Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Friday, January 11, 2013
Dear Tom:
Please take me off your mailing list (of the Kingston-Rhinebeck, NY Tea Party). I have concluded that there is no hope of reform of American tyranny. In 1776 Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that just government derives its consent from the governed. In 1860 the southern states concluded that they could no longer consent to the US government. In response to their withdrawal of consent, Lincoln murdered hundreds of thousands, with a total death toll of between 500,000 and 800,000 Americans, a million casualties, and massive property damage—all to ensure government without consent. Previously , the US government under Washington and Hamilton had violently suppressed Pennsylvania farmers who objected to a whiskey tax and had threatened violent suppression of South Carolina when it nullified a tariff in 1828. Since those events, and especially since 1860, America, by Jefferson’s own definition, has not been governed justly. America is a tyranny, and there is no hope of reform, for the American people are immoral. They have been satisfied with tyranny for 153 years.
Again, please remove me from your mailing list.
Again, please remove me from your mailing list.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
In early January we're about six months from July 4th, but recall Jefferson's and the Continental Congress's words written 236 years ago in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...
The Declaration of Independence claims that to be just government must derive its powers from the consent of the governed. Is this the case in the United States? In 1860 the southern states said that they did not consent to the US government; the US government proved that its power is not derived from any sort of consent. It invaded the South, and the death toll amounted to 600,000 to 800,000. There were a million injuries and massive property destruction. Far from being a government that derives its powers from the governed, the US government is as authoritarian as Hitler's or Stalin's. It is based on the power of a ruling cabal, nothing more. The cabal is more benign than Hitler's or Stalin's was, but it is not qualitatively different. There is no more moral grounding to the US government than there is to the Mafia. There is little reason to feel secure here, and there is no reason to assume that out-and-out tyranny is not around the corner.
Progressives are not troubled by the Civil War death toll, and I have never heard a suggestion that the victims' descendents are entitled to reparations. However, I have heard repeated complaints about Pinochet's killing 3,000 leftists in Chile. That is wrong, and it is a significant crime, but it is tiny compared to what the US government did.
I decided to assign part of Thomas J. DiLorenzo's book Lincoln Unmasked as well as part of his Hamilton's Curse in a new course I have developed called Government and Business. Usually Government and Business courses are textbook-based, cliche-ridden Progressive propaganda. CUNY's new free institutions program gave me released time last year, and I have developed the Business and Government course from a libertarian, free market, and anti-statist persepective.
Most historical accounts of the Civil War are told from the northern point of view; they emphasize the role of slavery, which is fair to a point. It is also true that there had been a southern secessionist movement in the late 1820s that had zero to do with slavery. It had to do with a tariff, the so-called Tariff of Abominations. There was much tariff talk in 1859 and 1860, and to say that secession had nothing to do with tariffs smacks of the kind of propanda that makes Pinochet the world's greatest criminal and Stalin an omelet maker. The low quality of historical research in general becomes embarrassing whenever economic issues are relevant, as DiLorenzo points out. An historian who claims that tariffs made the US wealthy, for instance, is a fool, not a formidable intellect as Americans often believe.
In 1828 John Calhoun published a tract entitled "The South Carolina Exposition and Protest" in which he argued for South Carolina's nullification of the 1828 tariff. Jefferson, who had died two years earlier, would have approved. Tariffs helped northern manufacturers but directly harmed southern agricultural interests. This is what Wikipedia says about Lincoln's position on the tariff:
The Republican party included a strong pro-tariff plank in its 1860 platform. They also sent prominent tariff advocates such as Morrill and Sherman to campaign in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where the tariff was popular, by touting the Morrill bill. Both Democratic candidates, John C. Breckenridge and Stephen Douglas, opposed all high tariffs and protectionism in general.[4]
Historian Reinhard H. Luthin documents the importance of the Morrill Tariff to the Republicans in the 1860 presidential election.[5] Abraham Lincoln's record as a protectionist and support for the Morrill Tariff bill, he notes, helped him to secure support in the important electoral college state of Pennsylvania, as well as neighboring New Jersey. Lincoln carried Pennsylvania handily in November, as part of his sweep of the North...On February 14, 1861, President-elect Lincoln told an audience in Pittsburgh that he would make a new tariff his priority in the next session if the bill did not pass by inauguration day on March 4.
