Bloomberg 3/3/19 GET TRUMP#1

***By the time he actually ran in 2016, he (President Donald J. Trump) had re-purposed himself as a market-driven conservative to win the Republican nomination, and ultimately, the White House. The billionaire candidate said in 2016 that he tried to pay as little tax as possible, and since then has generally compared Democrats’ tax-the-rich plans to the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.***

1. He did NOT run as a “market-driven conservative”! He was opposed by the Koch brothers the Bush family, the Clinton Crime Family, Mittens Romney, Chambers of Commerce, Business Round Table, EU, UN, and every other tool of Globalism. In other words he has all the right enemies and that speaks well for him. Clearly Trump did not run as a market-driven conservative! To say otherwise is deliberate ignorance or a lie.

The market-driven “conservatives” are Misesean hyper-libertarians. This philosophy serves their business model: outsource labor to low wage countries and import to the highly desirable US market. Good for Multinationals, and their shareholders BUT DESTRUCTIVE OF SWATHES OF AMERICA! And exterminating to the Middle Class that lived, loved and raised families in manufacturing towns now have become the Rust Belt. Where baby baby-boomers swarmed and played ringolevio until streetlights went on and parents began yelling for their kids to get home NOW! blocks and blocks of abandoned homes stand. The only economic activity is illegal drug sales.

Where once the mighty Arsenal of Democracy produced materiel enough to supply the American military to simultaneously mount massive armadas and invasions in Normandy and the Pacific while supplying the USSR the means to hurl Germany out of Russia and into the heart of Europe: stands the Rust Belt. The Rust Belt stretches from Buffalo to Duluth on the Great Lakes, including what should be made into Gary Indiana National Post-Deindustrialisation National Historic Park. (Driving through along the local road on the way to Chicago one evening [just to see the country off the Interstate system] in crepuscular light, either a boar or a feral hog stood sideways in my lane. It turned its eyes to us, and they reflected red. I was actually frightened! Then it turned its head and sauntered off after having demonstrated its right of way. It was huge! It was post-apocalyptic.)

So clearly Donald J. Trump did not run as a Bushie-Free trader!

2. “The billionaire candidate said in 2016 that he tried to pay as little tax as possible, …” Of course! Isn’t there an entire industry of tax accountants whose entire purpose is to minimize tax exposure? This sentence alone proves the essential hit piece nature of the Bloomberg news story. BTW, didn’t we just learn that the Soda Pop Police Chief, former Mayor Bloomberg, has taken office space presumably for his Presidential run? When will the media ask about the “ethics” of using his media empire as an arm of his campaign? *yawn* silence.

3. It was 1999! I know I have changed my mind on many things over the past twenty years. I was still an apologist for international free trade and considered it a corollary of libertarianism. I trusted GWH Bush over the need for the USA to lead a war against Iraq over Kuwait and defended his record. But after 9/11 I said after the second plane hit, that plane will be the death of Saddam Hussein, even though I did not believe he would be behind such a suicidal plan. I was angry and if Saddam gave an outlet, crush him!

Oh but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now!

INCOME INEQUALITY (the next big thing)

INCOME INEQUALITY: Let us watch as this phrase gathers momentum.  It is like being present at the birth of “Global Warming”.  We are hushed in awe. Before us silently spinning, a vast sphere of gas about to reach critical mass.  Fusion is initiated… a Star is born!  And we are witnessing it!
Rather than “wasting” time on proving that this is indeed both a problem and one that is within the government’s purview we get the bum’s rush to find a solution.  We must not allow ourselves to be stampeded into accepting this premise.  Income Inequality is merely a statistical construction.  Like “the economy” it has no independent actual existence.

