Nov 18, 2011 | Economy, Taxes
By Dr. Harold Pease
Few realize that New England’s first form of government under the Pilgrims was communalism (socialism) where “each produced according to his ability and each received according to his needs,” more than two centuries before Karl Marx first penned the above script. The result of “share the wealth” then and now was, and always will be, shared poverty.
William Bradford, the colony’s governor its first 30 years, wrote of the agreement between the Pilgrim passengers and the financial “Adventurers” in his book Of Plymouth Plantation. He noted that the seven-year contract signed July 1, 1620, before leaving Plymouth England, stipulated that the Pilgrims were to pool, for common benefit, “all profits and benefits that are got by trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing, or any other means of any person or persons…” It further noted “that at the end of the seven years, the capital and profits, viz. the houses, lands, goods and chattels, be equally divided betwixt the Adventurers and Planters…” During this time the colonists were to “have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock and goods of the said colony.” It doesn’t get more socialistic than this because the government divvied out the goods and loafers received the same as those who worked.
The first two years the result was shortages and starvation. About half the colonists died. No one did more than the minimal because the incentive to excel was destroyed. The industrious were neutralized. Bradford wrote of the scarcity of food “no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any.” The socialist experiment Bradford added, “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to the benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense….” In other words, socialism made strong men lazy. In another book written by the same author, History of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford spoke of another problem because of the government created famine—thievery. Even in this Christian community, “much was stolen both by night and day….”
After two years of such, with the survival of the colony at stake, they contemplated upon “how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery.” They opted to abandon the incentive killing socialist contract in favor of the free market. And so they “assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end…”
The effects were almost immediate. A delighted Governor Bradford wrote: “This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor… could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.” In other words, the free market is a much greater stimulus than governmental force. The Pilgrims now wished to work because they got to keep the benefits of their labor. “Instead of famine now God gave them plenty,” Bradford wrote, “and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God…. Any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.”
Secure property rights are the key to prosperity for all who wish to work. When this right is threatened by confiscatory taxation or outright confiscation of property, or by excessive government rules and regulations governing such, whether planned as in a contract enforced by the government at Plymouth, or gradual as in our day, work and production slow and can eventually stop. The answer for them was to extract socialism from their midst as it is for us today as well. May we have the wisdom to do so?
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Nov 12, 2011 | Economy, Globalism, Tea Party
By Dr. Harold Pease
Some protesters say the Occupy Wall Street mother city should move to Oakland, California as the New York branch has not shown the “stomach” needed for the more violent form of confrontation necessary for “real” change and the weather is better for maintaining the movement through the winter months. Others say that a move to Washington D. C. is critical as the Congress is the only real agent of change, and Occupy should assemble, like everybody else, in front of the capital, as did the Tea Party with their million July 4th 2010. “President Obama, Can you hear us now?” repeated three times with added emphasis each time.
But those who study special interest groups know that Occupy Wall Street needs to stay right where it is, as within blocks of Zuccotti Park, where they are assembled, is the most powerful special interest group in the United States. Unbeknown to the protesters, they are located near the nerve center of U.S. foreign policy. Important visitors to the U.S. usually make at least two scheduled visits while in the United States, one to 58 East 68th Street, New York City, the other to the White House. Yes, this one organization (which I will not identify just yet) provides at least a third of all cabinet members and the Secretary of State of every administration since the 1930s. It has, and always will, until known more fully to the American people for its vast influence over both major political parties, provided all ambassadors to Russia, China and the United Nations as well. Its members fill most of the seats on the Federal Reserve Board, from whom most of our fiscal policy is determined.
My Occupy friends, you have the power to bring attention and exposure to this semi- secret governance. You already want an audit of the Federal Reserve, and these members come from the organization just down the street. This organization in question cares nothing about you or your causes, and they are more responsible for your anger than any other single organization. Can you at least schedule a march to the address cited above and have discussion about this influence in your meetings? In your attempt to occupy colleges and cities throughout the land, would you please check out the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), not just from its sources, which you would expect to be favorable, but from the very numerous other sources fully documenting the power they hold over our media and government?
Start with conclusions three and four of the three-year, 1954 Reece Congressional Committee Report issued by the House of Representatives that identified the CFR as the special interest group of large foundations, specifically the Carnage Endowment, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Rhodes Scholarship Trust (p. 169 and p. 176). “The power of the individual large foundation,” they wrote, was “enormous.” “It can exercise various forms of patronage which carry with them elements of thought control. It can exert immense influence on educational institutions, upon the educational processes, and upon educators. It is capable of invisible coercion through the power of its purse. It can materially predetermine the development of social and political concepts and courses of action through the process of granting and withholding foundation awards upon a selective basis, and by designing and promulgating projects which propel researchers in selected directions.”
