galtgulch

Here is my chilling thought for the day. Suppose senator elect Scott Brown were to have a fatal "accident"? Who would benefit? Aha! Now you know why I have goosebumps from this thought.

I hope that the senator elect is well protected.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The Boston Globe had an article today which suggested that several Congressional office holders are vulnerable in the up coming election in November. There is likelihood that someone in the third district, my district, that of James McGovern, is already going to challenge him. If I could afford the cut in pay if I were to win, I would be tempted to run against McGovern myself!

Massachusetts may become a Republican state or an independent state perhaps with a libertarian, free market flavor soon.

gulch

Easy Doc. I asked if you voted, not who. I would have voted for Brown because of this particular intersection in the history of this incredible Constitutional government.

I would like to personally thank you for voting.

Adam

Adam,

I was particularly impressed that Obama is quoted earlier as saying that even though he knew there was much popular opposition to his health reform plan, that once it were rammed into passage that people would find things they liked about it and that it would be good for them, despite the individual mandate, the towering cost, the soaring taxation, the intrusive panels, the rationing, etc.

The fellow sees himself as a benevolent person but doesn't appreciate his tyrannical nature. I suppose they never do.

I appreciate your gratitude for the vote I did cast. I was tempted to vote for the libertarian who made a decent one percent showing without my ballot. I hope this demonstrates to the socialists that their agenda is not acceptable in America. I know a few of them and know however this will not deter them in their quest to institute their dream regardless of whatever means they need to resort to in order to achieve it. Just watch Obama's reaction in the days to come.

gulch

www.campaignforliberty.com 226,463

Did you vote Gulch?

If you have read your Lysander Spooner you would recall that it is a secret ballot. That way a secret band of robbers can represent those who will help themselves to the savings and earnings and inheritance of the productive members of society in order to distribute those dollars to their supporters.

Yes I voted! Paid my taxes too!

Also pass the torch at every opportunity by recommending both Atlas Shrugged and the Campaign For Liberty.

Just planting the seeds so someday we may harvest the sweet tasting fruit.

Can hardly wait.

Here is a link to Judge Napolitano's series on the www.campaignforliberty.com site

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/index.php

Here is the link to another source of the five part video :

http://freedomwatchonfox.com/the-constitution-and-freedom/

I am sure someone more computer literate than I am can figure out how to bring this series here.

Incidentally I had the opportunity to choose whether to vote for the man who best represents my views, Joe Kennedy, the Libertarian candidate for US Senate, or for the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, a Massachusetts state Senator, a virtual unknown. Both are running against one of the most incompetent Democrat candidates, Martha Coakley, who acted as if her election to fill the seat formerly occupied by Edward Kennedy who held the seat for 46 years was assured. Once it became evident that support for Scott Brown was escalating Martha Coakley hustled to gain the endorsements and support of President Obama himself.

Even the Cambridge Police felt it necessary to come out and endorse publically their choice, Scott Brown, when Coakley kept mentioning that her husband was a retired Cambridge Policeman implying an endorsement she did not have.

Both candidates alienated voters with robocalls around the clock.

The polls were showing the it was close with Brown catching up and then after closing a wide gap, pulling ahead. Naturally the only poll which counts would have Scott Brown's invigorated but largely disorganized enthusiasts matched against Coakley's Democrat political machine to get voters to the polls, including no doubt the illegal efforts of the ACORN troops who are renown for their cheating in elections.

What would you do if you lived in Massachusetts? Perhaps someday the enthusiasm will be for a libertarian candidate.

Folks:

If you know anyone in Massachusetts...PLEASE lean on them...threaten them...bribe them...perform sex acts for them...but get them to take two people to the polls on the 19th of January.

This can radically shift and shape the battlefield on health care...cap and [destroy] destroy bills.

“The Massachusetts Senate race is shaping up as a potential disaster for Democrats,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.

“Martha Coakley’s complacent campaign has put Scott Brown in a surprisingly strong position and she will need to step it up in the final week

to win a victory once thought inevitable.”

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_MA_45398436.pdf

This is a good polling firm. This poll will be all over the morning shows on Sunday.

This is the Jack Kennedy seat that has been held by the Kennedys for almost sixty (60) years!!!!

Adam

Adam,

At the risk of disappointing you, poll wise, the headline in the Boston Globe this morning is that Coakley is ahead of Brown in their very own poll : 50 to 35.

So much for polls.

The only poll which will count in the end will be held on election day, January 19th.

I did hear on the talk shows on the radio that even if Brown were to lose but by a narrow margin, thus depriving Martha Coakley of a landslide, it would send shock waves of tsunami proportions across the country as a portend of the potential losses by Democrats running for Congress in November.

Needless to say many people are fed up with both Republicans and Democrats, with politics in general, with Obama who has not lived up to expectations of so many.

Between the ideologues of the left who indoctrinate in the public schools and the religious fanatics of the right who indoctrinate in their own homes and the churches, it is no wonder that the so much of the populace remains so ignorant or misguided.

And to think that the antidote exists and is known to a handful of us and is so readily available in books and on the internet.

www.campaignforliberty.com 225,799 but growing too slowly after all to save the day any time soon. It appears that only a tiny number are actively recruiting to the cause. I am discouraged. Bernanke or whoever takes his place will continue to print over a trillion paper dollars a year to keep up with Obama's Keynesian deficit spending for years to come. Even if you manage to survive and prepare you will be vulnerable if your neighbors don't and come knocking when they run out. Time to invest in more guns and ammunition.

gulch

Here is the link to the Post and EMail article about the challenge to Obama to produce his birth certificate by Congressman Deal of Georgia:

http://tinyurl.com/yhwexoe

gulch

www.campaignforliberty.com 225,697

This used to called Man of the Year.

Time has selected villains before, Hitler & Stalin.

This is the first time they selected a Fed Chairman. I think it be argued that the Federal Reserve Chairman is always the big newsmaker of any year.

Obama will be disappointed that he was not selected.

My choice would be Ron Paul who sponsored the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, HR1207 which has 317 cosponsors in the House. Ron Paul's challenging interrogation of Chairman Bernanke is responsible to some extent for Bernanke's exposure as the cause of the crisis he is mistakenly being given credit for resolving!

<<<"Even president Thomas Jefferson warned us 200 years ago about private banks and allowing them such power over our currency like they have today:

“I believe banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around (the banks) will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…”">>>

www.campaignforliberty.com membership 224,691 at the moment

I understand that the invention of internal combustion engines which run on H2O in which electrolysis occurs within the combustion chamber has been accomplished but suppressed including murder of the inventor by the big oil or auto companies.

Huh? Where did you get that nonsense? Or is that some kind of joke I'm missing?

Dragon Fly,

Actually it was in the library recently in a magazine which might have been Popular Mechanics or the like. We all know that water is composed of hydrogen which can be used as a fuel and oxygen which facilitates combustion. If it can be done to use electrolysis, if that is the term, to separate hydrogen from oxygen within the cylinder, which evidently can be done then ignite the hydrogen in the presence of oxygen and the deed is done.

I cannot quote the source but I read the article which showed a picture of the engine. I don't recall the name of the inventor.

It is becoming typical of you to refer to such things as nonsense or a joke. Assuming it can be done can you imagine how far the auto industry and the oil industry would go to stop this from becoming competition? As I recall the inventor met an untimely death.

Sorry if I ruined your day.

Isn't it so that one reason NASA is so eager to find water on the moon because they could use it as rocket fuel in much the same way as this inventor did? It is not far fetched at all. Admittedly it did sound unbelievable when I first heard it but perhaps my mind is more open to rational evidence or the like.

gulch

www.campaignforliberty.com 224,560 at the moment.

I don't think technological innovation is holding us back, it's our widespread state of general unsanity that's the problem Technology without intelligence,sanity, etc. actually can make things worse I fear.

This is a point Ken Wilber has brought up frequently about the fact that we have technology outpacing ethics, that people in places like Iran might have nukes.

It's probably also unethical to build a machine that rapidly develops ethics. oh well...

Christopher,

I recall that you are the one who recommended that I explore the www.ChrisMartenson.com website some time ago. I did and watched all twenty videos twice.

I was particularly impressed with his explanation of the suddenness with which exponential growth can happen. One minute all seems well and as usual then in no time one is overwhelmed.

he uses an example of water filling up Fenway Park starting with one drop which doubles every minute. You are handcuffed in the last row in the bleachers. In less than an hour all still seems well. In another five minutes the stadium is filled to the brim.

He applies this to growing population as we are already on the asymptotic stage of the graph. Also at a comparable point on the downswing of oil production.

IT is intimidating to watch and I invite others to see for themselves and then come back here and tell us where is the fallacy!

He makes it sound as if this will all happen within the foreseeable future as in any year now.

Technology is supposed to be able to save us. I understand that the invention of internal combustion engines which run on H2O in which electrolysis occurs within the combustion chamber has been accomplished but suppressed including murder of the inventor by the big oil or auto companies.

As we all know Article 1 Section 8 authorizes the Congress to have the power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof." Here is the text of the Coinage Act of 1792. I draw your attention to section 19 below:

<<<"The 1792 Coinage Act had an interesting provision under Section 19.

SEC. 19. And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same ought to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, and if any of the said officers or persons shall embezzle any of the metals which shall at any time be committed to their charge for the purpose of being coined, or any of the coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of the said offences, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death.

____________ FULL TEXT OF THE ACT ____________

Excerpts from the Coinage Act of 1792
Act of 2 April 1792, 1 Statutes at Large 246 CHAPTER XVI. – An Act establishing a Mint, and regulating the Coins of the United States.

SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, and it is hereby enacted and declared, That a mint for the purpose of a national coinage be, and the same is established , to be situate and carried on at the seat of the government of the United States, for the time being; and that for the well conducting of the business of the said mint, there shall be the following officers and persons, namely, –a Director, an Assayer, a Chief Coiner, an Engarver, a Treasurer.

* * * * *

SECTION. 9. And be it further enacted, That there shall be from time to time struck and coined at the said mint, coins of gold, silver, and copper, of the following denominations, values and descriptions, viz.,

EAGLES – each to be of the value of ten dollars or units, and to contain two hundred and forty-seven grains and four eights of a grain of pure, or two hundred and seventy grains of standard gold.

HALF EAGLES – each to be of the value of five dollars, and to contain one hundred and twenty-three grains and six eights of a grain of pure, or one hundred and thirty five grains of standard gold.

QUARTER EAGLES – each of be of the value of two dollars and a half dollar, and to contain sixty-one grains and seven eights of a grain of pure, or sixtyseven grains and four eights of a grain of standard gold.

