While my fellow Americans and University of Rochester students, professors, and faculty spent January 20th celebrating the triumph of democracy and the emotional fervor of “Change”, I spent my day grieving the death of the Constitutional Republic. I’m sure many readers are under the impression that America was founded as a democracy, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The words of the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, stand out in bitter opposition to democracy. “Democracy is the most vile form of government…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as violent in their deaths.” These powerful words have all but lost their meaning. A Republic, created by the Constitution, is a framework of government which protects an individual’s freedom from the tyranny of the majority. Inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property were subject to seizure under the oppressive weight of democratic governments, where 51% of a mislead public can enslave 49%. The tyranny of the majority is in full swing nowadays, as the public clamors for the Obama administration to continue with “economic stimulus”. I, for one, do not want my tax dollars spent on saving failed companies. Should I be forced to loan money to Wall Street?
This supposedly unforeseen economic crisis was in fact a predictable consequence of a fiat (paper as legal tender) currency in a fractional reserve banking system. Most people believe inflation is rising prices; but that is the symptom, not the cause. Inflation is artificially increasing the money supply, which then decreases the purchasing power of each dollar, which forces prices to rise. This steals purchasing power from every single person who is holding dollars, plain and simple. The Federal Reserve system loots the nation’s wealth, and then redistributes this wealth on a mass scale to government and corporations suckling at government’s tit, since they get to spend the money before the market can readjust to the increase in money supply. The artificial lowering of interest rates by the Fed induces banks to “lend” (create) money while only holding a 1:10 ratio of reserves to liabilities. People then misallocated capital because they could borrow money that should never have existed, and then this created money was speculated in leveraged markets (CDS, derivatives)! The economist most widely known for engineering our financial system, John Maynard Keynes, says it best: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” So far, the Fed has stolen 97% of the purchasing power of the US dollar since 1913, and now they’re here for the coup de gras: the collapse of the dollar.
However, our democratically elected leaders have democratically voted to continue propping up a failing financial system with the ever-ready printing presses. Would a Republic ever allow for this sort of wealth confiscation from the general public? Never; a currency belongs to the people, not to a private banking corporation and government regulators. The Founding Fathers were well versed in looting strategies associated with the power to issue currency. For that reason, money was legally defined in the Constitution as gold and silver coin, which curtailed the supply of money in society, thus keeping spending and monetary abuses in check. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” Thomas Jefferson’s words are an eerily accurate description of the record number of foreclosures and bankruptcies that America has faced the past few months – and will continue for years to come, thanks to the economic policy of “Change”.
And so, on January 20th I watched Americans unwittingly celebrate the destruction of our forefather’s hard-earned liberty and freedom from the clutches of corporatist oppression. Ben Franklin noted that the prime cause of the revolution was due to the fact that King George III required the colonies to use the inflationary system of the Bank of England. Much like our forefathers, the State’s and major international bankers monopoly over money has put us on the brink of disaster. Promises of hope and change are fruitless; what we need is Revolution, led by the principles of Liberty, Freedom, and the Constitution.
