Posts by NelsonHultberg:

Moral Disorder

March 26th, 2015

By Nelson Hultberg.

Pervasive disorder dominates our lives today. It is not a frivolous thing, but a deadly thing that has seeped into our culture like nerve gas quietly permeating the brains of combatants in war. It has come over us because our society’s intellectuals, who are supposed to guide a country’s citizens toward freedom and sanity, have defaulted on the role given to them by the nature of their being.

Over this past century our men of the mind have scampered like little children into a pseudo realm of intellectuality, a sinister realm that they would know is false if only they would trust the gifts of reason and intuition bestowed upon them, if only they would seek their true purpose rather than so eagerly capitulate to the baser elements within them.

Iniquity and illusion lurk always in the background of human endeavor to threaten the modicums of progress mustered over the millennia. In heroic times these dangers are confronted with a nobility of soul that allows society to stay structured. But in collapsing times they are gleefully embraced by the ghouls and Machiavellians who live for the moment and care not for posterity. It is these malevolent types who are destroying us today. They control the citadels of power in all arenas – political, corporate, financial, educational, artistic – and will bring us to ruin if not vigorously challenged.

But they can be vigorously contested only by those who believe in the concept of moral truth and are willing to fight for its promotion even though all those around them are stampeding in the other direction. Once this fount of civilization evanesces, the beast in man returns to swallow up the heights of his sublimity. Yeats’ prophetic words come true:

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

The pervasive disorder we see all around us today is a moral disorder. Its destructive advance can be checked and reversed, but only if belief in moral truth still prevails in the wellsprings of our minds. It is the only power that can reverse the plague of moral disorder. But if it is to be resurrected, we must rediscover the “philosophical good” found many centuries ago by Moses and Aristotle. If it has not been eroded beyond retrieval, then we can save ourselves. If it has been eroded, then our fate will be that of flies in the winter. We will fade into the oblivion that comes to those who violate the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God, foolishly thinking that the Laws can be circumvented because we are “enlightened.” With us the Laws do not apply. We can turn dross into gold with a printing press. We can convey privileges to factions without being swallowed up by vermin lobbyists. We can erase the rights of our fellow citizens as if they are but X’s and O’s on bureaucratic charts in Washington.

The nefarious sources of our disorder are manifold; but there is one fundamental source that stands above all others. It is the soothing belief whispered into our collective conscience a century ago by those bent on the destruction of our free way of life – that there are no moral truths that apply to us all, that morality is relative, that we should be able to do our “own thing” instead of the “right thing.”

Moral Relativism

For 100 years now, our destroyers have preached “moral relativism.” They have told us that certainty in life does not exist, that it is a myth held by deluded and backward people. But this is a fallacy of gigantic proportions that undercuts all that is good and true throughout history. Certainty and its corollary of “moral truth” are indeed possible for humans. We understood this at one time in our past. If we are to regain its grasp, we must restore the intellectual pillar that built our civilization – the synthesis of reason, experience, and intuition.

Here lies the fount of our greatness. Truth comes not from REASON as the philosophers tell us. It comes not from EXPERIENCE as the historians and the scientists tell us. And it comes not from INTUITION as the religionists tell us. It comes from the synthesis of all three. This is the gift that our greatest thinkers possess – the ability to synthesize reason, experience, and intuition without even knowing they are doing it. They just do it naturally, and it is what creates the immense profundity of their thought. These are the minds that Oliver Wendell Holmes called the “skylight thinkers.” It is their thought that is the source of man’s certainty. They are the means with which God has endowed us to know the “philosophical good” so that we can lead free, happy, productive, and honorable lives.

Moses and Aristotle were the first of our skylight thinkers.

So when the pseudo-intellectuals try to tell you that certainty doesn’t exist for man, tell them, “Not so.” Life is filled with certainties. We can be certain that a society of Jeffersonian liberty is superior to a society of social welfarism; that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it’s follies; that fabricating the facts of reality is wrong; that two plus two can never be five as the Orwellians want us to believe; that murder, theft, and rape are heinous crimes for all eras and cultures; that corn flakes are a better breakfast than heroin; that objective law is superior to anarchy; that reason trumps sophistry; that faith, hope, and charity are better values to teach than cynicism and greed; and that love is the great, galvanizing spark that has instilled truth, goodness, and beauty into human existence. Tell them that life is filled with certainties.

Tell them that the most paramount of certainties we must recover is moral certainty. Without it, freedom is lost. It is what gives us the strength to govern ourselves. If we do not govern ourselves from within, dictators will govern us from without. There can be no such thing as a life of appetites unleashed. Yet our pseudo-intellectuals reject moral certainty like wolves reject a peaceful existence. Our intellectuals are the “new totalitarians.” They subtly sneak into our rationales a little more each year to rob us of our honor and courage. They call themselves “liberals” or “progressives.” They bamboozle our children into doubting the majesty of the Founders’ vision. They lust for limitless government authority over their fellows because it is the nature of wolves to prey on the defenseless.

The Pernicious Threats

These are the pernicious threats to the freedom and sanity of a just existence today, these lusters for an unlimited majority will’s authority over their fellowman. The Laws of Nature are but old wives’ tales to these lusters. Aristotle’s famous Law of the Mean that guided the rise of our civilization for 2200 years is not a “natural law,” they claim, but an arbitrary ruse for seekers of an impossible free life who would defy the bureaucracies of benevolence that Big Brother can give to us. It is from this lust to live without obedience to the Natural Law that all our problems spring.

