Warning: Revolution Ahead

 

"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."
― Aristotle

"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance?" ― Thomas Jefferson

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ― John F. Kennedy

The pre-totalitarian wobble

Before full-blown totalitarianism emerges for all to see, the failing societal establishment inevitably begins to "wobble" under the weight of the dire sociological and environmental consequences of its corrupted rejection of and/or departure from a steady and impartial [aka constitutional] rule of law according to the principles of sound reason and sustainable nature ... and America is wobbling badly as it lurches from crisis to crisis.

A debt-ridden Congress totters

Republicans have cut taxes not spending ... while Democrats have increased spending not taxes ... as BOTH PARTIES force the nation to "borrow" more using the central bank Federal Reserve to prop up the borrowing by purchasing trillions in public and private debt with fiat credit. This debt-rollover ponzi scheme is tantamount to counterfeiting the common currency in increasingly larger amounts which is impoverishing working families as a massive regressive tax on current and retired Labor [ie. family breadwinners] which gain income and hold wealth primarily in the form of the currency [ie. wages and savings] which is rapidly depreciating in real purchasing power.

This systematic impoverishment of breadwinners and the accompanying weakening of their families gives impetus to the expansion of the welfare state which is increasingly needed to stimulate the failing family structure and defer or mitigate the worst symptoms of sociological collapse without properly diagnosing and treating their underlying cause ... the corrupted fiscal and monetary policies of the federal government and the Federal Reserve. The result is a downward, multi-symptomed spiral into criminal and revolutionary discontent that will require both an enlarged welfare state and a strengthened totalitarian response to defer or mititgate breakdown and chaos.

As this post is being written, the Congress is passing a special "emergency" law to amend legislative procedures to allow a "one time only" special vote to increase the debt limit again ... to avoid national default ... in a way that will permit Republican deficit spenders to blame Democrat deficit spenders. And the Democrats are quite happy to play along and claim the Republicans are hypocrites. But everyone sees through the politics of both parties. 

What's happening is a clear act of desperation on both sides which exposes the ad hoc, reactionary manner in which the ruling establishment has abandonned any principled commitment to the rule of law and is willing to increasingly resort to pragmatic discretion disguised as gimmicks to mislead and deflect public anger over the advanced state of national dysfunction and fiscal-monetary decay.

A power-grabbing Federal Reserve is exposed as incompetent

At the same time, even the corporate-controlled media can see that the Federal Reserve [the government's elite and unelected co-conspirator in plundering the public treaury] has no clothes ... and is faltering badly ... for as CNBC reports, it is now changing course abruptly for the 4th time in Chairman Powell's four years. A reasonable person should not only question the credibility of such an erratic institution ... but should fear the consequences of giving unchecked power to such an obviously inept [or corrupt] unelected group of elite bankers.

"Central banks have shifted to almost purely discretionary monetary policies ... rooted in a Do Whatever It Takes monetary policy." Bill Hester, Hussman Strategic Advisors, December 2021

At least a few are left who are unafraid to call the tyrants out to their faces ... all our "great declarations" are nothing but sad commentaries on the advanced state of complacency in which we find ourselves as the watchmen on the wall.

https://wolfstreet.com/2021/12/20/enough-of-this-bond-markets-dont-buy-hawkish-feds-view-nonsense-its-the-feds-reckless-interest-rate-repression-at-work/

Totalitarians in the wings

But the real truth goes much deeper if we will look forwards not backwards.

As FA Hayek explained in The Road to Serfdom in 1945, a sure sign that a body politic is in the late stages of its journey towards the totalitarian side is repeated claims by those in power of the necessity to take temporary, extraordinary steps in further and further departures from the clear, written rule of law as they grasp more and more extreme, discretionary power in a fevered but futile effort to do "whatever it takes"  to shore up their corrupted, crashing, chaotic systems of control and oppression:

 "As planning becomes more and more extensive, it becomes regularly necessary to qualify [aka nullify] legal provisions by reference to what is 'fair' or 'reasonable'; this means that it becomes necessary to leave the decision to the discretion of the authority in question. ... One could write a history of the decline of the rule of law in terms of the progressive introduction of these vague formulas into legislation and jurisdiction and of the increasing arbitrariness and uncertainty of, and the consequent disrespect for, the law. ... This process of the decline of the rule of law had been going on steadily in Germany for some time before Hitler came into power [and completed its advance to complete totalitarian planning]." ― FA Hayek, 1945

A wobbling America stands on the brink of its own descent into totalitarianism. What can prevent it from stumbling over the edge and falling to its destruction?