After noting the power of just one large foundation such as those cited above, the House report continued, “This power to influence national policy is amplified tremendously when foundations act in concert. There is such a concentration of foundation power in the United States, operating in the social sciences and education… It has ramifications in almost every phase of research and education, in communications and even in government” (p. 16).
They noted that the productions, of what has become Wall Street’s special interest group, the Council on Foreign Relations, “are not objective but are directed overwhelmingly at promoting the globalism concept.” How powerful was it by the time Congress first discovered its influence? It had come, they wrote, “to be in essence an agency of the United States government, no doubt carrying its internationalist bias with it” (Pp. 176-177).
So my young friends, consider the possibility that you might just be a ploy to help these folks further some globalistic objective—perhaps the collapse of the economy in preparation for some world currency more easily managed by them. Extreme? Perhaps! But you are good at thinking out of the box so don’t move your headquarter and do make a visit just down the street to the real source of your concerns.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Oct 16, 2011 | Constitution, Economy
By Dr. Harold Pease
Steve Jobs died leaving five and a half billion dollars, thousands of high paying jobs (12,000 in his hometown Cupertino alone, plus countless others in support roles), and having made things better for every person on the planet. Having begun in a garage with his friend, Steve Wozniak, with only personal funding, and no government bailouts when things did not go well, he exemplified what has made the United States the most prosperous people on earth. He vies with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford as the world’s greatest inventor.
One wonders how he might have done if born under extreme socialism—such as Sparta, the ancient Greek city state and also the worlds’ first known socialist state—which model the Founders veered from in repulsion, in their founding of a land destined to produce at least 85% of all inventions of mother earth. How would a mind such as his have flowered under the more modern socialist states of the twentieth century, the USSR or East Germany perhaps, or in North Korea today? One is hard pressed to identify a single invention of significance under any of these states while under socialism. He would have been destroyed, as socialists traditionally kill or at least take the wealth of the rich and distribute it to themselves. Under more moderate socialism as in Europe, seemingly our model of late, we prefer to tax or regulate entrepreneurs to death—often before they get off the ground.
The philosophy of sharing the wealth has always resulted in bringing down those who create the jobs. You can hate McDonald’s, or Wall Mart or whatever, all you want, but they still give you your job. Do you suppose that those demonstrating in “Occupy Wall Street” today, (ironically using their various “Steve Jobs creations” to communicate with each other their revolutionary doctrine attempting to bring down “the stinking capitalist system”), understand how the free market actually saves them from third world poverty? No!!
The “share the wealth” philosophy is as old as mankind. Aristotle first wrote of it in his work Politics, Book IV twenty-four centuries ago when he noted that the poor will always envy the rich and the rich will always despise the poor. Neither can rule because neither can understand the other. The middle class, having enough of the goods of the world to not envy the rich, but being close enough to poverty themselves to understand the poor, is the arbitrator class. The free market also creates and expands the middle class. Karl Marx put force into the equation making the arguments for class warfare which make the Steve Jobs—all of them— the enemies of the state.
The problem with socialism, whether extreme under communism, which exterminates the rich, or more mild by taxing those creating jobs to accomplish equality for all, is that it destroys incentive for the producer. If a great inventor, such as Steve Jobs, cannot see a profit at the end of the tunnel why would he risk investing in the next new idea? Why would a medical doctor endure years of medical school and poverty if the government is not going to allow him, when finished, to charge what he may for his services? Altruistic motivators like “for the betterment of mankind” are normally not enough to vault the distance by themselves. There would be a shortage of inventors and doctors. Inventors deprive themselves of food, fabric, and fellowship, working late into the night to accomplish their vision of an Edison Illuminating Light Co. or the Apple Corporation rather than an eight-hour a day government job at a government-controlled salary. Government intervention in the market is like mixing a cup of sugar into the gasoline of a lawn mower. It may still work but the efficiency is greatly impaired.
Abraham Lincoln was well aware of the class warfare advocated by socialism, having read The Communist Manifesto, and saw it as a theory opposite that left to us by our Founders under the U.S. Constitution, when he wrote. “Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprises… Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently to build one for himself, this by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence… I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.”
Steve Jobs did well, in large part, because he could begin in a garage without governmental regulation. Big government advocates would have had him begin, at the very least, with a costly nine-month environmental impact study, followed by his obtaining a building permit to alter his garage, followed by a permit to do business, followed by filing forms dealing with social security and etc.; and there is always OSHA hovering over him. Get the picture? All this before he has any profits to confiscate for the benefit of those who do not support themselves.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Aug 13, 2011 | Constitution, Economy, Taxes, Tea Party
By Dr. Harold Pease
I do not usually write on themes getting extensive attention in the media but the establishment press has overlooked a big story in the debt limit debate. Every one has covered who lost: the President, Congress and both major political parties but almost no one identified the Tea Party Patriot movement as the clear victor.