The tyranny, degradation, and chaos that has overwhelmed so many people throughout the world during the past 100 years can be attributed to the fact that we have moved steadily away from Aristotle’s famous Doctrine of the Mean, i.e., the Golden Mean, in the most important regions of our lives. This moving away has distorted our freedom, our ideals, and our moral beliefs. If we are to save ourselves, we as a people must restore such a mean to our way of life again.

Our path to this is explained in The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values. It formulates a philosophy of politics based upon eight paramount minds of history: Moses, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Jefferson, Smith, Burke, and Mises.

This natural Law of the Mean will not be refuted by “chirping sectaries” sitting like crows on the phone lines of freedom’s back yard, excreting drops of utopianism upon the picnic table of sanity fashioned by our Founders. This Law of the Mean can no more be refuted than can the Law of Gravity. It can, though, be ignored like primitives in the jungle ignore the flashes of brilliance that civilization offers. If it is ignored, as some in the libertarian movement are doing today, the result will not be success for freedom. It will be doom for freedom.

Our free civilization was built upon the moral certainty that there exists in the scheme of life a great ideal of “right action,” a Natural Law of proportion and sanity that permeates existence, “an order in the universe which [we] can discover and according to which the human will must act so that it can attune itself to the universal harmony….We do not make this law, but are made to live within it.” [George P. Grant, Philosophy In A Mass Age, p. 41.]

The Aristotelian Mean is one of the manifestations of this Natural Law that permeates the universe. For us as individuals and as a society to go against this law is to incur tragedy and bring down upon our lives ruinous consequences. This is the great dilemma of modern times. We must once again come to grips with Francis Bacon’s observation that “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” There are eternal truths to which we must learn to conform.

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Moral Disorder

March 17th, 2015

By Nelson Hultberg

Pervasive disorder dominates our lives today. It is not a frivolous thing, but a deadlything that has seeped into our culture like nerve gas quietly permeating the brains of combatants in war. It has come over us because our society’s intellectuals, who are supposed to guide a country’s citizens toward freedom and sanity, have defaulted on the role given to them by the nature of their being.

The pervasive disorder we see all around us today is a moral disorder. Its destructive advance can be checked and reversed, but only if belief in moral truth still prevails in the wellsprings of our minds. It is the only power that can reverse the plague of moral disorder. But if it is to be resurrected, we must rediscover the “philosophical good” found many centuries ago by Moses and Aristotle. If it has not been eroded beyond retrieval, then we can save ourselves. If it has been eroded, then our fate will be that of flies in the winter. We will fade into the oblivion that comes to those who violate the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God, foolishly thinking that the Laws can be circumvented because we are “enlightened.” With us the Laws do not apply. We can turn dross into gold with a printing press. We can convey privileges to factions without being swallowed up by vermin lobbyists. We can erase the rights of our fellow citizens as if they are but X’s and O’s on bureaucratic charts in Washington.

Moral Relativism

Here lies the fount of our greatness. Truth comes not from REASON as the philosophers tell us. It comes not from EXPERIENCE as the historians and the scientists tell us. And it comes not from INTUITION as the religionists tell us. It comes from the synthesis of all three. This is the gift that our greatest thinkers possess – the ability to synthesize reason, experience, and intuition without even knowing they are doing it. They just do it naturally, and it is what creates the immense profundity of their thought. These are the minds that Oliver Wendell Holmes called the “skylight thinkers.” It is their thought that is the source of man’s certainty. They are the means with which God has endowed us to know the “philosophical good” so that we can lead free, happy, productive, and honorable lives. Moses and Aristotle were the first of our skylight thinkers.

Tell them that the most paramount of certainties we must recover is moral certainty. Without it, freedom is lost. It is what gives us the strength to govern ourselves. If we do not govern ourselves from within, dictators will govern us from without. There can be no such thing as a life of appetites unleashed. Yet our pseudo-intellectuals reject moral certainty like wolves reject a peaceful existence. Our intellectuals are the “new totalitarians.” They subtly sneak into our rationales a little more each year to rob us of our honor and courage. They call themselves “liberals” or “progressives.” They bamboozle our children into doubting the majesty of the Founders’ vision. They lust for limitless government authority over their fellows because it is the nature of wolves to prey on the defenseless.

The Pernicious Threats

Our free civilization was built upon the moral certainty that there exists in the scheme of life a great ideal of “right action,” a Natural Law of proportion and sanity that permeates existence, “an order in the universe which [we] can discover and according to which the human will must act so that it can attune itself to the universal harmony….We do not make this law, but are made to live within it.” [George P. Grant,Philosophy In A Mass Age, p. 41.]

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Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, the verdict after fifty years

March 2nd, 2015

By Nelson Hultberg.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. What I will be discussing in my talk today is the crucial role that the ideas of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard have played in the defense of liberty and Western civilization.

All Americans, well read in political affairs, know of these famous thinkers. They were two of the most powerful and revolutionary intellectuals in the 20th century, contributing many valuable insights to our knowledge of philosophy, politics, and economics. As with most intellectual rebels, their major ideas about freedom and government were highly controversial. What I will do in this talk is explain what these controversies are, demonstrating the wisdom and folly of their ideas. As to which is the more prevalent, wisdom or folly, stay tuned.
I will also explain a new way for libertarians and conservatives to look at the political spectrum and the egoism-altruism clash that Ayn Rand promoted so dramatically. This will be done by using the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s famous Doctrine of the Mean and applying it on the macro-level instead of just the micro-level.

In doing so, I hope I can alert you to the immense importance of Aristotle to the cause of freedom and how his philosophical approach compares to that of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard.

Why is this so important? Because freedom has always been a fragile orchid in a jungle of rapacious ideologies bent on snuffing its presence out. Freedom requires rational, irrefutable thought to be won and maintained. If we have built our defense of freedom upon a false philosophy with faulty premises, then we are fighting in vain.

