You are hereEconomics, Ideology, Freedom and Illusion

Economics, Ideology, Freedom and Illusion

By john - Posted on 16 January 2010

-- Edmund Burke

It is at times like this that I realize how tenaciously a world of illusion clings to many of our people. The overwhelming majority of any group of people, at any given time, operates under a mixed set of beliefs, some of which can be objectively validated in a scientific sense, and some of which cannot. As far as I can tell, that's the way it has been throughout recorded history -- and that's the way it will be for the foreseeable future. In many cases, the aspects of a belief system that cannot be seen under a microscope are worthwhile in that they constitute important cultural memes that shouldn't be trifled with lightly. But in too many cases, belief systems include fictions that serve to the detriment of our people.

Because we, the members of European Americans United, aspire to lead our people to greater happiness, meaning and prosperity; we can't afford to allow ourselves to be mired in the world of illusion that encompasses most of our people. So, today, I'm going to dispel just a part of that.

Human beings are unlike any other creature in that they are able to deliberately delude themselves into believing ideas that aren't true. Sometimes this is relatively harmless, such as the suspension of disbelief required to read a novel. But other times it has resulted in travesties on a truly epic scale.



In Europe, for centuries, the belief in "the divine right of kings" was prevalent. It was supported, of course, by kings who had been so anointed and certainly was supported by religious authorities who gained power thereby. This belief put the entire aristocratic class at a higher level than that of the rest of society by divine decree, even when their behavior demonstrated their lack of fitness for such a role.




So we can see that beliefs that either had no rational basis whatsoever or had, at most, a tenuous scriptural basis, were used as a means to justify the behavior of the dominant castes of their day and maintain their grip on power. It is for this reason that, for centuries, crimes such as "heresy" -- which is nothing more than a challenge to dominant beliefs -- carried the penalty of death. Even in modern times, thought-crimes against a ruling oligarchy have been punished through ostracism, banishment to Siberia, jail and economic penalties.





A few centuries ago, the ruling classes used religion -- the will of God -- to provide this stamp of approval. By invoking religion, they were able to convert man-made institutions such as monarchy into divinely ordained laws of nature as immutable as gravity in the public mind. Today's ruling elites use perverted science and a form of abstracted religion from which all of the divine elements have been removed. Being a scientist myself, I find this practice objectionable, but it is most certainly real. The scientist of today is seen in much the same way as the priesthood was viewed 1000 years ago: as the ultimate arbiter of truth.


The scientific basis for the existence of race is every bit as rock-solid as the basis for the existence of gravity. It's a metaphysical reality. Yet a handful of scientists get written up in the newspaper once in a while making sage announcements that race doesn't even exist. This is an example of a man-made human idea -- that of "equality" -- being used as a tool by a handful of people to accomplish something that is to their benefit, but probably not to anyone else's.

Another trick they have pulled recently to lend credibility to their arguments is the idea of consensus. Without regard to what is actually going on regarding the phenomenon of global warming, and whether human activities are affecting it; the most recent argument I have heard supporting the need for curtailment of human activities is that a "consensus of scientists" agrees. Consensus simply indicates agreement, not truth, fact or right. No doubt a consensus of Taliban officials believes that women shouldn't be able to learn how to read. Certainly, a consensus of Nazi SS officers approved the notion of building concentration camps. Likewise, a consensus in the Kremlin thought starving millions of Ukrainians to death deliberately was a pretty swell idea.

I hate to burst their bubble, but consensus means nothing. Almost all human progress in culture, science, engineering and dozens of related fields has been made by individual human beings with the confidence and courage to go against consensus and reach their own conclusions. John Snow, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch all stood against the consensus of their times in progressively developing the germ theory of disease. While that theory, particularly Koch's last postulate, is by no means seamless even today, it was a quantum leap forward from the "spontaneous generation" theory it eventually supplanted and has saved untold millions of lives.


Thus, moral approbation and condemnation flow freely in attempts to force people to conform their views within a very narrow range. You can rest assured that moral condemnation doesn't flow freely against people whose views regarding metaphysical realities lie outside the mainstream; but such condemnation comes in a flood that can sweep away those who contradict the man-made ideas that artificially support an elite that isn't really very elite.

