Howard S. Katz
7-21-08
Two weeks ago, I discussed the gold standard as an issue in 2008 and in American politics in general.
The American gold standard was established in two bitter electoral contests which left a permanent mark on American history. It was then defended in 4 more contests with the gold standard (or in general hard money) winning decisive victories in every case. When we moved away from hard money in the 20th century, the leaving of the gold standard was accomplished in 3 steps (establishment of a central bank in 1913, first abolition in 1933, second abolition in 1971). Because the issue is so important, I would like to go over these 9 events in more detail. (Correction, two weeks ago I should have stated that Congress asked Jefferson to recommend a money system in 1783, not 1873.)
1) It was traditional to finance wars by printing paper money in the 18th century, and this was the way the Revolutionary War was financed. Land speculators would borrow money to buy land; then as the currency depreciated, they could sell the land at a higher price. This is almost exactly what the housing speculators did in the period 1997-2007.
Disappointed when the Federal Government’s paper money stopped after 1783, the land speculators went to their state governments to try the same ploy. The Founding Fathers were outraged at what was no more than theft. And they devised the strategy of writing a complete ban on paper money into the Constitution. The issue was debated at the constitutional convention on Aug. 16, 1787, and the hard money forces won by a vote of 9 states to 2 states. The Constitution established a gold/silver standard with the Federal Government given the power to establish the gold to silver ratio but not to issue paper money. The leader of the paper money forces at the Constitutional Convention (who was named Luther Martin) urged his followers to oppose ratification of the Constitution because, once it was ratified, there would be no more paper money in the new country.
2) But establishment thinking of the time was sympathetic to a central bank. The colonists had been under the Bank of England prior to 1776. They had established the Bank of North America under the Articles of Confederation. And Hamilton (who was well-educated in establishment economics) moved to create the first Bank of the United States in 1791. A central bank weakens a hard money system, even a central bank whose notes are convertible into gold, because it allows a limited issue of paper money.
But Thomas Jefferson, in addition to all of his other talents, was probably the greatest economist of his age. He saw that a central bank promotes the bankers’ privilege to create money, and he went into opposition. Everyone thought he was crazy. Hamilton was simply doing what was normal at the time. Washington backed Hamilton, and the central bank sailed through Congress.
Jefferson broke with his party (the Federalists). He ran against Washington’s designated successor, John Adams, in 1796 and lost by only 3 electoral votes. In 1800, the Jeffersonians (called the Democratic-Republicans) swept to power. The Washington-Adams party (the Federalists), which had been so successful when it was on the hard money side of the issue, ceased to exist.
However, Jefferson still faced opposition in Congress and could not get a bill abolishing the bank enacted. Finally, when the bank’s charter expired in 1811, James Madison (Jefferson’s successor and a supporter of the anti-bank position) threatened to veto renewal, and that was enough to kill the bank.
The following year the country became involved in the War of 1812. The majority were for the war, but they were against paying for the war. Instead of getting the extra money for the war from a tax, the Madison Administration borrowed it from a new class of smaller, private banks which had sprung up since independence. These banks also created money but on a shorter leash, so to speak. They told their depositors that their bank money was redeemable in gold/silver, which was not completely true. The banks had issued more paper bank notes than they had gold or silver with which to redeem them. And they could only keep their promise for redemption if not too many people asked them to. (This special banker privilege to violate the normal laws of commerce continues to this day.)
In December, 1814, the British burned Washington. People rushed to the banks to redeem their bank notes, and the banks did not have enough gold or silver. When the Administration then asked for more money to fight the war, the banks could not make any more loans. In January 1815, the Madison Administration made peace.
This is a good illustration of how paper money acts as a force for war and gold/silver money acts as a force for peace. If the war is truly necessary, the hawks ought to be willing to pay for it. A gold standard does not prohibit all war. But it does act as a barrier against wars which are frivolous and in which the hawks do not want to reveal their true intentions. (The only valid war-issue of 1812, impressment of American seamen, had been on the verge of settlement. England had agreed to end the impressment, but the news had not reached Washington, D.C. in time to avert Congress’ declaration of war. English papers of the time genuinely expected the misunderstanding to be straightened out. But the Americans were looking for an excuse because they wanted to conquer Canada.)
3) In 1816, the finances of the country were a mess, and Madison did not know what to do. So he went along with a second central bank. Jefferson, now retired, was outraged. A young politician, Martin van Buren, went to visit him in Monticello. Jefferson poured out his heart to the young man. Everything they had fought for had been lost. Van Buren, who very much admired Jefferson, went off determined to oppose the second central bank. He recruited Andrew Jackson, the war hero from the War of 1812. In 1824, Jackson won a plurality of both the popular and the electoral vote but lost when the election was thrown into the House of Representatives.
In 1828, van Buren founded the (modern) Democratic Party, and it elected Jackson by a clear majority. But the Bank had bribed enough congressmen that it controlled the legislature. So the key issue was, who would be President for the term 1833-37; that President would have the power to veto charter renewal for the second bank. The proponents of the bank brought up an early charter renewal in Congress in 1832 to make it an issue in the 1832 election.
Jackson declared that the people could have, “a bank and no Jackson or no bank and Jackson.” He won an overwhelming victory (219-49 in the Electoral College). The bank was destroyed, and it became accepted political wisdom in the U.S. for the remainder of the 19th century that support for a central bank was political death. The U.S. was the only major democracy without a central bank in the period 1836-1913. This was the period when America had the greatest economic growth of any country in the world at any time of history.
4) Lincoln took the country off the gold/silver standard in 1861 for the same reason as Madison, the need to finance a war without taxes. After the war ended in 1865, there was a general expectation that the country would return to gold or silver. (Before the return, Congress switched from the traditional gold/silver system to a pure gold standard in 1873.) The great majority of the people favored this return, but the banks and the railroads were working behind the scenes to subvert it. In 1874, they managed to get Congress to postpone the return to gold. President Grant was ready to sign the postponement, but, when he sat down to compose his message, he could not justify the action and vetoed the bill instead. When Congress went on recess for the 1874 election, they found that their constituents were overwhelmingly for gold. In January 1875, they passed the return to the gold standard, which became effective in 1879.
5) The bankers and the railroads, defeated in every popular forum, started the use of subterfuge. They formed a paper money party which they called the Populist Party on the argument that the poor farmer wanted paper money. However, the poor farmer did not know that he wanted paper money, and the Populist Party was a dismal failure. Gradually the anti-gold forces in the country drifted into the Democratic Party, and the two parties switched their positions.
Then in 1884, the Democrats were given their opportunity. They had not won an election since 1856, but in ’84 a scandal gave them their opportunity. In this sense, the election of 1884 was like the election of 1976. The Democrats understood that they had to play the scandal issue and not allow more substantial matters to come up. So they nominated Grover Cleveland, a pro-gold Democrat. Cleveland won the election when a group of Republicans in New York State, called the Mugwumps, shifted over to vote for him and gave him a victory in the state by 1,000 votes (out of over a million cast). This shifted New York’s electoral votes to Cleveland and gave him the election. (There was an openly pro-paper money party in the 1884 election, The Greenback Party. They received 1.7% of the popular vote and no electoral votes.)
6) In 1896, the ideologues captured control of the Democratic Party. The greenbackers gave up their radical position and joined forces with the pro-silver faction. By 1896, the demonetization of silver in 1873 had led to a shrinking of the money supply. As a result, the U.S. dollar had risen to its strongest value in history. An average item which had cost $1.00 in 1866 was down to 30¢ in 1896. The bankers and railroads were desperate to increase the money supply. And they were all able to unite on the issue of the remonetization of silver. This had the advantage over the greenbackers of being in accord with both the Constitution and American tradition. The Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan, and he made the famous convention speech:
“you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
Bryan was regarded as a great orator and the “cross of gold” was one of his great speeches. William McKinley defeated him by 51% to 47% of the popular vote. Bryan tried two more times (1900 and 1908). I believe he is the only 3-time major party loser in American politics. (Labor had almost doubled its real wages between 1866 and 1896, the greatest advance of wages in history.)
7) Having lost on 6 straight occasions the paper money faction tried a change in tactics. In 1912, J.P. Morgan split the Republican Party by providing financial backing for Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party. This enabled Woodrow Wilson to get elected, and Wilson’s payoff to Morgan was to institute a central bank. (You were taught in civics class that Wilson hated big bankers like J.P. Morgan. This was a lie.) How did they deal with the fact that, since 1832 a central bank had been political death in American politics? First, they snuck it through in a late December session when many congressmen had left for the Christmas holiday. Second, they openly proclaimed that the Federal Reserve was not a central bank. (A central bank is the lender of last resort to the government, which is what the Federal Reserve has been since the first day of its operation in 1914.) Today it is generally admitted that the Federal Reserve is the American central bank.
8) The Federal Reserve led a nation-wide expansion of credit during WWI and during the 1920s. This was accompanied by a two-part contraction of credit in 1920-21 and 1929-32. The second part is called The Great Depression. (Remember that depressions do not exist. Credit contractions are called depressions or recessions by apologists for the paper aristocracy, but since the vast majority of the American people benefit from a credit contraction, it could not possibly be a depression or recession.) Since the paper aristocracy has generated so much propaganda about the Great Depression, it should be noted that, by creating the Federal Reserve, they have to take the responsibility for it.
1933 was probably the worst year in American history. It was the year that Hitler came to power in Germany, and it was the year that F.D.R. took power in America, took the country off the gold standard and gave the privilege to create money to the nation’s commercial bankers. Was any of this discussed in the election of 1932? In its 1932 platform, the Democratic Party declared:
“We advocate an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures …of not less than twenty-five per cent in the cost of the Federal Government….We favor maintenance of the national credit by a federal budget annually balanced….We advocate a sound currency to be preserved at all hazards….”
H. L. Menken, an earlier day libertarian, voted for F.D.R. in 1932 indicating that F.D.R.’s intentions to vastly increase government spending, to run enormous budget deficits and to abandon the gold standard were completely unknown. The interesting thing about this is that, long after it was done there was absolutely no reporting of this to the American people, and throughout my active political life (which extends from 1964) I continually meet people who deny that the U.S. is off the gold standard (because the prospect of this is so horrific to them that they cannot conceive of the degree of evil which made it possible. Certainly no one can say that the public ratified F.D.R.’s abolition of the gold standard at the polls. Indeed, F.D.R. was so careful to lie about it that he must have understood that the voters were against him on this point. And as for the Constitution’s ban on paper money? The Constitution was reinterpreted to mean the opposite of what it says. Luther Martin would have supported F.D.R..
9) But Cordell Hull (F.D.R.’s Secretary of State) led a movement for a partial reestablishment of the gold standard in 1944. Called the Bretton Woods System, it required the U.S. to maintain redeemability of the dollar into 1/35 oz. of gold whenever so asked by a foreign government (but not by an American citizen). From 1944 to 1971, the fear that foreigners would do this was a check on the money creation power of the central bank. This time it was the Republicans who destroyed that final check. Again no one had a clue that this was what the Republican candidate intended. The Republican platform of 1968 stated
“We must re-establish fiscal responsibility and put an end to increases in the cost of living….New Republican leadership can and will restore fiscal integrity and sound monetary policies, encourage sustained economic vitality, and avoid such economic distortions as wage and price controls.”
On Aug. 15, 1971, Richard Nixon threw fiscal integrity and sound monetary policies out the window, broke America’s promise to redeem its dollars for gold and imposed wage and price controls. Since this date we have seen the largest generation-long increase in prices in American history, and the first major decline in real wages since 1623.
This record is clear. On 6 occasions, the issue of hard money, in one form or the other, went to the American people. On each occasion, the America people voted for hard money, often by large margins. It was their hard money positions which made Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Van Buren, Grover Cleveland and William McKinley President. Hard money was important in securing the ratification of the Constitution, and it created the Democratic Party (which still feels obliged to celebrate Jefferson-Jackson days although it has betrayed the issue for which they fought).
What is the difference between the 18th and 19th centuries on the one hand and the 20th century on the other? When the 18th/19th centuries had an issue, they dealt with it openly and rationally. They stated their positions, gave their reasons and let the people make their choice. In the 20th century, they lied.
The biggest mistake of the conservative movement was its decision, in 1936, not to make the 1933 abandonment of gold the number one issue. We can’t be sure exactly what would have happened, but it probably would have resulted in an overwhelming Republican victory in 1936 and Republican dominance for the remainder of the century. As it is, the conservative movement is a political horror show, and pragmatic politicians run from any issue as soon as the conservatives support it. The rule in American politics since 1936 has been, if the conservatives are for it, then supporting it is political death.
In the election of 2008, rising prices are once again the number one issue. The American people have a choice of two parties: the party that caused it (the Democrats) and the party that followed them (the Republicans).
There has to be a better way.
# # #
Howard S. Katz can be visited at http://www.thegoldbug.net
Monday, July 21, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
SOCIALISM
Howard S. Katz
7-14-08
Ralph Nader is running for President in 2008 as an independent. Nader and the Libertarians are running the old fashioned way. They tell you up front just what they stand for and do not tell you something merely because they think it will win votes. This is refreshing. However, the main thing that Ralph Nader stands for is socialism.