Identify and disable the source of discretionary power

Reestablishing the rule of law follows a collapse into chaos and the long and painful period of sociological and environmental cleansing and rebuilding that must inevitably follow.

Rescuing the rule of law, however, requires decisive action in the late stages of decline by a committed remnant of the failing republic where enough otherwise-passive citizens are still willing to follow a bold and principled resistance to the emerging tyranny. The exact form and strength of this resistance varies depending on the circumstances of history, but it always seeks to first identify and then disable the underlying source of the discretionary power.

In America's case, effective power long ago passed out of the hands of elected public officials and the electorate [at any level] into the hands of an unelected financial elite that controls the US$ and the national banking system  ... led by the Federal Reserve which has illegally and unconstitutionally de facto counterfeited the common currency in open violation of the clear laws of its own charter and the US Constitution. ― see Love vs.The Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 2015.

By exposing and resisting what honest commentators are increasingly calling "the lawlessness of the Fed", a remnant of Americans can bring the entire associated system of fiscal-monetary corruption to its knees IF enough otherwise-passive citizens are still willing and able to follow a principled and impartial movement away from the edge of the abyss. And although that is a BIG IF, the alternative is to let America slide into totalitarianism ... and past any remaining point of rescue.

Is resistance worth the immediate risk and pain?

When evil is great, even the great in heart can be frightened into silence.

"There are those who hate the one who reproves in the gate
and despise him who speaks with integrity.
... You oppress the righteous by taking bribes;
You deprive the poor of justice in the gate.
Therefore, the prudent keep silent in such times,
for the days are evil." ― Amos 5

But there are good historical reasons [based on morality and self-interest] to join the effort to stop injustice while it can still be unseated.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former." ... And they will reply, "Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?" Then the King will answer, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me." And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. ― Matt 23-25

They came for the Communists, and I
didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Communist;
They came for the Socialists, and I
didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I
didn’t object – For I wasn’t a labor leader;
They came for the Jews, and I
didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Jew;
Then they came for me –
And there was no one left to object.
― Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Pastor, 1892-1984

Choosing to join the resistance against injustice or to remain silent may not be such a hard choice after all ... it simply takes a thoughtful forward-looking conviction about what is right and what is wrong ... something called conscience ... without which no individual or society can prosper. Sooner or later you will admit what is right and what is not ... voluntarily or involuntarily. Why wait when you can do it now?

How can you "fight the Fed"?

One principled person or organization can accomplish alot, but a multi-threaded coalition is not easily broken. The sociological and environmental symptoms of America's decline are diverse ... ranging from failing private families and businesses to failing public schools and eco-systems. If the source of discretionary power in America ... the enabling Federal Reserve ... is to be disabled resulting in the immediate shift of power back towards the rule of law under the citizens of the Republic, it will be by uniting the resistance in all the areas that are suffering directly and indirectly from the Fed's continued access to the discretionary power that is enabling the continued subversion of the societal and environmental rule of law. A good motto for such a coalition might be:

“In justice, unity; in all else, liberty; in all things, charity.”

Will YOU join the resistance?

Financial Totalitarianism

 "Let us control the money of a nation, and we care not who makes its laws" was said to be a "maxim" of the House of Rothschilds, or, even more vaguely, of the "money lenders of the Old World".

This is a play on an English proverb, "Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws." 

 

The mystery of totalitarianism

Controlling the individuals in society is a fundamentally different proposition than ordering their lives together.

• Adam Smith famously explained it as a moral paradox embedded in individual human nature and its collective consequences involving an "invisible hand" in 1776.
  
• Frederick Hayek linked it to centralized planning versus decentralized competition in his chapter on "Individualism and Collectivism" in "The Road to Serfdom" in 1944.

But, perhaps, the most penetrating investigations for today's reader are found in the writings of various 20th century thinkers who witnessed and sought to explain the spectacular displays of something they called totalitarianism which engulfed their world and marked their century.

We like to think that totalitarianism is no longer with us since the fall of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union ... that we have been enlightened beyond its reach ... that it will never come our way again.