Why is it taken as a given that INCOME INEQUALITY is a problem? Maybe a society’s level of income disparity is directly related to a higher standard of living among the poorest members?   Is this untrue?  Or is it true?  I do not know.  But, I suspect that those who rile about INCOME INEQUALITY are equally in the dark.
Since they do not know whether or not INCOME DISPARITY results in a higher standard of living for the poorest members of society or not, to what may we attribute their commitment to lowering this inequality?  The fact of the matter is that the well being of the poorest members of society is not even considered by “big-hearted” egalitarians.  Even if the poorest people in this country have a standard of living the envy of most of the world’s middle classes, the elite are unmoved.
From private Pre-K to private school to Ivy League the elite and their wannabes have been indoctucated to a state of conditioned response that would impress a BF Skinner: Inequality bad; equality good.  Inequality is in and of itself “bad”.  But why?
The Post Modern Elitist has learned the clever rhetorical device of placing their premise as a condition in a “problem” they seek to “correct”.  Like “what to do about Global Warming?”  To even begin an answer is to accept the premise.  This is why the Climate Gangsters always bring in “green jobs” to their rhetoric.  Once the rube rises to debate the economic benefits of “green shoots” he has acceded to the premise that man-made global warming is a reality, and that it is a crisis.
Their minds have been filled from birth with the premise that equality is the sine quo none of justice.   Talking about how to “manage” income inequality, no matter the proffered cure, whether “market based” or through government intervention accedes to the premise that Income Inequality is a problem, and a critical one at that.

To whom is Income Inequality a problem?  Certainly it is not to the wealthy.  The poor would surely prefer more wealth rather than income equality.  The evil is to convince the poor that they are poor because others are too wealthy.  This will not help the poor.  Every single attempt at creating a Utopian cornucopia of equality has resulted in the same sad totalitarian state.  Is it the Middle Class that would benefit from the lessening of Income Inequality?  That is the most ridiculous proposition of all!  The Middle Class nearly by definition is the class aspiring to become wealthy.  It is the Middle Class that the elites seek to destroy.  Historically the Bourgeoisie (the Marxist term for Middle Class) is the only new thing under the Sun.  It arose in the interstices of feudal society.  It prospered by diligent effort, thrifty habits, sobriety and those family values based upon particular religious values. Merchants, artisans and professionals created wealth.  For the first time in human history the Land Holders lost their monopoly over the production of wealth.  Capital came to compete with Land.  The rise of The Modern world lay in this conflict and its resolution.

What we see now is the end of the trajectory of that unique occurrence in history, the Middle Class and its republican form of government.  Who prospers when Income Inequality is attacked?  Not the wealthy, the poor or middle class, but only the Political Class will prosper.   They use the Poor both as a threat to bring violence upon the Middle Class and as numbers to win elections.  The Political Class is the final incarnation of the Princes and the Priests.  Once Income Inequality becomes an established “issue” upon which the State has an interest, all manner of economic decisions come under the control of Politics.  When every decision is a political one, Totalitarianism is present.
Let us never, not once engage in any discussions on how best to “solve” INCOME INEQUALITY.  We need be ever mindful that to do so is to accept its legitimacy as a political issue.

ALL LIBERTARIANS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL

NOT ALL LIBERTARIANS ARE CREATED EQUAL

The idea that Libertarianism is monolithic must be corrected. It is also important to point out that extreme Libertarianism in international affairs differs from Globalism in no particular manner.
(“Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace”)

The Radical Austrians perceive international borders to be illiberal impediments to people, capital, goods and services.
(“You, you may say 
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one”)
Many Ron Paulistas dream the same dream.  I am surprised, however that the most fierce of foes of sinister globalism, Alex Jones, and his clones are Paulistas.
Libertarian Constitutionalists agree on the premise that the Constitution as the Framers conceived it is the best hope of maintaining a Liberal republic.  It is the Constitutional piece that is required to maintain liberty; and unfortunately I am detecting a nascent anti-Constitutional, or anti-Federalist contingent within the Libertarian ranks.  The rise of those who would exhume Alexander Hamilton and exile him from the Pantheon of American Founders is an ominous sign of how far down the path of Anti-Federalism the Austrian Schooled radical libertarians wish to go.  Coupled with the sudden urge to “honestly” deal with Abe Lincoln, and declare him a Tyrant, by some of the supporters of the movement behind Ron Paul is concerning.  It becomes evident that even if the Constitution were to be fully restored there would remain legitimate differences in the policies that various interests would seek.  Indeed, when the Federal Government no longer is in charge of picking winners and ameliorating the losses of certain losers, there would remain a legitimate diversity of interests that would still need to be sorted out through deal-making and compromise of Representatives and Senators.  The return of legitimate Constitutional government would represent the beginning of new political debates; and this is good.  But it will raise the question of: now, what shall our reinvigorated Liberal republic do; how shall it conduct itself in the society of other sovereign nations and states?