Socialism has been roundly critiqued in this country on the grounds that it does not work. Indeed, the socialists in the Soviet Union came to this conclusion in 1989 and decided to close down the socialist “experiment.” Readers of earlier blogs will recognize the body-soul dichotomy here: Socialism is highly moral; therefore it must be impractical. And this is the most widely held opinion in this country.
For this reason, I would like to place the issue of socialism’s practicality aside and merely discuss whether or not it is moral. This subject is never discussed rationally. Socialists simply walk around with a morally superior air as though their position did not require proof. “We all know that socialism is moral. Now let us get to the question of whether or not we ought to be moral,” is their attitude.
Socialism is immoral because it is opposed to justice. Of course, this raises a further question, what is justice? And this question just happens to be at the center of our society’s view of justice. The question what is justice was raised by Plato in The Republic, and although he continued on to give an answer, virtually nobody was ever satisfied with Plato’s answer and instead came to the conclusion that we don’t know what justice is.
As it happens, the question what is justice was answered some 400 years before Plato lived. It was answered by Isaiah, who wrote:
10 Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
11 Woe unto the wicked! It shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
Isaiah, Ch. 3, vs. 10, 11.
What Isaiah is saying is that, in a certain sense both good and evil are treated alike. Both receive the consequences of their actions. However, the consequences of the good man’s actions are good (for human life). For him to receive the consequences of his actions is to be rewarded. The consequences of the evil man’s actions are bad (for human life). For him to receive the consequences of his actions is to be punished.
Let us take a simple, commonplace example which existed widely at the time that these concepts were first being discussed. Take the case whereby two farmers are farming two pieces of land side-by-side. The first is the good farmer. He works hard. He is up at the crack of dawn. He studies the plants he is growing and learns their nature (and hence what kind of care to give them). The second is the bad farmer. He is lazy. He does not do the things that have to be done. Indeed, he does not completely know what has to be done because he does not study the nature of the plants he is raising.
Now agreed, there can be a few freak situations, say a drought or a flood, where the crop is wiped out, and it does not matter much whether you worked hard or were lazy. However, in the vast majority of cases the good farmer raises more food than the bad farmer.
What does Isaiah say to do with these two farmers? Give each the consequences of his actions (meaning the quantity of food he has raised). The good farmer gets the big crop, and the evil farmer gets the small crop. In this way, justice is done.
Now what if the bad farmer, angry at getting the small crop, steals from the good farmer? The solution to this is for the good farmers to organize a government which passes a law which says something like, “Thou shalt not steal.” This government will then put the bad farmer in jail for stealing the good farmer’s crop. This is why the U.S. Constitution specifies one of the goals of government as to “establish justice.”
What does socialism (and Ralph Nader) say to do with these two farmers? “From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.” That is, Nader would merge the two crops and then apportion the total to the two farmers in accord with what he determined to be the needs of each. (How a given socialist government determines people’s needs is never examined too closely by those who advocate this system.) In short, Nader’s government, instead of opposing stealing, would assist the thief.
Although the passage from Isaiah is the clearest statement of the concept of justice, the Old Testament is infused with the concept. This is because the Old Testament had a new and radical concept of the world, of which justice was one aspect.
The radical concept which Moses brought to the Hebrews was that the universe operated by cause and effect. The God of Moses was distant and did not interfere in human affairs. Indeed, He had no physical shape. He was not in any place (being both everywhere and nowhere at the same time). And there is a clear statement (Exodus, Ch. 3, vs.14 -- “I am that I am” – which certainly seems to indicate that God has no name. (This is why the Jewish religion is so confused about the name of God, and it explains why the Christian religion got God’s name wrong and has it wrong to this day.)
Besides pretty much leaving his charges alone, the Jewish God gave people what they would have received if He did not exist. He gave them the consequences of their actions.
So here is a god who had no shape. (So he could not possibly have had a male sex organ with which to father a child.) He had no place. He probably had no name. And he pretty much left you alone. And all you were left with was a universe in which things occurred in accordance with the law of cause and effect. If you could obey this one law, if you expected to receive the consequences of your actions and lived your life accordingly, then you would very likely have a good life.
And here is Ralph Nader, howling in outrage, because our society, to some small degree, requires that people receive the consequences of their actions.
If you look at today’s America, this is precisely our problem. Compare America in 2008 with America in 1908. In every way, that was a happier, more prosperous, stronger and more competent society. In 1908, diseases were being conquered one after the other. In 1971, we declared was on cancer. But cancer won the war. Even as late as 1941, we whipped the blazes out of the Japanese, not because we had more courage but because we could out produce them. We made more and better of every type of military equipment, and that decided the war. Today Toyota makes a better car than Ford and is closing in on General Motors. I wonder what would happen if we got into war with the Japanese today?
In 1913, Henry Ford had a concept of making a much cheaper (but just as good) automobile. It wasn’t easy to do, but he made it work. He made millions of people better off, and they, in return, made him a millionaire. That is justice. But today’s owners of Ford, when faced with their problems, make plans to go to the government for a bailout. That is, the government will steal from you and me and give to Ford. The socialists always say that they want to rob from the rich and give to the poor, but they always wind up robbing from the poor and giving to the rich.
So far the Ford bailout is nothing more than talk, but at this writing there is a serious proposal to bail out the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) to the tune of up to 5 trillion dollars. That is over 4 months of the entire country’s product and represents slightly less than $17,000 for every man, woman and child. When you read in the paper next New Year’s day about the first baby born in 2009, remember that the U.S. Government is sending him a bill for $17,000. Not that any of this is firm. All the major politicians are talking out of both sides of their mouths on the subject. But that is what got us into this problem in the first place.
Ayn Rand postulated the concept of the strike of the men of the mind. It was only a literary device, but that concept certainly explains what is happening to our society. Where are the great men who invented things and produced things and made a better world back in the 19th and early 20th centuries? What an incentive for such men was there then. Thomas Edison said, “If it won’t sell, I don’t want to invent it.” And sell it did.
What happened to such men? Read the story of Preston Tucker. Read the story of Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television. After the disgraceful way these men (and many others) were treated in mid-20th century such innovators just dried up.
Through the 19th century, an average generation (30 years) of American working men saw its real wages rise by 60%. The generation from 1972-2002 saw its real wages decline by 18%.
When I was a boy, I thought that by the year 2,000 most everyone would have his own personal flying machine (something like a gyroplane or small helicopter). Ford, GM and Chrysler simply stood still, and the Japanese caught up. Where were the men of the mind who could have invented/made practical this personal flying machine? They were not around. They are no longer leading American business. They are no longer in the science labs. Our society has adopted a policy of punishing the good and rewarding the evil. Today’s bill for that policy is $17,000. Tomorrow’s bill will be massive world-wide starvation. (Remember the current starvation of 25,000 people per day only made page 42. Most people don’t even know that it is happening.) The bill for the day after? I can only guess.
This is the world Ralph Nader wants. Reward the evil and punish the good. From each according to his ability. To each according to his need. This is the strike of the men of the mind.
# # #
Howard S. Katz can be visited at http://www.thegoldbug.net.
7-14-08
Ralph Nader is running for President in 2008 as an independent. Nader and the Libertarians are running the old fashioned way. They tell you up front just what they stand for and do not tell you something merely because they think it will win votes. This is refreshing. However, the main thing that Ralph Nader stands for is socialism.
Socialism has been roundly critiqued in this country on the grounds that it does not work. Indeed, the socialists in the Soviet Union came to this conclusion in 1989 and decided to close down the socialist “experiment.” Readers of earlier blogs will recognize the body-soul dichotomy here: Socialism is highly moral; therefore it must be impractical. And this is the most widely held opinion in this country.
For this reason, I would like to place the issue of socialism’s practicality aside and merely discuss whether or not it is moral. This subject is never discussed rationally. Socialists simply walk around with a morally superior air as though their position did not require proof. “We all know that socialism is moral. Now let us get to the question of whether or not we ought to be moral,” is their attitude.
Socialism is immoral because it is opposed to justice. Of course, this raises a further question, what is justice? And this question just happens to be at the center of our society’s view of justice. The question what is justice was raised by Plato in The Republic, and although he continued on to give an answer, virtually nobody was ever satisfied with Plato’s answer and instead came to the conclusion that we don’t know what justice is.
As it happens, the question what is justice was answered some 400 years before Plato lived. It was answered by Isaiah, who wrote:
10 Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
11 Woe unto the wicked! It shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
Isaiah, Ch. 3, vs. 10, 11.
What Isaiah is saying is that, in a certain sense both good and evil are treated alike. Both receive the consequences of their actions. However, the consequences of the good man’s actions are good (for human life). For him to receive the consequences of his actions is to be rewarded. The consequences of the evil man’s actions are bad (for human life). For him to receive the consequences of his actions is to be punished.
Let us take a simple, commonplace example which existed widely at the time that these concepts were first being discussed. Take the case whereby two farmers are farming two pieces of land side-by-side. The first is the good farmer. He works hard. He is up at the crack of dawn. He studies the plants he is growing and learns their nature (and hence what kind of care to give them). The second is the bad farmer. He is lazy. He does not do the things that have to be done. Indeed, he does not completely know what has to be done because he does not study the nature of the plants he is raising.
Now agreed, there can be a few freak situations, say a drought or a flood, where the crop is wiped out, and it does not matter much whether you worked hard or were lazy. However, in the vast majority of cases the good farmer raises more food than the bad farmer.
What does Isaiah say to do with these two farmers? Give each the consequences of his actions (meaning the quantity of food he has raised). The good farmer gets the big crop, and the evil farmer gets the small crop. In this way, justice is done.
Now what if the bad farmer, angry at getting the small crop, steals from the good farmer? The solution to this is for the good farmers to organize a government which passes a law which says something like, “Thou shalt not steal.” This government will then put the bad farmer in jail for stealing the good farmer’s crop. This is why the U.S. Constitution specifies one of the goals of government as to “establish justice.”
What does socialism (and Ralph Nader) say to do with these two farmers? “From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.” That is, Nader would merge the two crops and then apportion the total to the two farmers in accord with what he determined to be the needs of each. (How a given socialist government determines people’s needs is never examined too closely by those who advocate this system.) In short, Nader’s government, instead of opposing stealing, would assist the thief.
Although the passage from Isaiah is the clearest statement of the concept of justice, the Old Testament is infused with the concept. This is because the Old Testament had a new and radical concept of the world, of which justice was one aspect.
The radical concept which Moses brought to the Hebrews was that the universe operated by cause and effect. The God of Moses was distant and did not interfere in human affairs. Indeed, He had no physical shape. He was not in any place (being both everywhere and nowhere at the same time). And there is a clear statement (Exodus, Ch. 3, vs.14 -- “I am that I am” – which certainly seems to indicate that God has no name. (This is why the Jewish religion is so confused about the name of God, and it explains why the Christian religion got God’s name wrong and has it wrong to this day.)
Besides pretty much leaving his charges alone, the Jewish God gave people what they would have received if He did not exist. He gave them the consequences of their actions.
So here is a god who had no shape. (So he could not possibly have had a male sex organ with which to father a child.) He had no place. He probably had no name. And he pretty much left you alone. And all you were left with was a universe in which things occurred in accordance with the law of cause and effect. If you could obey this one law, if you expected to receive the consequences of your actions and lived your life accordingly, then you would very likely have a good life.
And here is Ralph Nader, howling in outrage, because our society, to some small degree, requires that people receive the consequences of their actions.
If you look at today’s America, this is precisely our problem. Compare America in 2008 with America in 1908. In every way, that was a happier, more prosperous, stronger and more competent society. In 1908, diseases were being conquered one after the other. In 1971, we declared was on cancer. But cancer won the war. Even as late as 1941, we whipped the blazes out of the Japanese, not because we had more courage but because we could out produce them. We made more and better of every type of military equipment, and that decided the war. Today Toyota makes a better car than Ford and is closing in on General Motors. I wonder what would happen if we got into war with the Japanese today?
In 1913, Henry Ford had a concept of making a much cheaper (but just as good) automobile. It wasn’t easy to do, but he made it work. He made millions of people better off, and they, in return, made him a millionaire. That is justice. But today’s owners of Ford, when faced with their problems, make plans to go to the government for a bailout. That is, the government will steal from you and me and give to Ford. The socialists always say that they want to rob from the rich and give to the poor, but they always wind up robbing from the poor and giving to the rich.
So far the Ford bailout is nothing more than talk, but at this writing there is a serious proposal to bail out the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) to the tune of up to 5 trillion dollars. That is over 4 months of the entire country’s product and represents slightly less than $17,000 for every man, woman and child. When you read in the paper next New Year’s day about the first baby born in 2009, remember that the U.S. Government is sending him a bill for $17,000. Not that any of this is firm. All the major politicians are talking out of both sides of their mouths on the subject. But that is what got us into this problem in the first place.