So, another way to tell the difference between ideas representing true metaphysical reality -- as opposed to man-made ideas that are put forth as being true even if they are not -- is that people who contradict the ideas of true metaphysical reality are not persecuted for it. Members of the Flat Earth Society may be scoffed at, but they aren't being tracked and spied upon by law enforcement agencies. People who dispute the germ theory of disease, believe that alien spacecraft are zipping across the skies or that the lost continent of Atlantis will soon rise again don't lose their jobs, have their addresses published in newspapers, or find themselves entrapped in elaborate investigations.




Unfortunately, ideologies are seldom actually intended to achieve their stated goals. You can see this with programs like the Great Society that have actually increased the problems they were supposed to solve, yet haven't been changed. The stated goals serve as a smokescreen for the real intentions -- intentions that always benefit some group of people to the detriment of other folks.

In their zealous pursuit of ideology, the ruling caste discards or re-interprets any aspect of history or reality that doesn't fit. And the True Believers never give up, even when the proof of the failure of their ideas is undeniable.




Thus, materialistic economic ideologies are always at war with truth.


Today, our primary topic is economics, so with no further delay, let's jump right in.


Economic systems are entirely man-made. They are certainly essential for societies of any size, but within the limits where they bump up against the walls of metaphysical reality, they are malleable. Moses didn't walk down from the mountain with the writings of Smith, Keynes and von Mises chiseled into tablets of stone, interest rates can't be found under a microscope, and the moral content of these systems only exists in comparison to non-economic realities. Therefore, before looking at labels and definitions, I want to look at certain non-economic realities.


Well-designed economic systems can do a pretty good job of serving our material needs, but are utterly incapable of fulfilling our non-material needs. Unfortunately, economic systems -- without regard to their provenance -- tend to define everything in terms comprehensible within those systems. Being strictly materialistic in nature, they cannot conceive of poor people who are also happy and fulfilled; and they either discount or attempt to supplant crucial human needs for a life filled with meaning. They try to replace transcendent meaning with material goods. In practice, this doesn't work out very well.

In the modern West, economics in the form of capitalism has gradually expanded to fill almost every aspect of our society and culture. In effect, capitalism has obtained -- through gradual encroachment -- the preeminent position that communism could only attain through violence. In such a world, we are seen as strictly economic beings, through measures of "consumer confidence" and "consumer spending" and we are administered through a system of "human resources."



But in a world where the family unit has been shaken to its core and increased "diversity" has led to social alienation, it has become harder for people to find meaning in their lives. This problem has become even more pronounced as definitions of right and wrong have become increasingly fluid in order to accommodate both the behavior of our ruling caste and the need to accept practically anything in the name of their idea of "diversity." So, while, in the past a person could be motivated by the desire to do good deeds, in the post-modern West there's no longer any real sense of what that even means. It is from this understanding that we will launch into an analysis of modern capitalism.

The basic definition of capitalism according to Merriam Webster is: "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision rather than by state control and by prices, production and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market."

There is nothing wrong with this definition at face value. After all, the right to property is premised upon our right to life. That is, our lives are finite, a fact that gives their every moment value. When we invest the precious and finite time of our lives in the act of creating or acquiring something, it is -- and by right ought to be -- our own. For anyone else to exercise control over our property, then, is to exercise control over the finite time of our lives. In other words: slavery.


Thus, in the United States, taxes for purposes of boondoggle projects and establishment of social controls ARE theft in that they exceed the powers given to Congress in the Constitution; whereas taxes to secure our borders and provide for the common defense are a simple obligation of citizenship. A simple comparison is that of employment. If I have performed the agreed-upon work, I have every right to my paycheck in full. It's my employer's obligation to pay me. But if I undertake a project outside of work without his or her prior agreement, if I turn around and seize my employer's assets in order to pay for that, I am stealing.

So the core idea underlying capitalism in the dictionary -- private property -- is supportable on the basis of metaphysical reality, even if we apply that idea only to the extent of the food we eat. Our property is an extension of the only thing we truly have -- our finite time on this planet -- and as such it is ours by right. It is when we go beyond the basic metaphysics of this equation into the man-made ideology surrounding capitalism that we run into a minefield of problems, contradictions, inconsistencies and injustices.


