Real Change-Rejecting the Politics of Submission

[This is a further installment of the series Real Change. For the previous post in the series visit Real Change-Replacing the Federal Reserve. To read the whole series from the beginning click on "Real Change" under Topics in the sidebar.]

Though for the time being we still maintain the institutional semblance of constitutional self-government, the United States no longer has a political process consistent with its survival. This isn't a matter of structural features (two-party vs. multiparty, proportional vs. winner-take-all representation, regional vs. group representation and so forth.) Rather it has to do with what we understand to be the purpose of politics; the nature of citizenship in light of that purpose; and the means and methods most likely to produce actions consonant with good citizenship.

As things stand today, the only purpose of politics is to get elected. In order to get elected, you must get more votes than your opponents. The most efficient way to achieve this result is to find out what people want to see and hear, then fabricate and project an image that corresponds to their desire. The electoral process has become an information exchange between self-centered hedonists and self-promoting liars: people willing to expose their selfish desires choose from a menu of fictional satisfactions offered by candidates pursuing their own selfish ambitions. On Election Day the electorate selects the candidate whose fabricated image most effectively seduced their self-serving judgment.

Prior to Election Day the focus of the political process is on the candidates. The term politics is therefore used to refer mainly to the activities undertaken by and on behalf of those competing for political office. Besides the candidates themselves, the people involved in politics, are the pollsters and analysts of opinion who figure out what the people want to see and hear; the media consultants whose work is to produce and project an image of the candidate that corresponds to their preferences; and the money people who gather from every possible source the funds needed to pay and equip the rest. But there are obviously two other groups of people who actively participate in the process: those who control access to the media, and those who control access to the money. They have become the only electorate that really matters, the praetorian guard, as it were, whose choice ultimately determines which candidates shall be lifted up for the adulation or opprobrium of the selfish rabble. I say they are the only electorate because the people who determine the choices actually determine the choice. This paradigm of politics therefore effectively abandons the idea of government of by and for the people. Instead we have government over the people, manipulated by the media, who are owned by money powers that therefore control both the process and its results.

For our present purposes two things are especially noteworthy in this political paradigm. The first is the essentially passive, and ultimately superfluous, role of the people as a whole; the second is the concentration of political activity in the hands of a relatively small group of elite participants who in effect become the only real citizens. This paradigm represents the end of the democratic era in human affairs, and a return to the oligarchic rule (using those words to refer to government by the few, but with the usual implication of power in the hands of the wealthy) characteristic of societies before the institution of the American republic. As long as this oligarchic paradigm predominates, the American experiment is suspended. Once the paradigm has been consolidated, it will be over and done.

If this analysis of our present political process is accurate it means that as far as truly representative government is concerned American politics has become an imaginary exercise. Candidates for office have essentially been degraded into mere images. The final choice made by the people is also imaginary, since they select from alternatives predetermined by an exclusively elite process in which they play no active role. The aim of the imaginary process is to determine which representatives of the elite powers project an image more likely to mollify people, and make them less resistant to the will of those who in fact now exercise sovereign control. Though imaginary in its outward form and content, the process therefore aims at a very real advantage. It is less expensive (both in material and emotional terms) to control a people induced to vent its frustrations and ambitions in what amounts to a virtual reality. Such virtual politics adds the finishing touch to the welter of preoccupations and distractions offered by technological toys and sexual hedonism (keeping in mind, of course, that much of that is also virtually enacted, through internet pornography, and such vicarious satisfactions as following the antics of "stars" in the entertainment and information media.)

At the moment, this imaginary political process appears to serve the goal of establishing a system of global governance that will ultimately eliminate the need for the charade of representative institutions (or at least make it entirely optional.) From the oligarchic point of view, the advantage of such a global system lies in the concentration of sufficient power in the hands of a global elite to deter, co-opt or suppress opposition. This requires that a background network of globally minded elites becomes, in effect, the last remaining superpower, with no lesser power capable of standing alone against it. The American union has the wherewithal to be a lasting superpower, but on a national basis incompatible with the globalist principle of the New World Order. Therefore, the continued existence of the United States is an obstacle which must be removed by reducing the power and destroying the unity of the nation.