Ayn Rand postulated the concept of the strike of the men of the mind. It was only a literary device, but that concept certainly explains what is happening to our society. Where are the great men who invented things and produced things and made a better world back in the 19th and early 20th centuries? What an incentive for such men was there then. Thomas Edison said, “If it won’t sell, I don’t want to invent it.” And sell it did.
What happened to such men? Read the story of Preston Tucker. Read the story of Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television. After the disgraceful way these men (and many others) were treated in mid-20th century such innovators just dried up.
Through the 19th century, an average generation (30 years) of American working men saw its real wages rise by 60%. The generation from 1972-2002 saw its real wages decline by 18%.
When I was a boy, I thought that by the year 2,000 most everyone would have his own personal flying machine (something like a gyroplane or small helicopter). Ford, GM and Chrysler simply stood still, and the Japanese caught up. Where were the men of the mind who could have invented/made practical this personal flying machine? They were not around. They are no longer leading American business. They are no longer in the science labs. Our society has adopted a policy of punishing the good and rewarding the evil. Today’s bill for that policy is $17,000. Tomorrow’s bill will be massive world-wide starvation. (Remember the current starvation of 25,000 people per day only made page 42. Most people don’t even know that it is happening.) The bill for the day after? I can only guess.
This is the world Ralph Nader wants. Reward the evil and punish the good. From each according to his ability. To each according to his need. This is the strike of the men of the mind.
# # #
Howard S. Katz can be visited at http://www.thegoldbug.net.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
LIBERTARIANS ON MONEY
by Howard S. Katz
7-7-08
The central issue in election 2008 is the rising price of gasoline, and everyone understands that gas is a symbol for rising prices of almost all goods.
What is the cause of rising prices? It is the printing of money by the U.S. Government. This has been going on since 1933, but it has intensified since the abolition of the Bretton Woods System in 1971.
How is a problem like this supposed to be handled in a democracy? Well in a democracy, those who think that they know the solution to a problem, are supposed to organize and go to the people with their solution. If their arguments are good, then the people will agree, and their solution will be put into effect.
This was best expressed by George Washington at the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Washington was being urged to compromise his principles for the sake of popularity. He replied:
“If to please the people we offer what we do not approve, how will we defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.”
Washington was not making a pretty speech (although his words are very beautiful). The important part of that quote is, “how will we defend our work.” Washington viewed a political campaign as a debate, and in such a debate the rational side had a big advantage.
The actual ratification of the Constitution provides a good example of the kind of process of which Washington was thinking. The Constitution was not, at first, terribly popular. But the more it was debated the more opinion shifted in its direction. In most states, the people elected delegates to vote for or against ratification. And in several of these most of the original delegates had run (for delegate) on a position of opposing the Constitution. Then during the debate at the state convention they were persuaded to change their minds, and the state wound up ratifying. Reason won out.
The Libertarians have the answer to the problem of rising prices in our society. They know why gasoline (and other goods) is (are) going up. Goods are rising in price because the Government is depreciating our currency, and this is done by the creation of money. In 1933, the amount of money in the U.S. was $20 billion (15 dollars for each person). Today it is $1.3 trillion (a bit over 4,000 dollars per person). The blame for this lies chiefly with the Democrats. They abolished the traditional American gold standard in 1933 and started printing money. The Republicans at first opposed this printing of money in a wishy-washy way. Then they endorsed it, and the current rise in prices is due to Reagan, Bush, Sr., Bush, Jr. and Alan Greenspan (Republicans all).
So who is going to stand up against the printing of money? Only the Libertarians. To this end, I researched the 2008 Libertarian Party Platform. On the subject of money it states:
“Individuals engaged in voluntary exchange should be free to use as money any mutually agreeable commodity or item. We support a halt to inflationary monetary policies, the repeal of legal tender laws and compulsory governmental units of account.”
Now all this is very pretty. People should be free to use any mutually agreeable item. Who can argue with this? But what the blazes does it mean to the average Joe sitting in a bar, watching the baseball game and complaining about the high price of gas?
Well, I make it my business to talk to average Joes all the time. I bring up the price of gas. Wow, they are with me. Then I have a stopper of an argument. “Gold standard.”
“What?”
“The way to stop the rise in prices is by returning the country to the gold standard. We were on a gold standard for 145 years, and at the end of that time prices were almost exactly the same as at the beginning. The price of a new car in 1933 was $400. The price of the daily newspaper was 2¢. Rent for a 4 room apartment (San Francisco) was $25/mo.
Under the gold standard, the real wages of the average working man would be up by 60% over the course of a generation (30 year period). America abandoned its last tie to gold in 1971. From 1972 to 2002, the real wages of the average working man declined by 18%.
How did America get on the gold standard? In 1873, Congress asked Thomas Jefferson to recommend a money for the new country. Jefferson understood the Libertarian Platform. He replied that the people of America had already chosen a money (the Spanish thaller, or dollar) and that the government should ratify the choice of the people. So it was done.
If you are walking around in the clouds of academia, then it is perfectly OK to talk about the right of each individual to choose his own money. But to the average Joe this suggests that there are going to be as many monies as there are styles of clothes. He can’t go from the abstract to the concrete.
It is the job of a political party to do this for him, to advocate abstract principles and to show the average person how these principles are going to benefit his life. But the Libertarian Party Platform is floating in the sky. It is not connecting with the average American.
I spend a great deal of time talking with ordinary people. It is much nicer to talk to them because, unlike many academics, they do not have any hidden agendas. When I say to them, “gold standard,” they wake up. They are not, of course, convinced by 2 words. But if I have a chance to talk for 5 or 10 minutes, I usually make a convert.
Anybody who has the pulse of the people in election 2008 knows that people are sore. Events have opened a wound and then rubbed salt in it. Car sales are down 14% from last year. Toyota is outselling Ford and is close to overtaking General Motors. Many people have had to give up their car and ride mass transit. They don’t like it. Election 2008 bears a close resemblance to election 1980.
Neither does the true belief have to win a 51% majority to be implemented in practice. Remember Ross Perot in 1992? He ran on the issue of the balanced budget and got 19% of the vote. Bill Clinton looked at that 19%. He said, “Hey, most of the time candidates win by 5%-10% and sometimes less. I WANT THAT 19%.” And so he cut the size of government spending and balanced the budget.” Ross Perot won in fact because he made Clinton do what he (Perot) wanted.
What does the voter want in election 2008? He wants an answer to the question, “What are you going to do about rising prices?” And he is ready to give you his attention for 5 minutes.
The only way to get his attention is to say: “GOLD STANDARD.” The party which says “GOLD STANDARD” in 2008 will gain enormous public support.
And you know something? The gold standard (or a related question) has been a political issue 6 times in American history. Each time the issue went to the people, and each time the gold standard won.
In the 1780s, many states were issuing paper money. The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution in part to suppress this paper money. They won. Then this gold standard was compromised by Hamilton’s central bank in 1791. Jefferson went into opposition. He was elected in 1800, and the bank was abolished in 1811.
But the bank came back in 1816, and in the 1820s Martin van Buren, a young politician, visited Jefferson at his home in Monticello. The old man poured his heart out to the young man, and van Buren left resolved to destroy the 2nd bank. He recruited Andrew Jackson, and in 1828 he founded the Democratic Party. In 1832, Jackson told the voters that they could have “a bank and no Jackson or no bank and Jackson.” Jackson was reelected by an overwhelming majority.
And so it went, in 1884 Grover Cleveland – a pro-gold Democrat – was elected precisely because he favored the gold standard. When the Democrats betrayed their heritage and nominated an anti-gold candidate in 1896 (William Jennings Bryan), they went down to defeat. Bryan, a distinguished political figure and an obvious choice for President, never made it precisely because of his anti-gold views.
And every step away from gold was accomplished by politicians who misled the public before they acted. The Democratic Platform of 1932 sounds as though FDR was going to defend the gold standard. The Republican Platform of 1968 sounds the same. Nobody has ever gotten up and said loudly in public that he was against gold (as William Jennings Bryan did in 1896) and gotten elected.
With this record, you do not have to be very smart to understand that the gold standard is a winning issue. I know why the Democrats and Republicans don’t endorse it. They are in (mental) thrall to a group of establishment intellectuals who impress them with fancy titles. (And they are very stupid.)
The Libertarians are a cut above. But they have to leave the clouds and talk to the people. Washington understood this. He never compromised on a principle, but he understood the concrete applications of these principles to the political issues of his day. He was elected President by a unanimous (Electoral College) vote.
That is what has to be done in election 2008: GOLD STANDARD, GOLD STANDARD, GOLD STANDARD. That is all ye know and all ye need to know.
# # #
Howard S. Katz can be visited at http://www.thegoldbug.net
7-7-08
The central issue in election 2008 is the rising price of gasoline, and everyone understands that gas is a symbol for rising prices of almost all goods.
What is the cause of rising prices? It is the printing of money by the U.S. Government. This has been going on since 1933, but it has intensified since the abolition of the Bretton Woods System in 1971.
How is a problem like this supposed to be handled in a democracy? Well in a democracy, those who think that they know the solution to a problem, are supposed to organize and go to the people with their solution. If their arguments are good, then the people will agree, and their solution will be put into effect.
This was best expressed by George Washington at the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Washington was being urged to compromise his principles for the sake of popularity. He replied:
“If to please the people we offer what we do not approve, how will we defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.”
Washington was not making a pretty speech (although his words are very beautiful). The important part of that quote is, “how will we defend our work.” Washington viewed a political campaign as a debate, and in such a debate the rational side had a big advantage.
The actual ratification of the Constitution provides a good example of the kind of process of which Washington was thinking. The Constitution was not, at first, terribly popular. But the more it was debated the more opinion shifted in its direction. In most states, the people elected delegates to vote for or against ratification. And in several of these most of the original delegates had run (for delegate) on a position of opposing the Constitution. Then during the debate at the state convention they were persuaded to change their minds, and the state wound up ratifying. Reason won out.
The Libertarians have the answer to the problem of rising prices in our society. They know why gasoline (and other goods) is (are) going up. Goods are rising in price because the Government is depreciating our currency, and this is done by the creation of money. In 1933, the amount of money in the U.S. was $20 billion (15 dollars for each person). Today it is $1.3 trillion (a bit over 4,000 dollars per person). The blame for this lies chiefly with the Democrats. They abolished the traditional American gold standard in 1933 and started printing money. The Republicans at first opposed this printing of money in a wishy-washy way. Then they endorsed it, and the current rise in prices is due to Reagan, Bush, Sr., Bush, Jr. and Alan Greenspan (Republicans all).
So who is going to stand up against the printing of money? Only the Libertarians. To this end, I researched the 2008 Libertarian Party Platform. On the subject of money it states:
“Individuals engaged in voluntary exchange should be free to use as money any mutually agreeable commodity or item. We support a halt to inflationary monetary policies, the repeal of legal tender laws and compulsory governmental units of account.”
Now all this is very pretty. People should be free to use any mutually agreeable item. Who can argue with this? But what the blazes does it mean to the average Joe sitting in a bar, watching the baseball game and complaining about the high price of gas?
Well, I make it my business to talk to average Joes all the time. I bring up the price of gas. Wow, they are with me. Then I have a stopper of an argument. “Gold standard.”
“What?”
“The way to stop the rise in prices is by returning the country to the gold standard. We were on a gold standard for 145 years, and at the end of that time prices were almost exactly the same as at the beginning. The price of a new car in 1933 was $400. The price of the daily newspaper was 2¢. Rent for a 4 room apartment (San Francisco) was $25/mo.
Under the gold standard, the real wages of the average working man would be up by 60% over the course of a generation (30 year period). America abandoned its last tie to gold in 1971. From 1972 to 2002, the real wages of the average working man declined by 18%.
How did America get on the gold standard? In 1873, Congress asked Thomas Jefferson to recommend a money for the new country. Jefferson understood the Libertarian Platform. He replied that the people of America had already chosen a money (the Spanish thaller, or dollar) and that the government should ratify the choice of the people. So it was done.
If you are walking around in the clouds of academia, then it is perfectly OK to talk about the right of each individual to choose his own money. But to the average Joe this suggests that there are going to be as many monies as there are styles of clothes. He can’t go from the abstract to the concrete.
It is the job of a political party to do this for him, to advocate abstract principles and to show the average person how these principles are going to benefit his life. But the Libertarian Party Platform is floating in the sky. It is not connecting with the average American.
I spend a great deal of time talking with ordinary people. It is much nicer to talk to them because, unlike many academics, they do not have any hidden agendas. When I say to them, “gold standard,” they wake up. They are not, of course, convinced by 2 words. But if I have a chance to talk for 5 or 10 minutes, I usually make a convert.
Anybody who has the pulse of the people in election 2008 knows that people are sore. Events have opened a wound and then rubbed salt in it. Car sales are down 14% from last year. Toyota is outselling Ford and is close to overtaking General Motors. Many people have had to give up their car and ride mass transit. They don’t like it. Election 2008 bears a close resemblance to election 1980.
Neither does the true belief have to win a 51% majority to be implemented in practice. Remember Ross Perot in 1992? He ran on the issue of the balanced budget and got 19% of the vote. Bill Clinton looked at that 19%. He said, “Hey, most of the time candidates win by 5%-10% and sometimes less. I WANT THAT 19%.” And so he cut the size of government spending and balanced the budget.” Ross Perot won in fact because he made Clinton do what he (Perot) wanted.
