By: Monty Pelerin
History is a great teacher. It often provides clues that enable us to understand the present and future.
Ancient regimes’ concept of divine right of kings seems pertinent to today. Wikipedia offers as good a summary as any:
The Divine Right of Kings is a political and religious doctrine of royal absolutism. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving his right to rule directly from the will of God. The king is thus not subject to the will of his people, the aristocracy, or any other estate of the realm, including the church.
The phrase “not subject to the will of his people” is an appropriate similarity to contemporary times.
Divine right was based on a metaphysical assertion. Despite “ultimate authority,” kings engaged “intellectuals” to provide supporting propaganda for the claim. Their efforts worked for a long time. As late as 1729, Thomas Paine saw fit to speak about the lingering right of heredity:
…the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate.
We do not believe in the divine right of elected representatives, although some of them seem to.
The interesting parallel to today is the ancient regimes’ use of “intellectuals” as court propagandists. The same model exists today. The propagandists who led our country to its current dismal state, it seems to me, are economists. Today’s metaphysicians are called economic advisers. The Keynesian model is their tool for increased and activist government.
To many, the Keynesian myth is every bit as metaphysical as the divine right of kings. Gary North provides an evaluation that should unnerve Keynesians:
Ever since the third quarter of 2008, the nation’s nominal GDP has increased by a tiny $100 billion, but the Federal debt has increased by 25 times the GDP increase.
It has taken $25 of Federal deficits to produce $1 of GDP growth. This marks a major anomaly for Keynesian economic theory. The justification for government deficits in Keynesian theory is that government spending restores economic growth. Money spent by the private sector does not increase economic growth in a recession; government spending does. This has never made any economic sense, but now the non-response of the economy is exposing this original nonsense for what it always was: nonsense.
The ineffectiveness of Keynesian policies is a surprise only to those who worship at the Keynesian Temple. Many non-Keynesians accurately predicted that recent interventions would make conditions worse.
The Faustian bargain between some of the economics profession and the political class was struck after Keynes’ General Theory was published during the Great Depression. Keynes’ ideas provided cover for politicians to take increasing control of the economy due to its alleged instability. Government management was deemed necessary for consistent growth and wealth creation. For politicians, that was nirvana. For economists, it provided wealth and power in the form of government service. All they had to do was please the king and his court.
The Faustian partnership is now unraveling, despite the protestations of Keynesians. Worshipers like Paul Krugman claim that the economy would be worse if the Keynesian potions had not been applied.
The sacrosanct Keynesian paradigm is never doubted by true believers. All problems are assumed solvable by injection of more poison into the patient. There is no other solution. If results are less than expected, it is always the fault of practitioners who failed to administer enough medicine in a timely manner.
As the world economy implodes, the mountebanks are increasingly seen for what they are — descendants of the court advisers who supported the divine rights of kings. They are alchemists paid to support the divine right of government. It is their role to provide the intellectual support for the growth of government at the expense of the will of the people. These paid political hacks are little different from prostitutes or hired guns. They are the whores of the economics profession.
Let me be clear that I am not calling all Keynesians whores. Some are just plain ignorant. (Neither category is flattering.) Many are technocrats who have mastered mathematical techniques from prestige universities. Like idiot savants, they are brilliant with models, but not intelligent enough to know that aggregate models have nothing to do with individual human behavior. A wag’s characterization of Paul Samuelson seems appropriate to describe these types: “He is the best physicist that the economics profession has ever produced.”
Now their franchise is in danger. Their fingerprints are all over disasters like the Post Office, Amtrak, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and too many others to mention. Despite their best efforts and promises, there is no recovery coming in the economy. Keynesianism is under attack around the world.
It is times like these that paradigm shifts occur. Thomas Kuhn wrote about the difficulties of such shifts in the natural sciences. Vested interests were not easy to overcome, even with contradictory data. That does not bode well for changing the Keynesian paradigm in the social sciences where the vested interests are more numerous and powerful.
There are reasons to be pessimistic:
First, virtually every politician and bureaucrat favors the status quo. It has produced pay, retirement benefits, power and prestige relative to their counterparts in the private sector. There is no risk of unemployment of your employee relocating or going out of business. It is a sheltered overcompensated life that few would willingly change regardless of political affiliation.
Second, big media favors big government and big spending. They understand little about anything, especially economics. The Daily Bell discussed this shortcoming with respect to Time Magazine’s recent article on Economics and concluded:
Here is a woman who writes about economics for millions and whose platform is arguably the most prestigious magazine of its type during the 20th century. Yet both she and her editors allow her to publish an article that betrays such ignorance that the feedbacks beneath the article are of far more value than her own erroneous musings. When that happens, you’ve got a problem.
Third, major corporations are dependent upon various corporate welfare items, contracts and tax loopholes that they are unwilling to give up.
Fourth, 47% of individuals pay no income tax. These individuals have the incentive to vote for larger government because they are “free-riders.”
Fifth, the elderly receive Medicare and Social Security. Presumably they paid into these systems during their earning years. When someone talks about government reform, they see their primary source of income threatened — “they are trying to take away my benefits. How will I live?”