How shall the Federal Government use the legitimate powers conferred upon it to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”?  These are political issues that are legitimate debates within a constitutional republic.  However, Dr. Paul and his followers have taken particular stances on some of these issues and have made them into tests of loyalty to Libertarian Doctrine, which they aren’t.

What if someone who is less enamored with the Constitution than another candidate, but the other candidate reflects one’s own opinion of a policy that is believed to be superior to the Constitutionalist’s proposed use of Constitutional power?

For instance: Trade Policy.

Trade Policy is to be set by the Congress: Article one; section 8; third paragraph “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”.

The dogmatic Radical Austrian ideological libertarian insistence upon Free Trade as a logical corollary to individual liberty is at odds with the Constitution.

So if a candidate A is in favor of a nationalist trade policy, (Dr. Paul admits that setting Trade Policy with foreign states is a legitimate Federal power in “End The Fed”) but believes it to be illiberal, and not only bad on a practical level, but evil for its reduction of liberty, what to do?
Unfortunately there is no candidate A! (That would have been the Pat Buchanan Constitutionalist that never showed up for this campaign season; it might have been Michele Bachmann, or Sarah Palin. Alas.)

And if candidate B is in favor of a very forward Naval defense policy  (as Constitutionally laid out in Article One, section 8, paragraph 13: “To provide and maintain a Navy;” to ensure American preeminence over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; the God-given moats that will forever guarantee our Independence, then I ask what of the equally Constitutionally minded Dr. Paul’s evisceration of America’s forward and yes, offensive control of the Seas?  Agreed, that the very idea of a single pair of “boots on the ground” in the middle of Central Asia is as absurd as landlocked Mongolia investing in a Navy!  But, America has evolved from the antebellum days. No longer divided into a Northern modernizing commercial republic producing wealth through increasing industrialism, agricultural but becoming a major player in international commerce; and a Southern fossilized remnant of Cavalier Britain before their Civil Wars.  The Cavaliers, or Royalists were based upon a landed gentry with aspirations to nobility.  They derived their wealth from agriculture and rentals.  They scorned the upstart Middleclass with their Reformed Protestant chapels.   They, the new Bourgeois, or Middleclass, were represented by Parliament.  They were the shop keeps, the craftsmen, the merchants that represented the dawn of The Modern Age.  The final act of the British Civil Wars took place in Appomattox Court House Virginia.  America has moved on.  No longer is half the nation ruled over by aristocratic families set upon White Columned Mansions upon a well-tended lawn, surrounded by monoculture cotton for export.  And no longer are “servants” (southern for “Slaves”) used as beasts of burden and fed and clothed by the products of the plantations themselves.  This medieval landscape had to die before the United States of America could come into its own.  The Confederacy for all its talk of “states rats” was essentially fighting against the triumph of the “bourgeois shopkeepers”.   It was men like Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis who like Napoleon before them scorned the fighting spirit of the crass bourgeois Anglo-Saxon “shop keeps”. In case some have not noticed or have come to regret the fact, the North won.  And the results were not the South and the new west becoming a greater New England but instead an entirely new USA becoming a Continental Constitutional Republic of wealth, and power, on a level unseen in history. The New World, Atlantis perhaps, saved western Europe three times and continues to do so.
It is now no longer feasible to be as supreme as once we were. The inevitable occurred as new continental-sized states were ruthlessly unified by means of the various Isms’ of the Twentieth Century.  Now, there are nations the size and might of which have never been seen stomping over the face of the planet.  The Great Powers we reckoned with as a young nation were France, Britain, Spain, and Germany was not yet even a unified state yet.  The Framers never dreamed that nations with fabulous names from a mythic past, like Persia, India, China, or a backwards Russia would trod the earth like Behemoths. There are Chinese cities whose names we do not even know that have more people than Portugal, or Spain!