DOLLARS or UNITS – each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver.

HALF DOLLARS – each to be of half the value of the dollar or unit, and to contain one hundred and eighty-five grains and ten sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or two hundred and eight grains of standard silver.

QUARTER DOLLAR – each to be of one fourth the value of the dollar or unit, and to contain ninety-two grains and thirteen sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or one hundred and four grains of standard silver.

DISMES – each to be of the value of one tenth of a dollar or unit, and to contain thirty-seven grains and two sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or forty-one grains and two sixteenth parts of a grain of standard silver.

HALF DISMES – each to be of the value of one twentieth of a dollar, and to contain eighteen grains and nine sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or twenty grains and four fifth parts of a grain of standard silver.

CENTS each to be of the value of the one hundredth part of a dollar, and to contain eleven penny-weights of copper.

HALF CENTS – each to be of the value of half a cent, and to contain five penny-weights and a half penny-weight of copper.

SECTION 10. And be it further enacted, That, upon the said coins respectively, there shall be the following devices and legends, namely: Upon one side of each of the said coins there shall be an impression emblematic of liberty, with an inscription of the word Liberty, and the year of the coinage; and upon the reverse of each of the gold and silver coins there shall be the figure or representation of an eagle, with this inscription, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” and upon the reverse of each of the copper coins, there shall be an inscription which shall express the denomination of the piece, namely, cent of half cent, as the case may require.

SECTION 11. And be it further enacted, That the proportional value of gold to silver in all coins which shall by law be current as money within the United States, shall be as fifteen to one, according to quantity in weight, of pure gold or pure silver; that is to say, every fifteen pounds weight of pure silver shall be of equal value in all payments, with one pound weight of pure gold, and so in proportion as to any greater or less quantities of the respective metals.

SECTION 12. And be it further enacted, That the standard for all gold coins of the United States shall be eleven parts fine to one part alloy; and accordingly that eleven parts in twelve of the entire weight of each of the said coins shall consist of pure gold, and the remaining one twelfth part of alloy; and the said alloy shall be composed of silver and copper, in such proportions not exceeding one half silver as shall be found convenient; to be regulated by the director of the mint, for the time being, with the approbation of the President of the United States, until further provision shall be made by law.

SECTION 13. And be it further enacted, That the standard for all silver coins of the United States, shall be one thousand four hundred and eighty-five parts fine to one hundred and seventy-nine parts alloy; and accordingly that one thousand four hundred and eighty-five parts in one thousand six hundred and sixty-four parts of the entire weight of each of the said coins shall consist of pure silver, and the remaining one hundred and seventy- nine parts of alloy; which alloy shall be wholly of copper.

SECTION 14. And be it further enacted, That it shall be lawful for any person or persons to bring to the said mint gold and silver bullion, in order to their being coined; and that the bullion so brought shall be there assayed and coined as speedily as may be after the receipt thereof, and that free of expense to the person or persons by whom the same shall have been brought. And as soon as the said bullion shall have been coined, the person or persons by whom the same shall have been delivered, shall upon demand receive in lieu thereof coins of the same species of bullion which shall have been delivered, weight for weight, of the pure gold or pure silver therein contained: Provided nevertheless, That it shall be at the mutual option of the party or parties bringing such bullion, and of the director of the said mint, to make an immediate exchange of coins for standard bullion, with a deduction of one half per cent, from the weight of the pure gold, or pure silver contained in the said bullion, as an indemnification to the mint for the time which will necessarily be required for coining the said bullion, and for the advance which shall have been so made in coins.

* * * * *

SECTION 16. And be it further enacted, That all the gold and silver coins which shall have been struck at, and issued from the said mint, shall be a lawful tender in all payments whatsoever, those of full weight according to the respective values herein before described, and those of less than full weight at values proportional to their respective weights.

SECTION 17. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of the respective officers of the said mint, carefully and faithfully to use their best endeavours that all the gold and silver coins which shall be struck at the said mint shall be, as nearly as may be, conformable to the several standards and weights aforesaid.

SECTION 19. And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same ought to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, * * * every such officer or person who shall be guilty of any * * * of the said offenses, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death.

SECTION 20. And be it further enacted, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars or units, dismes or tenths, cents or hundredths, and milles or thousandths, a disme being the tenth part of a dollar, a cent the hundredth part of a dollar, a mille the thousandth part of a dollar, and that all accounts in the public offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation.

APPROVED, April 2, 1792.">>>

I suppose that technically, since there is no connection between our paper currency and either gold or silver that Bernanke gets to live on. Or perhaps one may assume that simply doubling the amount of paper currency in existence, which Bernanke did do over a four month period recently, would constitute a kind of debasement in which case he gets to defend himself in court. He might find authorization for what he has been up to in acts of the Congress but not the Constitution itself.

www.campaignforliberty.com 224,208

Gulch; I think we need to take away any sharp pointed objects from you.. You might do harm to yourself or others. What is a Tennessee Grand Jury. Are you suggesting that any US attorney would bring such a silly charge.

Chris,

I didn't realize you had such a low opinion of the Constitution. Either it should be taken seriously as the Supreme Law of the Land or else it would be meaningless.

I gather that in order to tell whether the allegation of treason were true or not the Grand Jury would have to overcome all the couple of million dollar obstacles Obama purchased with his attorneys to see for themselves whether Obama met the criteria set forth in the Constitution to be eligible to seek the presidency in the first place.

This man is willing to risk his life to have this issue resolved.

Your own comments betray your lack of appreciation for the issues involved. If the Founders did mean by "natural born citizen" that someone aspiring to the office of the presidency had to have parents who were both American citizens then it is evident that Obama does not meet that standard because his father was a British subject as he was a Kenyan which was under British rule.

I suggest that you read the articles and refrain from casting aspersions and making ad hominem suggestions about me.

I think the Democrat Party was complicit in keeping these issues out of the public eye. Once they realized Obama's potential their power lust took over. They probably advised Hillary Clinton to keep quiet about this as well. Otherwise she certainly would have made it an issue to eliminate the competition. But the Democratic leadership wanted Obama once it became evident that he could talk himself into the White House because of his huge popular appeal based on his appearance and eloquence.

Why would Obama spend a small fortune on lawyers to keep his credentials a secret?

An article in the Canada Free Press informs us that charge of no less than treason is going to be heard on December 1st by a Grand Jury in Tennessee which contends that Obama is guilty of treason. here is the link:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17303

And here is the link to an earlier article entitled: "Is Obama Guilty of Treason"

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/11853

The charge is brought by retired Navy LCDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III and either the charge is true or LCDR Fitzpatrick is guilty of mutiny and the punishment would be death!

Fascinating read. A Constitutional crisis is at hand.

The charge was filed in March and the Secret Service did go to the retired Naval officer's home but did not arrest him after spending an hour with him.

On 1 Dec the case was due to come before a Tennessee Grand Jury.

www.campaignforliberty.com 223,684

Folks:

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It is a uniquely American holiday. It also has a number of myths. The following is well worth reading. I am assuming that an OL participant will be able to enjoy a well written story. Yes, there is a religious overtone, but no more than the religious overtone of the signers.

Finally, I hope everyone here will have a safe Thanksgiving. It is, and has been, an extremely memorable and important celebration in my life of all the good, and well deserved, blessings that we possess as Americans. We are a remarkable people. However, there is a chilling wind sweeping over this magnificent country. When faced by the winds of war, tyranny and fear in the past, we have stood together as free men and women. We have always been proud and undefeatable.

Today's events call us to stand together once again. Tomorrow, whether you offer prayers or your thoughts in thanks, let us offer them together as Americans.

Adam

Thankful for family, friends and the freedom to break bread with them tomorrow

It was capitalism and Scripture which saved the day."

Adam,

Thank you for posting the real story of Thanksgiving. If only it were widely understood. I am thankful for the thoughts and efforts of all those, including the Founders who attempted to set every man, woman and child of every race free, and those more recently who have identified the philosophy needed to accomplish that feat, as well as the ideas necessary to make things work thus enriching our lives.

I am thankful for those who had the courage of their convictions to take up arms against the tyrant in Colonial days and those these days who endeavor to enlist others to the cause of individual freedom. Loyalty to one's values suggests that one ought to take advantage of every opportunity to enlighten others one way or another, either face to face or via written words to the existence of the pro freedom movement and to the books which hold the key to the establishment of a society free from tyranny.

www.campaignforliberty.com 223,453

<" "The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.-Thomas Jefferson" ">

Thanks Bill:

Well that was quick - 58 Dem 2 ind. voted for cloture

39 Rep. voted no and one seems to be missing.

Adam

Adam,

I believe that one of the Blue dogs said that although he would vote to have debate continue that did not mean that he would necessarily vote for the bill in the end.

Whether it happens or not there will still be hope as the Campaign For Liberty grows exponentially with the help of the Young Americans for Liberty which has chapters in over 150 colleges and universities.

www.campaignforliberty.com

www.YALiberty.com

223,150

gulch

A constant running through AS is the disimissal of suffering. It is called "unimportant", even "nonsensical" if memory serves.

Imo this is a flat-out denial of the reality of suffering. There are enough situations life where a person will suffer, and no Objectivist doctrine is going to change that.

Imagine parents living through the tragedy of losing their child in an accident. So, according to Rand, their suffering is to be regarded as 'unimportant'?

I don't think Ayn Rand meant it in the way you suggest.

I am reminded of the last scene of We The Living when Kira focuses her attention on the vision she had of the kind of life and the kind of world she longed to live in rather than to be distracted by the pain she must have felt by the wound inflicted by the unwitting servant of the careless State which stood for anti life on Earth.

The trick is to be loyal to your highest values and not to let any pain and suffering stop you from achieving your own personal goals.

gulch

www.campaignforliberty.com 233,136

Perhaps a metaphor for laissez-faire Capitalism!

gulch

www.campaignforliberty.com 223,136

We can only pray that there are enough "conservatives" on the Supreme Court that this outrage will be stopped. I hope. Maybe.

Given the perverse interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause currently prevailing, one cannot be certain. If Congress gets away with this, there is nothing that Congress cannot regulate, tax, ordain, require or forbid; the Constitution, for all practical purposes is dead and gone.

Meanwhile the "liberals" will tell us that this is all for The Children, The Children.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al,

While you bemoan the current state of affairs not without justification there are efforts to rouse and enlighten the populace who are the ultimate sovereigns in this once freer country.

For example, Judge Napolitano is offering a course on the Constitution on Fox. In addition there are many articles on the subject as well as online books on several websites including the Ludwig von Mises Institute site, www.mises.org.