Sixth, the balance of the population is generally unable to determine whether they are winners or losers from government. There are too many programs and regulations to make such a calculation. Many deem a particular program or regulation good because they do not know its costs. Even if proper cost determinations could be made, the calculation is terribly biased because of deficit spending. Deficit spending is close to 50% of total spending. If people compare what they pay in taxes as the costs of these programs, they fool themselves by being biased toward government spending.
Seventh, intellectual arguments cannot overthrow the Keynesian paradigm. Unlike the natural sciences, replicated laboratory tests of a hypothesis are not possible. Proof in the social sciences is never as definitive as in the physical sciences.
Vested interests are much greater than Kuhn described in the natural sciences. No constituent group supports a move toward smaller government. Eventually the truth outs, at least in the natural sciences. Will that happen in the social sciences? Will we overthrow the false paradigm of Keynesian economics? Will big government be able to be rolled back? These are questions that only the passage of time will reveal.
The Keynesian paradigm has gone on too long. It is likely that it cannot continue much longer. Rational evaluation will not kill it. It will die from self-immolation. It will perish in the flames that consume our economy. Consensus that it is dead will probably only come when the economy has reached a similarly terminal condition.
One hopes that this tragedy unfolds fast enough that our freedom still remains. If so, we will rise from the ashes painfully but quickly. If not the world may enter an Economic Dark Ages.
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Former Congressman Says Obama A ‘Threat’ And Must Be Impeached
Jul 26
Posted by admin in Abuse of Power, Commentary, Impeachments, News, Opinion | 2 Comments
By Bob Unruh
We have a man in White House who brazenly disregards his oath of office
A former congressman and GOP presidential candidate says for current members of the House and Senate to uphold their oath of office that includes the defense of the United States against enemies “foreign and domestic,” they need to be filing impeachment charges against Barack Obama.
Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., joined what has become a growing surge of those recommending the ultimate solution for a president they believe not only has disagreeable policies, but is participating in actions that damage the nation.
The ultimate guide to Obama’s radical agenda – and how to stop it!
Tancredo is not the first to raise the idea of impeachment against Obama, who has implemented legislation and policies effectively nationalizing financial institutions, automobile companies, health care and many other previously private interests.
In fact, he was not even the only person on this particular day. Times columnist Jeffrey T. Kuhner, who also is president of the Edmund Burke Institute, wrote at the same time, “President Obama has engaged in numerous high crimes and misdemeanors. The Democratic majority in Congress is in peril as Americans reject his agenda. Yet more must be done: Mr. Obama should be impeached.”
Kuhner continued, “He is slowly – piece by painful piece – erecting a socialist dictatorship. We are not there – yet. But he is putting America on that dangerous path. He is undermining our constitutional system of checks and balances; subverting democratic procedures and the rule of law; presiding over a corrupt, gangster regime; and assaulting the very pillars of traditional capitalism. Like Venezuela’s leftist strongman, Hugo Chavez, Mr. Obama is bent on imposing a revolution from above – one that is polarizing America along racial, political and ideological lines. Mr. Obama is the most divisive president since Richard Nixon. His policies are Balkanizing the country. It’s time for him to go.”
Tancredo’s arguments aren’t complicated. During his brief presidential run in 2008 he focused on the border security issue of the United States, and he still is concerned that the failure to secure the U.S. boundary – especially with Mexico – will lead to tragic consequences at the hands of border-crossing terrorists.
Tancredo appeared on Fox News today to defend his position from skeptics, saying Obama’s responsibility is to protect and defend the Constitution and the United States, not “fundamentally transform” them.
“He is more dangerous simply because he is inside,” he said. “Few people took him seriously about fundamentally transforming America. That is what he is all about. That is what he has set about doing. He is a committed ideologue. When you have someone like that in the White House, it is a scary proposition.”
He cited the president’s lack of action to adequately secure the border with Mexico.
“He’s putting his country in danger,” Tancredo said. “The country the Founders put together, that’s what’s in jeopardy.”
“Barack Obama is one of the most powerful presidents this nation has seen in generations. He is powerful because he is supported by large majorities in Congress, but, more importantly, because he does not feel constrained by the rule of law. Whether he is putting up the weakest possible defense of the Defense of Marriage Act despite the Justice Department’s legal obligation to support existing law; disenfranchising Chrysler and GM bondholders in order to transfer billions of investor dollars to his supporters in the United Auto Workers; or implementing yet a third offshore oil-drilling moratorium even after two federal courts have thrown out two previous moratoriums, President Obama is determined to see things done his way regardless of obstacles,” Tancredo wrote in his op-ed.
“To Mr. Obama, the rule of law is a mere inconvenience to be ignored, overcome or ‘transcended’ through international agreements or ‘norms.’”
Tancredo wrote that the “dedicated Marxist who lives in the White House” holds power over budgets, the judiciary, national defense and health care. As such, “his regime and his program are not just about changing public policy in the conventional sense. When one considers the combination of his stop-at-nothing attitude, his contempt for limited government, his appointment of judges who want to create law rather than interpret it – all of these make this president today’s single greatest threat to the great experiment in freedom that is our republic.
