The politics of envy is the politics of this commandment: "Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote." It is the politics of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
art is food for the soul, and an artistic climate is a healthy political climate because it breeds empathy.
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
Governmental subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation.
It will be asked how will the two masses of Continental and of State money have cost the people of the United States seventy-two millions of dollars, when they are to be redeemed now with about six million? I answer that the difference, being sixty-six millions, has been lost on the paper bills separately by the successive holders of them. Every one, through whose hands a bill passed, lost on that bill what it lost in value during the time it was in his hands. This was a real tax on him; and in this way the people of the United States actually contributed those sixty-six millions of dollars during the war, and by a mode of taxation the most oppressive of all because the most unequal of all.
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day
- ok, it's time to talk politics..
have you got your popcorn
sodapop & will to live?
"Don't you understand anything? Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it's properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us--to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we're non-political. The real power always is." -Miss Hardcastle.
My father always would say, "My daughter will go into politics? My daughter will become prime minister", but it's not what I wanted to do. I would say, "No, Papa, I will never go into politics." As I've said before, this is not the life I chose; it chose me ... But I accepted the responsibility and I've never wavered in my commitment.
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
When one uses the simple monosyllabic 'France' one thinks of France as a unit, an entity. When. . . we say 'France sent her troops to conquer Tunis'—we impute not only unity but personality to the country. The very words conceal the facts and make international relations a glamorous drama in which personalized nations are the actors, and all too easily we forget the flesh-and- blood men and women who are the true actors.. . if we had no such word as 'France' . . . then we should more accurately describe the Tunis expedition in some such way as this: 'A few of...thirty-eight million persons sent thirty thousand others to conquer Tunis.' This way of putting the fact immediately suggests a question, or rather a series of questions. Who are the 'few'? Why did they send the thirty thousand to Tunis? And why did these obey? Empire-building is done not by 'nations,' but by men. The problem before us is to discover the men, the active, interested minorities in each nation, who are directly interested in imperialism and then to analyze the reasons why the majorities pay the expenses and fight the wars.
What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups—or classes—of the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy as far as it is not sabotaged by the endeavors of the nonprogressive majority of the routinists and the public policies supported by them.
Politics does not exist to eliminate violence but to legalise it. The only people who suggest making violence illegal are libertarians, and that is why libertarian principles are the most advanced in the evolution of humanity.
Money power cannot be separated from democratic power without miscarriage and ensuing frustration - political and economic. Democracy implies the sovereignty of man; and, since man cannot be sovereign without the money power, there can not be democracy under the political money system.
If the government were obliged to come to the people for money instead of vice-versa, the people would keep government under control and operate their economy satisfactorily with prosperity and peace resulting. The peoples of the nations do not make war. For them peace is the natural and permanent order. Wars are planned and perpetrated by politicians and their diplomats; and the money power of government is the means by which the people are maneuvered into wars.
There is an analogy between the patent granting power of government and its money granting power. When a citizen invents a device, the government grants him, through the patent office, a monopoly on the sale of it. When a citizen produces anything, he is at liberty to use it; but, if he wishes to sell it, his ability to do so is dependent upon his ability to find someone who has the money. Since buyers can have only such money as the government distributes through its purchases, loans and gifts (or such substitute money as its creature, the banker, will authorize) it may be seen that buying is subject to grant, just as, in the case of a patent, selling is subject to grant. In the case of patents, the patent holder is the grantee of veto power; in the case of money, the banker is the grantee of the veto power. These two are the breeders of our monopolies and of the two, the money granting and vetoing power is by far the greater. It in fact makes possible the acquisition of the patent granting power from inventors who, not having money power, are obliged to sell to those who have. The government, which promulgates laws against monopolies in restraint of competition, is itself the author of these twin creators of monopolies.
Contrary to popular belief, the banker is neither a money creator nor a money lender. He merely profits from the ignorance of businessmen by charging them for authorizing them to create money, a function that is natural to the buyer and which he can exert without cost if he is intelligent enough to form a reciprocal enabling pact with other buyers. The process involves no cost and, therefore, justifies no fee. Since the money is created only by the act of buying, the banker, of course, does not lend it, and since he is not the buyer, he does not create it. Money cannot be loaned or borrowed until it has been created by the act of buying. Therefore it is correct to say that a savings bank makes loans, but a commercial bank makes no loans. It merely permits "borrowers" to create money. thus increasing the money supply. Non-banking corporations, individuals, pawnbrokers, etc., loan money from the existing supply. Therefore interest may be justified in these cases of actual loans, whereas, it cannot be justified where the "borrower" is the actual creator.
As has been stated, the purpose of money is to split barter into two parts so that the seller is free to find his source of supply later and elsewhere. This is the sole purpose of money. Any effort to use money to serve another purpose is perversive; and this statement condemns the entire managed money philosophy.
