It's All Our Fault

With an economic depression pending upon the near future of the United States, a lot of blame has been thrown around. Anybody partial to unadulterated, non-sensationalized economic study already knows what actions have caused these issues. Indeed, the false premise that a nation can consume more than it produces was the fundamental causation. This premise was carried out through the Federal Reserve system, whose no-strings-attached production of fiat currency - resulting in policies of central economic planning involving the manipulation of the macro US markets - allowed for far too much money to be borrowed and spent on unproductive and useless assets. What's worse is that these assets were severely over-valued, and risk was artificially low due to the necessary low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve Bank.

Though most Americans will never truly comprehend the concept of total economic freedom espoused by Austrian, laissez-faire capitalism, it is worse yet that most citizens do not possess a fruitful knowledge of our Constitution. That, in fact, is the true evil of the American people: ignorance. It brings me great sadness to conclude that the only group to blame for this economic collapse is the American people themselves. It's all our fault.

Before immediately writing off this claim as evil or unsympathetic, let me go over a couple of basic principles the Constitution teaches. Of course, all who truly understand this economic disaster should already understand Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution, which states that the government only has the right to coin money and that only gold and silver constitute legal tender. But even more generally, Americans have the right to vote politicians in and out of office. And so if there doesn't exist a single representative or senator who understands the Constitution (Ron Paul only meets true practitioners of liberty half way), it is the People's job to vote them out of office. Terms are implemented into our political system in order to determine whether or not the person elected is truly fit to run the country. If the People found their representatives were acting contrary to their oath of office (the one that demands the upholding of the Constitution), is it not their duty to make sure they do not step foot into their office again for the next political term?

The same politicians, and the same political “ideologies”, never seem to leave Washington DC. The reason is because not only do the citizens not know what their congress is doing – they don't even care. For over 90 years, we've had an illegal central bank, and we've had a fraudulently-implemented forced income tax for nearly as long. We've gotten into over five unnecessary wars resulting from the altruistic and self-destructive foreign policy of the US; completely undermined the competitive medical industry; put almost 15% of all citizens on restrictive and manipulative welfare systems that entrap the most vulnerable of our population; and lost a severe amount of our Constitutional liberties since those undertakings. These issues all stem from politicians responding to the grumblings of the American sheep, while promising to never raise taxes. If we just print the money and use the income tax to pay the interest to the bank that handles that printing press, we can just put all those services on the government credit card. At least, that's been the mentality for multiple generations of American citizens.

Well, that financial system is coming to an end. And it is unsurprising to see hardly anyone stepping up and calling for the resignation of all representatives, executives, and judges, who allowed these travesties to continue for so long. Now, the US will suffer the reversal of nearly 100 years of phony fiscal extravagance. What almost all people who vote Republican or Democrat fail to realize is that our Constitution gives us the power to elect representatives that can correct these mistakes! But look what the Congress and the President did during the beginnings of the financial crisis: they spent more money and drew up more of a deficit than ever before; they looted more money from the American people to pay for the poor business strategies of failing US corporations; and they re-elected the same sickening collection of political and economic dweebs that continue to forgo learning from both our rule of law, or their previous mistakes.

So if anybody complains about the sudden change in their standard of living, chances are their blunders can be directly blamed on themselves. Ask them which Republicrat or Dempublican they voted for this time, and ask them why they chose to simply ignore the Constitution, the rule of law, and the warning signs that all so obviously pointed to the current crisis. As Montesquieu said, the People only get a government that they deserve. If we want a better government, we need to have a better People.

In order to achieve a populous of "better People," there needs to be a complete revision of the American code of morality. This country is the closest mankind has ever gotten to a fully capitalist, free-market economy, rooted in the protection of individual rights. However, neither the founding fathers nor the overwhelming majority of modern Americans were able to abandon the immoral ethic of Judeo-Christian values: altruism. The disgusting premise that a man must live to sacrifice for the sake of another man - that we are our brother's keeper - is the root evil perpetuated upon modern American society.

Witness the foreign policy of the United States, which offers troop and food subsidies to over 130 countries world-wide, and gets involved in unconstitutional conflicts not out of interest of self-defense, but of wishing to spread "democracy" - a form of governance which enables the tyranny of the majority - to savage countries around the world. Not only is it purely irrational to expect a successful forced transition from tyranny to so-called "freedom" - as freedom can only be obtained through an honest desire for change - but more importantly, it puts the economic and foreign policy interests of the United States in further danger. It causes foolish actions to be carried out, and results in countless examples of blowback. The desire to want to do good for others not out of a genuine interest in doing so, but rather to satisfy some deeply-rooted lie that it is moral to sacrifice your life for the sake of some other undeserving life, is an evil moral code, which causes evil to be perpetrated upon those who practice it.

Witness the altruistic "war on poverty" and the welfare state the United States operates. Through the end of a gun, or through the force of tears, the government loots productive citizens' incomes to distribute amongst those who offer no productive value to this country's infrastructure. By rewarding the looters of labor with such subsidies, they are encouraged to continue looting and living off the handouts provided. They call for populist legislation to be drafted, with the intent of forcing companies to operate more altruistically. When such legislation is passed, it further hinders their ability to produce the very items which the unproductive clamor for. They grumble that corporations are selfish, that they aren't spreading the wealth. Is wealth not created? Should wealth not be earned? Is it not achieved by producing something of value, through a collection of acquired skills and specialties? Why, then, should one not be free to produce at full capacity, so long as they are not infringing upon the individual rights of another? The consequences of these irrational actions are inexplicably obvious to any observer: corporations do business where they are not hindered by the minimum wage and corporate income tax. How does one force companies to provide more jobs amid 10% unemployment rates, when regulations based off the same evil moral code caused the unemployment rate to be that high in the first place?

Such ironic and circular logic is precisely what is behind the American downfall. Such logic is embodied by two forms of mysticism: one form is mysticism of the body, and the other is mysticism of the spirit. The former is most akin to Soviet Russia. They claim that the body is nothing more than a collection of atoms, and that the human being should live not for himself, but rather for the vested interests of "the state." The latter - the most evil institution on this planet - is embodied by religion. Religion preaches the hatred of the body, of the mind, and of individualism, in order to appease a higher power which, conveniently, followers of said religion are not able to see manifested in any objective fashion. Religious institutions say you must sacrifice yourself for somebody you value less. (They disguise this as being somebody less "fortunate" than you).

No matter if altruism is perpetrated by socialists or religion - or by both, as is the case in the United States - the terrifying result is the same. The life you are to live is an immoral life, where ultimately, A is not A. In order to have a better life, they say, you must make your life worse.

If the American citizens are to have better results in the future - they want to make their own lives as valuable and fruitful as possible - then they need to reject the notion that an unhappy life is a moral life. They need to know that the government has a complete monopoly on retaliatory force. They need to understand that the government's only true purpose is to protect individual liberty, and that anything else the government involves itself in reduces individual liberty. Only then can we get a better People, and once we get a better People, we will get a better government. It will still be all our fault.