This is the paramount question that we as libertarians and conservatives must ask: Have Rand and Rothbard given us an undergirding philosophy of rationality upon which to fight for freedom? Or have we launched a freedom movement upon a ship resplendent in sail, but possessed of a leaky hull and faulty tiller? Are our basic premises rational and irrefutable? Because if they are not, we will lose our fight and will have lived lives of wasted purpose. We will have built nothing but an obscure footnote to history, rather than a formidable force in history. Posterity will laugh at us, rather than revere us.

I have just written a book about all of this titled, The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values, that I believe gives us a rational and irrefutable means to win the cause of freedom for the future. But not without a wrenching reappraisal of the philosophical ship on which we are presently sailing.

Economist, Mark Skousen, says, “The Golden Mean is an extremely important book that…is destined to be a classic.” Best selling author, Robert Ringer, says: “In a world inundated with political / ideological books, Nelson Hultberg’s brilliant work…stands apart from, and above, anything I have previously read in this genre.”

* * * *

So let’s begin by examining the political spectrum that I mentioned earlier, and why it is so important in our lives? Everyone, I’m sure, is familiar with the idea of a political spectrum. It’s a listing of the world’s various political-economic systems on a chart, placing each system on the chart toward the left, middle, or right according to the basic type of government that system upholds.

Here’s where the danger lies, though. The political spectrum being taught today in our schools is totally false, and it’s being used to discredit the legitimacy of capitalism, and therefore freedom. Here’s why.

The notion of a political spectrum with three poles of left, center, and right has come to us as a legacy from Aristotle’s idea that virtue consists of the “rational course” that lies between two opposite and natural extremes of defect and excess. This rational course he called the Golden Mean. For example, as Aristotle demonstrates in his famousNicomachean Ethics the chart you see before you.

The virtue of courage is the rational mean between the defect of cowardice and the excess of rashness. Ambition is the rational mean between sloth and greed. Likewise with liberality and self-control. These virtues are all means between defect and excess. In other words, good is the wisdom of balance, and evil is when you stray away from the Golden Mean toward one of the two extremes.

There are, of course, many values of life (other than the ones that Aristotle put forth), and these can also be placed upon a spectrum to determine a Golden Mean. Here are a few examples that I have put together over the years:

You see here the basic triad that Aristotle defined – vice, virtue, vice. Midway between the defect of apathy and the excess of zealotry, there lies the rational balance of CONCERN. Between vulgarity and prudery, there is the mean of DECENCY. And the same thing with all the other triads of value listed here.

What is so beautiful about Aristotle’s doctrine is that it shows all the noblest and most desired values of our existence to be means – such as loyalty, faith, love, peace,order, and freedom. All the things we value most in life are “means” between two opposite vices. This is the way reality is constructed. Almost always there is a mean between two evils.

It is this way of thinking that has led to the concept of a political spectrum. By listing the various ideological systems on a left to right chart, one can find the two opposite extremes and then determine the rational course that lies between them.

Unfortunately, however, the spectrum chart has been distorted over the years by American and European intellectuals to make their political bias toward statism look proper and virtuous. For example, here is the way the political-economic spectrum is taught to the great majority of college students today:

With this picture, students have gotten the idea that both ends of the spectrum are dictatorships (communism on the left and fascism on the right), and that America’s democratic welfare-state is the only possible good, for it is the mean between two opposite vices. On the contrary, this spectrum is a serious distortion of reality.

The reason why is that communism, socialism, and fascism are all listed separately here; and they shouldn’t be. They are all collectivist dictatorships. So they belong together on the same side of the spectrum. Dictatorship can’t be on both sides because you have to have an excess and a defect as your extremes. Dictatorship is an excess of government. Thus you need a defect of government on the other side. You need anarchism on the far right.

Thus the conventional spectrum taught today is not a correct picture. The true political spectrum would be like this:

The far left of the spectrum is the vice of total government whether it calls itself communism, socialism or fascism. The far right is its exact opposite, the vice of no government or anarchism. The middle is the virtue of limited government (and its economic corollary of capitalism). Welfarism is a semi-capitalist, semi-socialist mixture, and the anarcho-capitalism of the radical libertarians is a semi-capitalist, semi-anarchist mixture.

This is the true political-economic spectrum. There has to be two opposite extremes of evil beyond which one cannot go and then a virtuous middle, or it’s simply not a spectrum. It’s then just an arbitrary display of various political-economic systems with no rhyme or reason to it, and no capacity to judge any of the systems as right or wrong, workable or non-workable.

Thus, there is no such thing as a “dictatorship of the right” as so frequently declared by our establishment pundits. All dictatorships are of the left! The farther we go to the right on the spectrum, the less government we will have, not more.

* * * *

Let’s now look at a historical version of the political spectrum, and it should give us a little more clarity. A much more realistic picture of the political spectrum would be its division into the five basic categories we see here:

These are the basic political-economic systems that have existed throughout history ranging from the excess of total government on the far left, to the mean of limited government in the center, to the defect of no government on the far right.

1) Totalitarianism on the far left, is the form of government exemplified by the former USSR, Communist China, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy.

2) Welfare-Statism is the form of government utilized in all the Western democracies today such as England, France and America. While these systems are authoritarian and highly centralized, they do not try to totally control our lives. But they are moving in that direction.

3) Constitutional Republicanism is the form of government that the Founding Fathers espoused and which prevailed in 19th century America. Economically speaking it was laissez-faire capitalism, or what is known today as “libertarian-conservatism.”