What does the voter want in election 2008? He wants an answer to the question, “What are you going to do about rising prices?” And he is ready to give you his attention for 5 minutes.
The only way to get his attention is to say: “GOLD STANDARD.” The party which says “GOLD STANDARD” in 2008 will gain enormous public support.
And you know something? The gold standard (or a related question) has been a political issue 6 times in American history. Each time the issue went to the people, and each time the gold standard won.
In the 1780s, many states were issuing paper money. The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution in part to suppress this paper money. They won. Then this gold standard was compromised by Hamilton’s central bank in 1791. Jefferson went into opposition. He was elected in 1800, and the bank was abolished in 1811.
But the bank came back in 1816, and in the 1820s Martin van Buren, a young politician, visited Jefferson at his home in Monticello. The old man poured his heart out to the young man, and van Buren left resolved to destroy the 2nd bank. He recruited Andrew Jackson, and in 1828 he founded the Democratic Party. In 1832, Jackson told the voters that they could have “a bank and no Jackson or no bank and Jackson.” Jackson was reelected by an overwhelming majority.
And so it went, in 1884 Grover Cleveland – a pro-gold Democrat – was elected precisely because he favored the gold standard. When the Democrats betrayed their heritage and nominated an anti-gold candidate in 1896 (William Jennings Bryan), they went down to defeat. Bryan, a distinguished political figure and an obvious choice for President, never made it precisely because of his anti-gold views.
And every step away from gold was accomplished by politicians who misled the public before they acted. The Democratic Platform of 1932 sounds as though FDR was going to defend the gold standard. The Republican Platform of 1968 sounds the same. Nobody has ever gotten up and said loudly in public that he was against gold (as William Jennings Bryan did in 1896) and gotten elected.
With this record, you do not have to be very smart to understand that the gold standard is a winning issue. I know why the Democrats and Republicans don’t endorse it. They are in (mental) thrall to a group of establishment intellectuals who impress them with fancy titles. (And they are very stupid.)
The Libertarians are a cut above. But they have to leave the clouds and talk to the people. Washington understood this. He never compromised on a principle, but he understood the concrete applications of these principles to the political issues of his day. He was elected President by a unanimous (Electoral College) vote.
That is what has to be done in election 2008: GOLD STANDARD, GOLD STANDARD, GOLD STANDARD. That is all ye know and all ye need to know.
# # #
Howard S. Katz can be visited at http://www.thegoldbug.net
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Howard S. Katz's Portfolio Performance versus Fund Managers'
Katz's performance in blue, fund managers' in red. Katz's newsletter can be purchased at http://www.thegoldbug.net.
The data can be viewed more easily here.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
THE RIGHT TO PROPERTY
by Howard S. Katz
6-30-08
Election 2008 hinges, basically, on the right to property. This is true if one goes according to the candidates’ formal positions. In a great many elections, the victor moves to follow the campaign promises of his opponent, and formal positions are not a good measure of what the candidate will do. For example, FDR, in 1932, promised to reduce the size of the government. Richard Nixon, in 1972, promised to oppose McGovern’s policy of unilateral withdrawal (from Vietnam) and never to impose price and wage controls. Ronald Reagan, in 1980, promised not to negotiate with terrorists, and George Bush (Sr.) in 1988 promised “read my lips, no new taxes.”
In deciding for whom to vote, one must consider both a candidate’s formal position and the way he is likely to act once elected. Political professionals watch the votes cast for minor candidates (especially those with no chance to win) and are impressed by how many votes a specific formal position can attract. They often co-opt the position, and the position wins even though the candidate did not (e.g., Ross Perot’s balanced budget in 1992). To keep things simple in this blog I am only going to consider formal positions.
In this election, we have a situation very similar to that of the past 76 years. The Democratic Party is vocally and defiantly opposed to property rights. The Republican Party is wishy-washy and compromising. It will violate property rights but not to the degree that the Democrats will.
It should be noted that the 20th century Democratic Party, after 1932, is radically opposed to the original Democratic Party, which was founded in 1828 by Martin van Buren. This original Democratic Party was founded on the concept of upholding property rights, and it would have repudiated the New Deal slogan, “Rob from the rich to give to the poor.”
This slogan, by the way, is continually debated, and this often leads people into thinking that the (post 1932) Democratic Party does actually rob from the rich and give to the poor. They go to great effort to leave that impression. However, a closer study of almost any Democrat-supported policy or piece of legislation shows that it robs from the poor and gives to the rich. The poor do not donate significant amounts of money to election campaigns. Again and again the Democrats adopt a policy which robs from the poor and middle classes. This attracts large donations from the rich, and the Democrats then use this money to run campaign ads stating that they are robbing from the rich. The rich understand. The poor are taken in. (A good example of this is the enormous stock market rise since 1982 and the resulting stock options and enormous salaries of certain CEOs. These were the product of a policy initiated by the Democrats and copied by the Republicans. For the 50 years prior to 1932 for which we had reliable stock indexes, the stock market was flat.)
Under the influence of Christianity, the few rights of property which existed under the old Roman Empire/Republic were abolished. Money disappeared from circulation. (Perhaps certain supporters of the New Testament can explain to us whether it was money which disappeared or the love of money.) At any rate, the Roman economy collapsed. According to figures I have seen, the population of Rome in the year 400 A.D. was 500,000. The population of Rome in the year 900 A.D. was 20,000. The human suffering which was required to get from the first number to the second is beyond my ability to communicate with words.
Civilization reemerged in Anglo-Saxon society in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was an Anglo-Saxon named John Locke who proved the validity of property rights. How is it, Locke asked, that a man may rightfully own property?
“God, who hath given the World to Men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of Life, and convenience. The Earth, and all that is therein, is given to Men for the Support and Comfort of their being. And though all the Fruits it naturally produces, and Beasts it feeds, belong to Mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature; and no body has originally a private Dominion, exclusive of the rest of Mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state: yet being given for the use of Men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular Man. The Fruit, or Venison, which nourishes the wild [American] Indian, who knows no Inclosure, and is still a Tenant in common, must be his, and so his, i.e., a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his Life.”
John Locke, “Of the Beginning of Political Societies,” Two
Treatises of Government, (New York, Mentor, 1965), p. 328,
(Locke’s italics).
Locke is saying that when humans first discover land, the good things on it (the things necessary to human life) don’t belong to anybody. What is it that can make these things property? (Inclosure/enclosure is a process for dividing communist land into pieces of private property.) Locke then answers his own question:
“Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and Work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no Man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to….”
Ibid., pp. 328-29. (Locke’s italics).
For example, suppose a man comes across some land. It is overgrown with wild vegetation, most of which does not constitute food for human beings. But if he clears this wild vegetation, irrigates the land and fences it, then he can plant a crop and raise enough food to feed himself and his family. It is his labor which has made the difference between land which is worth very little and land which is highly productive. It is his labor which has given value to the land.
To whom does this value belong as a matter of right? It belongs to the human whose labor gave it value. Locke thus formulated the idea behind the movement, which was then going on in Britain, to take communal land and divide it into sections and give one section to each family. This was known as the enclosure movement. In 1623, the Pilgrims in Plymouth enclosed their land, thus turning it into private property. This resulted in a much improved harvest and saved them from starvation. And the first thanksgiving in America (the basis for our modern holiday of Thanksgiving) was held to celebrate this successful harvest. (You are not taught this in school because our education system is dominated by persons sympathetic to communism who do not want to admit that the American holiday of Thanksgiving celebrates the abolition of communism.)
In 1620, there were approximately 800,000 American Indians (best estimate) in the land area which today constitutes the United States. (The larger numbers which you see these days come from the same pro-communist intellectuals who, to make you feel guilty, are posing as pro-Indian.) They lived on the edge of starvation and were in almost continual war with each other (mostly over food). The American great plains, which today are the breadbasket of the world, were at that time infertile. Neither the Indians nor the first white settlers could raise a crop on it because the soil was too thick and crusty. It was John Deere who devised a plow strong enough to break the soil but still light enough to be usable.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the population of the world was 1.7 billion people. By the end of the century, the population was 6.6 billion. Despite the fact that the world’s population multiplied by a factor of almost 4 there was no starvation. Human ingenuity, operating under a system which guaranteed property rights, made food production rise faster than the population (Malthus to the contrary notwithstanding).
Why did the British Calvinists of the 17th century adopt the principle of property rights when all western culture had rejected it? It was because the Calvinists accepted the Old Testament principle of justice in contrast to the New Testament principle of love.
Plato acquired a reputation in classical times by saying that he did not know what justice was. But that only proved that Plato was stupid. The answer to the question what is justice had been given by Isaiah some 500 years before Plato lived. Justice is the state of affairs whereby people receive the consequences of their actions. The good man receives the good consequences of his good actions, and the evil man receives the evil consequences of his evil actions.
To apply justice to economics, consider two farmers working fields next to each other. The industrious farmer raises a large crop. The lazy farmer raises a small crop. The principle of justice says that each farmer should receive the crop that he raised (the consequences of his actions). The principle of socialism says that the two fields should be farmed in common and half the surplus raised by the industrious farmer given to the lazy farmer (to each according to his need).
To guarantee that a worker received the value which his labor had produced, the 17th century Calvinists asserted a right to property. The idea that man had a right to property was commonplace at the time of the American Revolution, and it was affirmed in many of the state constitutions. (When Jefferson wrote “pursuit of happiness” in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, he intended it to include property as property is essential to happiness.) The New Hampshire Constitution states:
All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights among which are, the enjoying and defending life and liberty: acquiring, possessing, and protecting, property: and, in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness.
Every member of the community has a right to be protected by it, in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property;
New Hampshire Constitution, 1784,
articles 2, 12.
When the New Deal proclaimed “Rob from the rich and give to the poor,” it was denying the basic American concept of the purpose of government. According to the American Declaration of Independence it is the job of government to protect its citizens’ rights, including their property rights. A political system which openly declares its intention to violate these rights is a perversion of government.
What will happen to any society in which the redistribution of wealth becomes socially acceptable? Why people will seek to get wealth by taking it from others (in the socially acceptable way). They will not bother to produce wealth. When I attended Harvard, the dominant intellectual behind almost all of their theories was Plato. What do we know about Plato? Well, he hated democracy and admired ancient Sparta. The Spartans got their wealth by practicing human slavery. They had enslaved their neighbors the Helots (fellow Greeks) and forced these Helots to produce their wealth. The contempt which modern leftist intellectuals have for businessmen comes directly from Plato’s and the Spartans’ contempt for the Helots. (So if you are a member of the Negro race and vote leftist thinking that these people are on your side, think again. If they ever won enough power, then before you knew what hit you , you would be back in the condition of your great, great grandfather.)
We have many examples of societies in which property rights were not respected and in which it was socially acceptable for certain people to steal (redistribute the wealth) from others. In the Middle Ages, the feudal lords stole the wealth from the serfs. The serfs developed the fine art of producing as little as possible while they pretended to work, and the lords spent their time warring with each other (to get the other’s serfs). During this period the population of Britain was 2 million to 3 million people. More than that was overpopulation, which could not be supported by the food supply. When the weather turned bad, there was famine.
In connection with the world starvation which is currently going on, you may have heard discussion of people whose net income is $1.00 per day (and are especially hard hit by food price increases). This $1.00/day concept was first presented in 1993, and here in 2008 that is equivalent to $1.50/day. These are the people who are physically starving and who are leading the food protests and riots around the world. Starting around 1650 (close to the time of John Locke) the world population began a steady rise (culminating in the 4-fold increase of the 20th century). I am now afraid that this increase has stopped, precisely because world policies against property rights have become dominant over the policies in favor.
Look around. The average height of the world’s tallest buildings is less than it was before 2001. The average speed of the fastest commercial airplane is slower than it was prior to 2003. The size of the average American car is smaller than it was in 1979. Ditto, ditto horsepower, comfort.
You are one of the fortunate ones. Because you read this blog you know the fact of world starvation. But your neighbor, your co-worker, your friend, does not know it. It has not been printed in 5 inch headlines in his local paper. So if you tell it to him, he will give you a stupid off-the-top-of-the-head argument whose intent is to deny it. (The premise in his mind is, “Reality is that which I read in the newspapers or hear on the network news”) The chances of solving this problem when we will not admit that it exists are very small.
It looks like I was wrong a month ago when I predicted a decline in the price of gasoline and crude oil. Commodities did decline in the March to June period, but energy was an exception. Now that decline is over, and the exception for energy indicates that it will probably lead the coming advance. Expect another ratchet up in both gasoline and food prices. If people making $1.50 per day were having trouble with current prices, things will be worse 6 months from now. Not only do most politicians not have a solution, it is hard to find one who knows the problem exists.
But the law of causality does not really care about us. If we obey its dictates, we prosper. If not, we suffer and die.
# # #
Howard S. Katz can be visited at http://www.thegoldbug.net.