Remember the over 2400 separate and spontaneous gatherings of Tea Party Patriots in 2009, geographically spread throughout the nation and proportionately held April 15, July 4, and Sept. 11, with about 800 such gatherings held each date. These gatherings, with no national leadership or direction, led mostly by moms with homemade signs, was perhaps the showing of greater anger against the federal government than in any single year in our history—certainly in my life time.
Remember as well the two Tea Party assemblages of over a million in Washington D. C. during that same year crying out “President Obama!! Can you hear us now?” “CAN YOU HEAR US NOW?? Yes, the establishment media had trouble covering these stories then too, but they still happened.
The Tea Party movement resulted in the election of a few candidates committed to Constitutional limited government, the free market and fiscal responsibility—the Tea Party’s core values and actually those of the U.S. Constitution as well. Values perceived by them as having been largely abandoned by the leadership of both major political parties.
All this is conceded but how does this translate to a win for the Tea Party Patriots on the Debt Limit Deal? True to the Constitution and their election promises these patriots bucked the weak-kneed Republican Party in the House of Representatives and the spend-happy Democrats in the Senate and forced both to talk about the following previously ignored concepts. What is the proper role of government? How do we get a Balanced Budget Amendment to curb our addiction to debt? Are raising taxes always the only answer? And given government’s addiction to growth, will they ever have enough?
The promise to vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment, to not raise taxes, and to actually cut future spending, are each a part of the finished agreement because of the insistence of the Tea Party members of Congress. As a group only the Tea Party saw the looming financial problems ahead if we did not seriously live within our means and scale back our debt. NOW!! With our debt credit down grade and near stock market crash of this week can anyone seriously question Tea Party philosophy now? Still, there are voices in the land aimed to discredit them.
Republicans have shown themselves to have no fire in their bellies and have thus caved-in to the run-away spending plans of their adversaries every time. Sometimes, as under the Bush Stimulus, they have shown themselves as leading the charge for debt enslavement. In short, modern Tea Party Patriots gave the Republican Party enough fire so that they did not cut and run so easily.
Did the Tea Party get what they wanted? No! Definitely not!! Were that the case they would have had an actual Balanced Budget Amendment, actual spending cuts, and our credit rating would not have been down graded. Reducing the rate of increase is not the same as reducing spending. The deal did nothing to stop the growth of our debt and resulting bondage of our children. In fact, it did just the opposite. Still, opponents were forced to listen and give some attention to the Tea Party Patriots—a huge victory especially given their small size in Congress and governments nature to spend without restraint. We just need more of them in Congress. Returning to the Constitution is the only answer and they are the only ones saying it.
Hopefully, more Americans will see the Tea Party Patriot movement and our defense of the Constitution as the same thing. Until now they have been a somewhat lone voice in the wilderness as far as Congress was concerned but with this victory should merit our greater confidence lending to greater support resulting in even bigger victories to come.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jul 14, 2011 | Economy, Healthcare
By Dr. Harold Pease
I met R. Sellner Reese some five years ago and found her story one of the most interesting and unusual ever; she lived under two of the most murderous tyrannical governments ever: Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. “I was born under Hitler, grew up under Stalin and worked under communist dictators Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honnecker in East Germany,” she told me. Few have more practical experience under socialism than she. She and her three children came to America in 1985 for political and religious freedom requesting political asylum. Her main message to us: “socialism never worked under these regimes and it will never work in America either.” She sees us falling into the same trap of repeated lies and promises that duped her German friends and neighbors.
“Hitler promised National Socialism but gave us tyranny instead,” she said. “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” Some warned the people but the promises were so desirable and powerful. “My friend’s father told other people, that Hitler is a liar and will bring Germany down. One evening, two men came to his apartment and took him in for questioning before the police. Five days later, the wife received a letter that he has passed away with a heart problem. The family was told his grave is at the City Cemetery. The family was so afraid to ask questions, and nobody knew what the Gestapo had done. No paper concerning his death was ever found. I personally know so many people who have suffered in the Nazi time.”
A second Hitler promise: “Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” The socialist promise that the government would take from the rich and give to the poor only made everyone poor and resulted in human suffering and death, and eventually war. “In my school class of 40 children, only 8 had a father after the war. Women had to take all the responsibility for family and their future.” So much for the socialist promises.
After the war the Soviets held the eastern part of Germany where she lived, (renamed East Germany) under socialism with Joseph Stalin. “We had to learn how wonderful the Red Army was and that socialism will take over the whole world to make all people free.” She remembered the fruitless promises of prosperity under Hitler. Socialism never delivered then or under Stalin. “We had little food and I never saw a banana, and chocolate was only a dream. We had to stand in long waiting lines for food. When I finally got to the counter, there might not be anything left. To buy a car, there was a 10-15 year waiting time. Of course, you must have cash!” Still, even midst all this poverty, the message went out, “SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY TRUTH ON THIS EARTH!” But the real truth was that the people could not choose their education or occupation. “The government had control over your personal life, our work, living place, childcare, school and the ‘STASI’ (Socialistic Secret Service) constantly watched us. If you resisted you ended up in prison and your children could be taken from you and adopted.”