China, itself, is economically capitalist and growing its economy rapidly. Yet capitalism has only spurred technological innovation that has enabled the totalitarian regime in Beijing to keep an ever-more-watchful eye on the population. While Christians and advocates of democracy are persecuted -- often with the help of American corporations -- their successful economy is creating a new middle class. Material well-being derived from capitalism does not depend upon even the most basic freedoms that Americans take for granted.

This is a critical error made by many advocates of capitalism, even though well intentioned. Ayn Rand, one of capitalism's most zealous advocates, stated that "The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion." This is only partially true. After all, many people created weapons systems to destroy human life while under Soviet rule, and others continue to create a good many innovations under the authoritarians in China. Likewise, many people invest effort on behalf of corporations on projects about which they may have moral reservations, but do so under the threat of economic loss. In essence, the boss says: "Do this, or you're fired."



The important thing to see here is that the problems with creativity are not tied to a particular governmental or economic system, but rather to the degree of intellectual freedom that a person has. Capitalism doesn't guarantee such freedom, and lack of such freedom doesn't completely stifle productivity because while the profit motive is certainly a good motivator, so is the desire to avoid punishment. Clearly, capitalism, as an economic system, does not automatically guarantee freedom in the important ways in which our Founding Fathers codified it in the Bill of Rights. In many cases, in fact, it is used as a way to take away freedom.




According to Steve Berman, an attorney working to sue Purdue Pharma, "From the beginning, OxyContin's enormous profit potential drove an operating modus of lies and deceit." In a recent settlement, Purdue Pharma paid a $624M fine to the government for fraudulent marketing, and three company officials, Michael Friedman, Howard R. Udell, Dr. Paul D. Goldenheim paid $34.5M in fines. They received NO jail time because their case was skillfully negotiated by a person whose name you might recognize: Rudy Giuliani. (Remember this when he tells you he's tough on crime. He's only tough on certain types of crime, but not the sort of folks who murder by the hundreds.)

Only in corporate America can someone engage in a deliberate deception that kills hundreds of people, pay less than a quarter of the revenue derived from the crime in fines, and walk away. The violation of a person's life, or addicting them to drugs by lying to them, is a serious affront to freedom to say the least.


Even though I've just given a pretty horrible example of the results of divorcing freedom and responsibility, a lot of people still don't understand the concept because when they visualize it in their mind, they are thinking about a lone individual.

Instead of a lone individual, think instead of five people on a desert island. As long as each of their actions doesn't result in infringements or impositions on the others, they are all equally free. Likewise, if one of them steps out of line and starts stealing ... as long as the others are able to assign responsibility to the malefactor and seek justice, his behavior will be controlled in most cases so that freedom continues. But what if, due perhaps to a disparity of force, someone on the island has the ability to do whatever he wants to the others without fear of retribution? Well, HIS freedom is not diminished, but EVERYONE ELSE'S is. This is why an absolute prerequisite of a free society is the ability to identify and seek justice against people who violate the life, liberty or property of others.


The benefits of corporations, including their economies of scale and ability to leverage profit-driven initiative are extremely important. Without a doubt, up until the early 1970's capitalism helped to make the United States and its people the most prosperous the earth had ever seen. Used properly, the ideological tool of capitalism was a great boon. And, it must be acknowledged that a number of lawyerly notions make it nearly suicidal to engage in business without some form of limitation of liability. And, certainly, individual directors or employees of a corporation shouldn't be held accountable for its debts.



Most people understand that a business shouldn't lie, cheat, steal or attempt to deceive. And if every business were run this way, there would be few regulations. But now there are thousands and thousands of business regulations specifying everything from the accounting methods to be used to the height of desks. A long parade of dishonest businessmen have eliminated any pretext of freedom from business. Moreover, the regulations adopted in order to prevent the sorts of abuses perpetrated by the folks at Purdue Pharma raise the cost of engaging in those businesses through the stratosphere so that in practical terms it isn't possible for folks who don't already control enormous wealth to get into those businesses.