Whatever his rhetoric, the policies being pursued by Barack Obama are intended to achieve this deflation of the relative power and cohesion of the United States.

His critics have been quick to see the destructive implications of his agenda, especially in the economic realm. But few if any have seen, or at any rate been willing to articulate, the purposeful intention behind it. The two party system effectually dampens any inclination toward such candor, since it represents an imaginary (or virtual) opposition of elements with no more real difference between them than two heads on the same body, or two eyes in the same head. However different they look, they move together and in the same direction. Though Democrats pretend to care deeply about the welfare of the people, Democrat policies increase the power of controlling elites with little net benefit for the people at large. Though Republicans pretend to care deeply about the liberty and opportunity available to individuals, their policies tend to increase the freedom of controlling elites, with little net benefit for individual liberty on the whole. The telltale sign of the agenda common to both parties is their actual indifference or hostility to the effects of programs and policies on the characteristics that are the essential bases of the people's ability to think and act for themselves: self-discipline, self-sufficiency and self-government.

Self-discipline clearly depends on the formation and encouragement of certain moral characteristics. Self-sufficiency requires economic approaches that preserve and enhance opportunities for individual income and wealth creation. Self-government demands political processes that depend on, and respond to individual initiative in the development and mobilization of representative political networks. Clearly these three components of self-government are interdependent. Unless they control material resources that exceed the bare necessities of life, individuals are unlikely to show much political enterprise. Without a sense of their own worth, and the significance of their own abilities and actions, people are unlikely to see or take advantage of economic opportunity. Even when they do, without a sense of responsibility for the management of their impulses and passions, they are unlikely to focus on and sustain effective action long enough to produce results. Finally, without the self-confidence and courage that arises from the sense of personal responsibility, individuals become the passive subjects of the actions and intentions of others, incapable of the initiatives required 0f true citizens.

In their different ways, both the Democrat and Republican parties advance policies that promote mentalities and ways of life that directly attack or persistently erode one or another of these components of republican citizenship. The Democrats consistently champion undisciplined sexual lust. The Republicans routinely cater to the lust for money and material goods. Both alike agree to serve as masks for the unbridled lust for power. In the more general sense of the term, therefore, lust is the whole purpose of the political system they comprise. It represents the implementation of an Hobbesian vision of human nature as an endless effort to satisfy unquenchable desire, a tyranny of domineering passions, in which the appearance of choice simply registers the prevalent passion of the moment. But Thomas Hobbes reasoned logically to the conclusion that absolute despotism is the political system that corresponds to this vision. He would not be at all surprised to see that both major Parties to the politics of lust tacitly agree on a path that leads humanity under the yoke of global tyranny.

The American republic was not founded upon a simply Hobbesian concept of human nature. The American founders acted on an understanding (profoundly influenced by Christian and Biblical precepts) that saw natural right, rather than passion, as the ruler or measuring rod of choice. This different conception of nature leads to a different conception of choice. Rather than arising from the welter of competing passions, it reflects the possibility of deliberation, the process whereby one consciously chooses which passions shall be constrained, and to what degree. But such deliberation assumes a standpoint not subject to passionate forces, an eye in the storm of passion, free in some sense from its prevailing winds because it represents the point of origin from which passion itself derives substance, force and meaning. In the understanding articulated in the American Declaration of Independence, this is the standpoint of the Creator. The concept of right arising from the authority of the Creator assumes that this original position represents more than the sheer force of real existence. It represents an intention, an inwardly formed purpose that foresees, and at every moment constitutes, the destination of existing things. The assertion of right represents the presence of this intention in action, along with just the force needed to carry it out. From this juxtaposition of intention and forcefulness arises a concept of justice that supplies the reason for constraining and ordering the passions, a reason that looks beyond the prevalent disposition of passion itself.