Gutzman has a new book: The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution.

http://tinyurl.com/yktr9k2

The ever popular Campaign For Liberty site has a section on Education with a heading Constitution which lists many books on the subject.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/edu/constitution.php

So there is the hope that the independent voters who enabled Obama to gain power and gave the Congress to the Democrats, aka "progressives", will give the Congress back to the Republicans next time. The pro Constitutional conservatives such as Rand Paul may find himself in the Senate from Kentucky and Peter Schiff may be there too from Connecticut giving a new voice to those who understand what the Founders had in mind when they reserved all powers not granted among the few enumerated powers to the Congress, to the States or to the people in the Tenth Amendment.

http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/

The States are asserting their sovereign power in response to the Federal power grab. Witness the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act of 2010 which is one of several efforts to thwart Obama and Pelosi in their mindless power lust.

I think that the ideas of Ayn Rand and other individualistic thinkers has spread sufficiently across the country to find support everywhere and a counter revolution is afoot.

We have their number and the only disaster in 2012 will be the death once and for all time of the premises of the Platonists, the Kantians and the Keynesians.

www.campaignforliberty.com 222,595

gulch

But what are you going to do if you need water, food and medicine and you (generic "you") can't shop because the store's computers are down for a week or looters have stripped the shelves bare

There is no way possible to prepare for anarchy. Further, I'm not interested in living in such a world. If the US degenerated into such a place I'd move somewhere safer or end my life.

Perhaps you might be amused and enlightened to listen to the wisdom of Chris Martenson, a Fortune 300 VP and research analyst who has a twenty video crash course on his website:

www.chrismartenson.com

I am prone to paranoia but also willing to listen to reason. I am also hoping that a better mind will find the fallacies in CM's contentions.

Most of the videos are less than twenty minutes each and there is a 45 minute version. I eagerly await someone's revelation that life as we know it will continue with new fangled technology getting me to and from work each day and food finding its way from the farms to the cities and the like forever and ever.

gulch

I am usually skeptical and dismissive of these tirades against banking. In this case, the kernels of fact are compelling.

I point out that there was no compulsion for the governments of France and Germany, etc., to use this power of liquidity to launch a war that shattered their civilization. On the other hand, we have to ask: "What is government for?" As government's role is coercion, it is not surprising when new resources are directed to war -- as opposed, say, to the production of astronomical instruments, deep-sea communities, or children's theater...

The failure was not the creation of a new form of money, but the moral failure of a bankrupt philosophy that allowed any new tool -- money; internal combustion engines; undersea travel -- to serve The Highest Idea of the Historical Dialectic.

America was built on the same premise that destroyed Europe: credit. Gold coins had little to do with railroading. (See The Man Who Found the Money: John Stewart Kennedy and the Financing of the Western Railroads by Saul Engelbourg and Leonard Bushkoff.) The Thirty Years War destroyed most of central Europe, with 25% of Germany's population killed. That did not require banking credit, only the will to commit murder in the name of a holy cause.

That said, the kernel of fact -- the legal tender laws of 1909 -- is interesting.

I wonder what you mean by your statement that America was built on credit.

To my way of thinking America rose because of the degree of freedom enjoyed by individuals whose rights to their property were protected and recognized and respected much more than they are today. It is hard to accumulate capital when the politicians and power lusters among them skim money from the earnings of the working man and woman.

Notice that the Campaign For Liberty membership has grown by about one thousand people in about ten days and is now 222,050

here is a link to an illuminating article on the question of what the Founders meant or understood the concept natural born citizen meant:

http://hesnotmypresident.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/chapter-2-constitutional-requirements/

And here is a link to Robert Shultz's Continental Congress which convenes Nov 11th and goes on for three weeks with some of it televised:

http://www.cc2009.us/

gulch

Link to Operation Health Freedom:

http://www.operationhealthfreedom.com/

<<"Tell Congress to Support the Health Freedom Plan!

Campaign for Liberty believes America's health care system is in desperate need of reform, but current proposals only cement the status quo by mandating further government interference and requiring Americans to either carry a government-approved plan or surrender more of their hard-earned money to the IRS.

There is a real alternative to yielding more power over our lives to Washington: implementing a plan centered on freedom, choice, and faith in the American taxpayers that they know how to spend their money better than some unelected bureaucrat.

In pursuit of this alternative, Campaign for Liberty is proud to unveil our Health Freedom Plan.

Our package includes legislation introduced by Congressman Ron Paul and Congressman John Shadegg. The cornerstone is Ron Paul's H.R. 1495, the Comprehensive Health Care Reform Act of 2009, which provides all Americans with a tax credit for 100% of health care expenses, a tax credit for premiums for high-deductible insurance policies connected with a Health Savings Account (HSA), and allows seniors to use funds in an HSA to pay for a medigap policy. In addition, it makes all medical expenses tax deductible.

Also included are Ron Paul's H.R. 2629, a bill that prevents the government from requiring people to purchase health insurance, and John Shadegg's H.R. 3217, which permits the purchase of health insurance across state lines and will ultimately lower costs due to the resulting competition.">>

There are several enlightening videos on the site's home page

Also links to recent articles

www.campaignforliberty.com 221,917

gulch

I found this article in the response section of another article by a neurosurgeon about the AMA on the Campaign For Liberty site. Here is the link to that article:

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=322

<<<"Medical Control, Medical Corruption

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The vested interests are sick over it: Americans are beginning, just slightly, to take charge of their own health care. Such best-sellers as the Doctor's Book of Home Remedies, the Physician's Desk Reference, and the Merck Manual can keep you out of the doctor's appropriately named waiting room, or at least help you understand what is being done to you, when an apple a day does not work.

Who is unhappy with this increased knowledge? The American Medical Association, which for almost 150 years has sought to institutionalize a rip-off and to keep sick people and their families oblivious to it. Thanks to this central committee of the medical cartel, the number of medical schools and medical students is drastically restricted, state licensure further obstructs the supply of doctors, fees are largely secret and controlled across the industry, alternative treatments and practitioners are outlawed, pharmacists and nurses are hamstrung, and the mystique of the profession rivals the priesthood, although priests have a somewhat lower income. Meanwhile, the customer pays through the nose, even if he does not go to an otolaryngologist.

Medicaid and Medicare have contributed to the problem, but the medical cartel is the original sin. Through its ability to keep incomes high by limiting supply and outlawing competition, organized medicine has punished its customers, although the word is never used so as to disguise what is, after all, an economic relationship.

Hillary Clinton's proposed merger of the medical cartel and the state seems like a radical move, and it is. It is also the logical next step in the partnership of government and medicine. That is why, in addition to opposing Hillary hammer and tongs, we should reexamine the AMA's distortion of the medical marketplace and the very idea of medical licensure.

Competition among providers – as with any service in a market economy – leads to rational pricing and maximum consumer choice. But this is exactly what the AMA has always sought to prevent. The American Medical Association, organized in New York in 1848, advanced two seemingly innocent propositions in its early days: that all doctors should have a "suitable education" and that a "uniform elevated standard of requirements for the degree of M.D. should be adopted by all medical schools in the U.S." These were part of the AMA's real program, which was openly discussed at its conventions and in the medical journals: to secure a government-enforced medical monopoly and high incomes for mainstream doctors.

Membership in the new organization was open only to "regular" physicians, whose therapies were based on the "best system of physiology and pathology, as taught in the best schools in Europe and America." The public had a different view, however. Official treatments of the time, such as bloodletting and mercury poisoning, harmed and sometimes murdered patients, causing mass outrage.

Emphatically not included among the "best" were the homeopaths. Homeopathy, a less invasive system that still thrives in Britain and Europe, may have done no good, but that was the worst charge lodged against it. Homeopathy did not kill people, as Orthodox medicine did. The homeopaths actually followed the Hippocratic injunction "First, do not harm" and refused to worship abstract Science. As a result, the clergy – an important interest group in 19th-century America – sympathized with them. As the president of the New York State Medical Society noted in 1844, "We feel severely the influence of the clergy as operating against our collective interest." One prominent pastor, for example, had called the medical establishment "an expensive vampire upon society."

How the "regulars" came to crush the homeopaths and other competitors, and penalize patients in the process, is a story of deception and manipulation, of industry self-interest and state power. The organized regulars or allopaths first set out to demonstrate that the homeopaths were ill-educated and therefore should be shunned, but that was difficult to substantiate because most of them were converts from orthodox medicine.

One was William H. Holcombe. When he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, he worried, as he wrote in his memoirs, that physicians "were blind men, striking in the dark at the disease or the patient-lucky if [we] killed the malady [instead of] the man." One day Holcombe was called by the parents of a seriously ill child, whom Holcombe subsequently set about to bleed. Bloodletting was considered especially important for children, and the younger the child, the more blood was to be drawn. But the mother clutched the baby to her breast and cried, "The blood is the life – it shall not be taken away." When the benighted father agreed, Holcombe "explained to him candidly, and with some display of professional dignity, that my opinion was worth more than his or his wife's."

Holcombe left and returned the next day, expecting to find a dead baby. Instead, the child – who had been treated by a homeopath – was playing in the yard. Holcombe later wrote that "after having blistered, bled, and drugged my patients for twenty-seven years, I determined to find some more humane mode." He was charged with violating "medical ethics," whose first principle was: "A physician ... should cautiously guard against whatever may injure the general respectability of his profession."

Eventually, homeopathy became almost as popular as allopathy, especially in the Northeast and Midwest. Many business leaders favored it and funded free dispensaries for the poor. This was made possible by the free market. From the early part of the century until 1850, state laws interfering in medical practice were gradually repealed. The AMA was founded to reverse the trend.

New York, for example, got rid of nearly all of its criminal legislation regarding medicine, forbidding only malpractice and immoral conduct by physicians. As one state senator said, "The people of this state have been bled long enough in their bodies and pockets." He called on them to demand medical freedom, in the tradition of "the men of the Revolution."

Most Americans were interested in nonorthodox treatments and believed they should be allowed to compete in the marketplace. Organized medicine claimed people were being fooled. But as Harris Livermore Coulter explains in his extraordinary 1969 study of the AMA's founding, "People were deserting orthodox medicine ... not out of ignorance, but out of knowledge of regular practice and consequent dislike of it."

An 1848 AMA convention speaker laughed at the "mass of the community" who thought there was "a wide difference" between a physician's "Apothecary Medicine and our native medical plants." The first "they regard as almost uniformly poisonous – the other, as harmless and healthful." He called this "an absurd idea," although virtually none of the official treatments of the time is still In use and many drugs from our "native medical plants" have proven to be effective.