6-30-08
Election 2008 hinges, basically, on the right to property. This is true if one goes according to the candidates’ formal positions. In a great many elections, the victor moves to follow the campaign promises of his opponent, and formal positions are not a good measure of what the candidate will do. For example, FDR, in 1932, promised to reduce the size of the government. Richard Nixon, in 1972, promised to oppose McGovern’s policy of unilateral withdrawal (from Vietnam) and never to impose price and wage controls. Ronald Reagan, in 1980, promised not to negotiate with terrorists, and George Bush (Sr.) in 1988 promised “read my lips, no new taxes.”
In deciding for whom to vote, one must consider both a candidate’s formal position and the way he is likely to act once elected. Political professionals watch the votes cast for minor candidates (especially those with no chance to win) and are impressed by how many votes a specific formal position can attract. They often co-opt the position, and the position wins even though the candidate did not (e.g., Ross Perot’s balanced budget in 1992). To keep things simple in this blog I am only going to consider formal positions.
In this election, we have a situation very similar to that of the past 76 years. The Democratic Party is vocally and defiantly opposed to property rights. The Republican Party is wishy-washy and compromising. It will violate property rights but not to the degree that the Democrats will.
It should be noted that the 20th century Democratic Party, after 1932, is radically opposed to the original Democratic Party, which was founded in 1828 by Martin van Buren. This original Democratic Party was founded on the concept of upholding property rights, and it would have repudiated the New Deal slogan, “Rob from the rich to give to the poor.”
This slogan, by the way, is continually debated, and this often leads people into thinking that the (post 1932) Democratic Party does actually rob from the rich and give to the poor. They go to great effort to leave that impression. However, a closer study of almost any Democrat-supported policy or piece of legislation shows that it robs from the poor and gives to the rich. The poor do not donate significant amounts of money to election campaigns. Again and again the Democrats adopt a policy which robs from the poor and middle classes. This attracts large donations from the rich, and the Democrats then use this money to run campaign ads stating that they are robbing from the rich. The rich understand. The poor are taken in. (A good example of this is the enormous stock market rise since 1982 and the resulting stock options and enormous salaries of certain CEOs. These were the product of a policy initiated by the Democrats and copied by the Republicans. For the 50 years prior to 1932 for which we had reliable stock indexes, the stock market was flat.)
Under the influence of Christianity, the few rights of property which existed under the old Roman Empire/Republic were abolished. Money disappeared from circulation. (Perhaps certain supporters of the New Testament can explain to us whether it was money which disappeared or the love of money.) At any rate, the Roman economy collapsed. According to figures I have seen, the population of Rome in the year 400 A.D. was 500,000. The population of Rome in the year 900 A.D. was 20,000. The human suffering which was required to get from the first number to the second is beyond my ability to communicate with words.
Civilization reemerged in Anglo-Saxon society in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was an Anglo-Saxon named John Locke who proved the validity of property rights. How is it, Locke asked, that a man may rightfully own property?
“God, who hath given the World to Men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of Life, and convenience. The Earth, and all that is therein, is given to Men for the Support and Comfort of their being. And though all the Fruits it naturally produces, and Beasts it feeds, belong to Mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature; and no body has originally a private Dominion, exclusive of the rest of Mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state: yet being given for the use of Men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular Man. The Fruit, or Venison, which nourishes the wild [American] Indian, who knows no Inclosure, and is still a Tenant in common, must be his, and so his, i.e., a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his Life.”
John Locke, “Of the Beginning of Political Societies,” Two
Treatises of Government, (New York, Mentor, 1965), p. 328,
(Locke’s italics).
Locke is saying that when humans first discover land, the good things on it (the things necessary to human life) don’t belong to anybody. What is it that can make these things property? (Inclosure/enclosure is a process for dividing communist land into pieces of private property.) Locke then answers his own question:
“Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and Work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no Man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to….”
Ibid., pp. 328-29. (Locke’s italics).
For example, suppose a man comes across some land. It is overgrown with wild vegetation, most of which does not constitute food for human beings. But if he clears this wild vegetation, irrigates the land and fences it, then he can plant a crop and raise enough food to feed himself and his family. It is his labor which has made the difference between land which is worth very little and land which is highly productive. It is his labor which has given value to the land.
To whom does this value belong as a matter of right? It belongs to the human whose labor gave it value. Locke thus formulated the idea behind the movement, which was then going on in Britain, to take communal land and divide it into sections and give one section to each family. This was known as the enclosure movement. In 1623, the Pilgrims in Plymouth enclosed their land, thus turning it into private property. This resulted in a much improved harvest and saved them from starvation. And the first thanksgiving in America (the basis for our modern holiday of Thanksgiving) was held to celebrate this successful harvest. (You are not taught this in school because our education system is dominated by persons sympathetic to communism who do not want to admit that the American holiday of Thanksgiving celebrates the abolition of communism.)
In 1620, there were approximately 800,000 American Indians (best estimate) in the land area which today constitutes the United States. (The larger numbers which you see these days come from the same pro-communist intellectuals who, to make you feel guilty, are posing as pro-Indian.) They lived on the edge of starvation and were in almost continual war with each other (mostly over food). The American great plains, which today are the breadbasket of the world, were at that time infertile. Neither the Indians nor the first white settlers could raise a crop on it because the soil was too thick and crusty. It was John Deere who devised a plow strong enough to break the soil but still light enough to be usable.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the population of the world was 1.7 billion people. By the end of the century, the population was 6.6 billion. Despite the fact that the world’s population multiplied by a factor of almost 4 there was no starvation. Human ingenuity, operating under a system which guaranteed property rights, made food production rise faster than the population (Malthus to the contrary notwithstanding).
Why did the British Calvinists of the 17th century adopt the principle of property rights when all western culture had rejected it? It was because the Calvinists accepted the Old Testament principle of justice in contrast to the New Testament principle of love.
Plato acquired a reputation in classical times by saying that he did not know what justice was. But that only proved that Plato was stupid. The answer to the question what is justice had been given by Isaiah some 500 years before Plato lived. Justice is the state of affairs whereby people receive the consequences of their actions. The good man receives the good consequences of his good actions, and the evil man receives the evil consequences of his evil actions.
To apply justice to economics, consider two farmers working fields next to each other. The industrious farmer raises a large crop. The lazy farmer raises a small crop. The principle of justice says that each farmer should receive the crop that he raised (the consequences of his actions). The principle of socialism says that the two fields should be farmed in common and half the surplus raised by the industrious farmer given to the lazy farmer (to each according to his need).
To guarantee that a worker received the value which his labor had produced, the 17th century Calvinists asserted a right to property. The idea that man had a right to property was commonplace at the time of the American Revolution, and it was affirmed in many of the state constitutions. (When Jefferson wrote “pursuit of happiness” in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, he intended it to include property as property is essential to happiness.) The New Hampshire Constitution states:
All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights among which are, the enjoying and defending life and liberty: acquiring, possessing, and protecting, property: and, in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness.
Every member of the community has a right to be protected by it, in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property;
New Hampshire Constitution, 1784,
articles 2, 12.
When the New Deal proclaimed “Rob from the rich and give to the poor,” it was denying the basic American concept of the purpose of government. According to the American Declaration of Independence it is the job of government to protect its citizens’ rights, including their property rights. A political system which openly declares its intention to violate these rights is a perversion of government.
What will happen to any society in which the redistribution of wealth becomes socially acceptable? Why people will seek to get wealth by taking it from others (in the socially acceptable way). They will not bother to produce wealth. When I attended Harvard, the dominant intellectual behind almost all of their theories was Plato. What do we know about Plato? Well, he hated democracy and admired ancient Sparta. The Spartans got their wealth by practicing human slavery. They had enslaved their neighbors the Helots (fellow Greeks) and forced these Helots to produce their wealth. The contempt which modern leftist intellectuals have for businessmen comes directly from Plato’s and the Spartans’ contempt for the Helots. (So if you are a member of the Negro race and vote leftist thinking that these people are on your side, think again. If they ever won enough power, then before you knew what hit you , you would be back in the condition of your great, great grandfather.)
We have many examples of societies in which property rights were not respected and in which it was socially acceptable for certain people to steal (redistribute the wealth) from others. In the Middle Ages, the feudal lords stole the wealth from the serfs. The serfs developed the fine art of producing as little as possible while they pretended to work, and the lords spent their time warring with each other (to get the other’s serfs). During this period the population of Britain was 2 million to 3 million people. More than that was overpopulation, which could not be supported by the food supply. When the weather turned bad, there was famine.
In connection with the world starvation which is currently going on, you may have heard discussion of people whose net income is $1.00 per day (and are especially hard hit by food price increases). This $1.00/day concept was first presented in 1993, and here in 2008 that is equivalent to $1.50/day. These are the people who are physically starving and who are leading the food protests and riots around the world. Starting around 1650 (close to the time of John Locke) the world population began a steady rise (culminating in the 4-fold increase of the 20th century). I am now afraid that this increase has stopped, precisely because world policies against property rights have become dominant over the policies in favor.
Look around. The average height of the world’s tallest buildings is less than it was before 2001. The average speed of the fastest commercial airplane is slower than it was prior to 2003. The size of the average American car is smaller than it was in 1979. Ditto, ditto horsepower, comfort.
You are one of the fortunate ones. Because you read this blog you know the fact of world starvation. But your neighbor, your co-worker, your friend, does not know it. It has not been printed in 5 inch headlines in his local paper. So if you tell it to him, he will give you a stupid off-the-top-of-the-head argument whose intent is to deny it. (The premise in his mind is, “Reality is that which I read in the newspapers or hear on the network news”) The chances of solving this problem when we will not admit that it exists are very small.
It looks like I was wrong a month ago when I predicted a decline in the price of gasoline and crude oil. Commodities did decline in the March to June period, but energy was an exception. Now that decline is over, and the exception for energy indicates that it will probably lead the coming advance. Expect another ratchet up in both gasoline and food prices. If people making $1.50 per day were having trouble with current prices, things will be worse 6 months from now. Not only do most politicians not have a solution, it is hard to find one who knows the problem exists.
But the law of causality does not really care about us. If we obey its dictates, we prosper. If not, we suffer and die.
# # #
Howard S. Katz can be visited at http://www.thegoldbug.net.
Monday, June 23, 2008
REPLY ON CHRISTIANITY
by Howard S. Katz
6-23-08
Again my comments on Christianity have stimulated a great deal of discussion, much more than I can address point by point. But this very fact shows that a great many of you are trying to live your lives on the basis of these premises. And since one of the goals of this blog is to help you live better lives, I would like to address what I think is the central, underlying point.
When I look out the window or go for a walk in the morning, I see the universe. I look around. I see the birds and the trees. I see the stars. I see the mountains, the animals and the other people, etc. All of this is a unified whole. There is one universe.
But those of you who wrote in evidently see two universes, which you call the material universe and the spiritual universe. What I see as one thing, you see as two.
If I understand your position correctly, then you regard most of the things in the universe as a part of the material world. And you regard those things which pertain to the mind or emotions as a part of the spiritual world. You further argue that the material world is evil while the spiritual world is good and that these two worlds are fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed to each other.
When I look at the world, I see that the human animal evolved (probably from a pre-chimpanzee in East Africa) by, in part, evolving a more powerful mind. His better mind made him better able to see reality as it is and to better take the actions which made him successful at life. That is why human beings today live all over the world, drive automobiles and fly in airplanes while chimps, as cute as they are, still live in Africa and eat termites.
In short, the mind, a spiritual entity, is a tool which is very useful for survival in the material world. The material and the spiritual are not opposed to each other. Just the opposite, the mind (and hence the entire spiritual universe) exists because it is well-suited to work in the material world. How could it possibly be that one of your worlds is good and the other evil since they are so nicely integrated?
If I were to throw the argument back at you, I don’t think that I would get much of a response. You have never considered why your view is true. You simply have always believed it. But further, I know from where the idea comes and what the argument is for it. Geoffrey Parrinder tells us:
“We meet the Orphics in Sicily and Greece in the fifth century BC; in the gold tablets buried at Petelia giving instructions to the souls of the dead; and in the so-called Orphic hymns from some rather different Dionysiac fraternity of the Roman empire. We know (though only from a late period) of a complex myth which told how Dionysus [Orpheus] was killed and eaten by the wicked Titans; how his heart was rescued, and a new Dionysus born from it; how the Titans were annihilated by Zeus’s thunderbolt, and mankind born from the ashes. Man was thus compounded of a titanic [evil] element, the body, and a Dionysiac [good] element, the spirit [soul]. To purify the self of titanic influence required religious observance, including vegetarianism.”
World Religions, ed. by Geoffrey Parrinder, (Facts on File,
New York, 1971), p. 155.
I will be blunt. Dionysus was a pagan god. He never existed. The Titans were pagan evil spirits. They never existed either. The whole thing is made up. Not a shred of proof exists for it, and today virtually nobody believes it. But this is the basis for arguing that there are two worlds, the material world (meaning the world of the Titans) and the spiritual world (meaning the world of Dionysus).
This pagan myth was incorporated into the philosophy of Plato, and from there it was adopted by early Christianity, not the full argument about the Titans and Dionysus but the conclusion about the material world and spirituality being in conflict with each other.
