sense fairer or "better" than the private justice system you refer to above ...
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And the dueling culture got to the point of extreme absurdity, snowballing, to the point that slighter and slighter insults because grounds for a duel.
DB: Actually, the system of dueling was not necessarily widespread, nor did it necessarily result in deaths, but it certainly did enforce courtesy.
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This is not a picture of a good solution to anything. Maybe you can present some more positive real world, not hypothetical, good results of private justice at work.
DB: We would argue the system you are presenting is one skewed by anti-private justice media promotions. (See Westerns, etc.)
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Of course, as mentioned, organized crime gives us yet another example of 'private justice.' As, indeed, does the CIA - the 'official' and 'sanctioned' arm of organized crime.
DB: Private justice could effectively ward off organized crime, given an even playing field ....
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Basically there are no easy answers; the best answers were generated by our country's founders and put into the Constitution. But they warned that we would have to be vigilant and educated or it would be deja vu all over again - which it has been, with bells on.
DB: Actually, much of what was practiced in the formative years of the American empire WAS private justice. The modern penitentiary state is an evolution of the past century or so. It is extremely expensive and needs a central banking environment to fund it ...
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A more workable solution to the problem of 'crime and punishment' - more practical than 'private justice' - which seems unrealistic on its face - would be trying to move to smaller governing bodies/units - small enough that the doings of government can actually be overseen and influenced by the people (political units not much bigger than counties).
DB: Private justice is not at all unworkable. It survived for tens of thousands of years. The current system is about 100 years old (with various eruptions over the past 1,000).
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But getting there (or anywhere) from here seems increasingly to be a remote possibility; and the situation in the world today does give ample mute testimony to the hard cold truth that there are no easy answers and that we are in a heap o' trouble.
DB: We think private justice will re-emerge as the current system begins to crumble, due to its extreme cost, viciousness and inherent injustices.
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My point remains - the distinction that you attempt to draw between govt. and the private sector - big business - simply no longer exists. We are in the grip of a two-headed monster.
DB: We emphasize the mercantilism of the current system on a regular basis, and never pretend that the current system is a free-market one. It's not.
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Posted by Agent Weebley on 12/12/11 08:37 AM
Hi NAPpy,
Thanks for the nice invitation. We have had brief convos in the past . . . there is nothing like a good debate . . . so yes, I'm game.
But before we engage, you must be advised that my most effective move is Change Of Engagement, where I inadvertently lose the epee. Before you know it, your may or may not notice a tear in the time / space continuum.
So, NAPpy, I will jump off the fence later tonight Canada EST, and make my first Attaque au Fer.
Click to view link
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Posted by tawny on 12/12/11 05:08 AM
Well, DB, maybe you can educate me here (seriously, not being facetious). Do you not believe that private persons and also businesses should be regulated and restricted by law from engaging in certain practices (theft, and murder, for instance)? Do you think that we can get along without laws (and without an entity, which has been government, to enforce these laws - using force or the threat of force if necessary?)
Didn't the country's founders (Jefferson, I think) speak of 'a rule of law and not of men'?
It seems to me that just as individual people need to be restrained by laws, so too do businesses (which are made up of people - engaged in commerce). Do you disagree?
Without a 'rule of law and not of men' you end up with competing 'gangs' which use force, violence, and intimidation to rule - organized crime.
Our situation with regard to personal freedom and the corruption of the law into an instrument of oppression of the people has certainly not been static since the Civil War. A few ways things have deteriorated/freedoms have been lost since the Civil War era: the income tax; the Federal Reserve Act; mass programming/indoctrination/brainwashing in (mandatory) public schools and by TV and other controlled media; and more recently, FEMA camps, non-judicial killings; the new 'indefinite detention' law applicable to American citizens; progressive loss of national sovereignty; loss/erosion of state sovereignty ... as well as science-based infringements/assaults, such as state of the art surveillance/data-bases, and bio-chemical warfare against us, by 'designer diseases' like AIDS; and chemicals in our food, chem-trails, toxic inoculations, emerging invasive nano-technologies.
Our situation (in terms of loss of freedoms and privacy, and perversion of the law to serve totalitarian/statist ends) has drastically deteriorated since the Civil War.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Do you not believe that private persons and also businesses should be regulated and restricted by law from engaging in certain practices (theft, and murder, for instance)?
We believe in private justice, Tawny. We've written about it a good deal. We believe in vendettas, duels, etc. - or at least the threat thereof. We think state-mandated monopoly justice as practiced in the West is a horror and has led to the current penitentiary-industrial complex.