Seven of eleven secessionist states had seceded by March 1861, and the Republicans took control of the Senate. The Morrill Tariff then passed. It was signed by Democratic President James Buchanan. Buchanan was from Pennsylvania, and he voted for the tariff despite his Democratic affiliation. He had bankrupted the US government, and a tariff was needed in part to cover the financial mess. It cannot be said that the South seceded because of the Morrill Tariff because seven of the eleven states that seceded had seceded before the Morrill Tariff was passed, and the tariff likely would not have passed without the southerners' seceding. At the same time, Lincoln's strong support for protectionism contributed to southerners' concerns about his election.
DiLorenzo is a clear writer, but he needs to tone it down; in rhetoric less is typically more. Otherwise, his books are great. His point that Lincoln was a racist who preferred to keep the territories all white to avoiding the Civil War is intriguing (see David Gordon's review on the von Mises site). He follows through on an idea I have thought of for some time: there is an arc of statism that stretches from Hamilton, through Lincoln, through the Progressives, through the New Deal on to Bush, the bailout, and Obama.
One of the interesting points DiLorenzo makes in his two excellent books is that Hitler was an admirer of Lincoln. DiLorenzo quotes Hitler in Mein Kampf (p. 566, 579 Houghton Mifflin 1999 edition) as supporting the Lincoln position on secession:
[T]he individual states of the American Union . . . could not have possessed any state sovereignty of their own. For it was not these states that formed the Union, on the contrary it was the Union which formed a great part of such so-called states...Certainly all the states in the world are moving toward a certain unification in their inner organization. And in this Germany will be no exception. Today it is an absurdity to speak of a ‘state sovereignty' of individual provinces.
Hitler would have been a supporter of today's European Union as well. DiLorenzo makes the point that pro-Lincoln propagandists, who are quick to brand anyone who questions Lincoln's cult of centralization a racist, are in full agreement with Hitler. If you have a bad argument like centralization, violent suppression of the governed, and totalitarianism, as do Lincoln's supporters, then it is necessary to divert the argument by calling those who disagree with you racists or advocates of slavery.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...
The Declaration of Independence claims that to be just government must derive its powers from the consent of the governed. Is this the case in the United States? In 1860 the southern states said that they did not consent to the US government; the US government proved that its power is not derived from any sort of consent. It invaded the South, and the death toll amounted to 600,000 to 800,000. There were a million injuries and massive property destruction. Far from being a government that derives its powers from the governed, the US government is as authoritarian as Hitler's or Stalin's. It is based on the power of a ruling cabal, nothing more. The cabal is more benign than Hitler's or Stalin's was, but it is not qualitatively different. There is no more moral grounding to the US government than there is to the Mafia. There is little reason to feel secure here, and there is no reason to assume that out-and-out tyranny is not around the corner.
Progressives are not troubled by the Civil War death toll, and I have never heard a suggestion that the victims' descendents are entitled to reparations. However, I have heard repeated complaints about Pinochet's killing 3,000 leftists in Chile. That is wrong, and it is a significant crime, but it is tiny compared to what the US government did.
I decided to assign part of Thomas J. DiLorenzo's book Lincoln Unmasked as well as part of his Hamilton's Curse in a new course I have developed called Government and Business. Usually Government and Business courses are textbook-based, cliche-ridden Progressive propaganda. CUNY's new free institutions program gave me released time last year, and I have developed the Business and Government course from a libertarian, free market, and anti-statist persepective.
Most historical accounts of the Civil War are told from the northern point of view; they emphasize the role of slavery, which is fair to a point. It is also true that there had been a southern secessionist movement in the late 1820s that had zero to do with slavery. It had to do with a tariff, the so-called Tariff of Abominations. There was much tariff talk in 1859 and 1860, and to say that secession had nothing to do with tariffs smacks of the kind of propanda that makes Pinochet the world's greatest criminal and Stalin an omelet maker. The low quality of historical research in general becomes embarrassing whenever economic issues are relevant, as DiLorenzo points out. An historian who claims that tariffs made the US wealthy, for instance, is a fool, not a formidable intellect as Americans often believe.
