The divide between the elite and the rest of the people became intolerable. The guillotine solved the problem. How will the widening canyon between America’s elites and the “little people' be solved?
lol, you want ‘em…where do you want ‘em delivered?
Argh, someone interpreted that plaque on Ellis Island too literally.
Note to myself: have wording changed - "give me your energetic and your ambitious who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge."
“We need two children per couple, just to stay even. We’ll have to make up the shortage with immigrants.”
Immigrants are the means to justify the ends which is to eliminate Whitey, a truly endangered species. And who are the elites behind this project, ongoing for thousands of years now? See Revelation 3:9.
The biggest problem I see with elitism is the government elites vote how the money is spent from the Treasury, while also voting themselves to be exempt from making the expenditures.
The result of this is that they always get what they want at the expense of everybody else, because they have other means of earning income away from the use of their ability in the private sector.
And this is a reason government spending will never be significantly reduced.
Kevin - so far so good until "never". Oh, no, it will be reduced when the system blows up because it won't be reduced until it does. There is talk about the "Great Reset" - sure, like it is some system the Government will introduce. Highly likely - the Great Reset will be a nuclear war and on its conclusion there won't be a "Reset" but a new beginning. Those in power will do whatever to remain in power including blowing up the World. Chaos cometh.
I believe you’re correct brother, and think the New World Order/Reset will begin in the Southern Hemisphere, as the majority of life is in the Northern Hemisphere…. Still have time to prepare 🙏
Good thought, Steve. If/when a nuclear war breaks-out, the South Hemisphere most likely will be spared. Problem is besides Argentina (currently) and Chile not much to count on at the End of the World.
Even if they did exist, in the interest of self-preservation the "elites" would never use nukes. Same with the fake CONVID and "GoF" pathogens - no need to release a potentially uncontrollable contagious pathogen when you can fake pandemics by simply using equally fake PCR "tests".
Thank you Bill for reminding me of one of my favorite principles which I like to express as 10% of the fishermen catch 90% of the fish. Which by definition makes me an elite of sorts, when filtered through my ego and in consideration of my self-adoration as an elite fisherman. Alas, this elitist must next get his hands dirty cleaning fish caught under last night's moon waxing near full. Me thinks, I would rather walk a frozen lake under a dark moon or drift in my boat under a full moon over frequenting the halls of Grandeau, under which those other elitists waste their lives in self-importance. After all, I am nearing my 70th year and there are still more fish to catch.
Relatively insightful for a Bonner political column except, of course, for one glaring error. There is always something with Bill. In reference to the French, Bonner writes that "the guillotine solved the problem". Really? Unlike the American Revolution, which predominately was a revolution of the intellect and an advocacy for individual rights, the French Revolution was revenge and carnage. No moral principles here, just a grab for power. The American Revolution led to a country that at least for some time progressively led to more individual freedom. It was not perfect or, for that matter, fully understood by all those involved. There were plenty of challenges and errors made. But the underlying principle of individual rights was always a guiding light, although somewhat obscured at times by statist influence. But it has taken a long time for those statist (progressive fascist nihilist) forces to come to prominence. And we can still fight against them by being guided by our nation's founding principles. The French, on the other hand, were doomed by their bloodthirsty, intellectually vacuous revolution. All it accomplished was to usher in another dictatorship. Guillotines never have, and never will, solve any problems. They will only bring death and destruction.
Good thing you’re on the watch, John, and keeping Bill Bonner on the straight and narrow. Despite his books and hundreds of essays that make fine discriminations on historical topics that are often new to many, if not most, of his readers, Bill has made “a glaring error,” somehow omitting or getting wrong what has been for more than two-hundred years a commonplace of historiography—that is, the fundamental differences between the American and the French Revolutions. Why I bet Bill has never even heard of Edmund Burke, let alone turned the pages of his magnum opus!
So instead of reading Bill’s sentence “The guillotine solved the problem” in the particular and ironic sense in which Bill intended it, you pump it full of your gaseous and tiresome obsession with faulting him for not elaborating on every intimation he makes or for failing to lay out the exceptions and qualifications to his generalizations. Something tells me, perhaps a little bird quoting the immortal words of Tigers manager Bucky Harris describing a Mickey Mantle blast that on June 18, 1956, cleared the right-field roof of Briggs Stadium in Detroit, that Bonner could make distinctions between the American and the French Revolutions sufficiently penetrating to “bring tears to the eyes of a rocking chair.”
