The Government That Cried “Wolf,”
Apr 22, 2015 12:11:10 GMT -5
Post by Michael Downing on Apr 22, 2015 12:11:10 GMT -5
h/t WRSA
straightlinelogic.com/2015/04/21/the-government-that-cried-wolf-by-robert-gore/
The Government That Cried “Wolf,” by Robert Gore
Through history, no institution has come close to government in its ability to inflict violence, terror, chaos, and death. War is almost exclusively the province of government. Every legal system rests in government the right to initiate force against its own citizens, to take money from them to fund itself, to promulgate laws, to decide what is just and what is not, and to dispense its justice and inflict punishment. Just an enumeration of those powers should leave one apprehensive; a survey of the historical record should leave one pale with fright.
Ten words transmuted a healthy American fear of government into an embrace: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear, per se, is not something to be afraid of. Conscientious parents try to inculcate all sorts of fears in their offspring: of poisonous creatures and plants, strangers offering rides, drugs and alcohol, unprotected sex, and the wrath of parents. Government, per se, is something to be afraid of, but Franklin Roosevelt’s alchemy turned the Founding Fathers’ dangerous master into the Superhero that would save the citizenry from the fearsome things it was not supposed to fear. Roosevelt’s famous admonition was a smokescreen; fear was his most powerful ally.
Perhaps the best explication of the causes of the Great Depression is Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression. The brand new Federal Reserve stoked an inflationary boom during the Roaring Twenties. Such booms and their attendant speculative manias, fed by artificial, central-bank bolstered credit, always go bust (the current “boom” will meet the same fate).
For the first time since June 1921, the money stopped increasing [in mid-1929], and remained virtually constant. The great boom of the 1920s was now over, and the Great Depression had begun. The country, however, did not really discover the change until the stock market finally crashed in October. (Rothbard)
Concludes...
The government has promised largess it can’t deliver. The mounting debt has slowed the economy to a crawl and promises future financial crises. Our intervention in the Middle East has notched up the chaos; thousands of refugees attempting to escape it have drowned in the Mediterranean, and each new “war” on a terrorist group creates more terrorists. Governmental surveillance has rendered a good part of the Bill of Rights a dead letter, but the security we traded for our liberty remains ever elusive. Roosevelt deliberately got it wrong: what we have to fear is a government peddling fear. Even in a flock of sheep there are smarter and dumber lambs, and the smarter ones have realized that their shepherd is a wolf. On present form, the 2016 election promises the flock a choice between escorts to the slaughterhouse. The defining issue of our times is whether enough get wise, and do something about it, before we’re all converted to lamb chops.
straightlinelogic.com/2015/04/21/the-government-that-cried-wolf-by-robert-gore/
The Government That Cried “Wolf,” by Robert Gore
Through history, no institution has come close to government in its ability to inflict violence, terror, chaos, and death. War is almost exclusively the province of government. Every legal system rests in government the right to initiate force against its own citizens, to take money from them to fund itself, to promulgate laws, to decide what is just and what is not, and to dispense its justice and inflict punishment. Just an enumeration of those powers should leave one apprehensive; a survey of the historical record should leave one pale with fright.
Ten words transmuted a healthy American fear of government into an embrace: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear, per se, is not something to be afraid of. Conscientious parents try to inculcate all sorts of fears in their offspring: of poisonous creatures and plants, strangers offering rides, drugs and alcohol, unprotected sex, and the wrath of parents. Government, per se, is something to be afraid of, but Franklin Roosevelt’s alchemy turned the Founding Fathers’ dangerous master into the Superhero that would save the citizenry from the fearsome things it was not supposed to fear. Roosevelt’s famous admonition was a smokescreen; fear was his most powerful ally.
Perhaps the best explication of the causes of the Great Depression is Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression. The brand new Federal Reserve stoked an inflationary boom during the Roaring Twenties. Such booms and their attendant speculative manias, fed by artificial, central-bank bolstered credit, always go bust (the current “boom” will meet the same fate).
For the first time since June 1921, the money stopped increasing [in mid-1929], and remained virtually constant. The great boom of the 1920s was now over, and the Great Depression had begun. The country, however, did not really discover the change until the stock market finally crashed in October. (Rothbard)
Concludes...
The government has promised largess it can’t deliver. The mounting debt has slowed the economy to a crawl and promises future financial crises. Our intervention in the Middle East has notched up the chaos; thousands of refugees attempting to escape it have drowned in the Mediterranean, and each new “war” on a terrorist group creates more terrorists. Governmental surveillance has rendered a good part of the Bill of Rights a dead letter, but the security we traded for our liberty remains ever elusive. Roosevelt deliberately got it wrong: what we have to fear is a government peddling fear. Even in a flock of sheep there are smarter and dumber lambs, and the smarter ones have realized that their shepherd is a wolf. On present form, the 2016 election promises the flock a choice between escorts to the slaughterhouse. The defining issue of our times is whether enough get wise, and do something about it, before we’re all converted to lamb chops.