Yet, still the Atlantic and Pacific moats protect us.  But we will require the forward offensive Naval and Air Power to project our frontiers to the far side of those oceans. The Constitution requires in Article One, section 8, paragraph 13: “To provide and maintain a Navy”, and if they could envisage such a thing as an Air Navy, the Framers would surely have added that to the paragraph. Constitutional Libertarians need not be non-interventionalist in foreign policy.  The USA has evolved from a small group of semi-autonomous states clinging to the eastern seaboard to a Continental power with interests spanning the globe.  There is no example in history of a major power reaching an apogee and deciding that they shall step back a pace or two so as to “not be over there”.  Nations are like Dylan said about people, only more so, they are either “busy being born or busy dyin'”.  Major nations continue to strive or they begin to collapse.  There is never any middle course.   Maybe, President Paul, will thread that needle.  But, I would not trust his Austrian School fanaticism that sees all international borders as purely “illiberal” and arbitrary lines on a map. They are Constitutionalist (but only maybe, it appears the Articles of Confederation are starting to seem more to their liking!)  yet they do not abide Congress restricting the flow of labor, capital, and goods flowing unimpeded across our borders.  The Constitutional right of Congress “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” though admitted by Dr. Paul, was said by him to be unwise policy.  I disagree.  There are those Austrian Scholars who giggle that we should be grateful to those people who wish to sell us the consumer goods we want for a price lower than American companies could provide.  The Doctor giggles, ‘should we ask them to charge us more?’ Problem is that the cheap imported goods are not so cheap, no, not so cheap at all.  Drive from Green Bay, down the western shore of Lake Michigan, past derelict plants.  Then visit South Chicago, where our current president prepared for the office by organizing the urban street.  Round the bend to Gary, Indiana, proceed through to Detroit, Toledo, Erie, across New York State past Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica; one long rusting blight of what was once the source of the might that created the wealth that when needed became the arsenal of democracy.  It lies like a bleeding corpse.  Perhaps a new “Industrial Ruins National Park” will revitalize the region?  This is the cost of ~giggle~ the Chinese not charging us enough for the goods we want.  Libertarianism in international affairs differs from Globalism in what particular manner?  Our Alex Jones’ friends, so vigilantly on guard against The New World Order Globalists, have somehow anointed Dr. Paul.  Yet he would do his best to facilitate freer trade if that were possible.  H would allow the last remnant of industry to be sucked out to China, and he would also reduce the size of our Navy facing this same hyper-industrializing China.

Dr. Paul’s unwavering loyalty to the doctrine of Free Trade is not the typical pragmatic Anglophone Way.  (It is interesting how Anglophobic paranoia fills Alex Jones’ clones; just as it did the isolationists in the early twentieth century.  Anglophobia unites illiberal attacks on the Modern Age both from the right and the left!, but that thought is for another time). Even Jefferson knew that theories must come second to the reality of statecraft.  He went beyond the Congress’ authority to purchase New Orleans and took up Napoleon’s offer for the entire Louisiana Territory. Would an ideologue make that compromise? 
Would Dr. Paul have looked beyond his ideology to base his decision on statesmanship?
As China begins to grow militarily into a potential major challenger to American dominance in the Pacific, the good Doctor prescribes harsh cuts in military spending.  When China pushes past the First Island Chain, if we allow the “Finlandization” of Japan, Taiwan, The Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, we shall have a new border.  Not only will we be ineffectual at the southern border, with Mexico, we should then have a western border with China in California.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact, Lincoln commented.  Nor is Constitutional Libertarianism a philosophy dependent upon the generosity and peaceful intentions of others.  Radical Austrian Libertarianism would be, it ought to be discarded as just one more Utopian Ism.  Does he suggest private ships with Letters of Marque instead of the US Navy patrol the western Pacific?  Is he crazy?  We can and ought to be libertarian within our borders, but maintain supremacy in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.   And we also need to protect our people from having to compete with coolie labor in a race to the bottom.

Ironically, Hamilton, and Lincoln, now considered fiends by the Lew Rockwell, Ralph Raico, Von Mises intellectuals of the Austrian School are believed to have injected a virus of International (Jewisssh) Bankers into the United States.  Yet, they are the ones who were assassinated!  Imagine the conspiracy theories if Hamilton shot and killed Burr, or Jefferson!  Or if it was Jefferson Davis assassinated instead of Lincoln! Finally, the last straw for me, was the vile Jew hatred spewed last week by former CIA man Scheuer, a standard on Judge Napolitano’s show.  The Judge a Paulist and an Austrian, proved to me how essentially un-American Radical Austrian School Libertarianism is last week.  The vile anti-Semitic comments on the websites of Alex Jones, and on Facebook pages discussing St. Paul shows who these Theories attract.  No, I cannot blame Jones and the Facebook Pagemasters for the comments of their followers.  But, it would be foolish to pretend there is no connection between the Ism of Radical Libertarianism and the vile anti-Zionist, anti-Jew tide of filth.  The psychosis in the US between the Leftists worshippers of Obama, on the one hand and the spitting spew of anti-Jewish hatred on the anti-Globalist side is leaving a narrow almost untenable path.  Glenn Beck seems to be the sole guardian there.  Mark Levin is not a Libertarian, so though a Constitutionalist on many points, he is willing to use the Federal power to fight the drug war.  Forced to choose between the two “opposites” this country is committing suicide.