But that is simply delusional thinking which demonstrates the unappreciated danger in which we reside in the modern world where technological implementation of closed systems of social credit are no longer Orwellian prophecies but daily realities.

The anticipated "police forces" and "Truth Ministries" which Orwell predicted do exist and are active ... but they are held largely in abeyance by the vastly more pervasive and effective financial coercion that, as noted above, overrides all national boundaries, laws and opposing sociological infrastructures [including family] by controlling what F. Bastiat renamed the last two of Jefferson's fundamental natural rights ... Labor and Property.

For the reader who would think about what we really face in today's world of lawless central bank power and how that power is subverting all sociological structures, I offer the following essay on

Financial Totalitarianism

Short-term cash: Pretended justice

“For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.

“But if justice consists in submission to written laws and national customs, and if, as the Epicureans persist in affirming, every thing must be measured by utility alone, he who wishes to find an occasion of breaking such laws and customs, will be sure to discover it. So that real justice remains powerless if not supported by nature, and this pretended justice is overturned by that very utility which they call its foundation” ― Cicero, On the Laws

Money and law … profit and justice

In “Money and the Rule of Law” which is heralded by some economists as “a profound and highly original assessment of monetary policy”, three fellow economists [Boettke, Salter and Smith] have suggested that monetary policy be subject to the rule of law … so that, as Alexander Salter [one of the authors] explains in a recent article,

“everyone [including the poor abroad who rely on the US$ as a reserve currency?] knows how much of their wealth to split between short-term cash holdings and long-term savings or asset purchases”.

Unfortunately, Salter’s article [and perhaps the book] fails to explain how being able to distinguish short term cash from long term savings is a hallmark of justice flowing from the rule of law. It is more like wishful non-thinking that robbers agree to limit their plundering to certain houses on certain days of the week during certain hours of the day so that property holders can better defend themselves … if that makes sense.

Cunning speculators that make clowns blush

Why is it that “our best minds” in economics have failed so completely to grasp long established and elementary notions of “justice”? Because “monetary profit” is the only language most economists speak and understand … they have a quite limited vocabulary. Consider the thoughts below … which are neither profound nor original in the larger history of mankind.

“It is not true, as certain people maintain, that the bonds of union in human society were instituted in order to provide for the needs of daily life; for, they say, without the aid of others we could not secure for ourselves or supply to others the things that nature requires; but if all that is essential to our wants and comfort were supplied by some magic wand, as in the stories, then every man of first-rate ability could drop all other responsibility and devote himself exclusively to learning and study. Not at all. For he would seek to escape from his loneliness and to find some one to share his studies; he would wish to teach, as well as to learn; to hear, as well as to speak. Every duty, therefore, that tends effectively to maintain and safeguard human society should be given the preference over that duty which arises from speculation and science alone.” ―  Cicero, On Duties

“There is the greater need, therefore, of insisting on the natural and unavoidable penalties of conscience. For if either direct punishment, or the fear of it, was what deterred from a vicious course of life, and not the turpitude of the thing itself, then none could be guilty of injustice, in a moral sense, and the greatest offenders ought rather to be called imprudent than wicked. … If we are determined to the practice of goodness, not by its own intrinsic excellence, but for the sake of some private advantage, we are cunning, rather than good men. What will not that man do in the dark who fears nothing but a witness and a judge? Should he meet a solitary individual in a desert place, with a large sum of money about him, and altogether unable to defend himself from being robbed, how would he behave? In such a case the man whom we have represented to be honest from principle, and the nature of the thing itself, would converse with the stranger, assist him, and show him the way. But as to the man who does nothing for the sake of another, and measures every thing by the advantage it brings to himself, it is obvious, I suppose, how such a one would act; and should he deny that he would kill the man or rob him of his treasure, his reason for this cannot be that he apprehends there is any moral turpitude in such actions, but only because he is afraid of a discovery, and the bad consequences that would thence ensue. A sentiment this, at which not only learned men, but even clowns must blush. ― Cicero, On the Laws

"The Creator himself pre-ordained that the criterion of all human behaviour was not profit but justice, and on the strength of this all efforts to define levels of profit are always useless. Not one person has ever known, or can know, what the final results of a certain action, or series of actions, will be, either for himself or for others. But each one of us can know which action is just and which is not. And likewise, we can all know that the consequences of justice will, at the end of the day, be as good for ourselves as for others, although it is beyond our power to say beforehand what this good will be and of what it will consist." John Ruskin, 1870

Have I made my point? If not, consider these two thoughts as a potential condemnation of modern economics pursued as a “science” rather than as a “philosophical” endeavor to expand our potential as fellow beings in an organic universe.