It may accurately be said that the people most responsible for the American founding were obsessed with justice. They saw it as the overriding purpose of political life, to which the freeways of passion would ultimately be forced to submit. But if, by deliberation, people recognize and submit to its requirements, their freedom of choice becomes the basis for government, rather than forced submission. The extent and degree of their self-determination with respect to the requirements of justice establishes the extent of individual freedom in their society. In this respect, the more good individuals are willing to do of their own volition, the less the force of government will be called upon to do for them. Conversely, the less justice they reflect in their individual choices, the more the force of government will be called upon to dictate and impose upon their actions. Freedom depends on individual responsibility.

The politics of lust (using the term in its general sense, as we have in this essay) represents the complete abandonment of this responsibility. Because we have accepted it, our freedom is being overthrown. If we wish to save and restore our freedom, we must become, like America's founders, partisans of justice; people willing to answer in word and deed for the right use of freedom in our own lives and the life of our nation. But we cannot restore the concern for right if we abandon the standpoint from which the concept of right arises: the standpoint of the Creator and of respect for the authority implied by His intention for our lives. This is the true fault line along which shall be determined the fate of American liberty. On one side move the forces that reject the premise of the Creator's will. On the other those firmly committed to its defense. And in between, so many who shift to and fro between the false promises of unbridled passion and the common sense of justice that inclines them toward the path of responsibility and true liberty. Though the partisans of justice cannot pander to the falsehoods, we can do our best to make clear the solid happiness that can only be achieved through liberty. This is the practical challenge that our derelict elites have brushed aside, but which those who are loyal to liberty must be ready to address. To see their work in progress, visit AIPnews.com. Then look for my further description of the real change they are working for in the next installment of this series, Real Change- Restoring the Politics of Justice.

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Real Change-Replacing the Federal Reserve

Our thinking about the fair tax approach has reminded us of the fact that in our society money is a commodity generally distributed throughout the land, not in the first instance pooled in the hands of a few. The contrary impression has been created by the centralized banking system, which along with the income tax obscures the simple fact that goods and services (and therefore the money that represents their value) start life as widely distributed as the individuals who actually produce and perform them. The first economic question therefore is not about the distribution of money (the false pretense of socialist and communist thinking) but about the mechanism for gathering it. Just as the income tax gathers money for government without regard to the choice of the people making it, the centralized banking system absorbs money from people that is then used (circulated in channels) without regard for choices they should make based on the actual circumstances of their lives. By disconnecting bankers' choices from the real life conditions of the people whose money they employ, the centralized banking system encourages the existence of the seemingly lucrative, but illusory assets whose corrupting weaknesses have caused its present crisis.

We're told that some banks and other financial institutions are too big to fail. But like a mass of cells growing in a way that burdens and harms the body (we call it a cancer), the question is, what allows the existence of something that continues to grow without regard for any contribution it makes to the real health and strength of the body (in this case the community or society in which it exists)? When the body must tax itself to exhaustion to maintain a tumor, we don't generally rush to rescue the tumor, or re-enforce the processes that encourage its growth. No, we seek to stop and reverse its growth, or by other means to kill it or remove it from the body. Even when dealing with the body's cancers we are finding that the real answer lies in re-discovering and strengthening the healthy functions and processes that respect the organic nature of the whole, rather than, at its expense, nourishing unproductive cancerous growths.

What we need is a fair banking system that, like the fair tax system, would make the flow of money more dependent on the choices of the individuals (and private associations) that produce its value in the first place. Step by step, let's try to envisage it. Private individuals make money. At first they may store it away about their persons, or in their homes, but experience teaches them that as the amount increases their individual ability to ward off thieves can't keep pace with the incentive others have to steal it away. Let's suppose that a family with a very large store of money has built a safe house for it. The neighbors approach them, asking whether, on some terms of mutual advantage and trust they could deposit their money in the safe house. They agree to share the burden of defending it (the cost of its security). Naturally, just as the store of money attracts interest from people willing to steal it, it attracts interest from others who, averse to stealing, are willing to ask for a loan. The owners of the store of money see the advantage of making such loans, on terms that help to defray the cost of its security, and eventually generate a profit. They agree to share in the profits in some way commensurate with the contribution each makes to the store. They also agree to let someone (perhaps the original owner of the safe house) make decisions about the amount and terms of lending, provided always that they make sure enough is available to meet the needs of the depositors as they arise.