.....except that he didn't, and I can only comment on what he posts. One who writes daily columns and books like Bonner does, should strive for clarity. In many of his columns he doesn't and makes contradictory points, or writes something to the effect -"but what do I know?" But I have to give you a "10" for style points. However, your "argument from authority", as philosophy refers to it, is a fallacious argument. The fact that you set up Bonner as an authority since he has written volumes doesn't address the point I made and can't be substituted as an argument for what I wrote. I admit I haven't read him for decades, only the past few years including his most recent book. But this certainly gives me a pretty good indication where he is coming from philosophically. At best, it is a hodge podge of ideas, some very good, some very suspect, but none of it analyzed from a fundamental perspective of individual rights. Instead, he divides people into groups, not individuals, and harps on elites or other groups. While I appreciate some of the arguments he makes (and even acknowledged that in my post above), when it comes to politics and analyzing political philosophy on a fundamental level, Bonner is second rate at best. For example, I don't recall him ever making the distinction in his columns or his latest book that our Founding Fathers gave us a Constitutional Republic. He always refers to our system of government as a democracy. I have commented on this many times, so I won't repeat here. It is possible that he has mentioned this in passing, but he certainly has not analyzed it in any depth. It's "elite this, elite that". Does he write about how returning to the principles of the Constitution would get us back on track? Nope.
John, you write: “ . . . I don't recall him ever making the distinction in his columns or his latest book that our Founding Fathers gave us a Constitutional Republic. He always refers to our system of government as a democracy. I have commented on this many times, so I won't repeat here. It is possible that he has mentioned this in passing, but he certainly has not analyzed it in any depth.”
You’ll recall, John, that just a few weeks ago I pointed out that for Bill Bonner the distinction between a democracy and a constitutional republic is of little consequence. After all, within just a few years of the ratification of the U. S. Constitution one division of the “elites” had imposed on the other division the Alien and Sedition Acts, gross violations of the 1st Amendment. And Thomas Jefferson, who thought the 10th Amendment the keystone of the Constitution, purchased the Louisiana territory from the French—despite his grave reservations about the constitutionality of such an action. Over the next few decades John Marshall and the Supreme Court transformed the original understanding of a nation founded on individual rights and federalism to one increasingly centralized in the District of Columbia. And what was left of that original understanding never fully recovered from Lincoln’s many and flagrant violations of both the letter and the spirit of the founding document.
The rise of Progressivism in the early years of the 20th Century--exemplified by the presidency of that anti-constitutionalist Woodrow Wilson and by the annus horribilis of 1913 that saw 1. the ratification of the 16th Amendment, the “root of all evil” income-tax amendment, according to Frank Chodorov; 2. the ratification of the 17th Amendment, which in enabling the direct election of members of the Senate proved to be a devastating blow to the Founders’ understanding of federalism; and, of course, 3. the creation of the Federal Reserve--gave the assault on constitutionalism as envisaged by the Founders nothing short of a turbo-charge.
The rest, as they say, is history and has been chronicled in excruciating detail by able journalists and scholars such as James Bovard, Timothy Sandefur, and Charles Murray, whose book “By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission,” especially its opening chapter on the failure of constitutionalism, I pointed out to you several weeks ago.
The larger point, John, is that we once had the finest constitution ever devised by man—and yet it has been circumvented, if not gutted. So where is the burden of proof, on Bill Bonner, a philosophical anarchist unwilling to put his faith in any form of government, for not falling back on constitutionalism to forestall what he deems to be an unavoidable disaster, or on you for presuming that one form of government will somehow save us from ourselves and the tendency of all democracies, whether constitutional or not, to instantiate in the large the tragedy of the commons?
Well, if this is your view, I don't have much to disagree with except for one thing which I will get to. But don't pass this off as Bonner's view. I've read his writings now for a few years and he has come nowhere near your explanation above. You are on another level then he is, so it puzzles me that you want to be his advocate/defender/psychoanalyst etc. While some of his columns on political issues are good throughout, most are muddled and contradictory, have what I refer to a "poison pills", and don't explore the topic from fundamental principles.
All that being said, I agree our Constitution has been under attack and that attack has been accelerating under the Progressive movement. I've stated this many times on these pages in one form or another. Even our Founding Fathers, when evaluated individually, had some strange ideas even while they understood a government for the purpose of defending individual rights was the moral and correct one. It seems that when the Founders came together for the purpose of formulating the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the whole was more than the sum of the parts, as their best ideas supportive of individual rights won out, while the suspect ideas of each of them were discarded. But not so much when they acted individually. The political disagreements and animus were as bad back then as they are today.