The cost of getting a single pharmaceutical through the FDA process nowadays is roughly $800M. Already-established businesses have the staff and regulatory experts to clear the governmental hurdles with no difficulty, but starting a new business of that nature is prohibitive because the bar is set so high. Thus, the so-called "free market" becomes severely compromised. It is no longer free.




Third, through property rights and one-sided contractual arrangements in which they hold all the cards, businesses gain the ability to abridge your rights in ways that government isn't even allowed. If you are planning to go hunting after work, most businesses disallow you from keeping a firearm in your trunk. Many businesses have random and pre-employment drug and even alcohol screenings. One prominent company, the folks that make Miracle Gro fertilizer, even fires employees who test positive for nicotine. A number of retailers make receiving discounts contingent upon your agreement to allow them to catalog everything you purchase -- for purposes we can't even yet imagine. Internet providers routinely adopt Terms of Service that explicitly restrict your freedom of speech even in areas where that speech is legal.

Advocates of the so-called "free market" say that if you don't like these policies, you can always work elsewhere, shop elsewhere or switch to a different ISP. But many policies are adopted across the board by thousands of employers, retailers and service providers at a time, effectively removing that choice.



Our founding fathers did not establish or seek to establish a particular economic philosophy. Rather, they sought -- explicitly -- liberty, justice and the general welfare. Thus it is no surprise that the term "capitalism" doesn't exist in our Constitution. In fact, the term wasn't even invented until 1854, long after our Founding Fathers had penned the Bill of Rights. In addition, the term "free market" wasn't invented until 1907. When people try to associate a particular economic system like capitalism or a form of competition, such as the free market, with the thought that went into our Constitution, they are engaged, at best, in rather dubious historical revisionism and, at worst, in outright deception.

Our Founding Fathers were very bright people. When they wrote the Constitution, they didn't write it to the tenets of a particular named philosophical system. Rather, they named the goals they were trying to achieve specifically so that their posterity -- that means us -- can stay focused on what is important. By guaranteeing us the common law right in the Constitution, they set us on the path of organic tradition rather than an abstract philosophy.

So let's take a look at what capitalism has become in post-modern America. Today it is utterly inseparable from a tandem utopian philosophy known as globalism or "free trade." And this is, partly but not exclusively, where capitalism has gone awry. But a big part of the problem is that -- like any tool -- capitalism takes on the character of those who are using it, and the character of capitalists has changed considerably in the past 150 years.



His speculation isn't idle. A Fast Company research article on the subject stated: "Such scandals as Enron and WorldCom aren't just aberrations; they represent what can happen when some basic currents in our business culture turn malignant. We're worshipful of top executives who seem charismatic, visionary, and tough. So long as they're lifting profits and stock prices, we're willing to overlook that they can also be callous, conning, manipulative, deceitful, verbally and psychologically abusive, remorseless, exploitative, self-delusional, irresponsible, and megalomaniacal. So we collude in the elevation of leaders who are sadly insensitive to hurting others and society at large. ... There's evidence that the business climate has become even more hospitable to psychopaths in recent years. In pioneering long-term studies of psychopaths in the workplace, ... Babiak [an industrial psychologist] found that ... organizational shake-ups created a welcoming environment for the corporate killer. 'The psychopath has no difficulty dealing with the consequences of rapid change; in fact, he or she thrives on it,... organizational chaos provides both the necessary stimulation for psychopathic thrill seeking and sufficient cover for psychopathic manipulation and abusive behavior.' And you can make a compelling case that the New Economy, with its rule-breaking and roller-coaster results, is just dandy for folks with psychopathic traits too."(3)

Psychologists Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon performed a study of 39 high-level executives and concluded: "The Personality Disorder profile of the senior business manager sample was found to contain significant elements of Personality Disorder, particularly those that have been referred to as the "emotional components" of Psychopathic Personality Disorder."(4)