Clearly, everyone involved can benefit from these arrangements, so long as sufficient care is taken to keep the lending practice strictly in line with the needs and interests of the depositors. If for example the depositors are farmers, the person in charge of the lending will make sure more reserves are on hand before planting season, when withdrawals will have to be made to buy seed, refurbish equipment and so forth; or at harvest time when more hands may be needed to bring in a particularly abundant yield. Of course those are also times when the demand for loans may rise. Therefore, loans have to be carefully prioritized to help the original depositors maintain their productive capacity, provided they're doing what's needed to make a good harvest more likely. The properly responsive local bank, tied to local needs and realities, has few opportunities to outgrow the health of the community in which it arises. By and large those temptations will be kept within bounds by due regard for the survival of the depositors whose productivity is the mainstay of its existence. Such a bank is like a healthy organ, interacting with the body whose health it reflects and helps to maintain.

A society whose financial life rests on a base composed of such institutions (independent local banks, sanely integrated with the communities they serve) has no special charm to avoid all calamities. Harvests will fail, lending decisions prove wrong, the occasional crooked professional bank schemers more dangerous than thieves in the night. But the impact of failures will be more localized, their effects more contained and transitory. This kind of bank failure was fairly common in nineteenth and early twentieth century America, before the creation of the Federal Reserve set up the conditions for a far more generalized and longer lasting form of failure.

I'm not saying that all more centralized financial institutions are intolerable. In fact, when the realities of life lead to the amassing of very large fortunes (as the discovery of large gold and silver deposits did in the U.S.) the community based banking model proves inadequate. Where one or a few individuals largely capitalize a bank (fill the store with their money), its practices will be driven by their desire for a good (and often a quick) return on their money. But there needs to be a sign marking the region occupied by such banks that says "enter at your own risk". Anyone who deals with them should have to live with that warning, including enterprises willing to depend on them for working capital. Moreover, this region should be hedged about in ways that prevent individuals and families from much involvement with them. People whose lives depend on their income (they live on a paycheck) need banks that keep an eye on conditions close to home. Properly understood, such individuals include business enterprises (including the affiliates of large, diversified corporations) located in a community and structuring a labor force that depends upon their operations. Such locally rooted enterprises should have to store their operating capital and reserves where they live, and get a return for it related to the health of their immediate environment.

In practice such a hedge might involve restricting certain banks to individual depositors above a specified deposit threshold, or to dealings with the corporate entities that float above and tie together locally based outlets and production units. The money available for such investments would be limited to the net profits (after seasonally adjusted local reserves are met) sent on to such corporate entities in return for the services they provide to their affiliates.

Instead of setting conditions that allow banks (or other enterprises) that are too big to fail, we need to structure the system purposefully so that failure is the natural consequence of bad decisions and actions, but no failure is catastrophic for people not directly involved with the institutions whose management decisions occasioned it. We need to structure it so that local communities benefit from the healthy result of their own efforts, rather than seeing those results siphoned off for uses that have little or no regard for their needs and interests. We need to structure it so that the folks who live at the grassroots deal with banks that rise or fall on the strength of the community, and which therefore have a vital interest in making responsible decisions that contribute to its strength. Finally we need to structure it so that the investments available to people who live on their income mainly take the form of equity in the enterprises they themselves depend on, so that they not only profit from their work but from the overall success of the business that makes use of it.

As we consider this kind of banking structure, one question looms: what about the large deposits and flows of money the national government requires to perform its functions. Well, if we think about the reasons people have for putting their money in the bank, instead of keeping it at home, none of those reasons apply to government. The Federal government has the wherewithal to safeguard and manage its own money. It also has a functional imperative (service to the people and national community as a whole) different than the more narrow, profit-oriented perspective of the private banking system. Government money should therefore be placed in a government bank, staffed and run like any other government department or agency. The hybrid monstrosity that is the Federal Reserve (a private system capitalized with public money) is a contradiction in terms that invites the kind of crack-up we're currently witnessing.