If, as you say, Bonner is "a philosophical anarchist unwilling to put his faith in any form of government", then I would say he is sadly mistaken and he is trying to believe in a contradiction. It goes much deeper than that. His recent book "Un-Civilizing America" advocates for Win-Win interactions. He treats that as a primary. It is not. Win-Win interactions among humans require rational thought and an understanding that humans are the rational animal (as Aristotle formulated) with a rational mind. Our rational mind is our most important means of survival. Unlike other animals, we lack either their strength, speed, or other physical abilities and traits, to survive. But our rational minds make up for that in spades but require freedom, or more accurately, individual rights, to function. Protection of individual rights is the only proper function of government, but for it to work, the citizenry needs to be predominantly rational and educated. It is better to shore up a legitimate government by educating the people to the substantial benefits of protecting individual rights rather than expect "anarchism" to do the job. What Bonner, through his anarchist philosophy, doesn't acknowledge is that his Win-Win interactions among humans requires rational people as well. Otherwise, it will devolve into warring factions as some people would rather steal than produce value. If one recognizes that rational thought and rational people are required for Win-Win interactions, then one would come to the conclusion (hopefully) that the legitimate purpose of government is to "create an environment" of protecting individual rights to make that happen. To expect anarchism to do the job is a losing proposition in my opinion. In fact, nothing will work with a citizenry of irrational people. So, people like Bonner want to pontificate about elites and other things he considers unjust while wallowing around in his "floating abstractions" without tying his ideas down to the facts of reality. And the basic fact of reality when it comes to human beings is that we each possess a rational mind that require freedom (individual rights) to function and flourish.
You repeatedly chide Bonner for his not elaborating a theory of rights and for his reluctance to show how protecting the rights of the individual undergirded the founding of the United States. Your concluding sentence neatly summarizes your position: “And the basic fact of reality when it comes to human beings is that we each possess a rational mind that require[s] freedom (individual rights) to function and flourish.”
Now whether protecting individual rights was a consequential driver for the American revolutionists is an historical question amenable to traditional modes of investigation. As far as I can tell, Bonner has never denied that the Americans were so motivated. But equating freedom with individual rights is an altogether different proposition, and regarding that equation Bonner is far more skeptical.
Bonner’s position can, I think, be approached by first asking questions that an influential group of libertarians, sometimes called philosophical anarchists, often use to introduce or support their own skepticism regarding rights. For example, would you agree that protecting rights means accepting mechanisms for enforcing those rights against persons or organizations that would encroach on them? And that without such enforcement those rights would be little more than empty words? So who or what has turned out to be the enforcer? Yep, the state! As more and more “rights” are asserted and then protected, the state grows ever more powerful and, eventually, more oppressive. In the United States, the federal government has become the biggest bully in the land, enforcing “rights” that just seventy-five years ago would have been deemed fanciful by most constitutionalists.
This mushrooming of the rights regime, sometimes called the nanny state or the administrative state, was adumbrated in a way by Herbert Spencer in his book “The Man Versus the State," published in 1884. In its first essay, “The New Toryism,” Spencer traced the transformation of liberalism in that century from its early days when it consistently strived to reduce the power of the state over the citizen--to its late-century incarnation when it came to resemble a paternalistic Toryism, pushing legislation and regulations that Albert Jay Nock described as “of ever-increasing particularity.” And a similar adumbration was advanced in the mid-20th Century by Isaiah Berlin in his 1958 inaugural lecture at Oxford, “Two Concepts of Liberty.” Berlin argued that “negative freedom”—that is, freedom from constraint and the freedom to pursue one’s goals as long as they didn’t interfere with the comparable freedoms of others—was being eclipsed by a pervasive and dangerous “positive freedom” in which the state, in order to expand “opportunity,” was undertaking all kinds of projects and programs that ultimately would constrain everyone’s liberties.
There is much more to say about “the problem of rights,” but this comment is already too long. Nonetheless, here are just two more points—actually more like hints—that you might want to take into consideration. First, as Berlin noted in his “Two Concepts” essay:
“No one would argue that truth or freedom of self-expression could flourish where dogma crushes all thought. But the evidence of history tends to show (as, indeed, was argued by James Stephen in his formidable attack on [John Stuart] Mill in his ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’) that integrity, love of truth, and fiery individualism grow at least as often in severely disciplined communities among, for example, the puritan Calvinists of Scotland or New England, or under military discipline, as in more tolerant or indifferent societies; and if this is so, Mill’s argument for liberty as a necessary condition for the growth of human freedom falls to the ground.”