Alan Deutschman put several big-name CEOs through the test for psychopathy anonymously, and ALL of them scored as moderately psychopathic. The average person scores 3 or 4 out of 40 on the test, whereas someone like the BTK killer scores around 30. Big-name CEOs score in the low 20s. Perhaps we shouldn't find this phenomenon so shocking, as a standard police textbook from 1990 states that "... modern American society makes heroes out of psychopaths. Further, the adaptability of this type of character structure makes the psychopath likely to emerge in increasing numbers. The modern world provides fertile ground for the rise of the psychopathic personality."(5) Some psychologists have even surmised that the psychopath is a new sort of human being that is being produced by the selective evolutionary pressures of the modern economic environment.(6)

The unfortunate phenomenon of our corporations being led by psychopaths has become so prevalent that an industrial psychologist, Paul Babiak, and psychopathy expert Robert Hare have written a book about the topic entitled "Snakes in Suits." According to Harvard psychologist Martha Stout, if western society continues in its pursuit of glorified self-interest and the rejection of the importance of community bonds: "evolutionarily speaking, it doesn't end well." (1)


Capitalism is particularly vulnerable to infiltration by people affected with this sort of personality disorder because it is the only economic system whose proponents extol the virtue of selfishness(7) and proclaims that "greed is good." By its very nature, capitalism in a free market is competitive -- that's the whole point. This competitive situation, in a perfect world, results in equilibrium pricing, each person employed at the highest level he or she can achieve, better products and a host of other benefits. But it is also a system that incentivizes dishonesty, corporate espionage, anything that reduces costs including off-shoring American jobs, etc. etc. etc.

These incentives come in the form of higher stock prices, impressive CEO compensation packages, and sometimes even the opportunity to cheat retirees out of their pensions. In practice, people are sometimes penalized simply for being more competent than their bosses, women who have the audacity to actually have children don't get promoted, fathers who opt to work only a 40 hour week don't get raises, and all the while Human Resource directors specialize in explaining to employees why they should be grateful that the increase in the employee share of their health insurance is bigger than the raise they are getting that doesn't keep pace with inflation.

In fact, over the past seven years, while CEOs of companies like Home Depot have walked away with tens of millions of dollars for dismal performance and Gillette's CEO collected over a hundred million dollars for selling out to Proctor and Gamble ... good-paying jobs with benefits have gone to China and India, and the real income of average Americans has actually been declining. In a nation where nearly everyone shared common values that kept even the extremely wealthy in line, capitalism did well for everyone. But in a world where common values are under assault, psychopathic behavior is rewarded and CEOs collect bonuses of hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for laying off thousands of workers; there are no barriers to the evil they can accomplish.

Capitalism is an idea, a tool, a servant. When it comes to government, George Washington said: "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." The same reasoning applies to capitalism. In order to derive its potential benefits, structures need to be put in place to tame its more deadly manifestations.

For much of our nation's history, such structures were provided by common blood and a common value system. But with those values perverted and replaced, capitalism needs to be restrained externally.

And speaking of its more deadly manifestations, none is more dangerous to this country and our people than the idea of free trade. Like most ideological zealots, Free trade advocates have a Utopian world-view in which all peoples of the world trade with each other to derive mutual benefit and as a result nobody goes to war. I'm not going to ask from which country these Utopians imported whatever they've been smoking, but they are wrong.

Prior to WWI, Britain and Germany were trading partners. It didn't help. Plenty of countries with substantial ties via trade have spilled each others' blood. One need not have a very long memory, either, to recall the spies that China placed in our most sensitive nuclear programs. Such behavior indicates hostility and malicious intent, rather than friendship.

A second problem with so-called free trade is that it puts consumption rather than production first. That is, free trade concentrates on whatever makes a product better and/or less expensive for the consumer. This works well ... temporarily for the consumer, and certainly allows fat cats to get even fatter; but ultimately it lowers wages and destroys the nation's self-sufficiency -- all so that only a few corporations can hold the wealth and power that had previously, and properly, belonged to nations.