The problem of course is that the indebtedness of the Federal government conjures the hybrid monster into existence. At the end of the day, the government ends up being like the house many people live in- because you owe more than you own, the bank owns the house, not you. Unless you can service what you owe, the bank owns the house, not you. This means that unless the American people have a government that lives on the revenues generated by their activities, they don't' own the government, its creditors do. In generations past political leaders who cared about preserving liberty (that is, government of, by and for the people) hated and feared large government indebtedness. Politicians today pretend that they can spend without regard for the indebtedness which results. They seem content to lead the American people into permanent debt slavery, effectively overthrowing the form of government based upon their freedom. Having quietly turned control over to creditors (including potentially hostile foreign governments) they are no longer free to act as representatives of the people.

By abolishing the income tax, we give people back control of the money they make. By restoring a locally based banking system, we give communities back control of the money the people of those communities supply. By establishing a properly public bank for public monies, we restore to the American people institutional control of and responsibility for monies intended for public use. But we will not restore the real liberty all these steps envisage until we discard the notion that the national government must be the servant of all our aspirations. Instead we must limit its activities to those functions directly related to its true purpose. According to our Constitution, the U.S. government's job is to secure (make safe) the blessings of liberty. It cannot produce them. That's our work. The Federal government is somewhat like the security team at a factory. The fact that its activities are vital to the operation of every shop in the factory doesn't mean that the head of security should make decisions best left to the people responsible for those shops. Even where centralization makes sense, it isn't sensible to make the national government the focus of centralization except in those areas (for example, border security, military preparedness, and international relations) where the Federal government rightly claims responsibility based on the provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

I conclude therefore that the current economic crisis requires these bold steps:

1. Abolish the income tax and replace it with a fair tax system such as that proposed in the Linder bill;
   
2. Abolish the Federal Reserve and replace it with a) a locally rooted banking system for people who live off their wage or salary income and for locally rooted enterprises b) a private, at your own risk banking system for rootless corporate investors and individual depositors who live off their wealth, not their income; c) a U.S. government bank for managing the government's money.
   
3. Thoroughly restructure the Federal government's activities so as to eliminate every activity, department and agency not strictly related to its specifically mandated Constitutional responsibilities. We must end, not extend the failed socialist experiments of the last century.

This is not a prescription for populist hand-outs and other lying policy delusions. It implies a return to individual, family and local responsibility. It implies restoration of the central role of private business, and religious and charitable associations. It implies an end to the pretense that government makes money, or progress or prosperity. It implies, in a word, a return to liberty- with all the hard work, risks and challenges liberty entails. But we all know that in many ways the present trends of our political and social life undermine the disposition and virtues people must have to accept these challenges. Therefore, economic restoration cannot occur unless our political system and moral identity are restored at the same time. Otherwise, real change will not come about, and would not be sustainable if it did. We must discard the political system that has failed and betrayed our liberty. We must reclaim the moral character that can produce energy and courage enough for the new politics that must replace it. No more manipulative, so-called Republicans. No more insidiously delusional Democrats. Just Americans striving as best we can to be decent human beings. Strong enough to be independent. Wise enough to stand united. Good enough to be free.
Obviously, we've got a lot more to think through. Stay with me.

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Abolish the Income Tax (Cont'd)

Contrary to the crypto-terrorist rhetoric of creative destruction, there's more to our lives than survival. According to our Constitution, security includes the blessings of liberty. This doesn't mean that we survive and then we enjoy freedom. It means that we survive in freedom, making right use of freedom, with freedom as the path and means to achieving favorable results. Given the dire warnings of impending economic doom being used to herd us toward the communist slaughter pens, this means remembering that freedom isn't our reward for being co-operative sheeple. It's a vehicle that conveys the strength we need to keep ourselves from being shorn, dressed and stewed like sheep.