“An old established metaphysical system gains a false air of adequate precision from the fact that its words and phrases have passed into current literature. Thus propositions expressed in its language are more easily correlated to our flitting intuitions into metaphysical truth. When we trust these verbal statements and  argue as though they adequately analysed meaning, we are led into difficulties which take the shape of negations of what in practice is presupposed. But when they are proposed as first principles they assume an  unmerited air of sober obviousness. Their defect is that the true propositions which they do express lose their fundamental character when subjected to adequate expression.” AN Whitehead, Process and Reality

“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” Mark 8

As I said … most economists [on both sides] have a very limited and generally incoherent vocabulary.

Extending vocabulary

The notion of reality as a marketplace in which the exchange of information is the fundamental process by which management [nomos] continuously approaches [or is distanced from] the rules [logos] of the household [oikos] appears generally sound as a basis for understanding the relationship between eco-nomics and eco-logy. Indeed, Cicero describes justice as a continuous exchange between conscience and nature. Where our would-be economists err is in loving money [merely the medium in this exchange] more than the knowledge it facilitates [properly prioritized in Cicero's statement of our "duties"] ... a common mistake.

Within natural boundaries, money as a medium of exchange is a blessing, but placing “profit” above “justice” [ie. loving money per se more than the knowledge it promotes as a naturally functioning medium of exchange] is a curse ... indeed, THE curse or "spell" that [according to Revelations 18] is driving the world mad. The separation of money from nature by non-organic, GMO fiat was a fatal mistake that will be rectified ... one way or another … but not by the thinking prevalent in economics today. A vocabulary change will be needed. Perhaps, it is time for “profit” to be extended into “potential” as Eichner attempts to do in “The Free-Market Family”.

The great divorce

CS Lewis wrote that the great divorce was between heaven and hell … but, perhaps, we might rephrase his thesis to propose that it is between philosophy [loving knowledge] and science [knowing]:

“In its use of the [philosophical] method [of generalization] natural science has shown a curious mixture of rationalism and  irrationalism. Its prevalent tone of thought has been ardently rationalistic within its own borders, and dogmatically irrational beyond those borders. In practice such an attitude tends to become a dogmatic denial that there are any factors in the world not fully expressible in terms of its own primary notions devoid of further generalization. Such a denial is the self-denial of thought.” AN Whitehead, Process and Reality

It is no coincidence that the study of “economics” as we know it today came to us in praxeological form through theologians in Spain and an ethicist in Scotland attempting merely to further explain [not constrain] the larger universe. But economics has too often become the haunt and habit of so-called scientists trained within narrow walls who cannot imagine much less articulate what exists beyond those walls.

Until our economists are able to expand their imaginations beyond “monetary profit and wealth”, they will understand neither the meaning of profit, wealth and money [on which they love to pontificate] nor the functioning of the non-monetizable reality which comprises the greatest part of our individual and collective existence and, as such, is per se unsuitable for “economic” regulation using “competition and prices” according to one of economics own heros … FA Hayek.

Sound money as a civil right

coherent - Latin com="together" + haerere="to adhere, stick"

“Coherence, as here employed, means that the fundamental ideas, in terms of which the scheme is developed, presuppose each other so that in isolation they are meaningless.” AN Whitehead, Process and Reality

Had he lived long enough, MLK Jr. might have become a brilliant economist. We all know of his defense of racial minorities … of the turbulence in his conscience when he observed “inequalities” that were inconsistent with his simple notion of how the world “should” work. But most do not appreciate that before he was killed, his focus had moved away from racial discrimination to wealth/income discrimination [a current topic] as he began to champion the poor [regardless of race] as “entitled” to something of which they had been deprived.

What MLK saw was that black Americans were constituents in an even larger multi-racial group of Americans who had been systematically deprived of something to which they were justly entitled. And, of course, he was right in his conclusion. The question is WHAT are they entitled [ie. have a civil right] to:

• wealth and income in some nominal or relative amount or
• the articulation and enforcement of “laws supported by nature” [to use Cicero’s notion] which [like Adam Smith’s invisible hand] would regulate the allocation of income and accumulation of wealth … if not overridden by "unjust and wicked" humans that violated them for selfish gain?

