OUR MONEY SYSTEM
PART 3 of 3

 

 

 

By Steven Yates
December 28, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

PART 3
Where Do We Go From Here?

"America is at that awkward stage. It�s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolf, 101 Things To Do Till the Revolution

Parts One and Two presented evidence that we have a problem of some magnitude on our hands. Some ask me, What can we do? Is there any way out of this mess? They are disappointed when I don�t have any magic wands. I�m just the messenger. I can suggest what some folks are already doing, which is to buy gold and silver. Clearly the value of gold is going to go up relative to the value of our fiat dollar. This obviously isn�t a complete solution. Unless you want to live in the woods, escaping the clutches of our money system and its super elite masters is very hard. While some people do not keep money in banks, most do and are unaware of any alternatives. Not to mention the difficulty of doing business on any large scale outside this system.

There are pessimists and there are optimists, with different schools of thought in each with different degrees of credibility.

The pessimists think nothing can be done; the process of encirclement toward global control is too far along, and there are too many resources arrayed on the other side. We are relatively few, poorly organized, and strapped for cash. We have no Ford or Rockefeller Foundation on our side. We have, at best, the Web (where writers publish for free) and publications like this one (where everyone works for free). None of us dare give up our day jobs�from which we can be fired if we get too politically incorrect! There is something to this, I admit. However, we should note that the laws of economics are what they are, regardless what government is in power or what the "banksters" do.

Part Two of this series established that the current process is unsustainable. Other things being equal, the laws of economics themselves will one day bring our financial flights of fancy down in flames. If that happens, then given how advanced nations� economies now interpenetrate one another, it may plunge much of the globe into a depression making the 1930s look like a picnic by comparison. Unemployment would reach levels never before seen in the advanced world. Partial infrastructural collapse could mean a return to quasi-medieval conditions. Millions of people would be killed in food riots, starve, freeze to death the following winter, or die from diseases we thought were wiped out, before a leadership capable of picking up the pieces could emerge. It is unlikely that such leadership would care about Constitutionally limited government!

Anyone with functioning brain cells should be motivated to prevent this scenario, if at all possible!

What about the optimists? They divide into two groups: those I increasingly think of as irrational optimists and those I would label rational optimists. Rational here means guarded, or cautious. They realize we did not get into this predicament overnight and we will not get out of it overnight. Moreover, they recognize human fallibility and sinfulness, which ensure that we will never have perfect civil government�the desire for that is the stealth humanist in each of us.

I have encountered schemes I am now convinced will not work�given the generally low educational level of today�s American public. These schemes all say, essentially, "If we just do x, we�ll be saved!" X might be abolish the IRS, or elect a Libertarian to national office. The first, I suppose, is not impossible�but be warned, it could be replaced by something worse. Read Joan Veon�s latest article on NewsWithViews.com. Or see Jim Cox�s review of Neal Boortz�s book on Fair Tax last Thursday on LewRockwell.com. Let�s use common horse sense. The feds are not going to cut off their free ride without ensuring that something replaces it.

The second isn�t going to happen, either. American voters, with few exceptions, are brainwashed by the so-called two-party system and sold on don�t-throw-away-your-vote arguments. Moreover, today�s money system is designed�among other things�to keep outsiders out. Insiders have access to huge sums of federal dollars and other resources third parties usually do not have. Even when the latter do have money it helps but little; Ross Perot�s billions were unable to win him a single electoral vote in 1992. The fact that many Libertarians reject the idea of a financial power elite as "conspiracy theory" is automatically working against them.

In this case, what about being done with it and seceding from the Union? Before we dismiss this idea, we should observe that if the Declaration of Independence�by its own statement a secession document�was valid then, the idea of organizing and departing from tyrannical governments is valid now. Secession deserves more than a passing glance these days, especially since just the weekend before last, a number of Vermonters convened to approve separation from the United States. The group called the Second Vermont Republic (SVR) did not meet in the back room of a restaurant but in the gold-domed capitol in Montpelier, resulting in national attention. The SVR argument: the Washington government has lost its moral authority, is unsustainable, and unfixable. It�s too late to work within the system, as Claire Wolfe says above. But let�s not shoot the b******s. Let�s separate peacefully, taking Vermont back from big government, big business and the money system.