4) Anarcho-Capitalism is the political system advocated by Murray Rothbard and Bruce Benson. According to these theorists, all functions of the state should be privatized and provided by the marketplace – even the protective functions such as the military, the police forces, and our courts of law.

Thus technically speaking anarcho-capitalists are not anarchists. They don’t want to eliminate the protective government functions; they just want to change them fromstate provided to privately provided institutions. Consequently they term themselves anarcho-capitalists so as to distinguish themselves from total anarchy. The best historical examples we find of this form of government were the customary law societies of the early Middle Ages.

5) Anarchism on the far right, as we all know, is a pre-civilizational form of social organization where there is no legal framework or government period – just the rule of primitive savagery and chaos. Best described by the philosopher, Thomas Hobbs, as “poor, nasty, brutish, and short life.”

This then is the total political-economic spectrum that makes up reality. You can’t go any further left than communism, and you can’t go any further right than anarchism. All systems fit in between these two extremes of total government and no government.

* * * *

Let’s now delve into the controversies that surrounded both Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard and which must be understood if we are to develop a successful defense of freedom in the West. As profound and cogent as they were, both Rand and Rothbard were guilty of serious errors in their philosophical approaches. These errors must be corrected; no civilization can be defended with irrationality and contradiction.

To understand this better, let’s take another look at the spectrum from a different perspective:

As we see with this portrayal of the spectrum, all ideological systems, other than laissez-faire capitalism, are either excessive or defective because they evolve into some level of arbitrary law and special privileges. Therefore, capitalism (with its corollary of limited government) is the system that all men should strive for because it is the only system that can maintain objective law – in other words, equal rights for everyone, which is what objective law is.

For example, the very act of moving leftward on the spectrum, away from laissez-faire capitalism into welfare-statism requires the steady destruction of “equal rights.” This is because all welfare-state policies require that special privileges be granted to one group of people at the expense of another group – all policies whether they be cash grants to individuals, quotas to minorities, price controls for corporations, or legislative favoritism to unions – all policies require the violation of equal rights in order to convey special privileges by government.

For example, every time the privilege of a subsidy is granted to a certain individual or group, someone else’s right to their income is destroyed to pay for it. Every time the privilege of an affirmative action quota is granted to a minority group, someone else’s right to free association is destroyed to implement it. Every time the privilege of price controls is established for certain corporations, someone else’s right to trade freely is destroyed in the process.

In other words, privileges and rights cannot be mixed in the same society. They are mutually exclusive. Just as locusts will destroy wheat when they are mixed in the same field, so also will privileges destroy rights when they are mixed in the same society. Thus the conveyance of privileges destroys the concept of objective law, upon which all of freedom is based. And the extent of this destruction is determined by how far to the left one goes on the spectrum.

What anarcho-libertarians miss is that any movement on the spectrum to the right of the Golden Mean would also bring about the destruction of objective law. Instead of the government conveying privileges to its favored factions, though, it would be ruthless warlords seizing privileges for themselves. There would not be one government guided by a Constitution; there would be thousands of private defense agencies throughout America guided by arbitrary rules and private stockpiles of weapons. These private defense agencies would become the warlords.

Unfortunately, the fallacy of anarcho-capitalism cannot be thoroughly demonstrated in a short talk, but I get into this issue much more extensively in my book to show clearly why anarcho-capitalism is irrational and must be abandoned by libertarians.

Hopefully you are now beginning to see the fundamental truth involved in all this: Once government expands to the left or contracts to the right, “objective law” becomes impossible to maintain. And once “objective law” diminishes, the destruction of freedom and order throughout society begins.

It is this point that libertarians and conservatives must grasp fully if they are to understand the political-economic crisis now consuming our country – this powerfully simple fact that there is only one spot on the spectrum where equal rights for all citizens prevail.

This is the genius of the capitalistic society that evolves under a Constitutional Republic: It alone, of the five political categories that make up the spectrum has the capacity to provide objective law for its citizens. This is why it is, and will always be, the only morally proper system of political organization for man.

Once we understand this point – that the mean is the only place where objective law prevails – then a major problem confronting libertarianism is solved, which is Ayn Rand’s controversial Non-Aggression Principle. In other words, her taboo on all initiatory force that she articulated so powerfully in her novel, Atlas Shrugged.

As Roy Childs and Murray Rothbard demonstrated in the late 1960s, Ayn Rand’s taboo on all initiatory force leads philosophically to anarcho-capitalism. If you can’t initiateforce, then you can’t have a government. You must privatize the military, police, and courts of law. This is why most libertarians today have become anarcho-capitalists.

But as we have seen, anarcho-capitalism violates the Doctrine of the Mean and thus it cannot maintain objective law, which is the all-important foundation for freedom. Without “objective law” you cannot have a free society. Thus Ayn Rand’s non-aggression principle and Murray Rothbard’s anarchist politics are serious fallacies.

What is necessary to maintain freedom is not to abolish government, but to restore “federalism.” What is necessary is to combine the Aristotelian mean with the ideas of John Locke and the Founding Fathers. This has never been done before.

When we combine Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean with Locke’s contractual theory of limited government, we gain an irrefutability of political theory that has never before been achieved in history, but which is so necessary to fend off the perennial despots of humanity. We fashion the political ideal not just for the 18th and 19th centuries, but for all of time.

Thus it is we, the constitutional republicans, who are solidly rooted where truth and freedom reside – in the center at the Golden Mean. It is the “welfare-statists” to our left and the “anarcho-capitalists” to our right who threaten a free society with the extremist evils of total government and no government.

* * * *

Let’s now analyze how the Aristotelian mean applies to the basic moral code of civilization, and in doing so I hope to show you where Ayn Rand also went wrong with her ethical ideas.