In the end … we all share the same household [oikos]. And that household has rules [logos] which enforce coherence [Col 1:17]. So the only question is how will we manage [nomos] this household we share. Let our best eco-nomists and eco-logists think again about money as an original civil right [MACRO2020] … or, if they dare to expand everyone’s vocabulary, about how to actually and organically link economy to ecology through education [e3] … now and for the generations to come !!

"A little learning is a dang'rous thing.
[So] fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
[But] to err is human; to forgive, divine.”
Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism

For more on this topic, stay tuned to Divorcing Economics from Philosophy … a work in progress.

The Long Train

"Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice." AN Whitehead

"Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security." Declaration of Independence

Duty and Despots

Most of us have experienced a “long train” literally by being forced to wait on the highway while it passes at an intersection. We tell ourselves various things to excuse [and justify] our inaction ... it's only temporary ... patience [which comes to us from the Greek word for suffering] is a virtue … it's the law ... there are no other options.

But some of us have experienced a “long train of abuses … pursuing invariably the same object … to reduce [us] under absolute despotism.” And this SHOULD eventually become the stuff of rebellions and revolutions [depending on which side you take] … personal and collective. It SHOULD not be tolerated ... ever ... inaction is the same as consent.

The federal government of the United States of America … including the Congress, the Executive and the Judiciary … has managed to string together some very long trains of serious abuse [domestic and foreign] in its 200+ year history but, perhaps, none so pervasive [domestic and foreign] and pernicious as the Federal Reserve.

Today we are seeing nothing short of absolute despotism attempted by the Federal Reserve on a scale nobody could have even imagined a mere decade ago … and almost NOBODY says a word. THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING.

The times they are a-changin'

Judy Shelton just wrote a piece telling us that the FED has clearly violated its powers with respect to “stable prices”. If she is right, is this just an innocent oversight we should tolerate? Or is it the tip of an established and dangerous iceberg ... the latest instance in a long train of increasingly serious abuses explicitly aimed at reducing us under absolute despotism?

• The Moment Janet Yellen Moved for ‘Greasing the Wheels’ with Inflation
• Maybe the FED has violated other aspects of its charter as well.
  
• Indeed, maybe its very charter is a violation of the US Constitution.
• Maybe the FED's attack on Bitcoin is final evidence of its tyrannical intent.

Only time will tell what comes next ... but this much we DO know:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ― Edmund Burke, 1776

Are YOU "based" in the face of the lie

“The [Bitcoin] system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.” - Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, Satoshi Nakamoto, 2009

These are trying times. Since you are reading this blog, you are probably already aware of some of the potential legal charges against the FED including, but not limited to, Shelton's revelations about "stable prices". But let's end by going beyond legality to morality which is ultimately the basis for all civil law and social order.

 

If you will carefully read the Nakamoto quote above, you will see that he claims the security of bitcoin [or any money] is ultimately based on one thing: the power of collective honesty.  In effect, the FED is lying to conceal its violence ... giving a false meaning to words that are clear. So how does one person deal with THE LIE? It is not an easy question to answer, but in his 1972 Nobel speech, A Solzhenitsyn shared some thoughts that will benefit us in our personal struggle:

"Violence does not and cannot exist by itself: It is invariably intertwined with the lie. They are linked in the most intimate, most organic and profound fashion: Violence cannot conceal itself behind anything except lies, and lies have nothing to maintain them save violence. Anyone who has once proclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose the lie as his principle. At birth, violence acts openly and even takes pride in itself. But as soon as it gains strength and becomes firmly established, it begins to sense the air around it growing thinner; it can no longer exist without veiling itself in a mist of lies, without concealing itself behind the sugary words of falsehood. No longer does violence always and necessarily lunge straight for your throat; more often than not it demands of its subjects only that they pledge allegiance to lies, that they participate in falsehood.

"The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme — only not through me."

For a self-check on whether YOU are firmly "based" in your response to lies, consider this challenge by James Lindsay: A Manifesto for the Based. It begins [but does not end] with YOU.