Historically, nations have grown more wealthy rather than less when protective tariffs have been enacted. Great Britain had always had such tariffs until they were repealed in 1860. In 1860, Great Britain was the greatest economic power on earth. Within fifty tears, the United States who had kept her tariffs in place had an economy twice that of Great Britain, and Great Britain was well on her way to losing her empire. In fact, according to Pat Buchanan's research, "... every modern state that rose to preeminence and power -- Britain before 1846, the United States from 1860 to 1914, Germany from 1870 to 1914, Japan after WWII and China today -- was protectionist ... All four presidents on Mount Rushmore -- Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt -- were economic nationalists. All believed in tariffs to finance the government, spur industry, and give U.S. manufacturers an advantage over foreign manufacturers in the American market. And what is wrong with preferring your own? Does not every family?"(8)


Our environmental laws, safety regulations and amendments prohibiting slavery exist for very sound reasons; and moving manufacturing offshore where they can all be flouted with impunity doesn't do anyone any favors in the long run except the handful of people who pocket the difference.




But that's not all. Foreign countries are now establishing their own investment houses for the express purpose of buying up our economy. Steven Weisman noted in the New York Times: "For years, the Bush administration has shrugged off concerns about the trillions of dollars that the United States owes to China, Japan and oil-producing countries in the Middle East, arguing that these debts give no undue leverage to foreign governments. But at a time of global financial instability, the administration has started to worry that foreign governments are increasingly converting their dollar holdings into investment funds to acquire companies, real estate, banks and other assets in the United States and elsewhere. The fear is that these so-called sovereign wealth funds could destabilize markets or provoke a political backlash."(10) Mr. Weisman makes the source of this problem clear when he states: "The funds are a product of decades of the United States importing more than it exports."

Right now, these so-called "Sovereign Wealth Funds" control roughly $2.5 trillion in assets, but that will grow to about $17.5 trillion within ten years. And the potential consequences economically and politically aren't just theoretical. Weisman points out: "Probably the most political turbulence caused by a sovereign wealth fund occurred when Temasek Holdings, the state-owned investment branch of Singapore, purchased a stake in the company owned by the prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. The deal fed anti-government demonstrations that led to his ouster in a coup in 2006. The worry is that beyond the possibility of foreign funds pushing up prices on bonds, stocks and real estate, they might exercise inappropriate control politically or in the private sphere." Today, it is Thailand. Tomorrow, OUR political system that is already corrupted by special interests, will be doing the will of China as Chairman Mao's capitalist successors grab our politicians by the balls and squeeze.

Congressman Duncan Hunter recently described the situation in stark terms that anyone can understand: "In World War II, our manufacturing base made more than: 100,000 tanks; 2.4 million vehicles; 36 billion yards of cloth; 3 million rifles; 41 billion rounds of ammunition; and 41,000 artillery pieces ... carried Eisenhower's forces to Berlin and paved the way for the Marines in the Pacific as they pushed the Japanese back to their mainland. This great arsenal, our industrial base, was important to collapsing the Soviet Empire and the Berlin Wall because it provided the strength in Ronald Reagan's stand against the forces of evil. Today my friends ... massive production of textiles, steel and machine tools are no longer found in South Carolina, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania, nor dozens of other states. In fact, as Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, when I sent my team to get more steel to protect troops against roadside bombs in Iraq, they found only one company in the U.S. making armor plate grade steel. When a Swiss company cut off the critical component for our smart bombs only one U.S. company remained which could supply it. Now, if you want to find where our Arsenal of Democracy has gone, you must look in places like Korea, France and, perhaps more ominously, China. China is cheating on trade. They are piling up over 200 billion U.S. dollars each year as a result and they are buying ships, planes and missiles with American trade dollars. They have purchased Russian Sovreignny Class missile cruisers designed to destroy American aircraft carriers. They have built between 750 and 1,000 medium range ballistic missiles and they have 17 submarines under construction. How are they cheating? China gives 17% tax rebate to their exporters and a 17% penalty to our businesses who export to them. In addition, they maintain a 40% currency devaluation just to make sure the U.S. business doesn't win. This is not free trade. This is not fair trade. It's cheating and if we put up with it, then we are dis-serving not only business and workers, but also our security. If this was a football game, it means China has put 74 points on the score board before the opening kick-off."(11)


In the long-term, the nation's standard of living for most people becomes equalized with that of the third world, and our ability to pursue our national interest is severely compromised.