“Yes, Mr. Obama is a more serious threat to America than al-Qaida. We know that Osama bin Laden and followers want to kill us, but at least they are an outside force against whom we can offer our best defense. But when a dedicated enemy of the Constitution is working from the inside, we face a far more dangerous threat. Mr. Obama can accomplish with the stroke of his pen what bin Laden cannot accomplish with bombs and insurgents.”
Tancredo, who served five terms representing Colorado and now is chairman of the Rocky Mountain Foundation, was joined by Kuhner, who accused Obama of abusing his office and violating his oath.
Kuhner cited Obama’s demand that all Americans buy health insurance.
“The federal government does not have the right to coerce every citizen to purchase a good or service. This is not in the Constitution, and it represents an unprecedented expansion of power,” he wrote. “Yet Obamacare’s most pernicious aspect is its federal funding of abortion. Pro-lifers are now compelled to have their tax dollars used to subsidize insurance plans that allow for the murder of unborn children. This is more than state-sanctioned infanticide. It violates the conscience rights of religious citizens.”
He further cited Obama’s actions regarding the BP oil spill.
“There is a legal process for claims to be adjudicated, but Mr. Obama has behaved more like Mr. Chavez or Russia’s Vladimir Putin: He has bullied BP into setting up a $20 billion compensation fund administered by an Obama appointee. In other words, the assets of a private company are to be raided to serve a political agenda.”
He also wrote about the takeovers in the auto and financial industries, and the New Black Panther case.
“Under Mr. Obama, the Constitution has become a meaningless scrap of paper,” he said. “As president, he is supposed to respect the rule of law. Instead, his administration has dropped charges of voter intimidation against members of the New Black Panther Party. This was done even though their menacing behavior was caught on tape: men in military garb brandishing clubs and threatening whites at a polling site.”
Tancredo nearly two months ago broached the subject of impeachment, suggesting an “impeachment file.”
“I believe there is a growing body of evidence of impeachable offenses sufficient to warrant a formal impeachment resolution in the House, followed by a trial in the Senate,” he wrote at the time.
And the suggestion even has come from onlookers at a presidential appearance. CNN has documented when Obama made a surprise visit to a crowd on a shuttle bus, one onlooker shouted, “When are you going to quit. When are you going to be impeached?”
The issue even has appeared among online gamers, when Microsoft told an Xbox user the signon name “Impeach Obama” was not allowed because, “If you were President Obama, how would you feel if someone wanted to impeach you?”
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, in a column on WND, discussed the ImpeachObamaCampaign.com that they launched.
They reported that many, instead of examining the evidence, attacked the messengers.
“We expected these attacks,” they reported. But they said the unresolved issues include:
Vallely, who served in Vietnam and retired in 1991 from the U.S. Army as deputy commanding general for the Pacific, said, “We now must call for the immediate resignation of Barry Soetero (AKA President Barack Hussein Obama) … based on incompetence, deceit, fraud, corruption, dishonesty and violation of the U.S. oath of office and the Constitution.”
“We can wait no longer for a traditional change of power and new government,” he has warned.
“‘We the People’ have had enough. Enough is enough. The Obama White House and identifiable members of Congress are now on a progressive socialist, treasonous death march and are bankrupting and weakening the country. We have watched them violate their sacred oath of office. ‘We, the People’ cannot wait for and solely rely on the next round of elections in November of this year. It is now and each day that these public servants must put the citizen’s interests above self-interest by resigning immediately,” he said.
Peter Ferrara, on the American Spectator website, also has predicted Obama’s resignation.
“I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it [to 2012],” he wrote. “I predict that he will resign in discredited disgrace before the fall of 2012,” Ferrera said.
Opinion by ImpeachCongress: Fellow Americans, we are at a crossroads here in America. We either stand up for our country as the founding fathers bequeathed it to us or we roll over and give up our Liberty. It is our choice. There are “designing men” as George Washington put it that want to destroy the very Liberty that America stands for and our forefathers fought for to further their own personal power.
We are a nation of free individuals. We cannot succumb to the progressive onslaught on our freedom. We must stand up, united, against the tyranny of the federal government and send the message this November that the progressive liberals in Congress are done. Once Constitutional Conservatives have gained control of both Houses we must begin to dismantle the past 110 years of progressive influence on our Country.
The first order of business will be to either impeach Obama or force his resignation followed by the criminal trials he so deserves. Second, we bring impeachment proceedings against any remaining Representatives and Senators, that were not voted out in November, that have been complicit in this great fraud on the American People. And, finally, we begin the arduous task of undoing the mess of laws and bureaucracies that have strangled our Liberty for one hundred years. Close the department of education and the IRS. Repeal the internal revenue code and replace it with a fair and simple flat tax. Put education back into the hands of State and Local government. Repeal the seventeenth amendment and scale federal government back to the seventeen enumerated powers granted it in the Constitution. We must unite around these principals and take back our country!
Tags: congress, ferrara, impeach, impeached, impeachment, oath of office, obama, tancredo, vallely