The power of two witnesses

Finally, they say the Papacy ignored Copernicus as an outlier ... but came down hard when Galileo merely repeated what Copernicus had claimed. Why the delay? For it is written that "from the mouths of two witnesses it shall be established". Deut 17:6 

 

Well, Judy Shelton has spoken ... so what do YOU have to say?

Politics: the Game of Psychotics and Sociopaths

"When I had been long enough hospitalized, I finally renounce[d] my delusional hypotheses and revert[ed] to thinking of myself as a human of more conventional circumstances. ... [and] became a person of delusionally influenced thinking but of relatively moderate behavior and thus tended to avoid [further] hospitalization and the direct attention of psychiatrists. …

[Then] gradually I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically-oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort.

So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos." ― John Nash, Nobel Prize Biography

Crossing the line

How many of us have begun a work or relationship with what we thought were honest and transparent hopes ... then [in the name of innocent pragmatism] repeatedly amended the "rules" to make the unfavorable results meet our otherwise disappointed expectations ... until we found ourselves, suddenly, unable to distinguish reality from delusion? This is the textbook definition of a psychotic. Examples of individual psychotics are endless.

“I always told myself that I would be able to pay these notes back someday with the massive growth of the empire I was trying to build,” she wrote. Gina Champion-Cain, 57

But mass psychosis [as in politics] is another subject altogether ... or is it really that different?

Please read the following essays to consider this timely thought as America embraces increasingly unconventional solutions to its entrenched and growing sociological and ecological problems.

• Politics: the Game Psychotics and Sociopaths Play
• The Inflation Psychosis 

PS. Others are seeing the same evidences of rising mass psychosis:

"The methods and means applied in service to a pseudo-reality will create and manipulate psychological weaknesses in people to get them to carry water for a destructive lie. The nicer, more tolerant, and more charitable a community is, supposing it lacks the capacity to spot these counterfeits early on, the more susceptible its members will tend to be to these manipulations." https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism

 

A Lesson from History

"Make your soldiers rich and do not bother about anything else ... I have been everything and it is worth nothing."

 

Roman Emperor Septimus'  advice to his sons and dying words in York in Britannia after expensive victories against the Scots in 211 AD. [He was the last Roman emperor for 80 years to die in bed.]

 

History of civilization

In 25 startling pages and 30 minutes of reading, Will Durant recounts the spasmodic convulsions of civil authority in the Roman Empire from the death of Commodus to the abdication of Diocletian [193-305 AD]. During one 35 year period alone, 37 men were proclaimed emperor [by various factions] then almost immediately deposed [primarily through murder and often by the same faction that made the proclamation]. As anxious attempts to secure and concentrate power and wealth by Senate elites, the emperor and the military complex collided in sordid schemes, incestuous intrigues and brutal betrayals, the once established rule of law [on which the pax romana rested] drowned … repeatedly struggling to the surface only to disappear again beneath the heaving waves. Private life and public order collapsed into a volatile cocktail of fragile arrangement or overwhelming enforcement as both private and public infrastructure disintegrated [the former from uncertainty and the latter from neglect].

The overview

Reading this panoramic overview provides almost no realistic understanding of how the day by day [generation by generation] experience must have felt … swinging both violently and gradually back and forth between hopes and fears for over a century. And yet by seeing it from above … compressed in retrospect … the skilled observer [like Durant] can confidently conclude that it was indeed a transformation … a metamorphosis … a collapse … from one thing into another.

The collapse

Here, according to Durant, are a few of the things through which the collapse passed:

• swings to and reactions against moral degeneration and new religions
• simultaneous, side-by-side growth in elite extravagance and common poverty
• uprisings by malcontents within and attacks by aggressors without
• growth of non-citizen military expense, power and intervention
• accumulating arguments for absolute executive power
• dislocation of established industry, labor and trade [internal and external]
• resort to unprecedented currency debasement as heavier taxes became impossible
• inflation ruining the middle class and investment capital without relieving the poor
• de-urbanization and re-ruralization … leaving slums behind.

The result

The 100 year collapse, according to Durant, led to the following under Diocletian who was elevated to power by the military in 282 and abdicated [to grow cabbages] in 305 ... only to watch Rome descend into civil war.