In 1828 John Calhoun published a tract entitled "The South Carolina Exposition and Protest" in which he argued for South Carolina's nullification of the 1828 tariff. Jefferson, who had died two years earlier, would have approved. Tariffs helped northern manufacturers but directly harmed southern agricultural interests. This is what Wikipedia says about Lincoln's position on the tariff:
The Republican party included a strong pro-tariff plank in its 1860 platform. They also sent prominent tariff advocates such as Morrill and Sherman to campaign in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where the tariff was popular, by touting the Morrill bill. Both Democratic candidates, John C. Breckenridge and Stephen Douglas, opposed all high tariffs and protectionism in general.[4]
Historian Reinhard H. Luthin documents the importance of the Morrill Tariff to the Republicans in the 1860 presidential election.[5] Abraham Lincoln's record as a protectionist and support for the Morrill Tariff bill, he notes, helped him to secure support in the important electoral college state of Pennsylvania, as well as neighboring New Jersey. Lincoln carried Pennsylvania handily in November, as part of his sweep of the North...On February 14, 1861, President-elect Lincoln told an audience in Pittsburgh that he would make a new tariff his priority in the next session if the bill did not pass by inauguration day on March 4.
Seven of eleven secessionist states had seceded by March 1861, and the Republicans took control of the Senate. The Morrill Tariff then passed. It was signed by Democratic President James Buchanan. Buchanan was from Pennsylvania, and he voted for the tariff despite his Democratic affiliation. He had bankrupted the US government, and a tariff was needed in part to cover the financial mess. It cannot be said that the South seceded because of the Morrill Tariff because seven of the eleven states that seceded had seceded before the Morrill Tariff was passed, and the tariff likely would not have passed without the southerners' seceding. At the same time, Lincoln's strong support for protectionism contributed to southerners' concerns about his election.
DiLorenzo is a clear writer, but he needs to tone it down; in rhetoric less is typically more. Otherwise, his books are great. His point that Lincoln was a racist who preferred to keep the territories all white to avoiding the Civil War is intriguing (see David Gordon's review on the von Mises site). He follows through on an idea I have thought of for some time: there is an arc of statism that stretches from Hamilton, through Lincoln, through the Progressives, through the New Deal on to Bush, the bailout, and Obama.
One of the interesting points DiLorenzo makes in his two excellent books is that Hitler was an admirer of Lincoln. DiLorenzo quotes Hitler in Mein Kampf (p. 566, 579 Houghton Mifflin 1999 edition) as supporting the Lincoln position on secession:
[T]he individual states of the American Union . . . could not have possessed any state sovereignty of their own. For it was not these states that formed the Union, on the contrary it was the Union which formed a great part of such so-called states...Certainly all the states in the world are moving toward a certain unification in their inner organization. And in this Germany will be no exception. Today it is an absurdity to speak of a ‘state sovereignty' of individual provinces.
Hitler would have been a supporter of today's European Union as well. DiLorenzo makes the point that pro-Lincoln propagandists, who are quick to brand anyone who questions Lincoln's cult of centralization a racist, are in full agreement with Hitler. If you have a bad argument like centralization, violent suppression of the governed, and totalitarianism, as do Lincoln's supporters, then it is necessary to divert the argument by calling those who disagree with you racists or advocates of slavery.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Monday, December 24, 2012
Friday, December 21, 2012
I read Antony Sutton’s history of Skull and Bones*(America’s Secret Establishment) last summer. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but Progressivism fits the Hegelian model that Sutton describes as Skull and Bones's ideology; moreover, the Hegelian model seems to have guided the direction of American politics for the past century. The concept of gradual socialization leading to a socialist America was characteristic of many Progressives, particularly Walter Weyl in his New Democracy. Sutton says something more: the American political process has been an orchestrated dialectic between two apparently competing factions, but the end result of the dialectic will be a synthesis that benefits the elite of both factions. As America becomes increasingly oligarchic there seems to be some meat on Sutton's discussion of Skull and Bones.
Sutton's history of Skull and Bones says more about American conservatism's being a form of Progressivism than it does about the left-wing Progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt and his cousin Franklin. Everyone already knows that left-wing Progressives favor socialism. There is more confusion about American conservatism, which claims to favor traditional American values. There is, though, a socialist tradition in America that arches from Hamilton to the Whigs to the Progressives. The Whig ideology was necessarily couched in individualist rhetoric just as Hamilton claimed to favor states' rights in The Federalist Papers. In other words, Whig liberalism was baloney, just as today's Republican Party's claims of being for small government is baloney.