Much of pre-Civil war justice WAS private. And via "Westerns" and other forms of promotional memes, the idea that justice can be administered by other venues than the "state" was gradually erased from the public mind. But as the Internet Reformation wends its way forward, we expect that private justice will be rediscovered.
Here is just one article we've written on the subject:
Click to view link
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Posted by tawny on 12/12/11 03:30 AM
DB Just saw your comment... yes I agree the rule of law died back during the Civil War. (I would like to know more about that, such as - have we been under some form of martial law/on-going 'emergency) continuously since then?) - BUT - things have progressively deteriorated. For instance, there were (a couple thousand I believe)prosecutions and convictions after the S&L corruption/scandal - but now... nothing. Nary a single prosecution.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Tawny, we KNOW what happened during the S&L scandal. An entire small-bank industry was tarred, feathered and then taken out. Central banking was the proximate culprit. So sad to see you advocating that the corrupt and vicious prison-industrial complex ought to be employed (this once) to prosecute evil-doers. It is entirely the wrong approach. It is a dominant social theme and you, a logical and intuitive person, are somehow surrendering to it ....
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Posted by tawny on 12/12/11 03:23 AM
Barnhart also says in closing:
'Don't kid yourself. These other entities are doing the same thing. It is just that they are not as heavily leveraged as Corzine was. So yes, the entire paradigm is no longer trustworthy. There is no meaningful government or industry wide regulation and I have been saying this for years. That regulation [still occurs, exists] in the financial industry in the United States, both government based and private regulation-private industry regulation-is a monstrous, monstrous joke. The top tiers of those organizations are evil, nefarious people. The mid level are halfway stupid, halfway evil who again, are just there to collect their salary paycheck... "
The impression I (tawny) have gotten is that these guys in top/insider positions in Wall Street and government know that the thing is in its last days - the inevitable has been postponed as long as possible - and they are just getting in there and taking, taking, taking, knowing that mayhem is almost upon us and devil take the hindmost, and there will be no accountability, just -quite possibly/probably - some kind and degree of chaos/disorder ('social unrest', martial law, etc.) - for quite a while.
On into this 'brave new world' ... this application of the "CLOWARD-PIVEN STRATEGY" to achieve world dominion - that ultimate prize sought and dreamed of by so many grandiose sociopaths thru the ages...
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Posted by tawny on 12/12/11 02:43 AM
Agent Sparky --
Read the article if you haven't done so. Click to view link
Its title is:
"Broker exposes depth of Corzine theft from MF Global investors."
Ann Barnhart is a commodities stock broker and says that what happened is unprecedented. In other words it is NOT the same old corruption just becoming more visible,or being discovered by the naive average Joe, but a totally unprecedented theft of investors' monies (under auspices of Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME) - some of which were not even invested but just sitting in investors' accounts - that is going completely unpunished. The total amount invested (leveraged 100:1) without clients' knowledge or consent is in the millions, perhaps even low billions.
From the article, speaking of the perp, Jon Corzine (former governor of New Jersey) --
'Why would a man like that even engage in a nefarious plot like this? Because he knew going into it he could get away with it. And the reason he could get away with it is he is in tight with the Obama regime."
Here is another quotation from the article -
"So these MF customers will essentially be raped three times-"
'They will have their cash stolen out of their accounts, they were then locked out of their position so they couldn't trade and were fully exposed to market risk, paralyzed, unable to do anything for excess of a week.[denied access to their own accounts.] And then, number three rape is having the bankruptcy trustee come back and literally seize money out of your own personal checking accounts and business accounts and so forth [known as 'claw back']. And clawing it back to feed this bankrupt entity. And you know what the cherry on top of the sundae of all this is? And this is what blows my mind-the bankruptcy trustee, right now, as this is being recorded on the 30th of November. The bankruptcy trustee is still allowing MF Global to trade proprietarily for itself, for the company proper."
Broker Ann Barnhart's whole point is that this goes way beyond previous levels of corruption and malfeasance. That is why she says,
'It is unbelievable. The rule of law is dead in this country.'
To me, this is a mind-blowing article and that is why I am making such a big deal about it.
Barnhart also says that the implosion is inevitable, way more is owed than the GNP of the entire planet.
Speaking of the most recent Fed 'rescue operation' --
"All they are doing is looking to kick the can down the road. At first it was kick the can down another 10, 12 years. Then it is kick the can down the road for another year. And then it was well, let's kick the can down the road for another few months. Now we're literally to the point where all we can do is kick the can down the road for a matter of a few days. It's not going to make it. I will be very surprised if we make it until Christmas.'