Worse than absurd was the effect on doctors' incomes. "Quackery [i.e., unofficial treatments by unofficial practitioners] occasions a large pecuniary loss to us," lamented an 1846 editorial in the New York Journal of Medicine. Quacks "too frequently triumph and grow rich, where wiser and better men scarcely escape starvation." To the medical dean at the University of Michigan, the specter of free competition was a "discouragement" to "graduates in scientific medicine," rendering their work "arduous and unremunerative."

In the golden age, "the doctor could tell his patient" anything, including, "'gape, sinner, and swallow,"' wrote J.H. Nutting in 1853. Then, with his "grave look of profound wisdom," the doctor had a "reputation for almost superhuman skill." Doctors, wrote the journal of the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1848, should be "looked upon by the mass of mankind with a veneration almost superstitious." Instead, there was public contempt.

A Michigan physician reported that the profession had "fallen so low that there are few to do it reverence. Quackery and empiricism in diverse forms like the locusts and lice of Egypt, swarm over our state and are eating out the very vitals and sucking the life blood" of doctors, some of whom said they were denounced on the street for bumping off their patients.

Organized physicians argued that popular reputation meant nothing. In fact, claimed the journals, a good standing in the profession usually meant a bad one with the public. At the same time there was the complaint – echoed by cartelizers to this day – that there were simply too many doctors. "The profession" is "crowded," argued one journal, with "unworthy and ignorant men" who ought to be prohibited from practicing. The regulars also villified their opponents with such works as Oliver Wendell Holmes' Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions (1842).

In 1849, the AMA worried that simply outlawing competition would not override the public's perversity. The only long-term "remedy against Quackery, is medical Reform, by which a higher standard of medical education shall be secured." As part of this drive, homeopathic physicians were expelled from state and local medical societies, even if they were trained in official schools. The AMA claimed that the public did not know what was good for it and that the medical establishment must have total control.

The organization knew it needed more than persuasion to secure a monopoly, so it also called for a national bureau of medicine to oversee state licensing and other regulations. In those limited-government days, however, the idea went nowhere. But in the statist Progressive Era after the turn of the century, anticompetitive measures became respectable, and the AMA renewed its drive for a cartel, spurred on by the popularity of self-medication and the increasing number of medical schools and doctors. (In 1902, an AMA study decried the competition that had lowered physicians' incomes.)

The number of medical schools had increased from 90 in 1880 to 154 in 1903. As an official AMA history by James Gordon Burrow puts it, the "frightening competition" showed a need for "education reform," i.e., cartelization. The state legislatures showed little interest in more restrictionist laws, so the AMA appointed the secretary of the Kentucky State Board of Health to rouse the profession to lobby.

Joseph N. McCormack spent a decade in agitprop among the doctors of more than 2,000 cities and towns, inspiring them with such speeches as "The Danger to the Public From an Unorganized and Underpaid Medical Profession." Like medical ethicists before and since, he denounced advertising (letting customers know services and prices in advance) and quackery (unapproved competition). Join our union, he said, and we will raise your pay. By 1910, about 70,000 doctors belonged to the AMA, an eight-fold increase over the previous decade.

To help bring about a higher-paid profession, the AMA in 1904 created the Council on Medical Education, which sought to shut down more than half the existing medical schools by rating them on a scale of A to C. In cooperation with state medical boards composed of what Arthur Dean Boran, head of the council, called the "right sort of men," the AMA succeeded in cutting the number of schools to 131 by 1910, from a high of 166.

Then the council's secretary N.P. Colwell helped plan (and some say write) the famous 1910 report by Abraham Flexner. Flexner, the owner of a bankrupt prep school, had the good fortune to have a brother, Simon, who was director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. At his brother's suggestion, Abraham Flexner was hired by the Rockefeller-allied Carnegie Foundation so that the report would not be seen as a Rockefeller initiative. And Carnegie, whose main goal was to "rationalize" higher education, that is, replace religion with science, saw the AMA cartelization drive as useful. Claiming to have investigated nearly every school in the country, Flexner rated them on suitability. Schools he praised received lush grants from the Rockefeller and associated foundations, and almost all the medical schools he condemned were shut down, especially the "commercial" institutions. AMA-dominated state medical boards ruled that in order to practice medicine, a doctor had to graduate from an approved school. Post-Flexner, a school could not be approved if it taught alternative therapies, didn't restrict the number of students, or made profits based on student fees.

Why the opposition to for-profit schools? If an institution were supported by student fees rather than philanthropic donations, it could be independent of the foundations. The Rockefeller family had invested heavily in allopathic drug companies and wanted doctors to use their products.

The Flexner Report was more than an attack on free competition funded by special interests. It was also a fraud. For example, Flexner claimed to have thoroughly investigated 69 schools in 90 days, and he sent prepublication copies of his report to the favored schools for their revisions. Homeopaths noted that his authority derived solely "from an unlimited access to the pocketbook of a millionaire." Homeopaths did not use synthetic drugs, of course. John E. Churchill, president of the Board of Education of New York, called the report a "menace to the freedom of teaching." Years later, Flexner admitted that he knew nothing about medical education. But he did not need to in order to serve his employers' purposes.

Flexner's attack, stepped up by the AMA's Council on Medical Education and its state medical boards, closed 25 schools in three years, with more over the years to come, and cut the number of students attending the remaining schools in half. All non-mainstream practitioners were targeted. For example, from the early part of the century, consumers preferred optometrists to ophthalmologists on grounds of both service and price. Yet the AMA derided the optometrists as quacks, and in every state, the AMA-dominated medical boards imposed restrictions on these and other "sectarian" practitioners when they could not outlaw them entirely.

Homeopathy still had a remnant of about 13,000 practitioners, supported by a fiercely loyal customer base, but decades of well-financed attacks had taken their toll. The battle-weary homeopaths eventually gave in, conceding major parts of their doctrine, but the AMA was not satisfied with anything less than total victory, and today, American homeopaths practice mostly underground.

With its monopoly, the AMA sought to fix prices. Early on, the AMA had come to the conclusion that it was "unethical" for the consumer to have any say over what he paid. Common prices were transmuted into professional "fees," and the AMA sought to make them uniform across the profession. Lowering fees and advertising them were the worst violations of medical ethics and were made illegal. When fees were raised across the board, as they frequently could be with decreased competition, it was done in secret.

But organized medicine still feared reporters. In Illinois in 1906, the publication of secret fee increases nearly incited public violence. The secretary of the Illinois Medical Society, N.L. Barker, admonished his fellow physicians to keep their higher "fee-bills" secret, "for the people will not appreciate what was intended for kindness and justice." To collect the higher fees, the AMA recommended that state-level medical societies develop formal systems. If a patient had not paid the full amount, especially out of dissatisfaction with the treatment, his name would go on a blacklist and he would be forbidden all future treatment by doctors until he had paid up and shut up.

The AMA, in its constant quest for higher incomes through lower competition, also battled churches and other charities that gave free medical care to the poor. Through lobbying, it attempted to stamp out what it called "indiscriminate medical charity." A model 1899 law in New York put the control of all free health care under a State Board of Charities dominated by the AMA. To diminish the amount of free care, the board imposed fines and even jail terms on anyone giving treatment without first getting the patient's address and checking on his financial status.

Then there was the problem of pharmacists selling drugs without a doctor's prescription. This was denounced as "therapeutic nihilism" and the American Pharmaceutical Association, controlled by the AMA, tried to stamp out the low-cost, in-demand practice. In nearly every state, the AMA secured laws that made it illegal for patients to seek treatment from a pharmacist. But still common were pharmacists who refilled prescriptions at customer request. The AMA lobbied to make this illegal, too, but most state legislatures wouldn't go along with this because of constituent pressure. The AMA got its way through the federal government, of course.

There were other threats that also had to be put down: "nostrums," treatments that did not require a visit to the doctor, and midwives, who had better results than doctors. Also a danger was "contracting out," a company practice of employing physicians to provide care for its workers. This was "unethical," said the AMA, and should be illegal. Fraternal organizations that contracted out for their members were put out of business with legislated price controls, and hospitals – whose accreditation the AMA controlled – were pressured to refuse admittance to patients of contracting-out doctors.

By the end of the Progressive Era, the orthodox profession as led by the AMA had triumphed over all of its competitors. Through the use of government power, it had come to control education, licensure, treatment, and price. Later it outcompeted fraternal medical insurance with the state-privileged and subsidized Blue Cross and Blue Shield. T'he AMA-dominated Blues, in addition to other benefits, gave us the egalitarian notion of "community rating," under which everyone pays the same price no matter what his condition.

AMA control remains much the same, and as a result, even incompetent doctors are guaranteed high incomes. In law, a profession with much freer entry, some lawyers get rich, others make middle incomes, and others have to go into another line of work. But thanks to almost a century and a half of AMA statism, even terrible doctors get lavish incomes.

The monopoly also allows anti-customer practices to go unpunished. For example, doctors routinely schedule appointments too closely together so as to keep their waiting rooms full, for prestige and marketing reasons. With little competition, they can get away with it, and advertising on-time service would be "unethical." The next time you have to wait 45 minutes amid six-month-old People magazines, thank the AMA.

Now, if Hillary gets her way, licensing will become even more abusive. Her Health Security Act mandates racial quotas for medical students and faculties, as well as for practicing physicians in the health alliances. This is the wits' end of licensing, which began as an effort by the regulars to weed out the competition and will now force on us the spectacularly inept, scalpels in hand.

Real reform would remove the AMA's grip on the marketplace and subject the entire industry to competition. Until then, stock up on home medical books.

This article appeared in the June 1994 issue of Chronicles. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com">>>

<<<"SMASHING THE AXIS OF FINANCIAL FRAUD

By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.

November 4, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

[The following is the full text of a somewhat shortened address presented to the Committee for Monetary Research and Education on 15 October 2009...]

The more things change, the more they remain the same. In 1814, in an address to the House of Representatives, Daniel Webster observed that

public credit, the last reliance of government, * * * does not exist. This is a state of things calling for the soberest counsels, and yet it seems to meet only the wildest speculations. Nothing is talked of but banks, and a circulating paper medium, and exchequer notes, and the thousand other contrivances which ingenuity, vexed and goaded by the direst necessity, can devise, with the vain hope of giving value to mere paper. All these things are not revenue, nor do they produce it. * * * [N]or is there a device more shallow or more mischievous, than to pour forth new floods of paper without credit as a remedy for the evils which paper without credit has already created.[1]

Even earlier, Thomas Jefferson had predicted the reason for such a sorry state of affairs:

From the conclusion of the [W]ar [of Independence] we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights.[2]

Jefferson was all too prescient. Ever since his day, the political class has looked elsewhere than to the American people for support—and always found it from the financial class.