When I first met Christians, as a child, I was astonished. They were so immoral. It took me a while to figure out why. For example, Christ preached, “Turn the other cheek.” None of my Christian friends actually did this. But they preached it, violated their own preaching and felt guilty. Then I would get into long arguments with them in which they asserted that every rich man had to have gotten his money by unethical means. First, it was unfair to condemn a man without looking at the circumstances of his life. Second, there are many wealthy people who were good people and earned their money in ways that benefited humanity. The existence of even one such good person refutes the idea that all rich are immoral.
But Christ taught that both money and wealth are evil. (“Take all that thou hast and give to the poor.”…Take no thought for the morrow, neither what ye shall eat nor what ye shall wear.”) He also taught that having one’s desire stirred by an attractive member of the opposite sex was equivalent to committing adultery. It is clear that anyone who actually practiced Christianity was not going to have a great deal of fun. So all my Christian friends resolved this issue by deciding to be immoral. St. Paul backed them up on this declaring, “All men are sinners.” No, all men are not sinners, but a lot of Christians are.
Neither can one make the distinction between money and the love of money (as several commenters tried to do). It is a distinction without a difference. The New Testament makes its position very clear. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle. The money changers had to be chased away from the Temple. Etc. Etc.
The insane consequences of trying to turn the other cheek, and the absurdity of feeling guilty over one’s sexual impulses are proof to me that the moral principles laid down by Jesus of Nazareth are false. What kind of a perverse creature would God have been to have created man full of sexual impulses and then to have condemned him for feeling them? It must be that Jesus did not know the first thing about God.
Morality is the science of action. It tells one how to act. Our society has two moral teachers. Moses told us to “be fruitful.” Jesus told us to “lay ye not up treasures on earth.” Moses told us, “an eye for an eye.” Jesus told us, “turn the other cheek.” Both of these things could not be true. It must be that one of the two is a false prophet.
Christianity got its start because the Jewish Diaspora (dispersion) began (in a big way) in the 2nd century A.D. By the 3rd century, Romans realized that their Jewish neighbors were living better (happier, more successful) lives. They wanted this for themselves, and so there began a large scale conversion to Judaism. Christianity took advantage of this and presented itself as a user-friendly relative of Judaism (no circumcision, no dietary laws). Many pagans regarded the two religions as essentially the same (e.g., the emperor Alexander Severus). As the pagans converted to Christianity, they thought they were getting the secret of what made the Jews so successful. It was a tragic mistake.
Through the Middle Ages, everything was divided in two along the lines of the material (body) and the spiritual (soul) universes. For example, there was no private property. There was good property, by which was meant communism. And there was evil property, by which was meant feudalism. But nobody owned things in the sense we do today. (The standard modern teaching that the economic system of the Middle Ages was feudalism is a deliberate falsehood. About 2/3 of the arable land was owned by village communes and farmed communally; the remaining 1/3 was lent by the feudal lord to serfs who farmed it; it had been lent to the lord by a higher lord, etc. all the way back to the king.) These two systems were abolished at about the same time. For example, France abolished feudalism in 1789 and abolished communism in 1793. Women were divided into the good woman (virgin or nun) and the sexually attractive women (evil). The kind of women a man would want to marry and have as the mother of his children did not seem to exist.
Politics in the Middle Ages is well illustrated by the idealism of Thomas Moore and the practical cynicism of Machiavelli. The former is too good and can exist nowhere. The latter leads to the war of man against man.
For a good example of the way in which the body v. soul dichotomy has returned in our own day taking us a step backward into the Middle Ages, consider the concept of romantic love. Romantic love is an emotion directed toward a person of the opposite sex which combines moral admiration and sexual attraction. People in the Middle Ages could not fall in love because they classified the opposite sex as being either moral (Dionysiac) or sexually attractive (Titanic). And romantic love did not enter Western society (as a social phenomenon) until the Puritans (who rejected the New Testament and hence gave us much of the modern world).
In the 1950s, virtually all of the songs which captured the hearts of teen-agers were love songs (Elvis, the Beatles). Today there are hardly any love songs, and most people do not marry for love. The cause of this is Freud, who taught that what we called love was a (rather repugnant) psychological need, and love itself did not exist. The result was that more than 50% of all marriages now end in divorce. (See Statistical Abstract of the United States 2004-05, [Washington, 2004], series 70, page 60. Use rate per 100,000.)
These ideas which take us back to the Middle Ages are all presented (fraudulently) as being liberal, scientific and progressive. The world into which I was born was a world of success and achievement. Famine had been abolished. Hitler had been defeated. Polio had been conquered. Cars kept getting more and more muscle. That world ended circa 1955 (the last year in American history in which prices did not go up).
Today, Americans stampede to buy smaller cars or give up their cars altogether and take mass transit. There is a word for that. The word is poor. The Government promised it would cure cancer by 1979. Buildings are getting smaller, and airplanes are getting slower. This is an age of failure.
The people who are taking us backward and peddling the ideas of the Middle Ages make a big show of being anti-religious so that we will not understand what they are doing. I call their tactic the wolf in sheep’s clothing. But that is a subject for another blog.
http://www.thegoldbug.net.
6-23-08
Again my comments on Christianity have stimulated a great deal of discussion, much more than I can address point by point. But this very fact shows that a great many of you are trying to live your lives on the basis of these premises. And since one of the goals of this blog is to help you live better lives, I would like to address what I think is the central, underlying point.
When I look out the window or go for a walk in the morning, I see the universe. I look around. I see the birds and the trees. I see the stars. I see the mountains, the animals and the other people, etc. All of this is a unified whole. There is one universe.
But those of you who wrote in evidently see two universes, which you call the material universe and the spiritual universe. What I see as one thing, you see as two.
If I understand your position correctly, then you regard most of the things in the universe as a part of the material world. And you regard those things which pertain to the mind or emotions as a part of the spiritual world. You further argue that the material world is evil while the spiritual world is good and that these two worlds are fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed to each other.
When I look at the world, I see that the human animal evolved (probably from a pre-chimpanzee in East Africa) by, in part, evolving a more powerful mind. His better mind made him better able to see reality as it is and to better take the actions which made him successful at life. That is why human beings today live all over the world, drive automobiles and fly in airplanes while chimps, as cute as they are, still live in Africa and eat termites.
In short, the mind, a spiritual entity, is a tool which is very useful for survival in the material world. The material and the spiritual are not opposed to each other. Just the opposite, the mind (and hence the entire spiritual universe) exists because it is well-suited to work in the material world. How could it possibly be that one of your worlds is good and the other evil since they are so nicely integrated?
If I were to throw the argument back at you, I don’t think that I would get much of a response. You have never considered why your view is true. You simply have always believed it. But further, I know from where the idea comes and what the argument is for it. Geoffrey Parrinder tells us:
“We meet the Orphics in Sicily and Greece in the fifth century BC; in the gold tablets buried at Petelia giving instructions to the souls of the dead; and in the so-called Orphic hymns from some rather different Dionysiac fraternity of the Roman empire. We know (though only from a late period) of a complex myth which told how Dionysus [Orpheus] was killed and eaten by the wicked Titans; how his heart was rescued, and a new Dionysus born from it; how the Titans were annihilated by Zeus’s thunderbolt, and mankind born from the ashes. Man was thus compounded of a titanic [evil] element, the body, and a Dionysiac [good] element, the spirit [soul]. To purify the self of titanic influence required religious observance, including vegetarianism.”
World Religions, ed. by Geoffrey Parrinder, (Facts on File,
New York, 1971), p. 155.
I will be blunt. Dionysus was a pagan god. He never existed. The Titans were pagan evil spirits. They never existed either. The whole thing is made up. Not a shred of proof exists for it, and today virtually nobody believes it. But this is the basis for arguing that there are two worlds, the material world (meaning the world of the Titans) and the spiritual world (meaning the world of Dionysus).
This pagan myth was incorporated into the philosophy of Plato, and from there it was adopted by early Christianity, not the full argument about the Titans and Dionysus but the conclusion about the material world and spirituality being in conflict with each other.
When I first met Christians, as a child, I was astonished. They were so immoral. It took me a while to figure out why. For example, Christ preached, “Turn the other cheek.” None of my Christian friends actually did this. But they preached it, violated their own preaching and felt guilty. Then I would get into long arguments with them in which they asserted that every rich man had to have gotten his money by unethical means. First, it was unfair to condemn a man without looking at the circumstances of his life. Second, there are many wealthy people who were good people and earned their money in ways that benefited humanity. The existence of even one such good person refutes the idea that all rich are immoral.
But Christ taught that both money and wealth are evil. (“Take all that thou hast and give to the poor.”…Take no thought for the morrow, neither what ye shall eat nor what ye shall wear.”) He also taught that having one’s desire stirred by an attractive member of the opposite sex was equivalent to committing adultery. It is clear that anyone who actually practiced Christianity was not going to have a great deal of fun. So all my Christian friends resolved this issue by deciding to be immoral. St. Paul backed them up on this declaring, “All men are sinners.” No, all men are not sinners, but a lot of Christians are.
Neither can one make the distinction between money and the love of money (as several commenters tried to do). It is a distinction without a difference. The New Testament makes its position very clear. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle. The money changers had to be chased away from the Temple. Etc. Etc.
The insane consequences of trying to turn the other cheek, and the absurdity of feeling guilty over one’s sexual impulses are proof to me that the moral principles laid down by Jesus of Nazareth are false. What kind of a perverse creature would God have been to have created man full of sexual impulses and then to have condemned him for feeling them? It must be that Jesus did not know the first thing about God.
Morality is the science of action. It tells one how to act. Our society has two moral teachers. Moses told us to “be fruitful.” Jesus told us to “lay ye not up treasures on earth.” Moses told us, “an eye for an eye.” Jesus told us, “turn the other cheek.” Both of these things could not be true. It must be that one of the two is a false prophet.
Christianity got its start because the Jewish Diaspora (dispersion) began (in a big way) in the 2nd century A.D. By the 3rd century, Romans realized that their Jewish neighbors were living better (happier, more successful) lives. They wanted this for themselves, and so there began a large scale conversion to Judaism. Christianity took advantage of this and presented itself as a user-friendly relative of Judaism (no circumcision, no dietary laws). Many pagans regarded the two religions as essentially the same (e.g., the emperor Alexander Severus). As the pagans converted to Christianity, they thought they were getting the secret of what made the Jews so successful. It was a tragic mistake.
Through the Middle Ages, everything was divided in two along the lines of the material (body) and the spiritual (soul) universes. For example, there was no private property. There was good property, by which was meant communism. And there was evil property, by which was meant feudalism. But nobody owned things in the sense we do today. (The standard modern teaching that the economic system of the Middle Ages was feudalism is a deliberate falsehood. About 2/3 of the arable land was owned by village communes and farmed communally; the remaining 1/3 was lent by the feudal lord to serfs who farmed it; it had been lent to the lord by a higher lord, etc. all the way back to the king.) These two systems were abolished at about the same time. For example, France abolished feudalism in 1789 and abolished communism in 1793. Women were divided into the good woman (virgin or nun) and the sexually attractive women (evil). The kind of women a man would want to marry and have as the mother of his children did not seem to exist.
Politics in the Middle Ages is well illustrated by the idealism of Thomas Moore and the practical cynicism of Machiavelli. The former is too good and can exist nowhere. The latter leads to the war of man against man.
For a good example of the way in which the body v. soul dichotomy has returned in our own day taking us a step backward into the Middle Ages, consider the concept of romantic love. Romantic love is an emotion directed toward a person of the opposite sex which combines moral admiration and sexual attraction. People in the Middle Ages could not fall in love because they classified the opposite sex as being either moral (Dionysiac) or sexually attractive (Titanic). And romantic love did not enter Western society (as a social phenomenon) until the Puritans (who rejected the New Testament and hence gave us much of the modern world).
In the 1950s, virtually all of the songs which captured the hearts of teen-agers were love songs (Elvis, the Beatles). Today there are hardly any love songs, and most people do not marry for love. The cause of this is Freud, who taught that what we called love was a (rather repugnant) psychological need, and love itself did not exist. The result was that more than 50% of all marriages now end in divorce. (See Statistical Abstract of the United States 2004-05, [Washington, 2004], series 70, page 60. Use rate per 100,000.)
These ideas which take us back to the Middle Ages are all presented (fraudulently) as being liberal, scientific and progressive. The world into which I was born was a world of success and achievement. Famine had been abolished. Hitler had been defeated. Polio had been conquered. Cars kept getting more and more muscle. That world ended circa 1955 (the last year in American history in which prices did not go up).
Today, Americans stampede to buy smaller cars or give up their cars altogether and take mass transit. There is a word for that. The word is poor. The Government promised it would cure cancer by 1979. Buildings are getting smaller, and airplanes are getting slower. This is an age of failure.
The people who are taking us backward and peddling the ideas of the Middle Ages make a big show of being anti-religious so that we will not understand what they are doing. I call their tactic the wolf in sheep’s clothing. But that is a subject for another blog.
http://www.thegoldbug.net.