And second, some very sharp libertarians of the anarchic persuasion have constructed plausible alternatives to the modern state and its freedom-constraining bureaucracies, alternatives that incorporate the best features of win-win but without relying on the complications of rights and the increasingly obnoxious apparats that enforce them. A good place for you to start if you wish to pursue this line of thought is with Michael Huemer’s book “The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey” (2013).
Rather than ask me what I consider to be a right, you've gone off on a tangent citing all sorts of contradictory ideas of what a right is. It seems you want to muddle the discussion rather than clarify it. A right is not just anything anyone can just make up. Rights, like all concepts, have to be objectively defined and demonstrated and based on the facts of reality. It is unfortunate in all your reading, you haven't read any Ayn Rand. She covered this topic thoroughly and objectively. She had a razor-sharp mind that cut through all the vague and muddled arguments and theories of other would-be philosophers. Your question about rights and enforcing rights was answered by Ayn Rand over 50 years ago.
I have a question for all us proles and the Bonner Team. This is from MacleodFinance Substack.
It now appears to China’s households, whose annual savings total the equivalent of $6 trillion, that gold has become an attractive investment option. As the crisis facing the western alliance develops, the pace at which these savings migrate from bank deposits into gold is set to increase. The quantities involved could easily trigger a crisis in gold and silver paper obligations, if bullion banks in London and New York fail to deliver physical bullion.
What happens IF/WHEN there is a meltdown of the Paper Exchange (aka "COMEX") happens? Where do the prices of Au and Ag go? And, what are the consequences to the massive amount of Derivatives? And might the U.S. Government prefer a nuclear war first?
The excellent advice from the BPR team makes all of us the “elite”, right? Like other elites, we should support all this illegal US immigration: they need a place to live, so the increased demand makes our houses more valuable, they need food, so prices go up and our shipping stocks do better, and they need transport, so fuel prices rise and our oil stocks go up! Am I doing this right? It’s really hard to think like an elite.
Mr Bonner, you worked in a great one-liner today, “Once again, statistics take on a life of their own... and become a policy goal.”
And today, Mr Casey doubled down on your quote with, “…government debt never stands still; it grows relentlessly with every passing moment.” And Doug threw in a graphic to boot - https://tinyurl.com/23tkhhaw
Once upon a time, some sage advice was given: …find the “Primary Trend”, follow it and invest in it.
The “IT” for now = falling dollar …Falling …FALL’ing $’s
Not so difficult to see Mr Bonner’s one-liner policy goal by the 542’ers and their sycophants as intentionality taking matters to the point of F.U.B.A.R. & introducing en masse F.U.D.
The illegal migrants will stop arriving soon enough… when they realise they are being paid with fake money … which won’t be able to buy them any real assets… because they too will not keep up with inflation. So what’s the point of migrating? One thing about illegals they are not delusional that’s why they’re migrants.
Give me your tired, your poor, your lazy, your felons, your corrupt
Your huddled masses of ignorance yearning to get everything from our demented Elite for free,
The wretched uneducated useless refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, your homeless, your evil, your useless, your demented tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door of Liberty’s End🤔
lol, you want ‘em…where do you want ‘em delivered?
Argh, someone interpreted that plaque on Ellis Island too literally.
Note to myself: have wording changed - "give me your energetic and your ambitious who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge."
😂🤣😂🤣 that would end the democratic cult forever🤔
There’s a cult? Do they have a commune too? 😂🤣😂🤣 Duh.
The answer is a return to anarchy. And, thank you for sharing MacleodFinance Substack. I subscribed. Solid and well-written.
Would anarchy stop or prevent "illegal" immigration?
Is it not the almost chaotic Ellis Island acceptance of immigrants seeking a better future that made America the great country it was?
Stupid and woke legislation and government deficit spending in an attempt to buy votes is what is destroying it
You’re welcome LSO. I’m an Alasdair fan.
Good ol’ anarchy; the close companion of chaos, riots, revolts & insurrections.
Regards & Be Well,
Mark
P.S. now I’d better get to work becoming competent at tuning my C.Crane SSB’s… and complete the DIY trash can faraday cage :)
Nice GF
Washington D.C.
The demented elite aren’t giving them anything- except the spoils of taxation of the underclasses
“We need two children per couple, just to stay even. We’ll have to make up the shortage with immigrants.”
