Economic slavery: Apathy is not the answer

Local politics is relevant and important. But, sooner rather than later, national and international issues quickly find their way to your front door.

Today’s energy prices, food prices, the cost of doing business prices and the cost of just paying for basic necessities is hitting the average American wage earner hard. Congress is impotent to do anything about it except blame the other party. And, on the main, they lie like they breath: continuously.

We live in an era where corporate nation-states continue their march to a trans-globalist beat that some prominent Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries, even the early and mid-20th century, tried to warn us about. We don’t listen. We won’t listen.

Trans-nationals only need the U.S. up to a point, but with the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations and others rising, that era of need is seeing a more rapid decline that what many expected.

We the people, or at least many of us, seem eerily content to center our political/economic points of view on whatever our congressional leaders in the two parties (and nearly all the national political pundits) tell us to believe, rarely questioning and being willing, instead, to center our ire on the prescribed hot-button political issues of the day.

It’s not that we’re stupid, it’s just that we’ve been brainwashed by parties practicing the politics of division, and we’re too dumbed-down to know any different. It reminds me of part of Pink Floyd’s song “Sheep,” “harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away, only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.”

But what about the words from the past that tried to rouse us from our apathy-induced sleep? What about these words? They are but an example from our past, and I can’t wait to see how many will try to rationalize them into irrelevant obscurity.

They are the words of Abraham Lincoln in response to the passage of the National Banking Act on Feb. 25, 1863. The act created another central bank (and Fed precursor) with the power to issue currency, backed by debt, not by gold. Pay attention to the specific words Lincoln uses.

“The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people, until wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the republic is destroyed.”

Lincoln wasn’t the only one to warn us. Using only slightly different words, Jefferson said the same thing, so did Andrew Jackson, so did Woodrow Wilson, so did Franklin Roosevelt, so did Dwight Eisenhower. So did Prof. Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor.

Bill didn’t listen, nor does Hillary, nor Obama nor McCain. They represent both sides of the same national political coin Mark Twain spoke of over 100 years ago when he said there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the parties.

Today, the march toward a greater economic slavery and diminished rights continues. The political nationals all talk good game, yet they and their parties have sold the American people down the river for generations. And today, with prospects of $200 a barrel oil and even higher food prices, that reality is finally coming home to roost.

Today, some multi-nationals, the nation-states whose allegiance is only to themselves (with the blessing of millions of stockholders that make a little money on the deals but who will never utter any objection), continue to exert global influence on an unprecedented scale. Some believe that Quigley’s mid-1960s prediction of economic pluralism has already occurred.

And in that brave new world, supported again in lock-step by national media and national and state education policy, prices continue to outstrip the earnings of the average American, Pakistani, Somali and all the rest. Maybe Karl Marx was right after all when he said that, in the end, there will be only one corporation.

We are well into the era of economic slavery. The recent explosion in energy and food prices in America simply mirrors what much of the rest of the world has been experiencing for decades.

Now present on our shores, we are witnessing the escalation of what many outside America, and some inside, view as the mere beginning of the end of American supremacy that will not stop unless a disaffected and dumbed-down populace, strung out on prescription drugs and the latest machinations of “American Idol,” actually forces Congress to act in our best interest.

As for the average American, how much can they take, $5 for a gallon of gas and $5 for a gallon of milk? $6? More? Many of us today are environmentally aware and green-oriented, a little or a lot. But green consciousness will evaporate when people are faced with the dilemma of either feeding the kids or filling the tank to get to school and work or paying the electric bill.

Congress, hot-button issues in tow to keep us divided, is treading on treasonous ground. China is drilling for oil nearly within sight of the Florida coast. We have billions of barrels of oil but won’t drill for them. Green-sounding oil companies and car manufacturers have no need to put more than a pittance of R&D money in alternative energy sources that would kill their cash cow. And Congress is too entrenched to force alternatives.

We’ve been running out of time since before the days of Lincoln. But today, the snowball has gained tremendous speed on its downhill course. We live inside the snowball.

No nation lives forever. History is replete with examples. Left unchecked, the energy wars are only a matter of time. So are huge oil spikes. What do you think a barrel of oil will go for in a heartbeat if/when the Iranian theocracy orders a strike either on Israel or on the “infidels” in Dubai who are content to deal with the Great Satan? $300 a barrel? More?

The worst thing we can do is to believe that these global problems have no solution, that they are over our heads. Like it or not, they are already at your door. Like it or not, apathy is not the solution to economic slavery.

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Submitted by look to the future on Wed, 06/11/2008 - 8:00am.

In my opinion have been dead on the money. I remain optimistic that the spirit of the American middle class, however, will rise to face those that would seek to oppress us with their false intellectualism tinged with greed and narrow party viewpoints. The country will not be able to sustain its freedom otherwise.

I am still hopeful we will find our way to some type of national sales tax. It would remove power from the government and return it to the hands of the people.

Keep up the good work!!

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