The financial class has arrayed itself on the side of the political class, and the political class has arrayed itself on the side of the financial class—not just in an incestuous coupling, but in the veritable fusion of a political-cum-financial hermaphrodite: the full integration and consolidation of bank and state.">>>

To read the rest of this article please go to :

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwinA.htm

and click on Smashing the Axis of Financial Fraud

in which Vieira spells out just how the citizens of each state can go about regaining their freedom from the "The financial class has arrayed itself on the side of the political class, and the political class has arrayed itself on the side of the financial class—not just in an incestuous coupling, but in the veritable fusion of a political-cum-financial hermaphrodite: the full integration and consolidation of bank and state."

<<<"As Jefferson predicted, now that THE PEOPLE are no longer making money, but instead are losing it hand over fist—and with it their jobs, their prosperity, their economic security, and their hopes for decent retirement—they have but one other alternative: They must “think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights”. When they do, THE PEOPLE will recognize that the only way to restore their national independence, societal prosperity, and individual liberty is to break the links once and for all between bank and state and between currency and debt, using the industrial-strength tools the Constitution supplies.">>>

The article is worth reading and promulgating!

www.campaignforliberty.com 221,770

gulch

You might enjoy exploring the website of American Precious Metals Exchange at www.APMEX.com

You would find the PEACE dollar under DOLLARS but not under SILVER in case you were looking for them, a lovely coin!

HR1207 The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 has 310 Congressional cosponsors and 30 Senatorial cosponsors

www.campaignforliberty.com 221,758 and growing exponentially! More than 1000 additional members every nine or ten days! Great feature articles with three new ones each day now.

gulch

This article appeared as a feature article on the Campaign For Liberty website today... I subscribe to Jacob G. Hornberger's Freedom Daily monthly and find it to be filled with relevant and insightful articles.

<<<"Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

He is a regular writer for The Future of Freedom Foundation's publication, Freedom Daily, and is a co-editor or contributor to the eight books that have been published by the Foundation. Visit his blog.

Gold and Freedom

By Jacob Hornberger [View more articles by this author]

Published 11/05/09

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Among the major threats facing the American people today is out-of-control spending at the hands of the U.S. government. It is a grave danger that people have faced throughout history from their own governments. After all, let's not forget the oft-repeated claim by U.S. officials about how they brought down the Soviet Union -- by causing the Soviet government to spend itself into bankruptcy and ruin.

When the Framers were deliberating over the Constitution, they were fully aware of the dangers to people's freedom and well-being posed by a profligate government. As British subjects, they had experienced firsthand the ever-increasing taxes imposed by their king to finance his ever-growing expenditures. As revolutionaries, they had also experienced the ravages that come with the inflation of a currency to finance government expenditures. That's what "Not Worth a Continental" referred to. As citizens living under the Articles of Confederation, they knew the damage that irredeemable paper money can bring to a society.

The first thing to keep in mind about the Constitution was its dual purpose: to bring into existence the federal government while, at the same time, protecting the nation from it. While the Framers understood the need for government, they also understood that that same government constituted the greatest danger to their freedom and well-being.

Thus, by its own terms the Constitution limited the powers of the federal government to a small number of powers that were enumerated in the document. To make certain that U.S. officials got the point -- that the federal government was considered to be the greatest threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people -- our ancestors demanded quick passage of 10 amendments to the Constitution. Naming the federal government as the primary threat to their freedom, the Bill of Rights expressly prohibited U.S. officials from infringing fundamental rights and expressly guaranteed important procedural protections as a prerequisite to searching, arresting, incarcerating, or otherwise punishing people.

Our ancestors realized that not only was the U.S. government the primary threat to such fundamental rights as free speech, freedom of religion, peaceable assembly, and gun ownership, it was also the major threat against personal wealth or private property. That's why, for example, the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits U.S. officials from taking people's property without due process of law or without just compensation.

The threat of inflation

The Framers also understood that there was an insidious, even fraudulent, way that government officials could seize people's privately acquired wealth -- through an indirect monetary method known as inflation. To protect themselves from that threat, they again used the Constitution.

First, while the enumerated powers that the Constitution granted the federal government included the power to borrow money, they did not include the power to issue paper money or to make paper money legal tender.

Second, the Constitution expressly prohibited the states from issuing paper money (i.e., "bills of credit") and from making anything but gold and silver coin legal tender.

Thus, from the inception of our nation our American ancestors intended for the United States to operate under a precious-metals monetary system or, more specifically, under a monetary system in which people used gold and silver coins rather than paper money as the media of exchange.

What is vitally important to keep in mind is the reason our American ancestors did this: to protect the nation from the federal government and, specifically, from the ravages of out-of-control federal spending financed by ever-increasing amounts of freshly printed paper money.

Historically, among the most effective ways that governments have plundered their own citizens has been inflation. Directly taxing people gets them upset and even angry. Such anger can be threatening to government officials, especially when it spills over into rebellion or revolution.

Long ago, government officials figured out that it was much easier to seize people's property through inflation, in large part because people lacked the astuteness to figure out what the government was doing to them. Even better, when the effects of inflation would begin manifesting themselves through rising prices, government officials knew that the propensity of people was to blame the problem on private businesses that were raising prices rather than on public officials who were inflating the currency. Best of all, government officials knew that as prices began rising, they could appear as saviors to the people by imposing price controls on those greedy businesses.

The inflation scheme had been going on long before the invention of the printing press. Here's how the process worked:

As people engaged in the process of trading with one another, they found that barter could be a less-than-satisfactory mechanism. For example, suppose John is selling a bushel of wheat that Joe wants to purchase. Joe offers John a bushel of apples in exchange for the wheat but John isn't interested in apples. He wants oranges. So Joe has to go out and find someone who has oranges before he can trade with John to acquire his wheat. But there's no guarantee that the person who has oranges is going to be interested in Joe's apples either.

Thus, over time people began using commonly traded items not only for their substantive use but also as a medium of exchange. Consider, for example, tobacco, an item that has sometimes served as money. Joe would go trade his apples for a bundle of tobacco, not with the intent of using the tobacco but solely as a way to purchase John's wheat. While John wasn't interested in Joe's apples, he would be willing to accept the tobacco because he knew that other people would be willing to accept it in exchange for purchases he wished to make.

Gradually, people began turning to precious metals for this purpose. Businesses would be willing to sell an item for an ounce of gold because they knew that everyone else would be willing to do the same. Although gold supplies could increase owing to new discoveries, thereby lowering the purchasing power of gold, people felt that, by and large, the commodity held its value. Other advantages of gold were that it was easily transportable and easy to hide.

But weighing out a quantity of gold each time a trade took place was cumbersome. In response, private minters began minting coins with a fixed amount of gold in them. To facilitate trades, various gold coins would be minted, each one containing a different quantity of gold -- e.g., 1 ounce, 1/2 ounce, or 1/4 ounce. For smaller transactions, silver coins were used, and even copper ones.

As in any other business, people turned to those minters who developed a reputation for honesty and integrity. Coins minted by those minters would be more readily accepted in the marketplace as containing the amount of gold represented to be in the coin.

People would use such coins not only to purchase goods and services but also to pay their taxes. They were the money that people used in their day-to-day transactions.

Clipping the coin

Ever-increasing government expenditures and ever-increasing resistance to high taxes caused government officials to look for other ways to raise revenues. The most effective method they came up with was inflation or what was called "clipping the coin."

What government officials first did was take over the business of minting the coins. It wasn't enough for government to simply enter the gold-minting business in competition with the private minters. That would obviously leave people free to choose between coins minted by private businesses and those minted by the government.

So the government would decree a monopoly on the minting of coins. That meant that only the government -- or a private business appointed by the government -- could mint coins. Every other minter was required by law to close down his operations, and new entrants into the minting business were prohibited.

As people paid their taxes with the government's coins, government officials began shaving off a slight bit of gold around the edges of the coin before returning it into the marketplace in payment of goods and services. The total amount shaved off the coins added significant amounts of money to the state's coffers.

Obviously, as government officials shaved off the edges of the coins, what was represented to be a 1-ounce gold coin was no longer a 1-ounce gold coin. As a result of shaving, the coin contained less than 1 ounce. Gradually, people began figuring that out, especially as the coins became smaller and smaller in size.

At that point the coin would begin trading at a discount in the marketplace. That is, a businessman selling an item for a 1-ounce gold coin would require not only the shaved coin but also, say, a couple of silver coins to compensate for the smaller amount of gold in the gold coin.

Needless to say, government officials didn't like their coins' being treated in such a shabby manner. It was an affront to the king. It was questioning his honor and integrity. The solution was to make the king's coins legal tender, regardless of how much gold they contained. What that meant was that people were required by law to accept the government's coins at face value for all economic transactions, including the payment of debts and the purchase of goods and services.

Inflation and the printing press

The invention of the printing press greatly facilitated the ability of government officials to seize people's wealth through inflation. Here's how the process worked. Let's say the government needed an additional one million gold coins to finance its ever-growing expenditures. Reluctant to tax the citizenry, the government went into the marketplace and borrowed the gold coins from the citizenry. The loan would be evidenced by a promissory note, or "bill of credit," promising to pay a fixed quantity of gold, e.g., a 1-ounce gold coin.

So far, so good, at least insofar as inflation was concerned. The government might be spending wildly but the money being spent was coming from either taxes or borrowing.

People began realizing that the government's notes could be used as easily as gold coins to facilitate trade. That is, sellers would be willing to accept a government note promising to pay a 1-ounce gold coin because they were certain that the note was as good as gold. All that anyone had to do was demand that the government redeem the note by paying him the gold coin, and it would be done.

Then the problem started. Government officials, ever in need of more money to finance their ever-growing expenditures, figured out that only a certain percentage of people holding the notes would appear and demand their gold at any one time. Most of the notes would continue to circulate as money.

So government officials began cranking up their printing presses and printing lots of government notes that they then used to pay for goods and services in the marketplace. They had little concern that everyone would show up at the same time demanding redemption of all the outstanding notes.

For example, let's say that on December 31 the government plans to receive tax revenues of one million 1-ounce gold coins. On January 1, it goes out and borrows one million gold coins, evidenced by the delivery of one million notes with a maturity date of one year, each one promising to pay the bearer a 1-ounce gold coin. On the following December 31, the government receives the million gold coins in tax revenue and the following day is prepared to pay off all the notes it issued when it borrowed the money.

However, on the maturity date government officials notice something important. On the maturity date, only 10 percent of the notes are offered for redemption. The other 90 percent continue being used to facilitate trade in the marketplace, with everyone's having the assurance that he can cash in the note whenever he wants.