Like any other conveyance, freedom can't run on empty. The first order of business is to keep it fueled. This takes us back to where we started: the Lindsey Bill to abolish the Federal income tax. At a stroke, abolition assures that freedom runs with a full tank of gas. For people who think the U.S. government has money of its own, this is hard to understand, so we'll take it a step a time. The U.S. government's money comes mainly from taxation. Before it's taxed away, all the money is in the hands of the people, either as individuals or in their private associations (business enterprises, for example.) The Lindsey Bill simply abolishes the system that gives the U.S. government the prerogative to reach into people's pockets and claim as much money as it pleases before they have a chance to decide anything about it.

The Federal government serves some legitimate purposes. No one denies that it needs resources sufficient for those purposes. But instead of amassing them through a supposedly legalized guild of professional pick pockets (the IRS as presently constituted), the fair tax approach first lets people decide for themselves what to do with their money. They may spend it all now (present consumption) or set some aside to serve future needs and purposes (savings). The present income tax system effectively taxes both activities (since the dollars it preemptively claims could be used for either purpose.) The fair tax approach levies taxes only on what people decide to spend.

Before we let the money grabbers distract us with their usual chatter about tax rates, let's focus on the key difference between the fair tax and the income tax. Under the income tax the government decides when and how much of your money it may claim. Under the fair tax, you make that decision. As all politicians and bureaucrats know, decision making is power, especially when it directly controls the activity that results. One person has a dollar. Another person wants to use it. If the person who has it can simply decide to keep it, that person controls the dollar's power. If the other person can at will reach out and use it for some other purpose, that other person controls the dollar's power. The fair tax returns control to the people who have first possession of the dollar. It's that simple.

But still not simple enough for the folks who get power from the present arrangement. Okay, let's try again. I walk into the barber shop with twenty dollars in my pocket. The barber takes twelve dollars and a three dollar tip out of my pocket the moment I cross the threshold. That's not just before I get the hair cut, it's before I finally decide that I want to get it then and there. I'm in the shop, so I pay. That's the income tax. Or alternatively, I walk into the store, look at the cuts they offer, take stock of how the customers look, maybe chat with a couple of them. Then I decide whether to spend some of my money on the haircut. No money changes hands until I pay for what I've decided to get. That's the fair tax.

Of course, we all live as it were on premises serviced by the Federal government in some way. Therefore, whatever we decide to buy, the U.S. government may claim a bit in payment for its services. Under the income tax that claim is preemptive. Under the fair tax, it becomes effective only when we decide to consume some of the goods (understood here to include good service) the U.S. government's services help us to preserve. By necessity, the government can be assured some revenue (we have to purchase food, for example.) In a society as diversely productive as ours, however, we have the luxury of lightening the load borne by necessity (to ease the path out of poverty, for example), spreading it to products and services that pleasure, adorn and entertain our lives.

In any case, we fill the government's resource requirements using a method of taxation that relies on the choices people make for themselves, rather than the choices political bosses and bureaucratic commissars make for them. This approach gives people the greatest possible opportunity to use the money they make to build a little something for themselves and their loved ones. Good decisions, both about their productive lives (what they do, how hard they work, how well they develop and target their talents and abilities) and about their savings and consumption, will allow them to survive, to live well, and/or to amass wealth, depending on priorities they determine (not bureaucrats and politicians.)

Well, almost. As we were reminded last fall, there remains the critical question of what happens to the money people decide to save. Government isn't the only threat to the control people have over what happens to their money. A banking/credit system divorced from their needs and circumstances can effectively erode and even destroy its potential, profiting others while they stand by helplessly. This thought brings us to the next step on the path of real change for the better: replacing our ill conceived and failing financial institutions. Watch this space.

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Real Change Step One: Abolish the Income Tax

I saw today that Rep. John Linder (R, GA-7) and 44 Republican co-sponsors have introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to abolish the income tax and replace it with an implementation of the fair tax proposal. As they say, this represents real, positive change. It is a critical element of the agenda that could avert the economic collapse made imminent by our country's long and damaging flirtation with socialism. Unfortunately, with Obama occupying the White House and the Democrats in control of Congress, what we're likely to get at the moment is just the opposite: a short engagement followed by a shotgun wedding that forces America into a Soviet-style marriage of inconvenience, then prolonged depression and a psychotic break.

