So, you’re planning to be a responsible American on
Election Day and cast your vote.Fine, but ask yourself why. Is it any more
than a ritual?Is the engine of government something you can control through
elections you don’t control? Do you think if you put a voice for liberty in
the Oval Office that voice would last long?Are any of the candidates even
selling liberty?Are you looking to buy it, or do you just want in on the
scam?
Further, what would motivate an institution — government —
which is fundamentally anti-liberty to surrender any of its power?
Government has been for sale to the highest bidders for a long time.
Nothing gets changed without their approval. Are you one of those
highest bidders? Probably not.
On November 22, 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald declared himself a patsy
in the murder of President John F. Kennedy, he provided a clue about the
power center of this country. It isn’t the president, it isn’t Congress
or the Court. It most definitely is not the voters.
Boston Globe journalist Jordan Michael Smith explains:
Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can
steer their own government by electing new officials, [political scientist
Michael] Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer
works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he
catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is
effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency,
or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”:
There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge
swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere
cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy. (emphasis added)
How did this “double government” come about?
Following World War II, there was no general
demobilization in the United States — something that had never happened
before in the nation’s history. In 1947, Congress passed the National Security
Act, which created the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and created
the framework for a permanent, globe-spanning military establishment under
the aegis of what was now called the Department of Defense. Five years later,
the National Security Agency, which originated as the US Army’s Cipher Bureau
and Military Intelligence Branch in World War I, was given institutional
permanence as well.
These initiatives grew out of the open-ended Cold War
conflict with the Soviet Union, which was described as a crisis of sufficient
magnitude to justify putting the United States on a permanent war footing.
The National Security State
Like many convicted Nazi criminals in the early Cold War
years, a number of the Nuremberg defendants sentenced to prison were later
the beneficiaries of politically motivated interventions and early releases;
few of the many thousand convicted Nazis were still in prison after 1953. A
number of those interventions on behalf of fortunate war criminals could be
traced to the quiet stratagems of Allen Dulles.
Allen and his brother John, who served as Secretary of
State, “used the Cold War to protect the interests of their law firm’s
clients, and they used it to enhance the power and budgets associated with
their high positions in government,” writes
Paul Craig Roberts.
Whenever a reformist democratic government appeared in
Latin America the Dulles brothers saw it as a threat to the holdings that
their law firm’s clients had in that country. These holdings, sometimes
acquired with bribes to nondemocratic governments, diverted the country’s
resources and wealth into American hands, and that is the way the Dulles
brothers intended to keep it. The reformist government would be declared
Marxist or Communist, and the CIA and State Department would work together to
overthrow it and place back in power a dictator in bed with Washington.
The Cold War was pointless except for the Dulles brothers’
interests and those of the military/security complex. The Soviet government,
unlike the US government today, had no world hegemonic aspirations. Stalin
had declared “Socialism in one country” and purged the Trotskyists, the
advocates of world revolution.
Peace with communists? A national security threat
At the time of JFK’s assassination French reporter Jean
Daniel, acting as an emissary for the president, was in Cuba conducting
private peace negotiations.But the CIA already knew what needed to be done
about Kennedy.
Over the final months of JFK’s presidency [Talbot writes],
a clear consensus took shape within America’s deep state: Kennedy was a
national security threat. For the good of the country, he must be removed.
And Dulles was the only man with the stature, connections, and decisive will
to make something of this enormity happen. He had already assembled a killing
machine overseas. Now he prepared to bring it home to Dallas.
Four separate amendments in the Bill of Rights address the
power of the federal government to take people, both Americans and
foreigners, into custody and to inflict harm on them: the Fourth, Fifth,
Sixth, and Eighth Amendments. Due process of law, right to counsel,
grand-jury indictments, trial by jury, search and seizure, cruel and unusual
punishments, bail, speedy trial — they are all expressly addressed,
reflecting how important they were to our American ancestors and to their
concept of a free society.
In the age of national security, all of those protections
have been rendered moot. They have all been trumped by the concept of
national security.