Realizing this, the government issues, say, 100,000 additional notes that it uses to pay contractors and suppliers. Those notes begin circulating in the marketplace just like the other ones. But there is now a significant difference: If everyone appears at the gold window and demands redemption, the government can't make good on its promises. It has only the 1 million in gold that it collected from the taxpayers, not the 1.1 million that it has issued in notes.

As people begin discovering that there are more notes in circulation than the government is able to redeem, there is a rush for the gold window. Everyone wants his gold. No one wants to be stuck with a promise to pay gold if the promise cannot be fulfilled.

Moreover, the government's notes start trading at a discount in the marketplace. That is, suppose a seller is selling an item for 1 ounce of gold. When a buyer offers him a government note promising to pay 1 ounce of gold, the seller demands the note plus a bit more to compensate him for the risk of default.

Just like the regimes of old, modern-day governments become outraged when people question their integrity and honor. Refusing to accept government notes at face value is considered a grave insult, one even akin to treason. That's where legal-tender laws came into play. Under threat of severe punishment, government officials require people to accept their notes at face value, without any discount, no matter how many notes have been issued and no matter how serious the risk of default.

That sets the stage to examine the monetary system of the United States, a system that began with precious metals and has ended up with irredeemable paper money known as Federal Reserve Notes, a process that endangers the well-being of the American people and that threatens their nation with bankruptcy and ruin.

The Framers had experienced the ravages of paper money during the Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation, and they were fully aware of how governments had plundered and looted their own citizenry with inflation throughout history. Therefore, the Framers used the Constitution to ensure that neither the states nor the federal government could ever do that to the American people.

The result was that from the founding of the nation and for more than a century, the money that the American people used was coins consisting of gold, silver, nickel, and copper. People became accustomed to transacting business with such coins. It was that type of monetary system -- one in which people used coins made of precious and non-precious metals -- that became known as "the gold standard."

It wasn't a purely free-market standard. The U.S. government was in charge of minting America's coins and, therefore, of defining the weight and fineness of the coins. Moreover, the government established a policy of defining the exchange ratio between gold and silver, a price control that would inevitably be out of sync with changing market conditions and that often led people to hoard one metal or the other.

What was important, however, was that the monetary standard for the United States was a metallic one, not one based on paper money. It's important to conceptualize what the "gold standard" meant. It did not mean some exchange ratio between paper money and gold. Instead, the "gold standard" meant that gold coins, silver coins, nickel coins, and copper coins were the money that the American people had chosen to use in their society.

Liberty, power, and the Constitution

Let's examine how the Framers used the Constitution to establish a government of limited powers and then examine how it protected Americans from the ravages of inflation with the establishment of a gold standard.

First of all, keep in mind the overall political philosophy that was guiding the Framers and the Americans during the founding of the nation. While Americans believed that a federal government was necessary, they also believed that it would nonetheless constitute the greatest threat to their freedom and well-being. Unlike so many Americans today, who view the federal government as their provider and caretaker, our American ancestors looked upon the federal government as a very dangerous entity, one that needed to be watched very carefully.

One can see this mindset most clearly in the Bill of Rights, which actually should have been called the Bill of Prohibitions. Behind every one of the prohibitions and guarantees in those Amendments was the conviction held by the people that in the absence of such express prohibitions and guarantees, the federal government would engage in the conduct that was prohibited or proscribed.

The reason that the First Amendment prohibited Congress from enacting any law abridging freedom of speech and freedom of the press, for example, was that in the absence of such an amendment, Congress would enact laws that would infringe such freedoms.

The reason the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms was that in the absence of such an express guarantee, federal officials would confiscate weapons from the citizenry in order to maintain order, stability, and obedience.

The same goes for criminal cases in which the government seeks to incarcerate and punish people. Express guarantees prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments, and relating to due process of law, right to counsel, and right to bail were included because our ancestors knew that federal officials would ignore the people's rights and liberties in the absence of express restrictions.

The cornerstone of American society was private property, whose protection was guaranteed in the original Constitution as well as in the Due Process Clause and the Just Compensation Clause in the Bill of Rights. Realizing that the institution of private property was a necessary prerequisite for a free society, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights prohibited federal officials from arbitrarily confiscating people's money, land, and other property. There was also an express restriction prohibiting the states from impairing private contracts.

All those enumerated powers and express prohibitions and guarantees reflected the mindset of the Framers. Since they viewed the federal government as the greatest danger to the freedom and well-being of the American people, they decided to use the Constitution not only to call the federal government into existence but also, at the same time, to limit its powers to those that were expressly enumerated.

In other words, one option would have been to delegate to the federal government general, unlimited powers to take whatever actions federal officials deemed to be in the best interests of the American people. That's not the option the Framers chose, because they knew that such a government would inevitably oppress the citizenry.

What they did instead was to make it clear that the government the Constitution was calling into existence would be one with very few, limited powers. The federal government's powers would be limited to those expressly enumerated in the Constitution. If a power wasn't enumerated, the federal government couldn't exercise it, even if federal officials deemed it to be in the best interests of the citizens.

The Constitution and gold

How did the Framers protect the American people from the ravages of inflation, which had beset people for centuries?

First, the Constitution granted the federal government the power to coin money and to regulate its value in accordance with a fixed standard of weights and measures.

Second, it did not grant the federal government the power to issue paper money or the power to debase the currency.

Third, while the Framers did grant the federal government the power to borrow, they refused to grant the power to make bills and notes legal tender. In other words, the government lacked the power to force people to accept its bills and notes in ordinary transactions or in payment of debts.

Fourth, the Framers expressly prohibited the states from issuing paper money, or what was commonly called "bills of credit."

Fifth, the Framers expressly prohibited the states from making anything but gold and silver coins legal tender.

Thus, it was clear that the Framers intended the United States to operate on a precious-metals standard, one in which gold coins, silver coins, and copper coins were the money in society.

In fulfillment of that intention, Congress enacted the Coinage Act of 1792, which established the U.S. Mint and provided for the minting of coins that would be based on a dollar unit of value. For example, there were silver dollars and silver half-dollars and $10 gold Eagles and $5 Half-Eagles.

A heritage of economic liberty

While statists love to regale us with stories of how horrible the Industrial Revolution was, the truth is that compared with what had gone on before, the Industrial Revolution was providing people with the means to escape death by starvation. Before long and as wealth began being accumulated, people were not only surviving, they were actually prospering.

Part of the reason for this remarkable outburst in economic prosperity was the fact that our Americans ancestors had rejected income taxation. Thus, through most of the 19th century, Americans could keep everything they earned and there was nothing the federal government could do about it.

It was also a society in which there was a lack of economic regulation on the part of the government. That's what "free enterprise" meant -- economic activity that was free of government control.

There was no socialism -- no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, education grants, foreign aid, or welfare.

There was no large standing army, no foreign aid, no foreign wars, no entangling alliances, and no overseas empire.

There were no controls on immigration, except for a cursory health inspection at Ellis Island.

All those factors contributed to the unbelievable rise in the standard of living of the American people. People were going from rags to riches in one, two, or three generations. They included the thousands of penniless immigrants who were fleeing the lands of taxation, regulation, socialism, conscription, militarism, and empire to come to the land of self-reliance, independence, voluntary charity, and limited government.

Savings, capital, and gold

Another critically important factor in the economic prosperity, however, was the gold standard. For the first time in history, people felt safe from the threat that had besieged people throughout history -- the threat that government officials would take away their wealth by debasing their currency.

Equally important was the positive effect that the gold standard had on capital markets. Companies were issuing bonds with a 100-year maturity date, with the proviso that the loan had to be paid back in a specified amount of gold or the same unit of value as when the bond was issued. In other words, no repayment in debased, inflated paper currency. Thus, people were willing to buy such long-term bonds because they didn't fear being paid back in depreciated currency. The massive accumulation of capital, brought about by the absence of an income tax, the propensity of people to save, and the existence of sound money, was among the critical factors that brought about an enormous increase in real wages in the 19th century.

Since America's money consisted of gold coins, silver coins, and copper coins, people knew that the federal government couldn't easily inflate the currency. After all, it's much more difficult to arbitrarily increase the supply of gold, silver, and copper than it is to increase the supply of paper money. Mining for precious metals can be expensive, while simply printing money off a printing press is much less onerous.

Of course, the federal government could have "clipped the coins," as regimes of old had done, leaving the coins with less gold and accumulating the shavings for government use. But the federal government didn't do that. While there were sometimes controversial adjustments in the weight or fineness of U.S. coins as well as in the exchange ratio between the coins, by and large U.S. coins were renowned for their quality and trustworthiness.

That's not to say that there weren't periodic increases in the supply of money, but at least they were localized or brought about by unusual market conditions rather than by government policy. A new gold discovery in California, for example, would increase the supply of gold overnight, causing prices of everything to go up in relationship to gold. It was the gold and silver coins that were the money, not the federal government's dollar bills.

By and large, the American people had confidence in the ability of their coins to hold their value. The consequence was that people were saving vast amounts of money, oftentimes passing it from one generation to the next. Thus, not only could people leave their children large sums of money that had been accumulated from the fact that there was no income tax, but they knew that federal officials lacked the power to ravage those savings with inflation.

Borrowing and gold

What about the federal government's power to borrow, which was among the enumerated powers granted in the Constitution? In principle, the power entailed nothing different from ordinary citizens' borrowing money. For example, people would lend gold coins to the government.

To evidence the debt, the government would issue a promissory note, which promised to repay the lender the gold that was being borrowed. Everyone understood that it was the gold and silver coins that were the money, not the government's notes. The notes were promises to pay money, not money itself.

Of course, there was nothing to prevent the federal government from simply printing an excess number of notes and using them to pay for goods and services in the marketplace, except that by doing so, it would run the risk that everyone would show up at the government's gold window and demand to have the promissory notes redeemed in gold coin. Thus, an excess issue of notes would, at some point, result in the bankruptcy of the government. That possibility operated as a very real constraint on excessive government spending.

All this is like ancient history to today's Americans. They've heard of the "gold standard" but it's a vague concept in their minds. They might be somewhat aware that gold coins, silver coins, and copper coins once circulated in American society, but most of them have no idea of the integral part the gold standard played in the lives of our American ancestors.

Most Americans today have no idea why a gold standard was important to our ancestors. The notion that a gold standard was established to protect them from the federal government is an alien notion to most people.

To most people today, the gold standard was a system in which the federal government's paper bills and notes were the real money, which was "linked" to some fixed amount of gold.