None other than Karl Marx predicted this eventuality when he noted in 1848: "The Protective system ... is conservative, while the Free Trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries antagonism of the proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a word, the Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In the revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favor of Free Trade."(12)


The fault of this lies both in the nature of capitalism AND in the nature of representative democracy. In 1790, when the first census was taken, there were fewer than 4 million Americans divided among the thirteen states. The largest city in America at that time was Philadelphia with 42,000 residents. New York followed with 33,000 residents and Boston had 18,000. At that time, the average Congressman represented 30,000 people -- men, women, children, white indentured servants and black slaves combined. Of those 30,000, fewer than 11,000 were eligible to vote. In our earliest elections, fewer than 1-1/2 percent of eligible voters actually voted at the Federal level because our government was effectively constrained by the Constitution so that it couldn't be used as a weapon to advantage some people at the expense of others. It's powers and duties were straightforward and didn't present a threat to anyone, so very few people even bothered to vote.



Today, of course, matters are quite different. Our government has gradually seized the power to regulate practically every aspect of our lives and every aspect of business under the guise of a perverted interpretation of the interstate commerce clause in the Constitution. The federal government tells me how many gallons of water I'm allowed to use to flush my toilet, how many bullets my pistol can hold, what my child needs to learn at school and on and on and on. It's ability to regulate business is even more profound; and because it has the ability to create businesses, destroy businesses, grant monopolies as it has for major league sports and prevent certain businesses from ever starting ... because of this, our legislators have a keen interest in business. And businessmen, quite understandably, have a keen interest in influencing the legislative process.

So the core cause of the corruption that lies at the interface between capitalism and democracy lies in the fact our federal government now wields far more power than the founding fathers ever intended. The day of the citizen legislature is gone. Ted Kennedy has been in Congress since before I was born, and I'm not exactly a youngster. Looking again at today's House delegation from Virginia, Frank Wolf has been there for 27 years, Robert Scott has been there for 18 years, and Bob Goodlatte has been a Congressman for 16 years.

The character of the task has changed from one of service, to one of pursuit of power and personal advantage. I was almost -- but not quite -- shocked to find the biography on another Virginia Representative's official Congressional website specifically referring to his positions on committees described as "powerful." I won't name the particular Congressman. I just want him to know that, in the words of a popular song, "that don't impress me much." Show me some tariffs against foreign manufacturers, THEN I'll be impressed. All the power in the world means NOTHING unless it is being used ethically.



An article in USA Today gave two clear examples: "Weldon, a former member of the House Armed Services Committee, was named chief strategic officer this month by Defense Solutions, a defense contractor that consults and lobbies for other companies. One of the company's executives, in a previous job, benefited from federal funds secured by Weldon. ... Burns was hired last month as a senior adviser by Gage LLC, a lobbying firm headed by his former chief of staff and whose clients benefited from funding Burns inserted into spending bills."(15)

Anybody whose brain hasn't been completely liquefied by the idiot box should see the corruption here with crystal clarity. Because, under the Constitution, our House and Senate are allowed to make their own rules regarding such behavior, what I have just reported to you isn't illegal. But it OUGHT to be. Far too many of the people who are supposed to be our servants are salivating like Pavlov's dog at the ringing of a bell whenever a lobbyist shows up. The depths of this sort of perfectly-legal corruption are so extensive I can barely touch on them in this podcast; but I'd like to give a few more examples just to drive this point home.



"People used to run for Congress to serve the greater good and help the public ... now Congress has become a way station to wealth. Members use it for job training and networking so they can leave office and cash in on the connections they forged as elected officials. No wonder the public is cynical about whose interests lawmakers are protecting in Washington. Lobbying has become the top career choice for departing members of Congress. ... Forty-three percent of the 198 members who have left Congress since 1998 and were eligible to lobby have become registered lobbyists." (17)










Under federal law, only one type of food is guaranteed to be free of Genetically Modified organisms; and that is food carrying the "USDA Organic" label. In addition, food produced by a Certified Naturally Grown farmer is GMO-free, but this is by virtue of a private agreement rather than by law. That's it. Anything else you eat can contain GMO food; and under federal law, food producers are under no obligation to inform you as to whether or not their products contain it. Many state legislatures were becoming concerned, and were poised to require that foods containing GMO ingredients be labeled so that we would at least be aware; and this federal preemption effectively prevented states from protecting us.

