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One reason why patriotic Americans are accomplishing
precious little in reasserting control over their country, while the
Establishment steadily advances its agenda on almost all fronts, is that
patriots are not taking advantage of their overwhelming numerical superiority
in the places where they can best bring it to bear. Instead of joining
together for effective—indeed, potentially unstoppable—political,
and particularly legislative, action in favorable venues at the State and
Local levels, all too many of them are sitting out the contest as mere
spectators.
This
is because most Americans are not rabid political animals with ravenous
appetites to dominate, oppress, and exploit others, but instead are basically
decent people who want only to be left alone to lead their own lives, as they
see fit, in peace and quiet. They may be aware of some of the schemes the
Establishment’s political Pinocchios are hatching in the Disgrace of
Columbia and various State capitals. Yet they hope that the worst of these complots
will not come to fruition during their lifetimes, or that in any event they
personally can avoid trouble, remain well employed, and continue to enjoy
reasonably good incomes, live in respectable homes, and eventually enjoy
comfortable retirement. But why do they hope and imagine that such a scenario
is possible?
The
notion that a placid and prosperous life for most Americans can continue
indefinitely is unrealistic. There will be trouble. Big trouble. And sooner
rather than later.
An
article entitled “Is the United States Bankrupt?,” in the Federal
Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review of July/August 2006 (page 235), provides
rather disturbing evidence supporting this prediction. The author shows that
the difference between the General Government’s future expenditures and
its future receipts over a economically realistic period—the so-called
“fiscal gap”—is some $65.9 trillion (page 239). Yes,
TRILLION. Estimates of this astronomical magnitude can be confirmed
elsewhere. See, e.g., the data collected by John Williams, Shadow Government
Statistics, [Read]. And even the Comptroller
General of the United States (in a letter attached to the 2006 Financial
Report of the United States) has calculated that the government’s
negative net worth as of 2006—which he acknowledges to be about $53
trillion—amounts to an hypothecated burden of debt of some $170,000 on
every single American. This is no “conspiracy theory,” but a set
of undeniable financial facts. It is also no smokey prognostication about an
uncertain future, but a fully documented description of harsh reality right
here and now.
This
situation raises two questions that every adult American must answer: (i) Is
he ready to assume for himself that huge share of the General
Government’s negative net worth, and multiples of it for his family?
(ii) If so, how could he possibly pay it?
Why,
though, should average Americans accept and assume responsibility for the
gargantuan profligacy represented by the predicted $65.9 trillion shortfall
in the fiscal gap? After all, much—perhaps even most—of this
amount has been and will be incurred for unconstitutional programs and
expenditures. Therefore, no matter its source in supposed statutes of Congress,
implemented by the President and approved by the Judiciary, and no matter how
large it may be, that unconstitutional increment is not a legitimate
obligation of the United States at all, and cannot legally be imposed by the
General Government, or its supposed creditors, on We the People. As the
Constitution states, “[n]o Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but
in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” Article I, Section 9,
Clause 7. And no “Appropriations” can be “made by Law”
if the statutes supposedly authorizing them violate the Constitution. Article
VI, Clause 2. So, the parties liable in justice to make good on these
unconstitutional obligations are: first, the thieves—that is, the
politicians, bureaucrats, and judges who originally arranged for or permitted
the funds to be stolen; and, second, the receivers of the stolen
goods—that is, the special-interest groups that have gorged on these
payoffs in the recent past and will continue to do so in the near future.
The
politicians, bureaucrats, and judges are in an especially difficult position,
because the Constitution—which provides the sole basis for their
authority—also supplies the primary and conclusive evidence against
them. Simply laying the terms of the various programs and expenditures
against the text of the Constitution will prove who is at fault.
To
be sure, elected officials will claim that they are innocent of any
wrongdoing, because the voters have authorized or ratified their actions by
electing and re-electing them. The flaw in this “we were just following
orders” argument, however, is that the voters cannot authorize, ratify,
or in any other way approve the least violation of the Constitution. Even if,
during an election-campaign, politicians ran explicitly on the platform that
once in office they would engage in specifically delineated unconstitutional
actions, and were elected on that very basis, their subsequent behavior in
fulfillment of such pledges would nevertheless be legally void. For, as soon
as they took office, they would be required to take an “Oath or
Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” Article VI, Clause 3. Their
“Oath or Affirmation” would not be to fulfill thieves’
bargains they may have negotiated with voters (or, more realistically, with
the special-interest groups that deceive and manipulate the voters), but to
follow “this Constitution,” no matter what contrary promises they
might have made to anyone. As the Constitution recites, public officials
“shall be bound by [their] Oath or Affirmation.” They are not
“bound” by their campaign promises, let alone absolved from their
“Oath or Affirmation” by those promises. Quite obviously as well,
“bound” means that public officials can be held legally
responsible and accountable, in their own persons, for violating their
“Oath or Affirmation.” And where that violation involves illegal
expenditures of undoubted public moneys and the illegal amassment of supposed
“public debt,” the perpetrators of those illegalities—not
their victims and dupes among the general public—are liable, and should
be made to pay damages to the fullest extent of their estates and abilities.
Every
American can be sure, however, that these miscreants will never willingly
accept responsibility for their fiscal wrongdoing, let alone bear its
financial burden when the bill comes due. Even though they know perfectly
well who is at fault, and why, they will bend their best efforts to impose
all of the costs of their criminal careers on YOU.