Monday, June 16, 2008
EARLY CHRISTIANITY
by Howard S. Katz
6-16-08
Well, people. It appears (from the temper of the comments) that I touched a nerve in my last blog (on the nature of money and the attitude of early Christianity toward it). And I would say that the subject is in need of more discussion.
Man is the animal who perceives reality by means of abstractions. And part of our, and every, culture is the inculcation of certain abstractions into the heads of the young, at an age when they do not have the critical faculty to tell whether these abstractions are right or wrong. This process is called education, although it deserves that name only when the abstractions are true. It is very easy for us to see the errors in the fundamental abstractions of other cultures, but it is much harder for us to see the errors in our own. The following facts ought to be part of the education of everyone in our culture.
The first century A.D. was a turbulent time in the history of ancient Judea. There were four ideological groups who contested for the allegiance of the people of which two are of interest here: the Essenes and the Zealots.
The Essenes were a group of pacifists and socialists who retreated from the world and lived in communal societies where they shared the wealth. They preached love and non-violence. The Zealots were also in favor of socialism. Indeed, the typical path to becoming a Zealot was to first become an Essene and then to break with the other Essenes on the issue of non-violence. The Zealots preached violence and advocated a revolution against Roman authority. This history is given us by Josephus, who is considered the definitive historian of that period. He lived through it and dealt with the Zealots face-to-face.
The revolution desired by the Zealots came about – twice: the First Jewish Revolt (66 A.D. to 73 A.D.) and the Second Jewish Revolt (132 A.D. to 135 A.D.) These were brutal and destructive wars which failed of their stated goal (Jewish independence from Rome) primarily because they were pursued in a completely irrational manner (although the second revolt was fought much more rationally than the first and came within a hair’s whisker of success).
As noted, the Zealots (the party of violence) of this period came from the Essenes (the party of non-violence). This seems to be a contradiction, but it can be understood by anyone who studies the American New Left of the 1960s. The New Left started with a movement for love, peace and socialism (the flower children of the early ‘60s). And then the very people who had been preaching peace at us turned, suddenly toward violence. We remember the “long, hot summer of 1964,” the names Stokley Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, and the slogan, “burn, baby, burn.”
Well, the Zealots were a lot worse than the American left of the 1960s. In the middle of the first revolt, the Roman armies suddenly pulled out of Judea to deal with a domestic political crisis (68 A.D.). What did the Jews do? With no Romans to fight, they divided into 3 factions and began killing each other.
With this as background, what do we make of the New Testament’s reference (when listing Jesus’ disciples) to “Simon, the Zealot?” Why was Jesus associating with this person of hate and why did he (Jesus) admit him (Simon) into the Christian movement?
First, Jesus’ Christian group was part of the larger Essene movement. For people to come into the movement, start out with peace and end with violence was quite common. Second, there are several facts reported in the New Testament which indicate that Jesus himself was in the process of changing from non-violence to violence (meaning from Essene to Zealot).
Relating the sequence of events which led to Jesus’ crucifixion, the New Testament reports that Jesus went out late at night with his disciples. The people of that time did not have street lights or local police. To meet a dozen young men late at night was a scary experience. The New Testament also reports that the Christians were armed, that there was an altercation with a rival group and that a member of the opposition had his ear cut off.
At the time, Zealot groups followed the policy of going out into the street to stir up violence hoping that it would mushroom into the revolution (against Rome) which they were trying to bring about. They got their way in 66 A.D.
The conclusion strongly suggests itself that Jesus was following the common Essene route of turning into a Zealot. He was leading his “disciples” (i.e., his gang) out into the street to try to stir up violence hoping that it would provoke a general revolution.
After Jesus is arrested for what was no more than a minor scuffle between two groups of Jews, he is taken to Pontius Pilate who asks him the question, “Are you the king of the Jews?” The point of Pilate’s accepting jurisdiction and asking this question was that the Zealots were looking for a strong leader to come forth and attract men to his banner for the revolution. When the revolution was successful and the Romans defeated, this strong man would make himself king of the Jews. The real meaning of Pilate’s question therefore was, are you trying to stir up a revolution? Jesus refuses to answer. (If he says no, he loses status in the eyes of his followers because, as Pilate suspected, he had been preaching revolution to them. If he says yes, he admits his guilt.)
If you read Josephus’ history of the ensuing revolt (in which he was one of the top Jewish generals), you are shocked and saddened by the senseless violence (which Josephus experienced personally and only barely escaped by luck and wits). Pilate understood the Zealots and was trying, in 29 A.D., to prevent their revolt by sentencing every Zealot leader to death. Perhaps he could have prevented what happened had he been tougher. Perhaps not. But Pilate was the man of peace at that time and place, and Jesus of Nazareth was the man of violence.
What is wrong with the philosophy which urges us to feel the emotions of peace and love is that human beings do not directly control the emotions they feel. A person who resolves to only feel love will find himself feeling hate, just like all the rest of us, from time to time, just as he finds himself feeling hunger, fear, excitement, sexual urges, etc. You don’t have to act on your emotions, but you cannot help feeling them.
People who believe that feeling hate is wrong go along in their life until some event causes this feeling. Perhaps the person has been sabotaged for a job by a fellow employee. Perhaps his wife has been seduced by his best friend. Perhaps he has been unfairly disgraced in his community. He feels hate.
Hate is the right emotion to feel in such circumstances. And the rational person will then ask himself, “What is the appropriate action to take to remedy this injustice?” He will then devise a response which is rational, just and (in our present society where law is usually on the side of right) legal. The evil-doer is punished, and this serves as an incentive for people in this society not to do evil. Thus his hate has served a good purpose.
But a person who follows the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth will not admit to himself that he feels hate. “How can I, a person of love, possibly be feeling hate?” He will then pretend that the feeling is not there. But it is there. The feeling does not go away. It is merely not admitted. As one incident after another mounts up, the quantity of hate in the person’s psyche builds. Finally, it is too strong to bottle up any longer, and the hate comes out against. Since the person has made the decision not to deal with the hate rationally, he seizes upon the first convenient object. “Oh, here is a person who is weaker than me on the social scale. I can persecute him and kick him around, and he can’t fight back.” This is the psychology behind the movement against “illegal” aliens. It is also the psychology of racism and the source of political support for the politician who blames all the country’s ills on some “outsider.”
Modern psychology, in its early days, had a pretty good handle on this mode of behavior. But it made the mistake of thinking that the hate was bottled up by an automatic process which applied to all men. In fact, a human being must consciously decide not to acknowledge his hate. Therefore, the correction of this evil must be accomplished by the discussion of philosophy. It cannot be accomplished by any of the (non-rational) techniques of current day psychology.
For a good example of how this theory applies to real life, take a look at one of the great unsolved problems of history: the collapse of Rome. Here was a society so vital and powerful that it dominated the Mediterranean basin for close to 1,000 years. And then, all of a sudden, it collapsed, not defeated by an external foe but defeated from within. And no one knows why.
No one but me. In 394 A.D., after the Battle of the Frigid River, Rome became Christian. (Actually the process was slow and drawn out, but 394 was the last stand of the pagans and is the best date.) At this time, Roman society adopted Jesus of Nazareth’s philosophy of love.
Through most of its history Rome had been surrounded by barbarians. Some of these admired Rome and were friendly. And some were hostile. Twelve years after the Battle of the Frigid River, Rome was attacked by 3 German tribes, who crossed the Rhine River on Dec. 31, 406 A.D.. The situation was serious, but Roman armies were very good. And the Roman army in 406 was led by the greatest general of his age, General Stilicho. It should have been a simple matter for Stilicho to march north, defeat the barbarians and save the empire, as had been done routinely for the past 500 years. Along the way (north Italy) was an ally of Rome who was making trouble, Alaric the Goth. But Stilicho had defeated Alaric on several previous occasions, and he did not present a serious problem.
But in the period 394-406 a movement had grown up in Rome: Rome for the Romans. This movement lumped all barbarians (friendly and unfriendly) together and condemned them as inferior to Romans. The “patriotic” Rome-for-the-Romans movement condemned all barbarians.
Unfortunately General Stilicho was half barbarian. His father had been a Vandal. But he was raised by his Roman mother and felt complete loyalty toward Rome. Nevertheless, the “patriotic” movement condemned him and convinced the Emperor Honorius (who was a simpleton) to kill him. When Stilicho was killed, the “patriotic” movement went wild with joy, rioted and murdered the wives and children of the barbarian soldiers in the Roman army. These barbarian soldiers quit the Roman army. They went north and joined Alaric.
The Roman army in Italy ceased to exist. Alaric, now holding the balance of power, moved south and sacked Rome (410 A.D.). The few remaining pagans said, “See, we told you. You turned Christian, and Rome fell.” The (unfriendly) barbarians swept through Gaul (France), Spain and northwest Africa. England was abandoned. The (Western) Roman Empire was reduced to Italy. Gibbon put its official end at 476 A.D.
The collapse of Rome is a mystery because the historians of our society are afraid to challenge the philosophy of love. The establishment of Christianity is put early in the 4th century (Constantine) when in fact it was a slow process which did not complete until the century was almost over. And Rome collapsed because the newly Christian Romans were so full of hate that they ran around killing the women and children of their allies.
The problem is that people did not learn from this. They kept doing the same thing generation after generation. In the ages that followed, Rome did not regain her greatness. She sank lower and lower so that this period is known in history as the Dark Age. It is unredeemed by any sort of human accomplishment or any glimmer of human decency. The people who most radically espoused the philosophy of love were completely and totally occupied, for a period of 500-600 years, with hate and killing. They had no time for science, for commerce, for thought, for medicine, for any human value.
Under the then standard interpretation of the New Testament, the world was supposed to end Jan. 1, 1,000 A.D. On the night of Dec. 31, 999, people climbed up to the roofs of their houses to meet Christ as he came down from heaven. But they got tired and fell asleep. When they woke up in the morning, the world was still there, and Christ was nowhere to be seen. Sheepishly they climbed down from their roofs and picked up the thread of their lives.
That was a shock to people which reverberates in our culture to this day. Perhaps you have seen a New Yorker cartoon showing an old man holding a sign: “THE WORLD WILL END.” The New Yorker’s message is not to take (the Christian) religion too seriously. After 1,000 A.D., the people of Europe began to make progress again. They still would not openly challenge the premises of Christianity. But they took them with a grain of salt. Things were still bad, but slowly they began to improve.
However, the time when the Middle Ages really ended was between the year 1500 and 1600 in Britain and a few other western countries (Holland, Switzerland and to a lesser extent France). If you study the British in the year 1500, the people are just as savage as those of the past 500 years. But by 1600, things were starting to change. A small movement began of people who followed the philosophy of John Calvin. Calvin taught that you can’t get to heaven. So don’t worry about it. This led his followers to abandon the New Testament and to concentrate on the Old. The Calvinists began a battle for freedom and democracy which achieved a major success with the Glorious Revolution (1688) and the Bill of Right (1689). (When the people of Holland espoused Calvinism in the late 1500s and started breaking idols, the most Catholic King of Spain, which owned Holland, made it illegal to be a Hollander and said that he wished the people of Holland had one neck so that he could kill them with one blow of the axe.) By the year 1700, the average Brit was the gentle, purposeful, law abiding, industrious, decent human being we know today. Calvin did not openly challenge the teachings of Christianity, but he knew which ideas governed people’s actions. Gradually this better way of life spread from Britain to other countries so that the 19th century was the greatest in human history.
Then an opposition movement began in Germany. The idea was to have a government based on love. The government was to act like a big father who loved all his subjects (and gave them something for nothing). This idea of government as a big father spread through Germany from 1880 until 1920. Bismarck called it his Christian program, and it was championed by the Social Democratic Party. From 1880 to 1920, Germany was widely praised among western intellectuals as the most humane and civilized of nations. Then from 1920 to 1933, Germany changed from the country of love to the country of hate (just as Jesus himself changed from Essene to Zealot). A former Social Democrat named Adolf Hitler began a program of world conquest and blind authoritarianism which killed 50,000,000 human beings. Hitler’s movement was based on Benito Mussolini, who changed from socialist (love) to fascist (hate). Hitler’s movement was defeated by the Calvinist countries (Britain and America) in 1945.
This did not stop the Christian party. They repudiated Hitler and went back to being advocates of love. That is where things stand today. There is a Social Democratic party in every western country. In the United States, it uses the cover of the old Democratic Party but has repudiated the traditional Democratic support of property rights and has succeeded in stealing the word “liberal” to hide the radical break which occurred in its philosophy in 1932. (Modern American “liberals” make a great show of their hatred of religion precisely to hide from you the fact that they are followers of Jesus of Nazareth.) When the party of love feels strong enough, it will throw off its disguise and (again) become the party of hate.
And that, people, is where we stand today. This history does not end, and the election of Nov. 2008 will be one more small chapter in it. We are today fighting the same ideological battle that we have fought for the past 2000 years. And the kind of life you lead depends on which side wins over the span of your lifetime. Is society going to be governed by love/hate, or is it going to be governed by justice?
Your choice.
