By Jacob van Flossen
Novel epitomizes the spirit & understanding of this web site: What happens as Federal entitlements continue to explode! Confusion, intrigue, suspense & violence, illustrate social & psychological dynamics that led to the Obama Revolution--changes, which threaten the continued existence of America.
Before Obama, Americans were subjected to a Century long propaganda barrage, influenced by Marxist & Jacobin values. Answering this attack is the purpose of this web site. In the dynamic interaction of the novel, you will find the most compelling argument. Carefully plotted, Return Of The Gods combines graphic realism, historic perspective, chivalric romance & numerous subplots, to directly challenge the wisdom of what has passed for political analysis during the past sixty years. The scene is America--with the mainstream media in the throes of "politically correct" mythology--as the Welfare State breaks down under the weight of entitlements, and chaos & revolution appear inevitable.
In the midst of a Kiplingesque day of reckoning--theme & title taken from the Kipling poem "The Gods of the Copybook Headings," who return "with terror & slaughter" whenever a people follow the false Gods of the Market too far down the path of wishful thinking--normal men & women pursue survival, love & romance; while conspirators on both the Left & Right maneuver for advantage.
Combining ideological conflict with a story of elemental passion, the author puts both politics & passion into a perspective seldom, if ever, found in contemporary literature. In projecting challenges to traditional values, through well drawn & appealing characters, the author seeks a sense of the timeless quality of the human drama.
Tired of an intrusive culture, which treats Government as the ultimate solution to human failure while denying each of us, tradition & privacy? You will love RETURN OF THE GODS!
More important: It will suggest a wealth of ways to fight back!
Patten Press
ISBN: 0-9612974-2-5
$24.95, plus shipping. Call 1-800-247-6553. Trade Discounts available via
www.atlasbooks.com, or at 1-888-822-6657.
Read First Chapter or order>>>>
In recent weeks, there has been some discussion over how to handle the soaring public debt of the United States; how that debt--its extent & the method by which it is managed--affects the credit worthiness of the United States & the likelihood of default on that debt; finally, the effect of such phenomena on the future economic well being of the people of the United States. There was also a hue & cry, when a popular financial rating agency issued a minor downgrade of the quality of that debt.
In this essay, we will focus on the question of debt default, debt ratings or evaluations & Constitutional, philosophic & moral issues involved with such. We will also suggest that the Standard & Poor evaluation of present Federal debt offerings remains absurdly high; that the recent downgrade was both late & inadequate, continuing a fantasy that misleads savers & investors, while accommodating demagogues & scoundrels.
While we cite the most relevant provisions of the United States Constitution, the whole document should be studied in connection with this discussion--particularly the full context in Article I, Sections 8, 9 & 10, from which the following passages are taken. Understanding context is always essential to perceptions required to rebut common misconceptions, promoted in political circles & circulated in the mass media. (Note the Constitution in the linked articles, that follow.)
The power to borrow money on the credit of the United States is specifically set forth in the second paragraph of Article I, Sec. 8. The fourth & fifth paragraphs of the same section read:
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
The functional linkage of money with weights & other measures was no accident. Clearly the context of those short paragraphs proves a desire that money have a fixed value, standardized as other measures used in commerce; a specific value that the Government is supposed to protect.
The fourth paragraph of Article I, Sec. 9, provides:
No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
While the Sixteenth Amendment now permits tax on incomes, proportioned to income not census, it does not alter the fundamental thrust of the Constitution against punitive policies that penalize some people for the benefit of other people.
The first paragraph of Article I, Sec. 10, provides in part:
No State shall . . . coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any . . . ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts . . .
Clearly, the Founders intended to prevent any State from undermining the monetary standard, or impairing the obligations of contracts--the bargains that a free people make with one another.
Under this precisely crafted, even handed, approach to fiscal & monetary responsibility, the Founders' posterity--as well as those who joined them in the days when we were less harshly governed, less crowded & less dependent upon the leave of politicians & bureaucrats to follow our individual lights;--all prospered beyond the prior expectation of any of the constituent human stocks, represented here, in their lands of origin. The Founders' system worked. We have not done so well, since we turned from that clear vision to the quackery of Keynesians, who have altered our measures--the monetary standard--taking much of the predictability out of economic decisions.
The subject is debt default. Let us define it! Surely, when one person loans another money; or sells goods or services for a future promise to pay; or buys the debt obligations of a government, public agency or private obligor, there is (or certainly was, before Keynesian manipulation became acceptable) a reasonable assumption upon the part of one extending credit, that he or she will receive back equivalent value for the value extended. Anything less, most clearly, impairs the obligation of a contract. Have holders of debt, denominated in a sum certain in U. S. Dollars, been receiving back equivalent value for their extensions of credit since the 1930s? Perhaps during very brief, deflationary periods. But what has been the norm?
Since 1933, we have repeatedly defaulted on our debts in real economic terms. We may pay a "dollar" for a dollar owed, but that dollar has been often devalued--first abruptly by FDR from 1/20.67 to an ounce of gold, to 1/35 ounce of gold; and then, by fits & starts, after Nixon was forced to abandon the gold exchange standard in 1971, to the Bernanke/Obama dollar, now worth less than 1/1750 to an ounce of gold--an over 98% decline.