• the movement of real power from Rome [which was in economic and moral decay even though government appeared to go on there as usual] to Nicomedia,
• an agreement with 3 co-elites to divide the sprawling empire into 4 parts … creating a “divided but absolute monarchy in which each law of each ruler was issued in the name of all 4 and was valid for the entire realm”
• a complete reformation of government into a hereditary [not meritocratic] and extensive bureaucracy resulting in
• a “centralized state which considered local autonomy, like democracy, a luxury … and excused dictatorship”
• the substitution of central planning for private enterprise and markets
• hereditary laws binding laborers and their households to specific state sponsored lands, enterprises and trades/guilds even if/as underlying resource ownerships were transferred among elites and bureaucrats … causing Labor in Rome to move “from slavery thru freedom to serfdom”
• reestablishment of precious metal coinage guaranteed by weight and purity [retained in parts of the Empire until 1453]
• unprecedented levels and ruthless collection [including torture of family members] of taxes
• which were necessary because “as yet the state had not discovered the plan of public borrowing to conceal its wastefulness and postpone its reckoning”
• but which caused an epidemic of property abandonment and emigration by people desperate to avoid their taxes and the severe penalties for non-payment.
  

The retrospective

And finally, according to Durant, this is history's look back at Diocletian’s actions:

• 50 years of anarchy were ended
• harsh enforcement of strict rule by executive order prevailed
• basic stability was restored to industry and security to trade
• internal dissent was crushed and external enemies were held in check
• central bureaucracy replaced local autonomy
• the population became a non-meritocratic, hereditary feudal caste society
• central planning and taxes replaced liberty and enterprise
• Diocletian was called “Father of the Golden Age” by his contemporaries … as Constantine prepared to take center stage.
  

The rhyme

Mark Twain claimed that “history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. Any rational observer that can and will step back and close his eyes cannot help but see outlines of a collapsing American middle class democracy presciently writ large in Durant’s historical observations of this tumultuous period. Diocletian's advent as a stern dictator was "needed" because "Rome's citizens had lost the fortitude to rule" themselves. And yet, even in the dictator's brutality there are remarkable signs of sound civil thinking.

• He worked to restore the reliability of the debauched common currency in a bold move that stood for over a millenium in parts of the Empire. This was no easy task, since nearly all the currency in circulation when he arrived was debased to varying degrees.
• We are told today that returning to sound money which [ala Bretton Woods] is guaranteed in "weight and purity" is not an option ... but, as you can see, that is simply not true. Where there is a will [even a dictatorial one] there is a way.
  
• He made no excuses for openly collecting the taxes needed to fiscally maintain his extensive bureaucracy ... and did not attempt to "hide" its glaring flaws from public view. Harsh but honest.
• He realized a corrupted state could not reform itself but needed a strong outside force to restrain its excesses and restore order without mercy.
  

The difference

However, there is one major difference between Diocletian's Rome and Biden's America. America, from the beginning under Alexander Hamilton, learned how to manipulate [but never repay] public debt combined with [and utimately taking the virtual form of] a debauched fiat currency

• to finance and hide her massive bureaucracy's waste and corruption
  
• by concealing the ruthless, de facto collection [via legalized monetary counterfeiting] of heavy taxes from anyone [citizen or not] who held her currency
• and by so doing to “postpone her reckoning”
• until “by her sorceries were all nations deceived and in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.” Rev 18

If Rome had technological access to the power of such financial sorcery, it might never have needed a Diocletian to rescue it from itself ... until rescue was no longer possible. And if there was no Diocletian to rescue Rome ... there might never have been a Constantine ... and the entire course of history in the West would be very different.

The question

As Diocletian obviously understood, with great power comes great responsibility. While we cannot know if or who will someday write history’s chilling chapter on “The Collapse of the American Empire”, we can know that

• it is not without precedent or warning
• it will require the surrender of ... local autonomy to central authority … liberty to dictatorship ... individual enterprise to central planning ... because "the people" are no longer able to rule themselves
  
• it will institutionalize a feudal caste society and bureaucracy
  
• it might have been prevented by [or even ultimately involve] an unthinkably painful but absolutely necessary and historically proven return to a sound currency guaranteed in both "weight and purity" and the transparent collection of taxes to restore both confidence and justice to our dealings with one another across accounts, borders and years
• it will be merciless in its retrospective recount of what will then be the completely obvious and tragically avoidable causes of America's irreversible collapse.
  

Can we afford to return our currency to a precious metal standard and collect our taxes honestly and openly as Diocletian did?   Can we afford not to?