The
article “Is the United States Bankrupt?” suggests that, in an attempt
to wash away the red ink with which they have filled the General
Government’s books, the politicos in the Disgrace of Columbia will
perpetrate the further mega-crime of hyperinflation: the Federal Reserve
System’s massive “monetization” of new debts emitted by the
General Government (see pages 241-242). Obviously, the author of that article
was not indulging in a “conspiracy theory,” but was making an
informed prediction of how the Money Power, operating through the Federal
Reserve System and the Department of the Treasury, will endeavor to save
itself, its political marionettes, and its special-interest clients at every
other American’s actual expense.
And
actual expense it will be! All debts are always paid—if not by the
debtors, then by the creditors, or by some third parties. Hyperinflation will
fill the fiscal gap through a vast redistribution of wealth from society as a
whole. And not simply a redistribution of wealth, but also a confiscation of
wealth, because the transfer will be imposed under color and especially by
force of law (the “legal-tender law,” 31 U.S.C. § 5103,
coming foremost to mind). And not simply a confiscation of wealth, but a
surreptitious confiscation, because most Americans will have no idea what is
going on, and who is benefiting from it—any more than sheep at the
shearers, or the slaughterhouse, have any idea of who benefits from the
marketing of their wool or their meat.
True,
the politicos will benefit from hyperinflation, because tens of millions of
minnows in the General Government’s sea of creditors will lose the real
value of their claims by being forced to receive worthless currency in
payment. But, precisely because it is so promiscuously destructive,
hyperinflation will not serve the interests of the sharks: the General
Government’s most politically influential domestic creditors, and
especially its foreign creditors who can make trouble in international
arenas. Anyone compelled to accept a rapidly rotting currency in payment of a
debt can expect some, and probably a significant, real financial loss on the
transaction. So a “conspiracy theorist” (that is, a monetary and
political realist) must anticipate that the big-money boys, both here and
overseas, will design a financial escape hatch through which they and their
cronies can wriggle when the ship of state sinks in an hyperinflationary
tsunami. After all, who can imagine that the porcine special-interest groups
that pull the politicians’ strings would ever permit their marionettes
to force them to settle their claims against the General Government for
hyperinflated currency the purchasing power of which is many orders of
magnitude less than its nominal value?!
Besides,
even if the General Government arranges to pay off the $65.9 trillion fiscal
gap through the Federal Reserve System’s “monetization” of
that amount of new “public debt,” the Treasury’s books will
then show a $65.9 trillion liability to the banks and other holders of the
new Treasury paper. How will that mountain of principal (and the interest
owed on it) be paid when they come due? Through the Treasury’s direct
issuance of $65.9 trillion of “greenback” irredeemable,
legal-tender fiat currency, in another round of hyperinflation that wipes out
the banking system and the powerful special interests that control it? Will
the bankers and their allies sit still for that?
No,
whatever the sequence of events in the coming financial meltdown, the small
but powerful set of knowledgeable, skillful, and above all ruthless parasites
that fatten off the General Government will demand—and through their
political Pinocchios will attempt somehow to arrange to receive—REAL
wealth, measured and delivered in REAL things, the value of which cannot be
hyperinflated away by politicians’, bankers,’ and governmental
bean-counters’ accounting tricks and printing presses. And that
necessarily will entail taking—by main force, if necessary, where
deception fails—real things from the real people who now have them.
Of
course, the special interests will not loot themselves, their families, their
friends, their political cronies and clients, and their other partisans. No,
indeed. What sense would robbing Peter to pay Peter make? Rather, they will
arrange to loot YOU, demanding that the General Government confiscate YOUR
valuable things in order to pay the part of the $65.9 trillion shortfall that
you, as a member of “the public,” supposedly owe to them. And
steeped in the confidence that derives from having successfully corralled the
sheeple in the pens of political apathy, sloth, and impotence these many
years, they will throw all moderation to the winds, and attempt to shear
common Americans to their very skins.
So,
as larger and larger installments of the $65.9 trillion bill come due, in
addition to hyperinflation Americans might well expect public officials in
the General Government to initiate programs of “taxation in kind”
through direct physical confiscation: that is, seizures of real and personal
property—such as common Americans’ businesses, houses, land,
securities, gold and silver, or such “luxuries” as one’s
second automobile—that will simply be taken outright and then turned
over to the government’s favored domestic and foreign creditors to pony
up the $170,000 or more that each American allegedly owes as his share of the
General Government’s negative net worth. Or, invoking “eminent
domain,” officials might well “condemn” common
Americans’ property, and then transfer it directly to favored
creditors, with the original owners being paid off in currency hyperinflating
at such a rate that, just weeks or days later, they ended up with paper notes
or bank balances of so little of real value that for all intents and purposes
they had been “taxed in kind,” too.
In
the face of these possibilities—which the fiscal gap of $65.9 trillion makes
strong likelihoods—what do YOU intend to do? Will you persist in
imagining that fiscal push will never come to financial shove? Will you
insist on assuming that the crisis—about which even the Federal Reserve
Bank of St. Louis Review warns this country—will never impact you,
personally? Will you desist from making any defensive preparations, in the
belief that, should all Hell break loose, it will nonetheless be more prudent
to be taken for a sheep than a goat, and quietly to endure your and your family’s
shearing? Or will you resist, in every constitutionally permissible manner?
Rest
assured that what you decide today you will be required to live with
tomorrow. For the fiscal gap is a national trap that is inexorably closing.
Once the financial swallows come home to the Disgrace of Columbia, there will
be no going back—only “forward,” into the New World
Disorder of economic dislocation and deprivation enforced by a thoroughgoing
police state.
Edwin
Vieira
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