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

― Abraham Lincoln

To Newt, and all would be Presidents

Newt, I have always enjoyed listening to your speeches. I heard you on Satellite radio a couple of weeks ago in a rented car.  I do not know what it is you said that set off this sh_t storm.  But if we agree that the Federal Government has no legitimate role in providing health care or insurance then we are on the same page.  But, I am also dead opposed to the Free Trade Orthodoxy that you seem to embrace.

Libertarian Zealots preach that Chinese slave-like labor is good for Americans, it provides us with cheaper products.  Unfortunately these folks are so Libertarian that they believe the very foundation of Governments, i.e. the setting of physical borders between “us” and “them” is illiberal.  But to do otherwise is to force American labor to compete with Chinese or even more exploited labor.  I believe in a Liberty that is within borders.  We would have more liberty if we were to sacrifice some liberty at the border.  To the degree that libertarianism is not anarchy, we accept that there is a basic legitimate power which we have delegated to the government, in order to enjoy the bulk of our liberty in civil society. That minimal evil, Government, is most efficiently used to the public good by keeping most of the illiberality at the outer border.

Like a lever and fulcrum, any given amount of illiberality at the border, will be capable of performing more “work” than when diffused throughout the body politic.  For example, Immigration, is most efficiently stopped at a strong impermeable membrane, at the border.  Past the border, the Government feels it can deputize civilian employers into becoming unpaid Immigration officials.  By avoiding the illiberality at the border, we create the situation where federal agents can casually claim the right to burst in on factories and slaughterhouses and demand ID cards.

WE need to control our borders in a rational way, a way that concentrates as much of the total imposition of the burdens of centripetal force there, rather than spread though the entire society.  Drugs, legalized, or stopped.  If we cannot do the former, then we do the latter.  But, it is the insufficient attempt at controlling the border that empowers the now tyrannical War On Liberty in the name of War on Drugs!  Between illegal immigration and illegal drug importation it is as if someone were deliberately constructing the raison d’être to impose internal dictatorship.  The border must not be seen as a passive line in the dirt.  Like a cell membrane, it is the site of a host of complex actions and reactions.

For the greater part of American history, one of the greatest recurring political debates in the Congress was on Trade Policy.  It was expected that the myriad of special interests jostling one another would result in compromises and something most similar to “common interest” was discovered.  There was a natural humility that no one claimed to know the Common Good!  That has disappeared with the self-anointing of economists and other Specialists who believe they are gifted to know the Common Good, as they peer from their lofty height.  Free Trade, is a trade policy.  It ought not, and never had been a moral claim.  It is one of an infinite number of trade policies that a sovereign nation may enact at its borders.  The United States grew into the mightiest industrial economy in the history of the world behind stout Tariffs.  In the post WW2 years there were indeed national interests that were furthered by a policy choice of Free Trade.  In the aftermath of the war, the world lay smoldering except the USA.  By opening our markets to the world, we were able to reap the benefits due a conquering nation, i.e. the importation of what once would have been unaffordable.  It also served our Foreign Policy by kick staring Western Europe and Japan’s economies.  The re-establishment of a middle class was rightly seen as the most important factor in the containment of Communism.  Allowing access to our economy, the only truly functional economy in the post war years was a means of nudging the nations of the world to implement policies in favor of the USA.  Such supreme power was a once -in-world history phenomenon.  It is unimaginable to picture what a victory by the Axis powers would have looked like.  I believe it would have been very bleak indeed for a world exploited by NAZIs and Samurai!  But, that was an exceptional period of history.  That moment has passed; perhaps at the time of the downfall of the USSR.  But be that as it may, it passed.  Free Trade is n o longer in our Best Interests.  It is hollowing out our economy.  It is moving us into a post-industrial world.  The so-called service and intelligence processing industries have not risen to replace the high wages of the auto manufacturing industrial middle class whose grandchildren are left adrift at the high water mark of the Midwest and Great Lakes rustbelts.

