One of the most memorable lines in American cinema occurred on a balcony in a Havana hotel on the eve of the Cuban Revolution. On the balcony Hyman Roth, an elderly gangster, is speaking to Michael Corleone about making an “investment” in Cuba, as rebel forces are challenging the regime of Dictator Fulgencio Batista, days before Fidel Castro takes over Havana on January 1, 1959. At this meeting of several Mafia chieftains, Roth says to Michael, “This is the business (crime) we have chosen.”
In a similar way, the American people are like the Mafia chieftains in the Godfather sagas, they have chosen a federal government that has ruled them since the first days of the republic with an increasingly ‘iron fist.”
If this sounds too harsh, let’s look at the federal government’s record: it has created a humongous debt, trillion dollar deficits, two Ponzi schemes—Social Security and Medicare, debased the people’s money, created—via the Federal Reserve–financial bubbles that always end in busts, bailed out crony capitalists, imposed confiscatory taxes, invaded our privacy repeatedly, redistributed our income, promoted a culture of entitlement and dependency, and the most reckless policy of all, intervened overseas against presumed enemies while disarming the American people at home.
In short, the welfare-warfare state is in its final stages, because it is financially unsustainable, morally indefensibly and intellectually bankrupt. Try as they might, America’s financial and political elites are desperately trying to maintain the Big Government infrastructure afloat while the distortions are piling up. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s latest “hail Mary,” creating another $600 billion out-of-thin air to “stimulate” the economy, is a sign of desperation, a Zimbabwean economics attempt to boost employment and the output of goods and services.
Nevertheless, the American people are not off the hook. They can blame the politicians all they want, however, they voted for these turkeys! In our democracy, the people are ultimately responsible for whom they elect. As H.L. Mencken quipped, in a democracy the people get the government they deserve…and hard. That is why the American people need to educate themselves about money, the business cycle, taxes, financial independence, and foreign policy. They can begin by reading the following books free of charge on the web:
- Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt
- The Law, Frederic Bastiat
- What Has Government Done to Our Money? Murray Rothbard
- The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Ludwig von Mises
- The Income Tax: Root of All Evil, Frank Chodorov
All of these foundational books are available at www.mises.org, except The Law, which is available at http://www.fee.org/pdf/books/The_Law.pdf.
I will make a presentation to the Middlesex County Tea Party on December 2 at 8pm at the Peter Pank Diner, 967 Route 9 (north), Sayreville, NJ 08872. The meeting starts at 7pm. My talk is entitled, “How to Get From Here—Big Government—to There—Liberty and Limited Government.” I will outline how to balance the budget at much lower levels, begin the phase out of the two Ponzi schemes, Social Security and Medicare, and reestablish the dollar as “hard money,” and why a noninterventionist foreign policy is “pro American” and in our best interests. I will also discuss how to end the entitlement culture in America and create a society based on financial independence and personal responsibility. The MCTP site is http://www.midcoteaparty.com/page/page/7525681.htm.