Obama's Soviet-style communist state is a Tyrannosaurus Rex on parade in the Jurassic Park of dangerous political excursions. For a moment it's exciting to get close-up and touchy-feely with something so old that we thought of as extinct. Then we remember that at feeding time, we're on the menu. Okay! That's no fun. But if the prospect means we're ready to end the vacation and get on with real life, what's to do? Well, it would be nice to make sure we get out of the Park alive. For this, just like the characters in the movie, we need to apply the know-how that made our little excursion possible. We need to remember our home address (that may strike you as a gimme, but don't forget how easily the mind goes blank during a life and death encounter with a resurrected monstrosity.) Once we retrieve the address, we need to remember how to get there. Then, we head for home. We open the place up, air out all the rooms and get back to being ourselves, that is, the first and greatest free people in human history. Now, being ourselves is hard work, but doing it well has been a source of great satisfaction in our lives. Smart people take vacations mainly to remind themselves of that. Unfortunately some people voted absentee in the last election, while their brains were still on vacation. Hence, the Obamasaurus hex.

There's been a noticeable spike in hate mail from the Obama worshippers since I called his communist agenda by its right name. I've also gotten a lot of encouragement and thanks from Americans who want to preserve liberty in this country, and the prosperity that goes with it. Typical is this brief comment from someone reacting to a WND.com story on my remarks: "I read your WND article, and I agree with you regarding stopping this mess, my question is what do you propose for a solution to stopping this? Thanks for all you do, and I think we need to start to pull together and get things turned around in a hurry."

In one remark, I see what I love and admire about Americans, but also what I find so frustrating. When we see a problem, immediately we ask the question- "What's the solution?" Wallowing in the mess is thankfully not the disposition of real Americans. On the other hand, we are, quite frankly, an impatient bunch anxious to get to the action in a hurry. Because of the first trait, we want a solution badly. Because of the second, we'll grab at a bad solution. But for the latter impulse, Obama would not be resident in the White House. During the election, people would have stepped back from his empty rhetoric to ask hard questions about just what kind of change he is proposing. They would have examined it long and hard enough to see that it's not change at all- just the same ugly grab for power and control that has marred every socialist movement in the world, and produced the sort of results that toppled the Soviet Empire and that have taken other countries (like Zimbabwe, for example) from prosperity to starvation.

Anyway, African countries provide at least a bit of evidence for the simple truth that electing a leader with a black skin is no guarantee of progress. (No, really, I'm not kidding.) In fact, in Africa it has occasionally been the harbinger of personality cults, repression and economic ruin. (Okay, now I am kidding.) Racial preoccupations have deeply wounded the American psyche, but the guilt induced delusion that we're putting a little pathetic salve on those old wounds hardly warrants national suicide. We don't need a phony savior. What we need is a reminder that, with God's help, ordinary folks built this great land, with government from time to time as their instrument, not their master. Though the socialist minded tinkerers of the twentieth century concluded that industrialization and urbanization meant doom for the culture of liberty, the technological leaps of the last thirty years have produced just the tools needed to prove them wrong. Government of, by and for the people- based on self-confident individuals, the God-ordained family, and other private associations now has more potency for economic and political success than ever before in human history. One person with a good idea can literally reach out and offer their ingenuity to the world. Maybe that's why the forces of elite tyranny are so anxious to get a stranglehold on our economy and government. These days, people motivated by a common cause can form a national network to advance it overnight. The information needed to substantiate their thinking and inform their actions is at their fingertips. Remembering the old Latin motto, "Festina Lente", let's get busy.

So much for introductions: tomorrow, I'll go more fully into the three revolutionary changes we need to get America on the way back home, starting with the one the Linder bill seeks to implement: ABOLITION (of the income tax, that is.)

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