The Whigs didn't picture themselves as more conservative or more radical than the Democrats, only more in favor of public works, centralized control, the public good, central banking, and subsidies to business. Both American conservatism and American progressivism in their current forms are descended from the Whigs' and Progressives' ideologies, but there was no Federalist, Whig, or Republican conservatism until 1912. Since then, both American conservatism and American "liberalism" have been Progressive, and have had little regard for Jacksonian or Jeffersonian republicanism except in apologia. Warren G. Harding ran on a platform of normalcy, as did Calvin Coolidge. Normalcy or consolidation has been part of Republican Progressivism pattern ever since. Reagan claimed that "government is the problem," but he consolidated government. He did not reduce it. In order to attract Americans who continue to believe in 19th century liberalism, the Republican Party has continued to lie and claim that it favors small government.
Skull and Bones was present at the founding of both major political factions. Much later, the Kennedy administration appointed Skull and Bones members (McGeorge Bundy, William Bundy, and Averell Harriman, along with a range of cronies.** Kennedy had asked Skull and Bonesman Robert Lovett to join his cabinet, but Lovett refused, recommending the Bundys instead. ) As well, Skull and Bonesmen have dominated American conservatism: William F. Buckley, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush were members. There is little of Jefferson or Jackson in American conservatism, which is pro-bank, pro-banker, pro-big business, and pro-elite.
Sutton's history of Skull and Bones says more about American conservatism's being a form of Progressivism than it does about the left-wing Progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt and his cousin Franklin. Everyone already knows that left-wing Progressives favor socialism. There is more confusion about American conservatism, which claims to favor traditional American values. There is, though, a socialist tradition in America that arches from Hamilton to the Whigs to the Progressives. The Whig ideology was necessarily couched in individualist rhetoric just as Hamilton claimed to favor states' rights in The Federalist Papers. In other words, Whig liberalism was baloney, just as today's Republican Party's claims of being for small government is baloney.
The Whigs didn't picture themselves as more conservative or more radical than the Democrats, only more in favor of public works, centralized control, the public good, central banking, and subsidies to business. Both American conservatism and American progressivism in their current forms are descended from the Whigs' and Progressives' ideologies, but there was no Federalist, Whig, or Republican conservatism until 1912. Since then, both American conservatism and American "liberalism" have been Progressive, and have had little regard for Jacksonian or Jeffersonian republicanism except in apologia. Warren G. Harding ran on a platform of normalcy, as did Calvin Coolidge. Normalcy or consolidation has been part of Republican Progressivism pattern ever since. Reagan claimed that "government is the problem," but he consolidated government. He did not reduce it. In order to attract Americans who continue to believe in 19th century liberalism, the Republican Party has continued to lie and claim that it favors small government.
Skull and Bones was present at the founding of both major political factions. Much later, the Kennedy administration appointed Skull and Bones members (McGeorge Bundy, William Bundy, and Averell Harriman, along with a range of cronies.** Kennedy had asked Skull and Bonesman Robert Lovett to join his cabinet, but Lovett refused, recommending the Bundys instead. ) As well, Skull and Bonesmen have dominated American conservatism: William F. Buckley, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush were members. There is little of Jefferson or Jackson in American conservatism, which is pro-bank, pro-banker, pro-big business, and pro-elite.
Before I had heard of Skull and Bones or knew of his membership in the Skull and Bones order, I had concluded that William Howard Taft was the founder of American conservatism; it turns out that his father, Alphonse Taft, was the founder of Skull and Bones, and William F. Buckley, who adapted Taft conservatism to the post-war era, was also a member. Recall that Buckley did his best to destroy Ayn Rand, in particular through a review of Atlas Shrugged by Whitaker Chambers.
Thesis: left-wing Progressivism (Roosevelt, Perkins, Rockefeller, Morgan),
Antithesis: conservative Progressivism (Taft, Buckley, Bush)
Synthesis: American oligarchy and crony capitalism
Since 1912 American politics has been a Hegelian battle between two versions of Progressivism; the ideas of the founding fathers are recognized rhetorically, especially in the conservative version, but are ignored in operation by both factions. The outcome is a mix of fascism and socialism, an oligarchy based on money printing and finance.
* http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Secret-Establishment-Introduction-Order/dp/0972020748/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356154884&sr=8-1&keywords=sutton+skull+and+bones
**Domhoff credited Lovett, Harvey Bundy and John McCloy with having a close working relationship; and credited John F. Kennedy as accepting Lovett's advice to appoint Dean Ruskas Secretary of State, Robert McNamara as Defense Secretary, and C. Douglas Dillon for the Treasury.
***Thus, TR became president, and the Order of Skull & Bones for the first time moved into the White House. Roosevelt surrounded himself with Bonesmen. His successor in 1908, William Howard Taft, was himself a second generation member of Skull & Bones.
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