When people pull out a Federal Reserve Note from their billfolds or wallets, it never occurs to them to ask why it's called a "note," given that it's not promising to pay anything. They have no idea that the "note" is a cruel reminder of a bygone era in which the American people once had a monetary system based on sound money rather than on irredeemable notes issued by the Federal Reserve.

What happened to the gold standard on which the United States was founded? What happened to all those gold and silver coins that Americans used to use in their day-to-day transactions? Why do people use irredeemable paper money today instead of coins made of precious metals? What happened to bring about such a monumental, even revolutionary, change in America's monetary system? Why do so few Americans know what happened and why it happened?

The answers to those questions require an examination into the economic policies of two presidents: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were the two presidents most responsible for the abandonment of sound money in the United States. These two U.S. presidents opened the floodgates to the monetary debauchery under which today's Americans have suffered for their entire lives.

In waging war to prevent the Southern states from leaving the Union, Lincoln was faced with the age-old problem that rulers have faced throughout history: how to pay for the war's ever-increasing military expenditures. One answer, of course, was taxation, but Lincoln was no fool. He knew that taxes were not popular among the citizenry, especially when they're continually going up.

Thus, he resorted to another revenue-raising device, one that historically did not engender the same amount of animosity among people that taxes did. He simply borrowed the money through the issuance of government notes.

Keep in mind an important point here: The notes promised to pay dollars, which everyone understood were simply units of value reflecting the value in gold coins and silver coins. Ever since the country's founding, the money that people used in their everyday transactions was gold coins and silver coins, along with copper coins for smaller transactions.

Since the Constitution permitted the federal government to borrow money, there was nothing unconstitutional about Lincoln's decision to employ that method to finance the war. The problem arose when the federal government took one additional fateful step: It made the federal notes "legal tender." That action converted the notes from simple evidence of a loan into "paper money."

Why was a legal-tender law important to Lincoln and the Congress? They knew that when profligate governments borrow excessive amounts of money, their notes ultimately begin losing value in the marketplace compared with everything else. As more and more notes promising to pay gold are issued, the chances of default increase. If everyone appears at the government's gold window at the same time and says, "I wish to redeem this promissory note for 10 gold Eagles," there is a chance that the government will be able to pay off, say, only 70 percent of the note-holders before running out of gold.

Inflation and the Constitution

Thus, as more and more notes are issued, their relative value in the marketplace begins to drop. Suppose, for example, a federal agent walks into a dry-goods store and selects merchandise having a price of 10 gold Eagles. He hands the clerk a federal promissory note promising to pay 10 gold Eagles. The storeowner, however, knows that such promissory notes are trading at a discount. So he tells the federal agent, "Sorry, that's not satisfactory. Either pay me 10 gold Eagles, or give me the note plus an additional 2 gold Eagles in exchange for the merchandise."

Lincoln's legal-tender law avoided that problem by simply dictating that every American had to accept federal notes at face value.

Yet that was precisely the reason that the American people had established a sound-money system in the Constitution. They knew that throughout history rulers had plundered and looted their own citizenry through inflation, first through such devices as "clipping the coin" and later through the issuance of paper money. Through the Constitution, the Framers intended to establish a monetary system by which the American people would forever be protected from the ravages of inflation. Lincoln's legal-tender law effectively removed that protection.

Let's assume that in 1860 Peter lends Paul the sum of $1,000 in gold coins. The loan is evidenced by a promissory note in which Paul promises to repay the sum of $1,000 in gold coins. The loan, principal and interest, is due three years from the date of issuance.

When the loan comes due in 1863, Peter demands his money. Paul tenders to Peter federal promissory notes totaling $1,000 and cites Lincoln's legal-tender law, which permits him to use federally issued paper money to pay his debts. Paul refuses the tender of the notes because in the marketplace the notes are trading for only $700 in gold coins. He demands payment in the money standard that the loan originally called for.

The Legal Tender Cases

That was the issue in the Legal Tender Cases, which are among the most significant cases in the history of U.S. Supreme Court. When Lincoln's legal-tender law came before the Supreme Court in the case of Hepburn v. Griswold (1870), the Court held that the law was unconstitutional.

However, because of a change in the makeup of the Court -- two new justices were named by President Grant (!) within two years of the Hepburn decision -- the ruling was overturned and the constitutionality of Lincoln's legal-tender law was upheld in the cases of Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis.

The thrust of the argument sustaining the constitutionality of Lincoln's legal-tender law was that since the Constitution granted Congress the power over the nation's monetary system, it was the prerogative of Congress to use such power to issue paper money and force people to accept it with a legal-tender law.

It was, however, a spurious argument, as the justices who voted against the constitutionality of the legal-tender laws pointed out.

Recall, first of all, that the Constitution expressly prohibited the states from making anything but gold and silver coin legal tender. The Constitution also expressly prohibited the states from issuing "bills of credit," a term that meant paper money.

Obviously, restrictions on the power of the states do not operate as restrictions on the powers of the federal government. But those specific restrictions on the states do provide a clear expression of the type of monetary system that the Framers intended for the United States -- one based on gold coins and silver coins.

Why didn't the Framers use the Constitution to expressly restrict the federal government in the same way as they did the states?

Recall that the Constitution brought into existence a government of limited powers that were expressly enumerated in the Constitution. Therefore, there was no need for the Framers to impose specific restrictions on federal power. To determine whether the federal government could exercise a particular power, all that people had to do was simply examine the list of enumerated powers. If a power was not listed, then the power could not be legally exercised.

Thus, since the Constitution did not give the federal government the power to issue paper money or bills of credit, such power couldn't be constitutionally exercised, even though there was no express prohibition against issuing paper money or bills of credit.

By the same token, while the Constitution did give the federal government the power to borrow money, it did not give it the power to make its promissory notes legal tender. Therefore, under the doctrine of limited, enumerated powers there would have been no need to include an express restriction on the power to enact legal-tender laws.

We should also note the importance that the Framers placed on the sanctity of contracts, as reflected by the Constitution's express restriction on the states from impairing contracts and their decision to not delegate the power to impair contracts to the federal government. That would be especially important to a person who had lent money pursuant to a loan contract that provided for repayment in the same standard of money under which the money had been lent.

Coins versus paper

Was the Constitution silent on federal power with respect to money? Absolutely not. The Constitution expressly gave Congress the power "to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin." That power made it clear that the intent of the Framers was to bequeath a monetary system to the American people based on gold coins and silver coins.

Obviously "to coin money" means to make coins out of metal, not out of paper. "To regulate the value thereof" obviously means to define how much gold and silver each coin will comprise.

Thus, given the express restrictions on the states prohibiting them from making anything but gold and silver coin legal tender and prohibiting them from issuing paper money, and given no delegation of power to the federal government to do those things, and given the expressly granted power to Congress to coin money and regulate the value therefore, how in the world could anyone rationally arrive at the conclusion that the Framers intended to permit Congress to establish a paper-money system, especially one in which people would be forced to accept devalued or even irredeemable paper notes as money?

Yet that's precisely what the Supreme Court held after the addition of the two new justices appointed by President Grant. The dissenting justices in Knox and Parker correctly pointed out that the result was that the American people would now be subject to being ravaged by the very inflationary measures that the Framers intended to protect them from. As dissenting Justice Stephen J. Field put it,

Speaking of paper money issued by the states -- and the same language is equally true of paper money issued by the United States -- Chief Justice Marshall says, in Craig v. State of Missouri, "Such a medium has been always liable to considerable fluctuation. Its value is continually changing, and these changes, often great and sudden, expose individuals to immense loss, are the sources of ruinous speculations, and destroy all confidence between man and man. To cut up this mischief by the roots, a mischief which was felt through the United States and which deeply affected the interest and prosperity of all, the people declared in their Constitution that no state should emit bills of credit."

After the Civil War, the American people continued operating under a monetary system based on gold and silver coins (as well as copper coins and nickel coins), which was the monetary system that the Framers had brought into existence through the Constitution. Since Lincoln's legal-tender law applied only to a select group of federal notes issued during the Civil War, its impact was limited in scope. Nonetheless, it set the stage for what would come 70 years later -- the nationalization of gold, the repudiation of gold clauses, irredeemable paper money, ever-increasing federal spending, financial chaos and crises, and never-ending inflationary plunder of the citizenry.

On April 5, 1933 -- about a month after taking office -- President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order commanding every American to turn in his gold to the federal government. The order was soon ratified by Congress, which made it a felony offense for Americans to own gold. The Congress also nullified clauses in both private and public contracts that required payment to be made in gold coin.

Roosevelt's actions rank among the most horrific abuses of government power in history. For 150 years, the American people had been accustomed to using gold coins as money. Their gold was their property. They were the owners of it. It belonged to them as much as their homes, their automobiles, and their personal effects. It did not belong to Franklin Roosevelt, nor to the members of Congress, nor to any other public official. It was privately owned property.

Nonetheless, the Roosevelt administration simply declared that everyone's gold suddenly belonged to the federal government. Everyone, including individuals and banks, was required to surrender his privately owned gold to the federal government. Anyone caught failing to do so was subject to being indicted by a federal grand jury and faced a possible jail sentence of 10 years and a fine of $10,000.

Imagine: In 1787 the Framers used the Constitution to establish a system whereby people were going to use gold and silver coins, rather than paper, as money. The reason they did that was to enable people to protect themselves from what governments throughout history had done -- plunder and loot people through inflation -- e.g., by printing ever-increasing amounts of paper money to finance ever-increasing governmental expenditures. For the next 150 years, Americans used such coins in their everyday transactions.

Then, one day federal officials suddenly made it a felony for Americans to do what they had been legally and constitutionally doing for 150 years.

In fact, the Roosevelt administration's confiscation of privately owned gold was no different from the nationalization of privately owned property that had taken place at the hands of the communist regime in the Soviet Union. And Roosevelt's criminalization of gold ownership was no different, in principle, from the types of economic crimes that the Soviet communists were creating and enforcing.

What was Roosevelt's rationale for this revolutionary action? He claimed that since the Great Depression was a national "emergency," the federal government had the authority to exercise emergency powers, including the power to confiscate gold, to make gold ownership a felony, and to nullify gold clauses in contracts.

One big problem, however, was that the Constitution didn't provide for the exercise of emergency powers. In fact, the Framers understood that emergencies are the time that liberties are most at risk. Therefore, it was during emergencies that constitutional restraints were most important.

Nazi admiration

Constitutional restraints, however, didn't present a problem for Roosevelt. After all, this was the man who would later come up with an infamous Court-packing scheme when the Supreme Court was declaring many of his socialistic and fascistic New Deal programs unconstitutional. He had no intention of letting constitutional restraints stand in the way of his aims and objectives.