Immigrants are the means to justify the ends which is to eliminate Whitey, a truly endangered species. And who are the elites behind this project, ongoing for thousands of years now? See Revelation 3:9.
Oh to see the Guillotine put to good use. Anthony Fauci, Redfield, Debra Birks, Merrick Garland, the list is long.
note to myself: invest in lumber, nuts & bolts, pullies, rope, and a hunk of steel plate.
GF: Great idea.
My thoughts exactly, add Schwab, Soros, Gates, and all the chickenhawk neocon warmongers.
"All men are created equal" is not a true statement. All people are individually unique and unequal.
I think what the Founders meant was all men should be treated equal before the law.
The law should be objective and treat all people equally.
The "equal" part is that while born to unequal circumstance, God endowed each of us with a soul.
The biggest problem I see with elitism is the government elites vote how the money is spent from the Treasury, while also voting themselves to be exempt from making the expenditures.
The result of this is that they always get what they want at the expense of everybody else, because they have other means of earning income away from the use of their ability in the private sector.
And this is a reason government spending will never be significantly reduced.
The government is a protection racket enabling the elites to raid the treasury with impunity.
Kevin - so far so good until "never". Oh, no, it will be reduced when the system blows up because it won't be reduced until it does. There is talk about the "Great Reset" - sure, like it is some system the Government will introduce. Highly likely - the Great Reset will be a nuclear war and on its conclusion there won't be a "Reset" but a new beginning. Those in power will do whatever to remain in power including blowing up the World. Chaos cometh.
I believe you’re correct brother, and think the New World Order/Reset will begin in the Southern Hemisphere, as the majority of life is in the Northern Hemisphere…. Still have time to prepare 🙏
Good thought, Steve. If/when a nuclear war breaks-out, the South Hemisphere most likely will be spared. Problem is besides Argentina (currently) and Chile not much to count on at the End of the World.
Maybe I was too optimistic, so a modification may be necessary.
This was based on a (faulty) assumption: The status quo will be maintained. If it falls, then all bets are off.
Even if they did exist, in the interest of self-preservation the "elites" would never use nukes. Same with the fake CONVID and "GoF" pathogens - no need to release a potentially uncontrollable contagious pathogen when you can fake pandemics by simply using equally fake PCR "tests".
Really? You know that for a FACT. Never. Interesting.........
As Samuel Clemens once noted: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble…..it is what you know for SURE that just ain't so.
"Never" wouldn't apply if the "elites" believe in "salvation". I tend to think they worship nihilism and thus cling to life accordingly.
Only takes a few to let the rockets fly. Dusty Springfield had a song that could be modify to explain that view - called Wishin' and Hopin"
Hope is a good thing - and I hope with you Kevin. However, planning for the downside seems appropriate as well.
If ‘never’ was an option … we would never have a problem!!
Thank you Bill for reminding me of one of my favorite principles which I like to express as 10% of the fishermen catch 90% of the fish. Which by definition makes me an elite of sorts, when filtered through my ego and in consideration of my self-adoration as an elite fisherman. Alas, this elitist must next get his hands dirty cleaning fish caught under last night's moon waxing near full. Me thinks, I would rather walk a frozen lake under a dark moon or drift in my boat under a full moon over frequenting the halls of Grandeau, under which those other elitists waste their lives in self-importance. After all, I am nearing my 70th year and there are still more fish to catch.
Oh, I don't know. Guillotine still sounds pretty useful to me. Efficient if not messy.
Netflix got something right; the one way ticket to the Yellowstone train station.
Relatively insightful for a Bonner political column except, of course, for one glaring error. There is always something with Bill. In reference to the French, Bonner writes that "the guillotine solved the problem". Really? Unlike the American Revolution, which predominately was a revolution of the intellect and an advocacy for individual rights, the French Revolution was revenge and carnage. No moral principles here, just a grab for power. The American Revolution led to a country that at least for some time progressively led to more individual freedom. It was not perfect or, for that matter, fully understood by all those involved. There were plenty of challenges and errors made. But the underlying principle of individual rights was always a guiding light, although somewhat obscured at times by statist influence. But it has taken a long time for those statist (progressive fascist nihilist) forces to come to prominence. And we can still fight against them by being guided by our nation's founding principles. The French, on the other hand, were doomed by their bloodthirsty, intellectually vacuous revolution. All it accomplished was to usher in another dictatorship. Guillotines never have, and never will, solve any problems. They will only bring death and destruction.