We heard secession stirrings in various places back in the 1990s. The League of the South, of course, has satellite organizations throughout the South. But the idea has also been floated in Texas, Arizona, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Michigan, Hawaii, Alaska, and doubtless elsewhere. The phenomenon is worldwide. Quebec has long wanted to separate from Canada. The Kurds wanted freedom from Iraq, and still do. Chechnya wants independence from Russia. Tibetans want out of Communist China. Following 9/11, the idea receded into the background, at least here. But in the wake of an increasingly out-of-control Bush Administration, having possibly lied its way into an unconstitutional foreign war and itching to declare martial law in the homeland, secession talk has resurfaced. One of the goals of Christian Exodus, which convened here in Greenville last month, is to congregate a sufficient number of Christians in South Carolina to change the political climate and, if necessary, separate from Washington D.C.�s grasping paws.

Secessionists have to think through what a viable separation would involve, though. It won�t happen by meeting in the back room of Prime Sirloin; it can only be carried forth via a strategy aimed at capturing state government. Thomas Naylor, of SVR, was able to convene his group in the Vermont capitol, and thus gained the most credibility any secession movement has yet achieved. I spoke with Mr. Naylor about the SVR strategy, and he told me his meeting had been approved by the Vermont Speaker of the House and the Sergeant-at-Arms; several legislators and a likely candidate for governor appeared. James Howard Kunstler (author of The Long Emergency, about Peak Oil and the end of American suburbia) gave the keynote address. The group put forth a Vermont Independence Resolution, but is not to the point of acting to secede from the U.S. yet; this would involve signing an official declaration of independence, presenting it to Washington and in other major capitols around the world attempting to obtain recognition abroad.

Huge hurdles would remain to be cleared. Any state separating from the U.S. would have to survive with no federal dollars whatsoever�for education, roads, or anything else. Of course, to secessionists this would be a good thing, but could ordinary people do it? I�m not asking whether federal dollars for these things was constitutional. Of course not. But the fact remains: many at the state level have grown dependent on these dollars. Here in South Carolina, ending the flow of federal money would mean surviving on our own in a potentially very hostile environment. This would call for maximum self-sufficiency. A self-sufficient infrastructure could not be created following the act of secession. It would have to be mostly in place already. Vermonters might have a serious problem keeping warm during the ensuing long northern winter.

Mr. Naylor was aware of these things, but saw the effort at obtaining state funding to replace federal funding as just one step to be taken later in a long process. He made a useful observation: an end to the torrent of unfunded federal mandates would free up state money to handle such problems. The real hurdle would be convincing the people of any state that secession is both legitimate and necessary. What would accomplish this? Kunstler�s Long Emergency, if it hits; the collapse of the dollar as discussed in Part Two; or an attempt by Bush to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law. In other words, things will have to get worse before conditions are right. Our poorly educated and self-absorbed masses�not to mention an entrenched political and business establishment!�will literally need a fire built under them before they see a need to act.

For those who can clear all these hurdles, I would be the last person to stand in their way. But no neo-secessionist has answered me convincingly: assuming every bit of this can be accomplished, what, specifically, will the new leadership do when the feds send in the heavy artillery. Peaceful secession sounds nice, but by definition will work only if both agree to let the other one go without a fight. It isn�t impossible; Czechoslovakia split peacefully. So did Slovenia. But circumstances there were rather unusual�the parent nations had just been freed from Soviet enslavement. Most secession movements have had to fight for freedom.

Advocates of secession thus had better be sure what they are getting themselves into, which means having plans to deal with the consequences. If they lose, they would doubtless be imprisoned�possibly executed if firefights broke out and any feds lost their lives. If they win, they had better be ready for maximum self-sufficiency amidst hostile surroundings.