Thus, it's not surprising that one of Roosevelt's greatest admirers was none other than Adolf Hitler, who was adopting many of the same types of measures to deal with the economic emergency in Germany that Roosevelt was employing in the United States. Here's what Hitler wrote to U.S. Ambassador Thomas Dodd on March 14, 1934, about a year after the Roosevelt administration had nationalized gold and nullified gold contracts:

The Reich chancellor requests Mr. Dodd to present his greetings to President Roosevelt. He congratulates the president upon his heroic effort in the interest of the American people. The president's successful struggle against economic distress is being followed by the entire German people with interest and admiration. The Reich chancellor is in accord with the president that the virtues of sense of duty, readiness for sacrifice, and discipline must be the supreme rule of the whole nation. This moral demand, which the president is addressing to every single citizen, is only the quintessence of German philosophy of the state, expressed in the motto "The public weal before the private gain."

In his excellent book, Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939, Wolfgang Schivelbusch points out,

On May 11, 1933 [one month after Roosevelt's gold decrees], the main Nazi newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter, offered its commentary in an article with the headline "Roosevelt's Dictatorial Recovery Measures." The author wrote, "What has transpired in the United States since President Roosevelt's inauguration is a clear signal of the start of a new era in the United States as well." The tone on January 17, 1934, was much the same, "We, too, as German National Socialists are looking toward America.... Roosevelt is carrying out experiments and they are bold. We, too, fear only the possibility that they might fail."... Just as National Socialism superseded the decadent "bureaucratic age" of the Weimar Republic, the Volkischer Beobachter opined, so the New Deal had replaced "the uninhibited frenzy of market speculation of the American 1920s." The paper stressed "Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies, praising the president's style of leadership as being comparable to Hitler's own dictatorial Fuhrerprinzip."

Plundering and looting

Why did Roosevelt nationalize gold? Why were gold clauses nullified?

The answer is simple: to enable the federal government to do what governments throughout history had done -- plunder and loot people through inflation in order to pay for ever-increasing government programs and projects.

Let's review the process to understand what Roosevelt was doing.

The reason the Framers established gold and silver coins as the money that Americans would use was to protect them from the inflationary ravages of paper money.

The Constitution permitted the federal government to borrow money -- e.g., gold and silver coins -- and issue notes promising to repay the loans. Such notes customarily contained gold clauses requiring repayment in the same gold-coin standard in effect when the loan was made.

Let's assume that I lend the federal government a gold coin containing 1 ounce of gold. Before the loan is repaid, the government lowers the quantity of gold in coins of that same denomination to -- ounce. When the loan becomes due, the government tries to repay me in the devalued coin. But the gold clause protects me. It requires the government to repay me in the standard that was in effect when the loan was made -- or its equivalent. Because of the gold clause, the government would have to pay me two of the new gold coins containing -- ounce of gold each.

What constrains the government from issuing too many short-term paper notes -- or bills? The fact that people might start demanding gold in payment of such notes! And that's exactly what was happening by the time Roosevelt assumed office. Americans were doing what people throughout history had done -- they were putting their savings into gold coins rather than in the ever-increasing numbers of bills and notes that the federal government was issuing. That's what Roosevelt called the "hoarding" problem.

Moreover, people continued doing what Americans had done since the start of the Republic -- relying on gold clauses in contracts, both government and private, to ensure that their loans would not be repaid in debased, depreciated currency.

Yet, within just a few weeks of taking office, Roosevelt extinguished 150 years of sound money. From the day his executive orders were issued, Americans could no longer use the media of exchange on which their country had been founded and which Americans had used ever since. In fact, while Roosevelt billed his actions as "emergency" measures, most people knew that that was a lie. Everyone knew that the criminalization of gold ownership and the nullification of gold clauses would continue long after the Great Depression ended.

Also remarkable is the fact that this revolutionary and permanent transformation of America's monetary system occurred without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

Beyond Lincoln

Why didn't Roosevelt simply do what Lincoln had done during the Civil War? Recall that Lincoln had enacted a legal-tender law that required people to accept paper money at face value, even though it had depreciated against gold in the marketplace. While Lincoln's actions violated fundamental moral principles, not to mention constitutional principles, at least Americans still had the freedom to continue owning and using gold, and the gold standard was eventually restored after the end of the war.

Why did Roosevelt go so much further than Lincoln? Why did he actually seize people's gold? Why did he convert millions of peaceful and law-abiding gold-owning Americans into potential felons? Why were gold clauses nullified?

The reason for Roosevelt's actions was simple: He knew that the federal government was moving in a new direction -- in the direction of a socialistic welfare state and an interventionist economy, a direction that he knew would entail massive federal spending in the decades ahead. Obviously, that type of revolutionary change would be impossible under a gold standard. The only thing that would enable the welfare-and-interventionist state to operate, decade after decade, would be the ability to print unlimited amounts of paper money.

Thus, Roosevelt and the statists surrounding him knew that they needed to do much more than simply enact a legal-tender law, as Lincoln had done. They knew they had to smash the concept of gold as money from the consciousness of the American people. It was absolutely necessary, they felt, that people totally forget that Americans once used gold coins as their money as normally and naturally as people today use dollar bills. It would, of course, take a few generations but gradually people would forget the past and just accept the new order of things.

Consequences of debasement

And so it has been. Decade after decade, inflationary debasement was accompanied by periods of panicky constraints on money growth, bringing about the traditional boom-bust cycle. Over time, the primary engine of the monetary debasement became the Federal Reserve, one of the most powerful government agencies in history, an agency whose supposed mission, ironically, had been to stabilize America's monetary system.

In fact, the most terrible irony is that it was the Federal Reserve itself whose policies had brought about the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression, notwithstanding Roosevelt's pronouncement that it was all the fault of free enterprise, speculation, and greed. After decades during which public schools and state-supported colleges and universities had deceived students as to the cause of Great Depression, one of most remarkable admissions in U.S. history was made by Bernard Bernanke, the Federal Reserve official who would go on to become its chairman. At a dinner in 2002 in honor of Milton Friedman, who, along with Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and the Austrian school, had long pointed out that the Federal Reserve was the culprit behind the Great Depression, Bernanke stated,

Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve System. I would like to say to Milton and Anna [schwartz]: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right: we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again.

Americans who are 55 or older remember that as children they used dimes, quarters, and half-dollars made of silver, and nickels made of nickel. As such coins gradually disappeared from circulation, Americans just scratched it off to "progress" or "the natural order of things." The last thing Americans wanted to do was accuse their government of some sort of monetary wrongdoing. After all, as the federal government began playing an ever-increasing paternalistic role in people's lives with its welfare state and interventionist system, Americans placed ever-increasing faith in their government

But the reason that those coins disappeared from circulation is the same reason that gold coins were starting to disappear from circulation when Roosevelt took office. The federal government was printing such vast quantities of money, decade after decade, to finance its welfare-state operations that the value of the silver in dimes, quarters, and half-dollars began to exceed the face value of the coins. In other words, it was worth more to people to sell the silver to be melted down than it was to use the silver coins to make purchases at the face value of the coins.

Over the years, the federal government prosecuted Americans caught owning gold, but none of those cases ever reached the Supreme Court. The cases that did reach the Supreme Court were ones that challenged Roosevelt's nullification of the gold clauses. Those four cases have become known as the Gold Clause Cases.

In 5-4 rulings, the Court ruled in favor of Roosevelt's actions and against the victims of his policies. The damages suffered by those victims were not small. While people were being paid for the gold they were sending to the federal government, they were being paid in depreciated paper money, for Roosevelt had increased the price of gold, and so had devalued the dollar by some 40 percent. The financial losses suffered by private lenders who had relied on gold clauses to protect them and by private holders of government-issued gold certificates were incalculable.

Not everyone rolled over. One of the finest expressions of opposition to Roosevelt's monetary horror, from a legal standpoint, appears in the dissenting opinion in the Gold Clause Cases. Writing for the group of justices who would become known in judicial history as the Four Horsemen, Justice James Clark McReynolds wrote,

Just men regard repudiation and spoliation of citizens by their sovereign with abhorrence; but we are asked to affirm that the Constitution has granted power to accomplish both. No definite delegation of such a power exists, and we cannot believe the far-seeing framers, who labored with hope of establishing justice and securing the blessings of liberty, intended that the expected government should have authority to annihilate its own obligations and destroy the very rights which they were endeavoring to protect. Not only is there no permission for such actions, they are inhibited. And no plenitude of words can conform them to our charter....

Under the challenged statutes, it is said the United States have realized profits amounting to $2,800,000,000.... But this assumes that gain may be generated by legislative fiat. To such counterfeit profits there would be no limit; with each new debasement of the dollar they would expand. Two billions might be ballooned indefinitely to twenty, thirty, or what you will.

Loss of reputation for honorable dealing will bring us unending humiliation; the impending legal and moral chaos is appalling.

Restoration of gold ownership

In 1974 -- 40 years after Roosevelt confiscated people's gold and made it illegal for Americans to own gold -- and three decades after the "emergency" of the Great Depression had ended, Congress made it legal for Americans to once again own gold. By this time, of course, the notion of gold as money had been wiped from the consciousness of most Americans. After decades of being taught economics in public schools and state-supported colleges, their understanding, at best, was that America once had a paper-money standard that was somehow linked to gold.

Over the past 30 years many Americans have rediscovered the value of owning gold, even if it isn't being used as official money in society. They discovered what people throughout history discovered -- that placing their savings in gold, rather than bills and notes, is more likely to protect the value of their savings, especially if the government intends to continue printing the necessary paper money to fund its ever-growing operations.

Today, there is increasing awareness of what the Federal Reserve has done to destroy what was once one of the soundest monetary systems in the world, one based on gold and silver coins. There are even calls, especially among young people, to abolish the Fed and restore sound money to the nation. More and more people are recognizing that a system of sound money is a necessary prerequisite to a free society.

Yet, there is now the specter of another monetary horror, one in which President Obama decides to mimic the actions of the president he so admires, Franklin Roosevelt. As Obama embarks on one of the biggest federal spending sprees in U.S. history, continued monetary debasement has become a certainty. The risk, of course, is that Obama will resort to the same method employed by Roosevelt and the Soviet communists. To replenish the coffers of the federal government in order to fund his ever-growing socialistic, interventionist, and imperial programs, Obama may well decide to re-confiscate people's gold in another massive assault on the freedom, private property, and economic well-being of the American people.

Copyright © 2009 Future of Freedom Foundation">>>

Introduction to a series of interviews at Campaign For Liberty website:

Here is the item at C4L site:

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/#27211

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