Good thing you’re on the watch, John, and keeping Bill Bonner on the straight and narrow. Despite his books and hundreds of essays that make fine discriminations on historical topics that are often new to many, if not most, of his readers, Bill has made “a glaring error,” somehow omitting or getting wrong what has been for more than two-hundred years a commonplace of historiography—that is, the fundamental differences between the American and the French Revolutions. Why I bet Bill has never even heard of Edmund Burke, let alone turned the pages of his magnum opus!
So instead of reading Bill’s sentence “The guillotine solved the problem” in the particular and ironic sense in which Bill intended it, you pump it full of your gaseous and tiresome obsession with faulting him for not elaborating on every intimation he makes or for failing to lay out the exceptions and qualifications to his generalizations. Something tells me, perhaps a little bird quoting the immortal words of Tigers manager Bucky Harris describing a Mickey Mantle blast that on June 18, 1956, cleared the right-field roof of Briggs Stadium in Detroit, that Bonner could make distinctions between the American and the French Revolutions sufficiently penetrating to “bring tears to the eyes of a rocking chair.”
.....except that he didn't, and I can only comment on what he posts. One who writes daily columns and books like Bonner does, should strive for clarity. In many of his columns he doesn't and makes contradictory points, or writes something to the effect -"but what do I know?" But I have to give you a "10" for style points. However, your "argument from authority", as philosophy refers to it, is a fallacious argument. The fact that you set up Bonner as an authority since he has written volumes doesn't address the point I made and can't be substituted as an argument for what I wrote. I admit I haven't read him for decades, only the past few years including his most recent book. But this certainly gives me a pretty good indication where he is coming from philosophically. At best, it is a hodge podge of ideas, some very good, some very suspect, but none of it analyzed from a fundamental perspective of individual rights. Instead, he divides people into groups, not individuals, and harps on elites or other groups. While I appreciate some of the arguments he makes (and even acknowledged that in my post above), when it comes to politics and analyzing political philosophy on a fundamental level, Bonner is second rate at best. For example, I don't recall him ever making the distinction in his columns or his latest book that our Founding Fathers gave us a Constitutional Republic. He always refers to our system of government as a democracy. I have commented on this many times, so I won't repeat here. It is possible that he has mentioned this in passing, but he certainly has not analyzed it in any depth. It's "elite this, elite that". Does he write about how returning to the principles of the Constitution would get us back on track? Nope.
John, you write: “ . . . I don't recall him ever making the distinction in his columns or his latest book that our Founding Fathers gave us a Constitutional Republic. He always refers to our system of government as a democracy. I have commented on this many times, so I won't repeat here. It is possible that he has mentioned this in passing, but he certainly has not analyzed it in any depth.”
You’ll recall, John, that just a few weeks ago I pointed out that for Bill Bonner the distinction between a democracy and a constitutional republic is of little consequence. After all, within just a few years of the ratification of the U. S. Constitution one division of the “elites” had imposed on the other division the Alien and Sedition Acts, gross violations of the 1st Amendment. And Thomas Jefferson, who thought the 10th Amendment the keystone of the Constitution, purchased the Louisiana territory from the French—despite his grave reservations about the constitutionality of such an action. Over the next few decades John Marshall and the Supreme Court transformed the original understanding of a nation founded on individual rights and federalism to one increasingly centralized in the District of Columbia. And what was left of that original understanding never fully recovered from Lincoln’s many and flagrant violations of both the letter and the spirit of the founding document.
The rise of Progressivism in the early years of the 20th Century--exemplified by the presidency of that anti-constitutionalist Woodrow Wilson and by the annus horribilis of 1913 that saw 1. the ratification of the 16th Amendment, the “root of all evil” income-tax amendment, according to Frank Chodorov; 2. the ratification of the 17th Amendment, which in enabling the direct election of members of the Senate proved to be a devastating blow to the Founders’ understanding of federalism; and, of course, 3. the creation of the Federal Reserve--gave the assault on constitutionalism as envisaged by the Founders nothing short of a turbo-charge.
The rest, as they say, is history and has been chronicled in excruciating detail by able journalists and scholars such as James Bovard, Timothy Sandefur, and Charles Murray, whose book “By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission,” especially its opening chapter on the failure of constitutionalism, I pointed out to you several weeks ago.