Ironically, the term isn’t even found in the Constitution.
One searches in vain for some grant of power anywhere in that document
relating to “national security.”
One also searches it vain for a precise definition of
“national security.”It is, as Hornberger says, “whatever the government says
it is.”It’s at once nonsense and the most important term in our lives.
One of the most fascinating aspects of all this is how
successful the government has been in convincing Americans of two things:
that all this is necessary to keep them safe and, at the same time, that
America has continued to be a free country notwithstanding the fact that the
government has acquired and has exercised totalitarian powers in order to
preserve national security. . . .
When Americans read that the Soviet government rounded up
its own people and sent them into the Gulag, they recoil against the exercise
of such totalitarian powers. . . .
But when the U.S. government does such things or even just
claims the authority to do them — in the name of national security — the
mindset of the average American automatically shifts. . .
The main components of the national security
establishment, he tells us, are the military-industrial complex and the CIA.
They are the entities that enforce the sanctions and
embargoes and engage in the invasions, occupations, regime-change operations,
coups, assassinations, torture, indefinite incarcerations, renditions,
partnerships with totalitarian regimes, and executions — all in the name of
“national security.”
The national security establishment is the godfather of
what Doug
Casey refers to as the Deep State, which “is a real, but informal,
structure that has arisen to not just profit from, but control, the State.”
The Deep State has a life of its own, like the government
itself. It’s composed of top-echelon employees of a dozen Praetorian
agencies, like the FBI, CIA, and NSA…top generals, admirals, and other
military operatives…long-term congressmen and senators…and directors of
important regulatory agencies.
But Deep State is much broader than just the government.
It includes the heads of major corporations, all of whom are heavily involved
in selling to the State and enabling it. That absolutely includes Silicon
Valley, although those guys at least have a sense of humor, evidenced by
their “Don’t Be Evil” motto. It also includes all the top people in the Fed,
and the heads of all the major banks, brokers, and insurers. Add the
presidents and many professors at top universities, which act as Deep State
recruiting centers…all the top media figures, of course…and many regulars at
things like Bohemian Grove and the Council on Foreign Relations. They
epitomize the status quo, held together by power, money, and propaganda.
The free market versus the State
We hear a lot of talk about how good democracy is.
But is it? What’s the distinction between political democracy and what
has been called market democracy? Government is bureaucratic. It
promotes “the leveling of the governed,” or as Gary North puts it,
"the flattening of the voters." They are flat on
their bellies. The bureaucrats walk over them.
On the free or even semi-free market companies have to
answer to their customers.Those that don’t, including the Big Boys, find
themselves in trouble.North writes:
Kodak's executives refused to develop digital cameras
because they feared that the new cameras would destroy their business. They
feared cannibalizing their own company. But as Steve Jobs famously said,
"If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will."
Kodak declared bankruptcy in 2012.
Then there’s the famous case of IBM. Personal
computers? They were toys, distractions for the little people.
Fancy calculators at best. The IBM PC sold well in the early eighties,
but the company balked at supporting newer chips. Compaq didn’t, and
snatched the PC market lead from IBM. As North tells us, “IBM finally
sold its PC line to China in 2005: Lenovo.”
Governments, of course, work differently than
markets. They are not subject to market forces of profit and
loss. Government's revenue stream is theft. As government
bureaucracies manifest their incompetence and/or corruption, they become
eligible for new management and bigger budgets. Recall Katrina and
FEMA.
This is the heart of the matter. The market, we’re
told, is evil, powered by selfish impulses of survival and profit.
Never mind that under a system of property rights this creates an Invisible
Hand that promotes peace, prosperity and harmony. Government, we’re
forever reminded, is good, has only the best intentions as it forever makes
life worse, leaving us with perpetual wars, debt and divisiveness.
Election Day for presidents comes every four years.
“Elections” on the market are around-the-clock affairs. “The free
market is a genuine democracy that offers all the benefits supposedly found
in democratic political systems without their drawbacks,” says Matt
McCaffrey. I strongly recommend reading his article.
Go ahead and vote but choose your elections wisely.