Who benefits? Mainly, but not exclusively, the Monsanto corporation. Naturally, they have shown their ... appreciation ... to Representative Leonard Boswell who inserted the federal preemption into the farm bill in the form of a PAC contribution to his election fund.(20)

That's not all. The federal government is also funding two new full-time positions in the country of Jordan. The purpose of those folks, according to the job descriptions, is to research how to short-circuit the regulatory process in Middle-Eastern countries in order to gain acceptance for the importation of United States grown GM crops.(21) So your tax dollars are funding employees whose sole purpose is to advance the interests of particular corporations. Does that sound like a "free market" to you? It sure doesn't to me. This is the sort of meddling in foreign nations that gives our country a bad name.




Is this a "free" market? Is forcing our brethren in Europe to ingest potentially dangerous products against their will "free trade?" Can you see how incestuously intertwined our government has become with large corporations? And, most importantly, can you see that all of this is at the expense of the fundamental principles of self-government and republicanism that underlie our form of government? Aren't you outraged, as well, that the WTO had the authority to rule ANY American tax to be illegal?

If you want people to feed you high fructose corn-syrup and cover it with artificial cherries, that's fine. You can get that right off the television or talk radio most of the time. But if you are listening to me, you are going to get hard-core analysis that leaves the emperor of postmodern ideologies naked. Capitalism, as it is practiced today, has no relationship to freedom in the way our nation's founders understood it. It is nothing more than a man-made ideological sham used to trick you into supporting rule by an oligarchy. And it IS rule. Our legislative process is corrupted and OWNED by people whose names we don't even know. Their interests are NOT our interests. They do not share our fate and they don't have to live with the consequences of their actions. We do.



This brings to mind something important that I need to point out. The status quo didn't just magically pop into existence. Rather, it is the culmination of millions and millions of individual decisions. Most of those decisions weren't made by some other ethnic group, but were actually made by our own ancestors. It is important that we understand why they made the decisions that they did so that we, as leaders, can manifest a better future.


It is a fact of nature that most of us assume that other people have motivations and goals similar to our own. Because we don't have psychopathic traits, we don't expect to see them in others and so when we are back-stabbed, it takes us by surprise. While we can acknowledge the potential existence of such people in an intellectual sense, it isn't quite real to us. This is what our ancestors did, and what far too many of our people do today. Because we simply can't conceive of such evil, we look for any possible excuse to avoid reaching such a conclusion. We can't afford to do that any longer. Failure to identify and label evil, and to exact justice upon the perpetrators gives it license. And evil people, given license, will kill the innocent and destroy entire cultures. We MUST withdraw that license.




In order to exploit the vulnerabilities of the enemies of our people and all of humanity, we need you. We have modeled European Americans United as a system of distributed responsibility and effort, rather than top-down-driven where the people at the top represent a choke point. My friend and colleague Frank Roman has been calling members, and I've been calling members. Based upon our members' interests and skills, we are currently organizing teams for effective action. If you are not already a member, it's time for you to join. Don't tell me that you'll join once everyone else has done the hard work of building and achieving. This isn't a condominium that we build for you, maintain and invite you in. This is a community, and you will reap from it proportionately to your own efforts and contributions. So if you aren't already a member, go to our website at European Americans United dot Org, download our application and send it in. This is an important step toward becoming a part of the solution for our people's future.

Already, some of our membership has access to members-only online tools for organizing their cooperative efforts; and soon ALL of our members will have that access. We're gearing up and getting organized. A number of our special projects are moving forward. We're adding people to existing projects, and starting new ones. The future is bright, and it will come about as an exercise in our will to nobility as applied to the post-modern context. You owe it to yourself to be part of it.


(2) ibid
(3) ibid
(9) ibid. pg. 214
(10) Weisman, Steven (2007), "A Fear of Foreign Investment," New York Times, Aug 21, 2007
(17) Public Citizen, July 25, 2005, "Members of Congress Increasingly Use Revolving Door to Launch Lucrative Lobbying Careers"
(19) ibid.
(21) Corroborated tip forwarded from anonymous federal source