The larger point, John, is that we once had the finest constitution ever devised by man—and yet it has been circumvented, if not gutted. So where is the burden of proof, on Bill Bonner, a philosophical anarchist unwilling to put his faith in any form of government, for not falling back on constitutionalism to forestall what he deems to be an unavoidable disaster, or on you for presuming that one form of government will somehow save us from ourselves and the tendency of all democracies, whether constitutional or not, to instantiate in the large the tragedy of the commons?
Well, if this is your view, I don't have much to disagree with except for one thing which I will get to. But don't pass this off as Bonner's view. I've read his writings now for a few years and he has come nowhere near your explanation above. You are on another level then he is, so it puzzles me that you want to be his advocate/defender/psychoanalyst etc. While some of his columns on political issues are good throughout, most are muddled and contradictory, have what I refer to a "poison pills", and don't explore the topic from fundamental principles.
All that being said, I agree our Constitution has been under attack and that attack has been accelerating under the Progressive movement. I've stated this many times on these pages in one form or another. Even our Founding Fathers, when evaluated individually, had some strange ideas even while they understood a government for the purpose of defending individual rights was the moral and correct one. It seems that when the Founders came together for the purpose of formulating the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the whole was more than the sum of the parts, as their best ideas supportive of individual rights won out, while the suspect ideas of each of them were discarded. But not so much when they acted individually. The political disagreements and animus were as bad back then as they are today.
If, as you say, Bonner is "a philosophical anarchist unwilling to put his faith in any form of government", then I would say he is sadly mistaken and he is trying to believe in a contradiction. It goes much deeper than that. His recent book "Un-Civilizing America" advocates for Win-Win interactions. He treats that as a primary. It is not. Win-Win interactions among humans require rational thought and an understanding that humans are the rational animal (as Aristotle formulated) with a rational mind. Our rational mind is our most important means of survival. Unlike other animals, we lack either their strength, speed, or other physical abilities and traits, to survive. But our rational minds make up for that in spades but require freedom, or more accurately, individual rights, to function. Protection of individual rights is the only proper function of government, but for it to work, the citizenry needs to be predominantly rational and educated. It is better to shore up a legitimate government by educating the people to the substantial benefits of protecting individual rights rather than expect "anarchism" to do the job. What Bonner, through his anarchist philosophy, doesn't acknowledge is that his Win-Win interactions among humans requires rational people as well. Otherwise, it will devolve into warring factions as some people would rather steal than produce value. If one recognizes that rational thought and rational people are required for Win-Win interactions, then one would come to the conclusion (hopefully) that the legitimate purpose of government is to "create an environment" of protecting individual rights to make that happen. To expect anarchism to do the job is a losing proposition in my opinion. In fact, nothing will work with a citizenry of irrational people. So, people like Bonner want to pontificate about elites and other things he considers unjust while wallowing around in his "floating abstractions" without tying his ideas down to the facts of reality. And the basic fact of reality when it comes to human beings is that we each possess a rational mind that require freedom (individual rights) to function and flourish.
John,
You repeatedly chide Bonner for his not elaborating a theory of rights and for his reluctance to show how protecting the rights of the individual undergirded the founding of the United States. Your concluding sentence neatly summarizes your position: “And the basic fact of reality when it comes to human beings is that we each possess a rational mind that require[s] freedom (individual rights) to function and flourish.”
Now whether protecting individual rights was a consequential driver for the American revolutionists is an historical question amenable to traditional modes of investigation. As far as I can tell, Bonner has never denied that the Americans were so motivated. But equating freedom with individual rights is an altogether different proposition, and regarding that equation Bonner is far more skeptical.
Bonner’s position can, I think, be approached by first asking questions that an influential group of libertarians, sometimes called philosophical anarchists, often use to introduce or support their own skepticism regarding rights. For example, would you agree that protecting rights means accepting mechanisms for enforcing those rights against persons or organizations that would encroach on them? And that without such enforcement those rights would be little more than empty words? So who or what has turned out to be the enforcer? Yep, the state! As more and more “rights” are asserted and then protected, the state grows ever more powerful and, eventually, more oppressive. In the United States, the federal government has become the biggest bully in the land, enforcing “rights” that just seventy-five years ago would have been deemed fanciful by most constitutionalists.