Howard S. Katz can be visited at http://www.thegoldbug.net.
6-16-08
Well, people. It appears (from the temper of the comments) that I touched a nerve in my last blog (on the nature of money and the attitude of early Christianity toward it). And I would say that the subject is in need of more discussion.
Man is the animal who perceives reality by means of abstractions. And part of our, and every, culture is the inculcation of certain abstractions into the heads of the young, at an age when they do not have the critical faculty to tell whether these abstractions are right or wrong. This process is called education, although it deserves that name only when the abstractions are true. It is very easy for us to see the errors in the fundamental abstractions of other cultures, but it is much harder for us to see the errors in our own. The following facts ought to be part of the education of everyone in our culture.
The first century A.D. was a turbulent time in the history of ancient Judea. There were four ideological groups who contested for the allegiance of the people of which two are of interest here: the Essenes and the Zealots.
The Essenes were a group of pacifists and socialists who retreated from the world and lived in communal societies where they shared the wealth. They preached love and non-violence. The Zealots were also in favor of socialism. Indeed, the typical path to becoming a Zealot was to first become an Essene and then to break with the other Essenes on the issue of non-violence. The Zealots preached violence and advocated a revolution against Roman authority. This history is given us by Josephus, who is considered the definitive historian of that period. He lived through it and dealt with the Zealots face-to-face.
The revolution desired by the Zealots came about – twice: the First Jewish Revolt (66 A.D. to 73 A.D.) and the Second Jewish Revolt (132 A.D. to 135 A.D.) These were brutal and destructive wars which failed of their stated goal (Jewish independence from Rome) primarily because they were pursued in a completely irrational manner (although the second revolt was fought much more rationally than the first and came within a hair’s whisker of success).
As noted, the Zealots (the party of violence) of this period came from the Essenes (the party of non-violence). This seems to be a contradiction, but it can be understood by anyone who studies the American New Left of the 1960s. The New Left started with a movement for love, peace and socialism (the flower children of the early ‘60s). And then the very people who had been preaching peace at us turned, suddenly toward violence. We remember the “long, hot summer of 1964,” the names Stokley Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, and the slogan, “burn, baby, burn.”
Well, the Zealots were a lot worse than the American left of the 1960s. In the middle of the first revolt, the Roman armies suddenly pulled out of Judea to deal with a domestic political crisis (68 A.D.). What did the Jews do? With no Romans to fight, they divided into 3 factions and began killing each other.
With this as background, what do we make of the New Testament’s reference (when listing Jesus’ disciples) to “Simon, the Zealot?” Why was Jesus associating with this person of hate and why did he (Jesus) admit him (Simon) into the Christian movement?
First, Jesus’ Christian group was part of the larger Essene movement. For people to come into the movement, start out with peace and end with violence was quite common. Second, there are several facts reported in the New Testament which indicate that Jesus himself was in the process of changing from non-violence to violence (meaning from Essene to Zealot).
Relating the sequence of events which led to Jesus’ crucifixion, the New Testament reports that Jesus went out late at night with his disciples. The people of that time did not have street lights or local police. To meet a dozen young men late at night was a scary experience. The New Testament also reports that the Christians were armed, that there was an altercation with a rival group and that a member of the opposition had his ear cut off.
At the time, Zealot groups followed the policy of going out into the street to stir up violence hoping that it would mushroom into the revolution (against Rome) which they were trying to bring about. They got their way in 66 A.D.
The conclusion strongly suggests itself that Jesus was following the common Essene route of turning into a Zealot. He was leading his “disciples” (i.e., his gang) out into the street to try to stir up violence hoping that it would provoke a general revolution.
After Jesus is arrested for what was no more than a minor scuffle between two groups of Jews, he is taken to Pontius Pilate who asks him the question, “Are you the king of the Jews?” The point of Pilate’s accepting jurisdiction and asking this question was that the Zealots were looking for a strong leader to come forth and attract men to his banner for the revolution. When the revolution was successful and the Romans defeated, this strong man would make himself king of the Jews. The real meaning of Pilate’s question therefore was, are you trying to stir up a revolution? Jesus refuses to answer. (If he says no, he loses status in the eyes of his followers because, as Pilate suspected, he had been preaching revolution to them. If he says yes, he admits his guilt.)
If you read Josephus’ history of the ensuing revolt (in which he was one of the top Jewish generals), you are shocked and saddened by the senseless violence (which Josephus experienced personally and only barely escaped by luck and wits). Pilate understood the Zealots and was trying, in 29 A.D., to prevent their revolt by sentencing every Zealot leader to death. Perhaps he could have prevented what happened had he been tougher. Perhaps not. But Pilate was the man of peace at that time and place, and Jesus of Nazareth was the man of violence.
What is wrong with the philosophy which urges us to feel the emotions of peace and love is that human beings do not directly control the emotions they feel. A person who resolves to only feel love will find himself feeling hate, just like all the rest of us, from time to time, just as he finds himself feeling hunger, fear, excitement, sexual urges, etc. You don’t have to act on your emotions, but you cannot help feeling them.
People who believe that feeling hate is wrong go along in their life until some event causes this feeling. Perhaps the person has been sabotaged for a job by a fellow employee. Perhaps his wife has been seduced by his best friend. Perhaps he has been unfairly disgraced in his community. He feels hate.
Hate is the right emotion to feel in such circumstances. And the rational person will then ask himself, “What is the appropriate action to take to remedy this injustice?” He will then devise a response which is rational, just and (in our present society where law is usually on the side of right) legal. The evil-doer is punished, and this serves as an incentive for people in this society not to do evil. Thus his hate has served a good purpose.
But a person who follows the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth will not admit to himself that he feels hate. “How can I, a person of love, possibly be feeling hate?” He will then pretend that the feeling is not there. But it is there. The feeling does not go away. It is merely not admitted. As one incident after another mounts up, the quantity of hate in the person’s psyche builds. Finally, it is too strong to bottle up any longer, and the hate comes out against. Since the person has made the decision not to deal with the hate rationally, he seizes upon the first convenient object. “Oh, here is a person who is weaker than me on the social scale. I can persecute him and kick him around, and he can’t fight back.” This is the psychology behind the movement against “illegal” aliens. It is also the psychology of racism and the source of political support for the politician who blames all the country’s ills on some “outsider.”
Modern psychology, in its early days, had a pretty good handle on this mode of behavior. But it made the mistake of thinking that the hate was bottled up by an automatic process which applied to all men. In fact, a human being must consciously decide not to acknowledge his hate. Therefore, the correction of this evil must be accomplished by the discussion of philosophy. It cannot be accomplished by any of the (non-rational) techniques of current day psychology.
For a good example of how this theory applies to real life, take a look at one of the great unsolved problems of history: the collapse of Rome. Here was a society so vital and powerful that it dominated the Mediterranean basin for close to 1,000 years. And then, all of a sudden, it collapsed, not defeated by an external foe but defeated from within. And no one knows why.
No one but me. In 394 A.D., after the Battle of the Frigid River, Rome became Christian. (Actually the process was slow and drawn out, but 394 was the last stand of the pagans and is the best date.) At this time, Roman society adopted Jesus of Nazareth’s philosophy of love.
Through most of its history Rome had been surrounded by barbarians. Some of these admired Rome and were friendly. And some were hostile. Twelve years after the Battle of the Frigid River, Rome was attacked by 3 German tribes, who crossed the Rhine River on Dec. 31, 406 A.D.. The situation was serious, but Roman armies were very good. And the Roman army in 406 was led by the greatest general of his age, General Stilicho. It should have been a simple matter for Stilicho to march north, defeat the barbarians and save the empire, as had been done routinely for the past 500 years. Along the way (north Italy) was an ally of Rome who was making trouble, Alaric the Goth. But Stilicho had defeated Alaric on several previous occasions, and he did not present a serious problem.
But in the period 394-406 a movement had grown up in Rome: Rome for the Romans. This movement lumped all barbarians (friendly and unfriendly) together and condemned them as inferior to Romans. The “patriotic” Rome-for-the-Romans movement condemned all barbarians.
Unfortunately General Stilicho was half barbarian. His father had been a Vandal. But he was raised by his Roman mother and felt complete loyalty toward Rome. Nevertheless, the “patriotic” movement condemned him and convinced the Emperor Honorius (who was a simpleton) to kill him. When Stilicho was killed, the “patriotic” movement went wild with joy, rioted and murdered the wives and children of the barbarian soldiers in the Roman army. These barbarian soldiers quit the Roman army. They went north and joined Alaric.
The Roman army in Italy ceased to exist. Alaric, now holding the balance of power, moved south and sacked Rome (410 A.D.). The few remaining pagans said, “See, we told you. You turned Christian, and Rome fell.” The (unfriendly) barbarians swept through Gaul (France), Spain and northwest Africa. England was abandoned. The (Western) Roman Empire was reduced to Italy. Gibbon put its official end at 476 A.D.
The collapse of Rome is a mystery because the historians of our society are afraid to challenge the philosophy of love. The establishment of Christianity is put early in the 4th century (Constantine) when in fact it was a slow process which did not complete until the century was almost over. And Rome collapsed because the newly Christian Romans were so full of hate that they ran around killing the women and children of their allies.
The problem is that people did not learn from this. They kept doing the same thing generation after generation. In the ages that followed, Rome did not regain her greatness. She sank lower and lower so that this period is known in history as the Dark Age. It is unredeemed by any sort of human accomplishment or any glimmer of human decency. The people who most radically espoused the philosophy of love were completely and totally occupied, for a period of 500-600 years, with hate and killing. They had no time for science, for commerce, for thought, for medicine, for any human value.
Under the then standard interpretation of the New Testament, the world was supposed to end Jan. 1, 1,000 A.D. On the night of Dec. 31, 999, people climbed up to the roofs of their houses to meet Christ as he came down from heaven. But they got tired and fell asleep. When they woke up in the morning, the world was still there, and Christ was nowhere to be seen. Sheepishly they climbed down from their roofs and picked up the thread of their lives.
That was a shock to people which reverberates in our culture to this day. Perhaps you have seen a New Yorker cartoon showing an old man holding a sign: “THE WORLD WILL END.” The New Yorker’s message is not to take (the Christian) religion too seriously. After 1,000 A.D., the people of Europe began to make progress again. They still would not openly challenge the premises of Christianity. But they took them with a grain of salt. Things were still bad, but slowly they began to improve.
However, the time when the Middle Ages really ended was between the year 1500 and 1600 in Britain and a few other western countries (Holland, Switzerland and to a lesser extent France). If you study the British in the year 1500, the people are just as savage as those of the past 500 years. But by 1600, things were starting to change. A small movement began of people who followed the philosophy of John Calvin. Calvin taught that you can’t get to heaven. So don’t worry about it. This led his followers to abandon the New Testament and to concentrate on the Old. The Calvinists began a battle for freedom and democracy which achieved a major success with the Glorious Revolution (1688) and the Bill of Right (1689). (When the people of Holland espoused Calvinism in the late 1500s and started breaking idols, the most Catholic King of Spain, which owned Holland, made it illegal to be a Hollander and said that he wished the people of Holland had one neck so that he could kill them with one blow of the axe.) By the year 1700, the average Brit was the gentle, purposeful, law abiding, industrious, decent human being we know today. Calvin did not openly challenge the teachings of Christianity, but he knew which ideas governed people’s actions. Gradually this better way of life spread from Britain to other countries so that the 19th century was the greatest in human history.
Then an opposition movement began in Germany. The idea was to have a government based on love. The government was to act like a big father who loved all his subjects (and gave them something for nothing). This idea of government as a big father spread through Germany from 1880 until 1920. Bismarck called it his Christian program, and it was championed by the Social Democratic Party. From 1880 to 1920, Germany was widely praised among western intellectuals as the most humane and civilized of nations. Then from 1920 to 1933, Germany changed from the country of love to the country of hate (just as Jesus himself changed from Essene to Zealot). A former Social Democrat named Adolf Hitler began a program of world conquest and blind authoritarianism which killed 50,000,000 human beings. Hitler’s movement was based on Benito Mussolini, who changed from socialist (love) to fascist (hate). Hitler’s movement was defeated by the Calvinist countries (Britain and America) in 1945.
This did not stop the Christian party. They repudiated Hitler and went back to being advocates of love. That is where things stand today. There is a Social Democratic party in every western country. In the United States, it uses the cover of the old Democratic Party but has repudiated the traditional Democratic support of property rights and has succeeded in stealing the word “liberal” to hide the radical break which occurred in its philosophy in 1932. (Modern American “liberals” make a great show of their hatred of religion precisely to hide from you the fact that they are followers of Jesus of Nazareth.) When the party of love feels strong enough, it will throw off its disguise and (again) become the party of hate.
And that, people, is where we stand today. This history does not end, and the election of Nov. 2008 will be one more small chapter in it. We are today fighting the same ideological battle that we have fought for the past 2000 years. And the kind of life you lead depends on which side wins over the span of your lifetime. Is society going to be governed by love/hate, or is it going to be governed by justice?
Your choice.
Howard S. Katz can be visited at http://www.thegoldbug.net.
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