One of the fundamental points stressed by Rand was that morality is the prime mover of a civilization. Over the long haul, she maintained, we will erect our political-economic structures and cultures according to our moral-philosophical convictions. What is conceived to be the moral ideal will be the primary force that forms the nature of our society.

Contemporary philosophers maintain that there are two primary moral ideals which have motivated men throughout history. They are altruism and egoism.

Altruism is the ethical belief that one’s moral duty is to always place the interests of his fellow man above his own. Egoism is the ethical belief that one’s moral duty is to always place his own interests above those of his fellow man. In other words, it is the opposite of altruism.

As all libertarians know, Ayn Rand advocated the ethics of egoism, claiming that altruism leads to massive statism and tyranny. Only upon an egoistic moral base, she said, can a free capitalist society be defended. She stated this over and over again throughout her works.

The theme I will present here is that Rand’s denunciation of altruism is correct. It is the moral foundation of dictatorship. But her contention that liberty and capitalism must have an undergirding moral base of egoism is totally false. The true code for living on this earth has been established through thousands of years of Judeo-Graeco-Christian wisdom and tradition.

The questions we need to pose are these: Why is altruism supposedly the moral ideal? And most importantly: Are our Judeo-Christian traditions actually based upon altruism? But if altruism is not man’s ethical guide, what then is the moral ideal? And why? For only through a clear cut knowledge of what is the moral ideal, can we achieve the proper political structure for man. The ethical ideal helps to define the political ideal.

Well, just as Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean can be used in political philosophy to determine the ideal, such a doctrine can also be used in moral philosophy. The first thing to do is establish the two polar opposites of defect and excess beyond which one cannot go. These would be total self-sacrifice (altruism) on one end of the spectrum, and total self-concern (egoism) on the other end. One is defective concern for yourself, and the other is excessive concern.

According to Aristotelian logic, the ideal social ethics then would be a “rational mean” between the opposite extremes of altruism and egoism. For example:

The ideal social ethics would be concern for yourself combined with concern for others, or what is known as the Golden Rule, or the Judeo-Christian ethic. The far left of the spectrum is altruism, which is the total lack of concern for oneself that would be found in a pure communist society. The far right of the spectrum is egoism, or the excessive concern for oneself that would be found in a pure anarchist society. These are the two extremes of opposite vice.

The Golden Mean would be the Judeo-Christian ethic as it was practiced in early America, for it taught men, through the wisdom of the ages, what was necessary to maintain their own personal good and to also be concerned with others.

The ideal man is neither altruistic nor egoistic. He is strong, purposeful, self-aware, and self-reliant, yet always possessed of an awareness of other people’s interests and a willingness to help those who are incapable of taking care of themselves.

The ideal man would possess the attributes of three great heroes of Western civilization, the lofty and charismatic George Washington, the noble and reverent Robert E. Lee, and the brave paladin Sir Francis Drake. This ideal man would be a composite of George Washington’s strength of personality and self-reliance with General Lee’s nobility and compassion with Drake’s adventurous daring.

The Judeo-Christian ethic then is the “mean” because it is a completely different way of life than being totally wrapped up in one’s own interests, or being totally devoted to the interests of others. It is neither of these two. It is a third way – the Aristotelian rational course between the two extremes.

Thus the ancient wisdom, handed down from the Old Testament Hebrews and several other cultures, summed up in Christ’s declaration to “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” is the proper way of life (i.e., the truth). And it is identical with Aristotle’s Golden Mean discovered 2,300 years ago in Greece. This ethical mean is one of the most important manifestations of the natural law that permeates the universe. I like to think of it as the “doctrine of equal concern.”

This doctrine is the genius of our Western ethical tradition, or it could be said that this doctrine is its rationality. It praises man’s egoistic virtues (such as independence, courage, and productivity), and rewards man for his achievement of them. But it also ties such virtues into a concern with the interest of the other man, which allows men to co-operate with each other through trade and compassionate help, rather than conflict with each other through selfish greed.

So viewed from this rational and historical perspective, both altruism and egoism become highly undesirable. To further verify why this is so, we need only to look at the human personalities that succumb to these two vices.

No one really respects the altruist extreme, the servile Milquetoast who glorifies pacifism and perpetual sacrifice to others. And likewise, no one ever respects the egoistextreme, the callous Peacock who struts through life, insufferably consumed with his own image, accomplishments, and well-being. Both of these extremes, the Milquetoast and the Peacock, are offensive to all of us. This is because neither archetype is possessed of the strength to live equally concerned with others as with oneself.

All the greatest heroes of history from Moses of ancient Israel, to Joan of Arc and William Wallace in the Middle Ages, to the Founding Fathers of 1776, to our modern day entrepreneurs and astronauts – all have been men and women who generated the strength of will to rise above self-absorption, yet never succumb to individual subservience.

Don’t misconstrue. Ayn Rand’s heroes, such as Howard Roark and John Galt, are certainly not Peacocks. In fact, they’re quite admirable characters possessed of numerous noble virtues. But their flaw is that they are ceaselessly concerned only with themselves, even in their charitable ventures, which gives a sort of unbalanced distastefulness to their personalities. As a result, they move on the spectrum toward the egoist extreme and become cold and unfulfilling. They lack that crucial magnanimity found in history’s traditional heroes.
Rand purposely created her heroes in this way, because she felt that such an egoistic ideal man was necessary to counter the altruistic ideal man that socialism promoted. But sadly, she could not see that egoism is merely the opposite evil to altruism on the Aristotelian spectrum.

Egoism is not the answer to altruism at all, but merely an over-compensation from excessive concern for others to defective concern. Rand merely replaced one evil with another evil.