The guarded optimist recognizes something else easily overlooked. The power elite may be rich, but it is not infallible. There is no magic to its methods. Its members are not numerous�probably a few hundred in all. Their unofficial secular ideology�the worship of power and money�is alien to most peoples� ways of thinking. Despite what gets uploaded to CFR web pages, which most of America�s entertainment-seeking masses won�t access anyway, the elite fears public disclosure. They have had close calls before, such as when Carroll Quigley�s Tragedy and Hope was published, or with the Barry Goldwater and George Wallace candidacies. If the wrong person gets elected to national office, they are finished. This is why they have seen to it that huge sums of money are now necessary for a credible national candidacy�sums that are beyond the means of those outside their orbit of approval. They could still miscalculate or stumble�especially as events accelerate. Let�s also remember that New World Order kingpin David Rockefeller Sr. is 90 years old, and doubtless would like to see some of his envisioned globalist system in place before he goes to meet his Maker. This may be one reason New World Order underling-elites in the Bush Administration are advancing their "free trade" agenda with reckless abandon.

There is hope. The original timetable for the FTAA, for example, is defunct. The elite�s original date for implementation was January 2005. Discussions on the deal have stalled; the recent Summit of the Americas in Argentina disintegrated amidst political squabbling and public protest. The year 2005 is almost over, with no FTAA in place. The plain truth is, those who study these trade deals want no part of them! So what may we conclude? I come back to my first realization: none of us have magic wands. Where we go from here depends on what people do with this information. I can communicate it. Others must pick up the ball and run with it. With this in mind:

(1) People must get over their phobia about "conspiracy theories." It is as much a fact as gravity that a cabal of international bankers�"banksters"�staged an economic coup back in 1913 with the Federal Reserve system. Since then this cabal has sunk its wealth into tax-exempt foundations and increased its power by controlling the flow of dollars from such foundations and other entities into government, media, academia, business, public education, and elsewhere. Its current goal is to establish regional regimes, the first of which is the European Union. The proposal on the table here is an American Union modeled on the EU. The long term goal is world government: the New World Order. On their own web pages the globalists are open about their plans for the world.

(2) The truth�correspondence with fact as opposed to consensus-reality (see Part One)�is on our side. The laws of economics are on our side. (See my articles a few weeks back on Fred Bastiat.) The fact that certain kinds of societies tend to prosper and flourish, while others stagnate and go into decline, is on our side. That these trends occur for identifiable reasons is on our side. Socialism does not work, and the high-tech neo-feudalism of the financial power elite will not work.

(3) Nevertheless, any attempt to take our political system and economic lives back from the "banksters," whether by secession or other means, is going to be fraught with hazards. Some will end up unemployed, doing their work living with relatives or tolerant friends. Civil disobedience might be necessary; I can easily envision people ending up in prison before things play themselves out. The Homeland Security and USA Patriot Acts already lay the groundwork for political dissidents to be declared terrorists and held without being officially charged with anything or allowed appeal to the courts.

(4) We must therefore educate, educate, and then educate some more. The means of doing so are in place; it is just a matter of using them. I am all in favor of homeschooling, for instance, and forming private schools to pick up where homeschooling leaves off. We need real education on a large scale. Real education is more than job training for wage slavery in the "global workforce." It means being able to think and act independently, as an individual.

This calls for an education heavy with reading, writing, arithmetic and mathematics, personal finance and economics, religious and ethical instruction, and basic reasoning. Historical literacy is also necessary. Part of our problem is that most people today have little inkling who our Founding Fathers were, why they separated from the British Empire, or what they put in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. A viable opposition to the incipient New World Order must immerse itself in our Founding and the philosophy behind it�so that its members know not simply what they are against but what they are for.

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This essay has been long and unwieldy. I hope I haven�t lost anyone. Since I�ve no crystal ball about what the future holds, I must end inconclusively. I�ve no magic formulas; it�s up to all of us�those who teach and write and those who organize and those who act. Given what we are up against and its long history, this won�t be easy. It is tempting to say, this is God�s world, and in the last analysis He is in charge. We don�t want this to become an excuse for sitting on our duffs. I don�t believe God wants us to cooperate mindlessly with evil. "Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law, have fellowship with you?" asks the Psalmist (Ps. 94:20). So in the last analysis, we must stand against this darkness we call the New World Order, understand its premises and strategies, and make our case for all who will listen how destructive this movement really is. Then we must work for freedom for ourselves, our families and our communities while planning as best we can for an uncertain future.

Click here for part -----> 1, 2

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� 2005 Steven Yates - All Rights Reserved