Political economy is a fiction. Economy can have but one sphere, namely, in the practice of the individual. Political economy implies that the state can have a separate existance as a creative force, whereas, it is but one of the instruments of the individual's economy. All wealth - all economic planning - can spring only from the individual for his private guidance; and in him resides both the political and economic power. The ballot is his instrument of political power; money his instrument of economic power and the former is futile without the latter. He is a dupe, who believes that government can be both his servant and his patron, i.e., that the state can develop an economy to enrich him. He must govern government as he governs himself; and he must provide for government as he provides for himself. Any power existing outside himself is only that which has been delegated by him, or has escaped from him; for he is the one and only power-house. He cannot delegate his money power, if he would, because it is inseparably linked to his buying wherein he must exert his private discretion. To issue money, one must buy, to buy, one must appraise. Hence, the money issuing power is undelegatable and unusurpable.
Money can be issued only in the act of buying, and can be backed only in the act of selling. Any buyer who is also a seller is qualified to be a money issuer. Government, because it is not and should not be a seller, is not qualified to be a money issuer.
As long as we cling to the superstition that we must look to government for money supply, instead of requiring it to look to us, just so long must we remain the subjects of government and it is vain to follow this or that policy or party or ism in the hope of salvation. We can control government and our own destiny only through our money power and until we exert that power it is useless for us to debate the pros and cons of political programs.
Money power means budget power and it is folly to imagine that the citizen can control government unless he can control its budget.
When government is invested with money power it rises above the citizen and under the profession of protecting him may actually constitute the greatest threat to his well-being and safety. The power which control of the money system gives to government to interfere in and direct and even take the life of the individual should not exist on this earth. No man or group of men is warranted in holding this terrible power over fellow men.
Money is an instrumentality of the profit motive and must be issued and backed only by private enterprisers. Economic and political perversities are inescapable while government is admitted to money power. Since all national governments have, up to the present, been money issuing powers we may justly attribute all the economic and political ills of mankind to this single error.
The first cardinal truth of money is that no one, whether individual or government, can issue money without buying something. By inviting government to become a money issuer, we invite it to become our customer. Then we quarrel with it if it tries to buy something that we deem within the province of private enterprise.
The second cardinal truth of money is that money must be backed with something, and the act of backing can only be the act of selling. Since we object to government buying and selling anything useful, but nevertheless insist that it issue money, we force it into boondoggling or public works that do not conflict with our private enterprise. Thus we compel government to issue unbacked money by making it impossible for it to sell anything in exchange for the money it issues. As this process of issuing unbacked money continues, each unit grows weaker and thus the dosage must be increased. Hedged about, as government is, by our objections to its invading private enterprise and yet keeping it under the pressure to issue money, it is ultimately forced to the most consummate public works spending program, which is war.
When man has mastered money he shall have mastered not only his economic problem of prosperity but also his political problem, for he will see that money has no place in state functions, and, the money power being entirely in his own hands, he will easily master the state and clearly define its services. Thus money must be seen as the means of mastery of all economic and political problems. Until we have mastered money we shall not master any of our problems. Not money, but a false money system, is the root of all evil.
Money doesn't corrupt politics—politics corrupts money.
The only way to get money out of politics is to get politics out of money-making.
Opening and closing of Chapter 9 Tennis On The Titanic
During the Gore/Bush/Nader presidential election, while the entire nation was hypnotized by the spectacle, I had a vidsion. I saw the Titanic churning through the waters of the North Atlantic toward an iceberg looming in the distance, while the passengers and crew concentrated on a tennis game taking place on deck.
In our election-obsessed culture, everything else going on in the world - war, hunger, official brutality, sickness, the violence of everyday life for huge numbers of people - is swept out of the way while the media covers every volley of the candidates. Thus, the superficial crowds out the meaningful, and this is very useful for those who do not want citizens to look beyond the surface of the system. Hidden by the contest of the candidates are the real issues of race, class, war, and peace, which the public is not supposed to think about.
...
The ferocity of the contest for the presidency in recent elections conceals the agreement between both parties on fundamentals. The evidence for this statement lies in eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration, whose major legislative accomplishments - destroying welfare, imposing more punitive sentences on criminals, increasing Pentagon spending - were part of the Republican agenda.
The Demacrats and the Republicans do not dispute the continued corporate control of the economy. Neither party endorses free national healthcare, proposes extensive low-cost housing, demands a minimum income for all Americans, or supports a truly progressive income tax to diminish the huge gap between rich and poor. Both support the death penalty and growth of prisons. Both believe in a large military establishment, in land mines and nuclear weapons and the cruel use of sanctions against the people of Cuba.
Perhaps when, after the next election, the furor dies down over who really won the tennis match and we get over our anger at the referee's calls and the final, disputed score, we will finally break the hypnotic spell of the game and look around. We may then think about whether the ship is slowly going down and whether there are enough lifeboats and what we should do about all that.
Lie to one person and you're a crook.
Lie to many people and you're an entrepeneur.
Lie to everyone and you're a politician.