Ludwig von Mises, throughout his works, stresses that the entrepreneur’s need is to serve the consumer. This is because, in doing so, the entrepreneur serves himself also. This is the ideal social approach for humans to adopt – the morality of equal concern – in other words, the Judeo-Christian ethic.

Howard Roark’s way, however, is to create only for his own happiness and sense of accomplishment. The client’s needs and desires are of no concern to Roark. In The Fountainhead he states emphatically to the Dean of Stanton College, “I don’t intend to build in order to serve or help anyone.”

It is here that Randian egoism falls short and can never be the ethical foundation upon which to build a movement to restore individualism and freedom, because egoism is not the proper goal of a trader. A trader gets caught up in other people’s lives as well as his own. This is the basis of capitalism: serving one’s fellow man in order to serve oneself.

In The Fountainhead, Roark also makes the statement, “I don’t give or ask for help.” Is this really the way we should raise our children? Or should we teach them instead to be self-reliant and compassionate both? To say instead, “I intend always to take care of myself, and when I can, I will also help those unfortunate ones who can’t quite keep up the pace.”

The primary fallacy of egoism as an ethical doctrine then is that it contradicts the Golden Mean, and thus it violates natural law. Egoism, as a code of morality, is just another attempt to convert an extreme into an ideal and must lead to an emptiness of spirit and meaning in life that is destructive in the long run.

This is Ayn Rand’s great mistake! In exposing the impossibility of altruism as a moral code, she has replaced it with the equally impossible code of egoism. But then this is always the problem whenever one strays away from the Golden Mean. Destruction, impracticality, and evil are the results.

Man’s code of morality must be RATIONAL, yes. Rand was quite correct in insisting on that. But this is what has been given to us in the Judeo-Christian ethic.

It’s been revered for thousands of years through faith and common sense in all cultures. And as we see now, it is also theoretically validated through Aristotelian logic and the Golden Mean. So it is most certainly a RATIONAL code for humanity. Hopefully you can now see that the Doctrine of the Mean is of the utmost importance in the rise and fall of civilization itself.

In conclusion, Ayn Rand gave libertarianism a spectacular beginning, and Murray Rothbard was certainly a brilliant economist. But the primary philosophical thrusts of these two thinkers are totally wrong for the cause of liberty.

Rand’s egoism and Rothbard’s anarchism are anathema to capitalism and the vision of the Founding Fathers. We will never defeat the welfare-state paradigm with egoism and anarchism as our guides. Aristotle and the Golden Mean offer us a far sounder philosophical vision.

The Aristotelian mean is a spiritual Law of Nature, to which men everywhere are instinctively attracted. Just as all humans must obey the Law of Gravity in the physical realm, they must also obey the Law of the Mean in the intellectual realm.

This law is an imperishable compass that has been instilled into the nature of life by a power far greater than we. It will lead us to almost everything we yearn for. It is our path to the restoration of a free America that the Founders envisioned.

All men and women seek to move toward this mean if only they are told of its existence and taught persuasively how to achieve its implementation in their lives. This then is our task for the 21st century – to lead a demoralized world toward the true political and moral ideal for mankind.

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Conservative Sheep, Neocon Shepherds

February 24th, 2015

By Nelson Hultberg.

In 1919, Rudyard Kipling wrote in The Gods of the Copybook Headings, “As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man / That…the Sow returns to her Mire / And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.”

Likewise, it appears that conservatives return to their disastrous past policies. In outlining his foreign policy plans for America, Jeb Bush recently stated, “I love my father and my brother…But I am my own man – and my views are shaped by my own thinking and own experiences.” He went on to say, “I won’t talk about the past. I’ll talk about the future.”

What does this mean in actual foreign policy goals and actions? As reported by Chris Stirewalt at Fox News, the foreign policy team being formed by Jeb Bush “is not just very much George W. Bush’s, but includes two of the most controversial figures from [the] invasion of Iraq, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Short of including Dick Cheney, this is the strongest possible indication that Bush is embracing his brother’s foreign policy.”

“Feels like old times,” reports Stierwalt. “Other core players from the George W. Bush administration on the team include former Homeland Security secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, former intelligence bosses Porter Goss, John Negroponte and Michael Hayden.”

How many conservatives, other than Jeb Bush, are also of this mindset? How many are itching to get bogged down again in the Mideast cauldron with ground troops taking on ISIS? John Kasich of Ohio, for one, states in the Washington Post that he supports sending U.S. ground forces to fight the Islamic State: “You will not solve this problem with only air power.” Will Chris Christie be strong enough to reject such herd thinking? Hardly. He’s the personification of an establishment sycophant.

Paul, Cruz, and Walker

Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Scott Walker will surely not stand for this myopic rehash of Bush Doctrine interventionism. But neocons control the GOP both ideologically and financially. To become the nominee, a candidate must acquiesce to the neoconservative worldview. This is why all prospective nominees (even Paul, Cruz, and Walker), when discussing the illegal immigration problem, state that they support “opening up a path to citizenship” for the illegals. What else is this but amnesty for over 20 million illegals? What else is this but acquiescence to the neocon controllers of the party? Prospective nominees realize that such a stand is mandatory if they are to win the nomination of a party controlled by “pro-amnesty” neocons. Will the same acquiescent attitude also govern Paul, Cruz, and Walker on foreign policy?

One certainly hopes not, but the desire to win the nomination is a fire that burns obsessively in the bellies of every presidential aspirant. Such an obsessive fire, far too often, destroys the principles of all aspirants who eventually cater to the ideological and financial partisans of the GOP hierarchy, i.e., the powerful intellectuals, bankers, and corporate moguls, who dominate the Washington-Wall Street axis.