Reply from The Daily Bell
"The rule of law is dead in this country.'
Tawny: You are getting carried away. The rule of law died during the Civil War in the US, if not before. This is all just prelude to a new Pecora Commission ... Setting the stage so to speak ...
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Posted by NAPpy on 12/11/11 11:51 PM
"Isn't the "Libertarian Philosophy" based on "small" government and laissez faire attitudes towards others to promote a market driven economy?"
It depends. I would argue that Rothbard is responsible for defining the philosophy of modern libertarianism. He wrote For A New Liberty and helped start the Libertarian Party in the U.S. In that sense, libertarianism is the philosophy based on self-ownership, which can be used to derive the Non-Agression Principle, and the science of voluntary exchange, which can be called laissez faire economics. However, "libertarian" has been adopted by minarchists who aren't even aware of Ancap / Voluntarist philosophy, or Austrian Economics, for that matter. So, pick your poison.
"I believe in "no government" and agree with that laissez faire attitudes towards others, unless you can change my mind, which you seem to have resigned yourself to not being able to do already, so it may be "pointless.""
I can derive the non-agression principle from the Axiom of Argumentation (Hoppe). Since government, by definition, initates force, I must conclude that government interferes with human self-ownership, and should therefore be eliminated. I wasn't aware of ever debating with you before, so I don't know if it's pointless or not.
"So bringing in poor public school education as the source of the problem right at the end, was the likely cause for alien intervention... "
Molyneux references (and advertises) Lloyd deMauses' "History of Childhood Abuse", and theorizes that abuse has a correlative effect on the ability to reason. Another proponent of the impact of violence on human society is Julian Jaynes in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Public school as an institution is responsible for some child abuse. I would not argue that public school is the source of child abuse. I would argue that children who experience violence in the family are more likely to become adults who condone or advocate violence (per Molyneux, deMause and Jaynes).
So, if you want to help expand the liberty movement, it would help to understand the implications of the theories of Molyneux / deMause / Jaynes:
1. A sizeable majority of adults experienced violence as children
2. A sizeable majority of those adults who experienced violence as children will emotionally react to ideas, like liberty, which challenge their deepest beliefs
3. Brain studies show that logic centers shut down during emotional reactions
4. Arguing with people that have emotional reactions cannot work. Overcoming emotional reactions is a personal challenge that must be overcome before logic is even possible.
5. Therefore, key strategies for spreading the ideas of liberty are:
-screen your conversations with others for emotional reactions
-throw out links on how to overcome emotional reactions, then move on to other people
-spend most of your time talking to people that don't have emotional reactions, because they are the only ones capable of using logic, which is the whole idea behind engaging in a debate
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Posted by Agent Sparky on 12/11/11 11:39 PM
Hi tawny,
Regarding "the rule of law is dead", maybe a more accurate description would be "the rule of law is exposed".
All that's happened is that Toto has pulled back the curtain, and we can now all see the dirty business that's going on back there. Too bad that some people's illusions have been shattered, and they think the sky is falling. In the end, seeing the truth is always a good thing, and can only make the world a better place.
In a past life, I cloaked myself and spent many years infiltrating that dirty business behind the curtain, just because I wanted to see. They thought I was one of them, and they showed me a lot, and invited me way up into the towers. The higher I went, the fewer lights there were. I don't know how they can even read a newspaper up there. Then one day, when I had seen enough, I just flew away.
My real job is a lot more fun. Now I stand in front of the curtain and sell tickets for the magic train, that takes people inside and shows them as much as they want to see, and no one in there can see the train or the explorers on it. And Toto just hangs out with me now.
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Posted by Agent Weebley on 12/11/11 10:42 PM
Slight calibration needed on my comment.
Adrian had 2 choices going forward, but I didn't like them, so we now have 3rd choice.
Unfortunately, no-one can seem to see it right now.
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Posted by Agent Weebley on 12/11/11 10:34 PM
Hi NAPpy,
Isn't the "Libertarian Philosophy" based on "small" government and laissez faire attitudes towards others to promote a market driven economy?
I believe in "no government" and agree with that laissez faire attitudes towards others, unless you can change my mind, which you seem to have resigned yourself to not being able to do already, so it may be "pointless."
Now that we've drawn a virtual line in the sandy bottom of a dry river bed, dissecting and probing Keynesianism is rather passe [avec accent egu] when just yesterday, the problem and solution was identified by Adrian Kreig on More Money!
Click to view link
So bringing in poor public school education as the source of the problem right at the end, was the likely cause for alien intervention, which we have not done like that in years, and never on children. All probing is now done using sensors like on Star Trek.