We need to regain control of our border and make it work for us.  The right to export into the United States ought to be considered a fantastic boon, and not a bowl of beans!  How do we dare allow our corporations to produce everything overseas with cheap hazardous labor, in factories belching out toxic waste that dwarfs anything produced in the peak of our industrial age, to freely import their products back here?  No!

We would solve virtually every one of our major problems by returning the creation of Trade Policy to the realm of politics where it belongs, and out of the realm of Political Philosophy where it now resides.  We need to re-assert the right, the obligation, of Congress to legislate Trade Policy based upon self-interests jostling against one another.  This will be the closest approximation to The Common Good that flawed human being can achieve.

Newt, if these border issues are not addressed, the presidential campaign in 2012 will sadly be about selecting the last president of the United States of America.

Free Trade: A MALIGNANT IDEOLOGY

Free Trade is a malignant ideology. It is designed to destroy the American Middle Class. “They” the anti-capitalist, anti-liberty conservatives (in the true sense) have never conceded the point that the nobility and priesthood have been excluded from the modern world of which America was the nucleus. American History I believe should be taught as beginning in the English Civil Wars. At the heart of that war was the battle between the Landed Aristocracy/the Monarchy/the Established Church/the superstitious and manipulated peasantry, on the one hand, and the craftsmen, tradesmen, merchants of the towns, with their anti-Episcopal Churches and reformed Protestant theology, on the other.

Eventually after one king was executed and a brief period of “commonwealth” dictatorship under Cromwell ended with the threat of the return of the Stewart dynasty, the British were tired of war and invited Prince William of Orange (Netherlands) and his English wife, Mary to reign. While Britain was distracted by this chaotic period, the American Colonies were free to establish the first polities created rationally by enlightened Protestant middle class, for the middle class. When Britain later tried to bring the “upstarts” to heel they lost. But “nouveau riche” upstarts is how the Nobility and Warrior Class saw the Middle Classes. And the peasants and proletariat were used and manipulated by the Princes and Priests and their Pomp and Pageantry and taught to envy the Middle Class “upstarts” who “thought they were better than” them. Thus Napoleon and Hitler dismissed the Anglo-American commercial empires as nations of mere “shopkeepers”. BUT the EuroTrash has never really despaired of putting us back in our place!

Free Trade is their method, now. Through out-sourcing jobs that allowed a man to support his family in Middle Class comfort, we have been weakened. By allowing the re-import of the products that were out-sourced without having to pay a Tariff allows for maximum profit for the Upper Class, some of which they use to support “liberal” groups that keep the lower classes at odds with the Middle Class.

America has been unique in several ways. But one way has been in its unique history of having a consciously designed political system based upon the ideas that existed in Europe during the brief window between John Locke and the French Revolution. That window slammed shut like a guillotine, cutting American middle class Liberty off from Continental EuroTrash ideology of “Left and Right”.

WE NEED A TRADE POLICY THAT VALUES ACCESS TO THE AMERICAN MARKET AS THE GREAT BOON IT IS. The World has grown accustomed to its belief that America’s markets are freely open to all. This has led to the deliberate destruction of the Middle Class. It is the happy Middle Class that has given the lie to Marxist Utopian theology. Thus the Middle Class MUST be destroyed. And as Britain was the bulwark for Protestantism against the Catholic Habsburgs and Bourbons, America played that role against the Communists and Fascists. Free Trade must end as an ideological “good”. Sometimes perhaps Free Trade is in our interests and at other times protectionism better serves. In every debate over Trade Policy there will be interested parties that stand to gain or lose, based upon changing Trade. Political debate in Congress had been the method of bringing to bear the closest approximation of the best trade policy at any given time. These debates are between what have been derided as “special interests”. When I hear politicians using the phrase “Common Good”, like Ayn Rand I ask “for whom?” There is NO such thing as “The Common Good”, just as there is no such thing as “The Economy”. “The Economy” has no independent reality. It merely is the sum total of rational beings exchanging goods and services to advance their own perceived ideas of where their best interest lies.