This mushrooming of the rights regime, sometimes called the nanny state or the administrative state, was adumbrated in a way by Herbert Spencer in his book “The Man Versus the State," published in 1884. In its first essay, “The New Toryism,” Spencer traced the transformation of liberalism in that century from its early days when it consistently strived to reduce the power of the state over the citizen--to its late-century incarnation when it came to resemble a paternalistic Toryism, pushing legislation and regulations that Albert Jay Nock described as “of ever-increasing particularity.” And a similar adumbration was advanced in the mid-20th Century by Isaiah Berlin in his 1958 inaugural lecture at Oxford, “Two Concepts of Liberty.” Berlin argued that “negative freedom”—that is, freedom from constraint and the freedom to pursue one’s goals as long as they didn’t interfere with the comparable freedoms of others—was being eclipsed by a pervasive and dangerous “positive freedom” in which the state, in order to expand “opportunity,” was undertaking all kinds of projects and programs that ultimately would constrain everyone’s liberties.
There is much more to say about “the problem of rights,” but this comment is already too long. Nonetheless, here are just two more points—actually more like hints—that you might want to take into consideration. First, as Berlin noted in his “Two Concepts” essay:
“No one would argue that truth or freedom of self-expression could flourish where dogma crushes all thought. But the evidence of history tends to show (as, indeed, was argued by James Stephen in his formidable attack on [John Stuart] Mill in his ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’) that integrity, love of truth, and fiery individualism grow at least as often in severely disciplined communities among, for example, the puritan Calvinists of Scotland or New England, or under military discipline, as in more tolerant or indifferent societies; and if this is so, Mill’s argument for liberty as a necessary condition for the growth of human freedom falls to the ground.”
And second, some very sharp libertarians of the anarchic persuasion have constructed plausible alternatives to the modern state and its freedom-constraining bureaucracies, alternatives that incorporate the best features of win-win but without relying on the complications of rights and the increasingly obnoxious apparats that enforce them. A good place for you to start if you wish to pursue this line of thought is with Michael Huemer’s book “The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey” (2013).
Rather than ask me what I consider to be a right, you've gone off on a tangent citing all sorts of contradictory ideas of what a right is. It seems you want to muddle the discussion rather than clarify it. A right is not just anything anyone can just make up. Rights, like all concepts, have to be objectively defined and demonstrated and based on the facts of reality. It is unfortunate in all your reading, you haven't read any Ayn Rand. She covered this topic thoroughly and objectively. She had a razor-sharp mind that cut through all the vague and muddled arguments and theories of other would-be philosophers. Your question about rights and enforcing rights was answered by Ayn Rand over 50 years ago.
I have a question for all us proles and the Bonner Team. This is from MacleodFinance Substack.
It now appears to China’s households, whose annual savings total the equivalent of $6 trillion, that gold has become an attractive investment option. As the crisis facing the western alliance develops, the pace at which these savings migrate from bank deposits into gold is set to increase. The quantities involved could easily trigger a crisis in gold and silver paper obligations, if bullion banks in London and New York fail to deliver physical bullion.
What happens IF/WHEN there is a meltdown of the Paper Exchange (aka "COMEX") happens? Where do the prices of Au and Ag go? And, what are the consequences to the massive amount of Derivatives? And might the U.S. Government prefer a nuclear war first?
The U.S.A. road is a mirror of the ROMAN EMPIRE road. So why would anyone believe man today is any different than a few thousand years past?????
RALPH W.
The excellent advice from the BPR team makes all of us the “elite”, right? Like other elites, we should support all this illegal US immigration: they need a place to live, so the increased demand makes our houses more valuable, they need food, so prices go up and our shipping stocks do better, and they need transport, so fuel prices rise and our oil stocks go up! Am I doing this right? It’s really hard to think like an elite.
Mr Bonner, you worked in a great one-liner today, “Once again, statistics take on a life of their own... and become a policy goal.”
And today, Mr Casey doubled down on your quote with, “…government debt never stands still; it grows relentlessly with every passing moment.” And Doug threw in a graphic to boot - https://tinyurl.com/23tkhhaw
Once upon a time, some sage advice was given: …find the “Primary Trend”, follow it and invest in it.
The “IT” for now = falling dollar …Falling …FALL’ing $’s
Not so difficult to see Mr Bonner’s one-liner policy goal by the 542’ers and their sycophants as intentionality taking matters to the point of F.U.B.A.R. & introducing en masse F.U.D.
Cheers,,
Mark
The illegal migrants will stop arriving soon enough… when they realise they are being paid with fake money … which won’t be able to buy them any real assets… because they too will not keep up with inflation. So what’s the point of migrating? One thing about illegals they are not delusional that’s why they’re migrants.
Maybe the flamethrower would be more efficient Bill? Where ya gonna go when the volcano blows…..