In earlier looks at money & gold (below), we noted a decline in dollar value, since 1930 &/or 1933, at compound rates in excess of four or five percent--certainly destructive. But except for the Roosevelt devaluation from a gold dollar at 1/20.67 to the ounce, to a gold/exchange dollar at 1/35 to the ounce, we did at least maintain a partial gold standard until 1971--providing some protection to debt holders during that period. Now, if instead, we compare the early 1971 dollar to the present Bernanke/Obama dollar, we have a 98% devaluation over just forty years. That works out to a loss compounding at better than 9% per year--a rate of default, catastrophic to anyone trusting in his Government to do a job it was created to do.
Does this not raise both profound moral & economic issues?
The moral issue, here, is more serious even than the economic, which we have already characterized as catastrophic. The United States are supposed to be governed under a Federal Constitution, established by free citizens. Yet present Government policy--and the Federal Reserve's Monetary powers are controlled by the Federal Government, even though the Federal Reserve actually belongs to the member banks;--Government policy has deliberately placed an additional burden on all who have extended credit, even those investing in a forlorn hope to provide steady income for their widows & orphans. This conscious undermining of the value of savings & investment, by cheapening the measure, the monetary standard, is absolutely indefensible as a moral proposition. America's savers, investors, her producing sons & daughters, have a right to the fruits of their labor & ingenuity. Plundering that expectation, in this manner, is the moral & legal equivalent to appropriating their labor against their will--effective theft & involuntary servitude.
This would be true, even if the theft were only a small percentage of reasonably expected value. But as we have shown, the rate of value confiscation has been cataclysmic. No one can justify this under a Constitution, ordained & established to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" (Preamble)!
Let no utilitarian collectivist (no Jacobin, Marxist, Bolshevik, Fabian or Nazi demagogue) suggest that there is actually true economic benefit to America--other than to politicians & bureaucrats & a bought following--in creating this enormous uncertainty as to the true value of all contracts, all bargains & economic commitments. Anyone with a modicum of common sense will see in an instant how that uncertainty must hamper the quick decision making that was once the essence of a free market; the ability to adjust rapidly to ever changing conditions; the very qualities, essential to actually deal with such changing conditions as lead to the imbalances that stifle constructive progress.
The monetary quacks are as detrimental in a strict material sense as in that moral, ethical, one. We will continue to suffer them, only to our imminent demise as a significant factor in the annals of human history.
William Flax
Conservative Debate Handbook>>
Introduction
Chapter One---A Simplified Overview of the Constitution
Chapter Two--The Right To Keep & Bear Arms
Chapter Three--Leftist Word Games & Religious Freedom
Chapter Four--James A. Reed of Missouri's Summary Of League Of Nations Debate
Chapter Five--The Rape Of Tolerance (How The Left Keeps Indians and Negroes Dependent)
Chapter Six--James A. Reed Address on the "Voice Of The World"--Case Against Disarmament
Chapter Seven--The Lies Of Socialism
Chapter Eight--The Feminist War On Love & Reason
Chapter Nine--The Moral Bases Of A Political Society
Chapter Ten--Universal Suffrage: Threat To Liberty, No Guarantee of Virtue
Chapter Eleven--The Battle Over Patterns Of Personal Identification
Chapter Twelve--The Political Spectrum
Chapter Thirteen--How To Recognize The Bigot In The Argument
Chapter Fourteen--Economics & Common Sense
Chapter Fifteen--Immigration & The American Future
Chapter Sixteen--Myths & Myth Makers In American "Higher" Education
Chapter Seventeen--Issues In The Debate Over Abortion
Chapter Eighteen--An American Foreign Policy
Chapter Nineteen--"Civil Rights" vs. A Free Society
Chapter Twenty--Medicare--Panacea Or Death Potion?
Chapter Twenty-One--The Semi-Autonomous Family
Chapter Twenty-Two--Perspective & Focus--A Closer Look
Chapter Twenty-Three--Notes On Method & Purpose
Chapter Twenty-Four--Senator James A. Reed Demonstrates Effective Use Of Irony & Satire
Chapter Twenty-Five--Democracy In The Third World, Destructive Egalitarian Myth
Chapter Twenty-Six--A "Progressive" Income Tax--Destructive Socialist Misnomer
Chapter Twenty-Seven--The Persuasive Use Of Images
Chapter Twenty-Eight--Public Schools: Issues & Reality; Education & Politics
Chapter Twenty-Nine--Cause & Effect, Avoiding Obvious Error
Chapter Last--Conservative Potpouri
Postscript--A Note Of Caution As To Other People's Motives
Kosovo:>>
American Foreign Policy At The Crossroads
"How The Welfare State Works!">>
Welfare State
To Restore Reverence Of The Fathers In Public Schools>>
George Washington Thanksgiving Project
More Relevant Now Than Ever>>
George Washington's Farewell Address
Classic Treatise On State & Federal Relations>>
John C. Calhoun's Fort Hill Address
Rudyard Kipling On Absurdity Of Modern "Liberalism">>
"The Gods Of The Copybook Headings"
Kipling's "An Imperial Rescript"
Absurdity of Feminism>>
Feminism Rebuked
Emotional Basis For Modern "Liberalism" (Social Democracy), Communism & National Socialism>>
Compulsion For Uniformity
How the Left undermines Jewish & Christian Faiths>>
Cult Of "The Holocaust"--Golden Calf Of The 20th Century
Edgar Allan Poe Rebukes British Utilitarians>>
Poe On Bentham & Mill
Edgar Allan Poe Essay On Art Of Creative Writing>>
The Philosophy Of Composition
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Constitution of the United States of America
Truth Based Logic Introduction
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