Middle Class: The Exceptional Flash-In-The-Pan

I do not know who it was that conflated the history of European oppression over Native-Americans into this discussion, but it is off point.  Oppression can only be recognized in a Civilization that has notions of Liberty.  From the Incas, to the Maya, the Aztec, the Mississippian Mound Builders, all were based upon Tribalism and Force.  Same for all of the Civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia.  Tribalism and Force.  Greek City-States were based on power and tyranny or power and democracy (in its cannibalistic sense).  The Greeks however did produce the first political philosophers; though their ideas were never given a chance to take root.  More war and tribalism destroyed the Greeks.  And made way for Alexander.  And there was a brief flicker of enlightenment, but Aristotle’s philosophy did not stand up to Alexander’s great Thirst for wine women and that gold-standard of tribalistic thought: Glory!  And then Rome.  The Republic, looked to the Philosophy of the Greeks.  The ancient perpetual antagonism between oppressed and oppressor was channeled into political rather than military striving.  But, the Light of The Republic flickered only long enough to produce a civilizational memory of the concept of political Liberty.  And again the Glorious Generals resumed their sway.  The Empire gradually diminished and even its tyranny was remembered fondly in the dark ages that followed the onslaught of the Germanic, Hunnic and finally Mongolian Tribes.  All the time, it was Might Makes Right.  Even into Medieval Europe, it was the descendents of the most recent successful Tribal foray that became the so-called nobility, who ruled over the native-born toilers of the soil. Human History forever has been Swordsman, Horsemen, Pikemen, Musketeers, fighting for GLORIOUS Nobles.  The peasants saw only the change in fashions of dress and language as one ruling class was replaced by the next.  But, miraculously as technology crossed some threshold, and there was a food surplus (as a result of the Black Death), there developed a niche of specialists.  They learned new trades and produced things that the Nobility wanted.  Learning that a looted tradesman will probably no longer produce the goods desired, the Nobility had to recognize that here was a person who was not Clergy, nor Nobility, and yet not peasant either.  These craftsmen and women, and merchants became wealthy.  Their wealth was required by the Nobles to wage their Glorious Wars.  And again they learned that you can loot the Townsman once, but then he will either leave, or revert to farming.  And the Towns and Cities demanded licenses, or privileges (private law) that formalized the inhabitants newly recognized middle class.  These Towns (or Burgs) were filled with Burgers or Bourgeoisie.  The Bourgeois continued to produce more wealth than they needed and thus accumulated capital.  Finally a force evolved that stood a chance against the men on Horseback.  With Capital came power.  It took various true revolutions most classically the British Civil Wars to once and for all force the Nobles to accept the Legal Equality of the Middle Class.  This phenomenon in terms of world history and geography is like a flash bulb going off in a black empty arena.  The Middle Class has been despised by Nobility and “Old Money” ever since its foundation.  All of the nations of Europe arose in misty mythic ages where Glorious Monuments to Church And Princes still are seen everywhere.

But America, was new.  Here, there never were nobles.  Never were peasants tied to the land.   (Except the Slaves of course.  And that required the final revolution of Capitalism against Aristocracy, The American Civil War.)  America was founded by Pilgrims fleeing the High Church of the Aristocracy.  Yes, as the British Civil wars ran their course, when aristocrats were down they also came here, to Tidewater lands in the South.  But, that is why the US Civil War is the last act of the British Civil Wars, (see The Cousin’s Wars).  America is the exceptional nation.  Here we had no traditions that drifted back into some mythic past.  When America became Independent from Europe they never quite forgave us our uppityness.  Yet, just as on the microcosm the individual Earls and Dukes came to the merchants and capitalists for cash to throw their gala wars, so too did the European Nation-States come to the USA to fund their “Proud Military Tradition”.  They needed the wealth produced by the combination of Liberty, the Natural Resources of the Land to which the God whose hand is seen in History lead us to, and the ethic derived from pragmatic enlightened Reformed Protestantism.    They needed it but hated having to come to us for it.    And now, all the enemies, all the jealous Knights and the hordes of peasants they entice with myths of glory are circling.  America is Gulliver, and the Lilliputian ropes individually laughable are bound in fascicles and are slowly harnessing us again.  Once again America, and The Middle Class will be taught their place!  And the very brief flash will flare out, and the darkness will  seem much more dark than it had been before.  All of the technological advances produced by America and the Liberal World of which it was the Champion will be weaponized and turned upon us.  And The World can resume its Quest For Glory, For Counting Coup, For Collecting Scalps and Ears and Shrunken heads.   Please, the Indians were just as beholden to Might makes Right and the Ideals of Honor and Glory as the monocled and scar-faced Prussian Junker.  They merely lacked the technology to produce mustard gas and barbed wire and machine guns!