This hierarchy is “interventionist” through and through, and it will turn most GOP aspirants into dancing puppets. Watch over this next year as the GOP nomination seekers drift closer and closer into acquiescence to the neocon worldview on immigration, welfarism, and a police-the-world foreign policy.

It’s disgusting because this has been going on for over 40 years now, and nothing ever changes. When do the lights come on in conservative heads? When do they come to grips with the need to form an alternative political party if we are to save the country?

Those who refuse to see this, and insist it is a mandatory rule of politics that we must “always work within the GOP,” don’t understand that their rule is only a slogan with no rationality to back it up. They have become part of the problem, not the solution. They have become the equivalent to Lenin’s “useful idiots” for the neocon dictatorship being insidiously formed around us.

There’s a saying in Las Vegas that casino owners “send cabs for the gullible sheep.” Well, neocons do the same for Republicans who preach the myth that we “must always stay within the GOP and try to take it over with new conservative legislators.”

Vegas casino owners love the sheep who come to gamble because they know the game is rigged in the casinos’ favor. And likewise the neocon hierarchy loves conservatives who preach “eternal love for the GOP” because it knows the party is rigged in its favor. The hierarchy has the power to buy off (or discourage from running again) 90% of new libertarian and conservative legislators sent to reform Washington.

Buying Off the Patriots

If you doubt that 90% of libertarians and conservatives are bought off or discouraged from running again by the neocon hierarchy, consider this: In 1991, the Republican Liberty Caucus was formed, consisting of libertarian and conservative congressmen to fight for free-markets and restoration of the Republic as the Founders envisioned. In the first three years the RLC had about 25-30 members in the House of Representatives out of 435. Today they have 36 members.

If the strategy of taking over the Republican Party by sending new libertarian and conservative legislators to Washington has any validity, why has the RLC not grown to 200 members by now? Every election year, scores of new candidates win office who could be classified as strong patriots. Let’s say 30-40 every two years. Why has all this new blood not translated into firm control of the GOP? At least 400 new conservatives and libertarians have been sent to Washington in the last 24 years. Why have we only increased the RLC membership by 8 during this time?

The answer is obvious to those who are perceptive and grasp the frailties of human nature: Out of the 400 new libertarian and conservative representatives we sent to Washington over the past 24 years who remained in Congress, only 36 had the strength of mind to stand firm on principle. Only 36 were possessed of the integrity of Ron Paul. Many got discouraged and went home. But of those who remained most capitulated to the enticements of fame, power, popularity, access to more campaign contributions, and ease of re-election that the neocon hierarchy promises to all incoming legislators who play ball with them by “modifying” their principles and easing away from hard core insistence on free-market capitalism. In other words, they got bought off.

The lure of power and wealth has been corrupting men since time began. Do our conservative pundits believe that somehow human nature can be dramatically changed and politicians will no longer seek gratification of their egos? That such politicians will not cross over the aisle to do the neocons’ bidding in order to gain more power and wealth? Do those activists in the Tea Party believe such nonsense?

Of course not. Why then are so many conservative pundits and activists preaching that “we must always remain within the Republican Party?” Why are so many ignoring history and human nature? Why are they not checking deeper into their arguments to make sure they are subscribing to truth, instead of succumbing to slogans? Isn’t this what rational men do in disputes of monumental importance?

Unfortunately our pundits and activists have abandoned reason and are more interested in slogans. Consequently, the neocon hierarchy continues to bamboozle the Republican rank and file with the old communist agitprop that “one must never doubt the widsom of the party.”

Thus conservative sheep remain loyal to the GOP and, in doing so, enable their neocon shepherds to relentlessly centralize government in Washington while perpetuating military interventionism around the globe. Strong minded patriots would revolt, not readily acquiesce to unconditional “love for the Party.”

They Don’t Think

Hitler told his Nazi followers: “How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.” Ditto with the neocons. How fortunate for them that so many conservatives don’t think. Don’t observe history. Don’t grasp the flaws of human nature. Don’t understand the evil of appeasement. Don’t muster the courage to revolt. How fortunate for the neocons that so many conservative pundits refuse to leave the flock and continue to play the lackey to their neocon masters. How fortunate that so many are so soft and undiscerning.

America is descending into despotism because of the softness of conservative pundits and activist sheep. My message is this:

What will you tell your grandchildren when they have grown up amidst vicious tyranny and ask you, “why didn’t you oppose the neocons when we still had a chance to save freedom? Why didn’t you revolt? Why didn’t you break from the GOP? Why would you continue for forty, fifty, sixty years to tolerate the constant ‘crossing of the aisle’ by conservative legislators you sent to Washington? Why would you continue to support a party hierarchy that bought off or scared off 90% of the freedom advocates you sent to reform the system? Why would you continue to tolerate collectivists who relentlessly expanded their power every year, yet soothed you every election with embarrassing lies claiming that they stood for freedom? Why didn’t you revolt, Grandfather, when we still had time?”

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The Ark of Freedom

February 9th, 2015

By Nelson Hultberg.

There is only one hope to stop the tyrannical rot of statism stealing over our country. We must challenge the Democrat-Republican monopoly of politics that foments the rot.

Is this being redundant? Heard all this before? Perhaps, but our most defiant Founding Father, Samuel Adams, was very redundant in his pursuit of justice. He told his fellows repeatedly: “It does not take a majority to prevail…but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” Irate and tireless are what’s important here. We can save our country only if we patriots (who are the minority) relentlessly challenge the Democrat-Republican monopoly and the egregious falsity it spews out every election year.

