Liberty and the Federal Reserve

Since the days of our founding fathers, the American ideal of individual liberty has been constantly besieged by the appetite of politicians for more power. Secretly, those politicians have gained much of their growing strength through a central bank that has allowed them to manipulate the individual through his pocketbook.

The nineteen century, even more than in our present time, was a time in which libertarians stood against the oppressive forces of an advancing central government. However, in those days, unlike our own time, it was the Democratic Party that defended the individual from the state. The Democratic Party of Jefferson and Jackson was the true libertarian party of that time, while it was the pro-bank Republicans of Hamilton and Lincoln that consistently undermined our Constitution in an attempt to increase the “implied powers” of the government to intrude ever more upon our freedoms.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the roles of the two parties began changing. First, the Democratic Party gave up its losing cause for liberty. They joined the Republicans in the quest for a forceful government with a central bank, the only difference between them being the division of spoils among the party of political victory; the Republicans protecting incumbent business interests while the Democrats promising entitlements to the “little guy.”

Libertarianism in America finally began to regain a voice in American politics with the modern conservative movement under Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Although the Republicans have yet to prove themselves as the party of small government, libertarians can only hope that their cause is making it full circle from the Democratic Party of Thomas Jefferson to the “government is the problem” Republican Party of Ronald Reagan.

The mystery of how the statist (big government) cause went from the pro-business party to the pro-labor party can be easily explained if we follow the history of the dispute over our national banking cartel (presently called the Federal Reserve). From the beginning of the federal government’s growth as an institution to the current economic crisis, American political history has been secretly dominated by the quest for a national banking system that would have absolute control over the people’s monetary wealth. The so called “implied powers” that provides the government with potentially limitless authority was invented by Alexander Hamilton in his “Opinion on the Constitutionality of the Bank.” And, once that national bank system was created, banks and their political partners had the power to increase their power over the American people through fraud and deception and even cause depressions and credit meltdowns through their own incompetence.

Although our state-run schools have not included it in their curriculum, the most important theme in American history is the story of how the greedy forces from both the left and right have used the growing power of a central banking system to deprive the individual of his promised liberty. As further posts here will show, the libertarians’ fight for individual freedom must be largely directed at its natural enemy – the Federal Reserve banking cartel.

Reagan, both a Lion and a Fox

“..he [a ruler] should take as his models among the animals both the fox and lion, for the lion does not know how to avoid traps, and the fox is easily overpowered by wolves.”

Machiavelli, The Prince

Politics is where the visionary world of dreams, beliefs, and the love of humanity meet the realistic world of deals, calculated appearances, and brute military force. A true political leader needs to provide his people with a vision that can only come from a set of core beliefs and convictions, but, in order to make that vision a reality, he also needs to be skilled in expressing his vision to the world. Politics is no place for the pure idealist; a successful leader must use the weapons of political reality to turn his vision into true accomplishment.

The inspiring vision of human liberty stood atop the world by the end of the Reagan administration, even to the point where credible writers were speaking about its being the so-called “end of history,” that utopian point in time when the goal of man’s dialectic of political conflict would resolve itself into a final peaceful solution. Even Bill Clinton said that the time of big government was over. From those heady days of victory in the cold war, economic juggernauts at home, and socialist humiliation worldwide, history has turned Reagan’s party out of the White House and into an overwhelmed minority in congress. The American people have spoken and they have said that they want an avowed socialist for President and a legislature sympathetic to his ideology. History’s failure to end is now a reality as big government appears to be our immediate future.

What happened? The forces of liberty had lost a great leader, Reagan, and had cast their fates in with men who, while perhaps well-meaning and strong of heart, were unskilled in the art of political expression. While Reagan demonstrated the heart of a lion and the guile of a fox, both Bush Presidents were lions only. All three Presidents had the lion-like qualities that defeated foreign foes, but Reagan also had the ability to communicate to the American people the importance of remaining independent and self-determining citizens.

The press hated Reagan because, unlike them, he did not find wisdom in the enslaving policies of Stalin, Zedong, and Che Guevara, but Reagan’s skill at communicating the truth kept him popular throughout their propagandizing attacks. They hated the Bush family for the same reason (socialism is, after all, just the “institutionalizing of envy”), but the Bush family did not have the communication skills that Reagan had. The attacks on the Bush family stuck like Velcro where they had slid off Reagan like Teflon. Only the fox outwits the ensnaring traps of the predator.

The primary factor that liberty has going for it is that it is the truth. Socialism fails wherever it is tried. In the final analysis, the only systems that work are the ones that give their people the liberty to find their own happiness. But if liberty is to prevail, it will need a leader who not only has the heart of a lion, but the clever fox’s ability to expose the traps of deceit.