Flying Pig . . . are you from the past?
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Posted by tawny on 12/11/11 09:56 PM
In fact, Goldman, I believe, is tied to the Rothschilds or a Rothschild front. The same was (is) probably true of JP Morgan and offspring.
The hand inside the govt. sock puppet is definitely, collectively speaking, the corporate/banking elite.
So the people need to realize THAT - rather than deciding which to blame, big govt. OR big business - realize that big finance/business and big government are joined at the hip (the mercantilist system) and are basically the two faces of a single monolithic cabal.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Tawny, we believe we know what is going to happen. There will be Pecora Hearings and Wall Street will be blamed. The Hearings themselves will give people the impression that government CAN clean itself up. Some regulators may be sacrificed this time. But the show will go on.
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Posted by NAPpy on 12/11/11 09:20 PM
"What you really need to do is to find a way to prevent the aliens from administering anal probes to little kids. Once abused as kids, they remain morons forever."
The libertarian philosophy is impossible to argue against. People that disagree with it always resort to ad hominems or just avoid debate altogether. Yet, adults, statistically, don't change their minds. Sure, some small minority do. But, by and large, adults don't change their minds, even when they are wrong. Why is that? The link I provided gives the best explanation I've seen. Your alien anal probe comment is, well... childish. Get in the debate. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
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Posted by tawny on 12/11/11 09:09 PM
DB you will be interested in this as well, which is what you have been saying all along. In fact you are probably already aware of it, but perhaps not all DB readers are.
"Wall St. Propagandists Scramble to Cover US Ties to Russian Protesters." Found on Click to view link
Wall Street Propagandists Scramble To Cover US Ties to Russian Protesters
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Posted by tawny on 12/11/11 09:04 PM
Mr. Wile, you should take the time to read that article - it is excellent.
Barnhart basically says that 'the rule of law is dead' - existing laws that are SOP and have protected investors before, are not being enforced/applied - and that the corruption is endemic, in govt., in Wall St., in the regulators who do not do their jobs honestly, and if they do what Wall St. et al want, they are rewarded with lucrative positions and other percs.
She says that the CLOWARD-PIVEN strategy (forcing political change through orchestrated crisis)is being used to tear down the existing governments (cause them to fail) and install oligarchic elitist exploitative ones in their place. Which is exactly precisely the truth!!!
So she is saying that the perps are the corporate/banking/govt. elites, the very Anglosphere you take about. The Wall St./govt. distinction is ultimately spurious, as they basically are the same (the notorious 'revolving door') and/or cooperating with/facilitating one another and getting fat at public expense and both stand to win with this NWO installation. But the elites manipulate public opinion/outrage and if public opinion demands, might posture to correct the problems by having the right hand 'investigate' and correct the ways of the 'left hand.'
She definitely is 'blaming government' - pointing out that they are not 'regulating commerce in the public interest' -- that they are allowing blatantly illegal doings (read article) and just standing down, not prosecuting, not even investigating, or at best making limp-wristed ineffective gestures that accomplish nothing and are mere window dressing. But it is the same players, by and large, in govt. and in the big Wall Street firms like Goldman.
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Posted by Mary Martin on 12/11/11 09:00 PM
The reason for the geographic area presently referred to as the USA needs to be a single political union now for the same reason it did in 1776: We must all hang together, or we will all hang separately. How long do you think it would take the Sinaloa/China/Russia/take your pick to militarily crush a Balkanized America? How long would it take for wars to begin between regions?
We cannot run from the daunting tasks involved in restoring our country by fleeing to "sanctuaries" that, if elections are anything to go by, are at best 60/40 on any given topic or value.
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Posted by Mary Martin on 12/11/11 08:50 PM
He didn't say it was okay. If you listen to his words, Robertson said If you (the male caller) are going to do something (see another woman), get divorced. He added that someone with Alzheimer's wasn't there. If you watch Robertson (I occasionally do) it's also obvious that his mind is no longer entirely clear. He used to be very sharp and intelligent, and now just gets on as best he can, supported by his staff. Given that Protestantism has become casual about divorce, his response doesn't mean he isn't really Christian. It means that "in sickness and in health, until death do us part" has become meaningless noise for millions.
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Posted by flying_pig on 12/11/11 08:37 PM
You had me till your last sentence.
What you really need to do is to find a way to prevent the aliens from administering anal probes to little kids. Once abused as kids, they remain morons forever.
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Posted by NAPpy on 12/11/11 07:51 PM
I wonder what kind of nation America would be today if public schooling had never been implemented:
Click to view link
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