A visit to Russia, the motherland of socialism, in 1982 revealed the failure of the promise of socialism there as well. “The citizens of Russia were so poor. Bad housing, not enough food and clothing.”
In 1985 Reese was finally able to leave socialist East Germany and come to the United States under political asylum. What she sees here in recent years is too similar to the socialist worlds from which she escaped, Reese says, and it frightens her that we are taking the same path of forced sharing the wealth and socialized medicine and so many other things, and she is forced to watch tyranny return one more time.
When she sees Congress having its own healthcare plan rather than taking the same one forced on the people visions of privileged healthcare for the socialist leaders in East Germany comes to mind. She experienced rationed healthcare when her mother, at 70, was declared too old for an operation and died two years later because resources would be better spent on the young but knew that such would not be denied a government official.
Reese warns, “What is happening in America right now is scary! I’d like to tell everybody, socialism will never work in America either.” Her loss of freedom in her former settings, she says, “didn’t happen overnight, but gradually, and it can happen in America!!”
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
May 4, 2011 | Constitution, Economy, Tea Party
Dr. Harold Pease
When President George W. Bush left office the national debt was about $10 trillion—the highest in our history and a serious, unacceptable problem. Today, two and a-half years later, it exceeds $14,340 trillion. We are on the eve of destruction, as Barry McGuire sang in his 1965 anti-war hit “Eve of Destruction,” and both parties are responsible.
The President wanted to spend $3.7 trillion this year. Our total income for the year is about $2 trillion so that would leave a deficit of $1.7 trillion which will be added to the $14 trillion that is already placed upon the backs of our children and grand children. I am having difficulty understanding why this isn’t a sell-out to them.
In fiscal responsibility both parties flunked Economics 101 and proved themselves inept. Spending, even if money does not exist to be spent, is the drug addiction of both parties, although presently amplified by the Democrats, as never before in U.S. history. The printing presses are already going full steam as the Federal Reserve gave itself power last December (with presidential knowledge) to devalue your savings by printing and distributing $600 billion by June 1, of this year. We are on a course neither party fully is willing to stop. The time has come for the states, under Article V of the Constitution, to take charge and do so. The only answer to avoiding financial collapse is a balanced budget amendment and it must be enacted ASAP as Congress and the President are out of control.
All state constitutions except Vermont’s require a balanced budget in their spending. Such parameters within their borders make it easier for them to say “no!!” to new spending without also raising taxes. Basically one spends only that which is received.
The Constitution does not have a balanced budget amendment largely because of the Founders attitude that only gold and silver would be the medium of exchange in the states as expressed in Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution. This would automatically inhibit governments’ temptation to first create and then inflate paper money. We got off track rather quickly and by 1797 Thomas Jefferson wrote in irritation, “I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. I now deny their power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender” (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Taylor of Caroline, November 26, 1798; reproduced in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson v. 10, edited by Lipscomb and Bergh).
A Constitutional amendment to restrict the federal government from further enslaving our children with debt could come from either the states or the Congress. Since 1975 thirty-two states have petitioned Congress proposing a balanced budget amendment. Two more, are needed to complete the 2/3rds requirement of Article V in the Constitution forcing the ratification process. This process necessitates the acceptance of 3/4ths of the states which, with the flagrant abuse of our money supply on the part of the federal government, should be a given. The beauty of this is that a spending addicted president, whether republican or democrat, is by-passed. No signature is sought and no veto power can be exercised. So states let us get two more states on board.
Congress was one vote short of passing a proposal for a Balanced Budget Amendment in 1997 but interest waned until the Tea Party Movement reinvigorated the demand. The Senate presently has a good amendment under consideration. Outside of war or an “imminent and serious military threat to national security,” Congress and the President must submit a balanced budget. It has an 18 % spending cap. To exceed this for one year requires a 2/3rds approval of both Houses for “a specific excess.” Declared war, or “an imminent and serious military threat to national security,” also allows excess of the 18% but the excess must again be specific. The bill requires 2/3rds of both Houses for any tax increase and forbids the raise of the debt ceiling without a 3/5th of both Houses vote. Finally, it gives the government 5 years to get their fiscal house in order before the balance takes affect (Human Events, April 11, 2011, p. 13).
The Founders gave us two paths to constitutional change, the Congress, and should they fail, the states which could by-pass them. Would one of you finally come through for the people, or do you both wish to continue to leave us on the eve of destruction?
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org