Our Democrat-Republican politicians are not interested in freedom. They’re interested in power and riding around in black limousines. Conservatives and libertarians must break from them totally and join with millions of patriotic independents and blue-collar Democrats to form a new governing coalition.

Never can we hear too much of this message of American salvation. The Democrat-Republican monopoly is like the Bolsehviks’ Master Party collectivizing us with its regimentation (only done with ballots rather than bullets, subsidies rather than gulags), but always degrading our lives in so many ways, keeping us from what could be and ought to be. So if redundancy is the price we must pay to rouse the people from their stupor, so be it.

But the People Just Don’t Care!

The most frequent objection encountered in discussing a challenge of the Democrat- Republican monopoly is that it will be impossible for an alternative political party to win at the polls because the people just don’t care enough to do something so revolutionary. They are mesmerized by their SUVs and all the goodies that Consumerland has brought them. Voting will not change things because the voters are already bought and paid for with the bread and circuses government perpetually sends their way. Apathy dominates their lives.

This is partly true; most people will not listen at first. But life is not static. The great majority of Americans will begin to be receptive as the country descends deeper into the massive debt and immigration crises now upon us. It will not be long until the dollar is dropping like a rock in a dry well, 30 million illegals are banging on the door of our Congressional appeasers, and government is stultifying everything in its path. Then the people will be willing to listen to calls for an alternative party solution.

How far into the future that day is cannot be said with certainty. But we need to start building an anti-amnesty, patriot party NOW. The time to build an ark is before the raging flood is upon us, not after we’re waist-deep in the tides of chaos and despair.

Amidst the coming socio-economic tumult, there will be a breakdown of many of the established ways of doing things. When the Keynesian fallacies plaguing us today have wreaked sufficient destruction upon our economic stability and sanity, there will take place an inevitable economic crash much bigger than the busts of 2008 and 2000; more lethal even than 1929. It is then, as we are climbing out of this catastrophic crash, that the people will be crying for radical change. Our danger lies in the fact that Democrat-Republican demagogues, bolstered by waves of third-world immigrants, will stampede the confused masses into accepting all-pervasive government control of the economy. They will abandon what vestiges of a free country we have left.

There will be a rash of sequels to what Roosevelt biographer, John T. Flynn, called the “dance of the crackpots” during the Great Depression era. Ivory tower eggheads will descend upon Washington like weevils to the gristmill to bring government and our corporations further together into not just today’s partial fascism, but into the total form.

Attacking the Fortress

This “dance of collectivist crackpots” and its government-business partnership will have to be fought. And there is only one way to do that. We must attack its protective fortress, the Democrat-Republican monopoly over politics. But the time to start doing so is now. This means commitment instead of cynicism. This means a new political party – the National Independent Party – that AFR is forming.

Only in this way will we have a chance to save America as we are climbing out of the upcoming crash. Only in this way can we convince voters to return to the Founders’ ideal of freedom, rather than subordination of America to World Government, which is what the Democrat-Republican monopoly will certainly be preaching

If, during the coming crisis, we do not have a strong “freedom candidate” in the national TV presidential debates to counter Democrat-Republican proposals for subordination of America to World Government and a World Bank, the first stages of Orwell’s nightmare will arrive. American sovereignty will become a “19th century delusion” in the media’s eyes. The United Nations will begin to dictate our political direction in huge and hideous ways. To avoid this denouement, it is crucial that we get a “freedom candidate” into the national TV presidential debates to challenge the globalist propaganda that Washington’s odious elites will be heaping upon a confused American populace.

To help make this happen, we at AFR have published Salvation of America (4 pgs). It lays out a revolutionary strategy of reform for our monetary, tax, immigration, and foreign policy systems that will stop the Democrat-Republican monopoly from its steady march to bigger and bigger government.

The Failure of the Libertarian Party

“But alternative political parties always fail,” reply the naysayers. Yes, this is true. But there’s a reason for their failure. They fail because they structure themselves upon excessively idealistic platforms that frighten the electorate with dissolution of the welfare state. They ignore the fact that politics is a game of incrementalism. They ignore the fact that we’re not going to eliminate the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and the welfare state overnight.

As a result, no nationally prominent candidates choose to run on the tickets of any alternative “freedom party” out there. Thus their candidates end up getting at best 1% of the vote. Our article, Why the Libertarian Party Fails (4 pgs), explains how today’s alternative parties foolishly marginalize themselves

The National Independent Party will not make this mistake of “marginalization.” Thus it will be able to attract a nationally prominent candidate (of libertarian-conservative beliefs) such as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, or Mike Lee. Our Four Pillars of Reform platform is designed to stop the growth of government and restore sanity to the country, but not threaten the voters with dissolution of the welfare state like the Libertarian Party and Constitution Party do every election year. Restoring the Republic will be left to future generations; we need to get the runaway freight train of government growth stopped first.

Libertarians and Immigration

Those libertarians of America who oppose our tough stand on immigration must rethink their reasoning. Tight borders are based upon one of the most libertarian of all principles – the “right to freedom of association.” This means humans have the right to form into groups and establish rules for entrance into their groups, whether it’s a family with a fence around its yard, or a country club with a gate at its entrance, or a labor union with closed doors and by laws, or a country with tight borders and a Constitution. There is no such thing as a “right” to go wherever we please as Judge Napolitano and the Libertarian Party maintain. Immigration is not a fundamental “right.” It is a conditional “privilege” conveyed by the members of the group one is seeking to enter.

This was the view of Washington, Jefferson, and the Founders in 1787. [1] It was the view of the Supreme Court in 1892. [2] And it must become America’s view again. No individual has the right to enter a country uninvited.

All property in the world is owned either individually by persons or collectively by groups. The owners of a house and yard decide who can enter their house. The members of a country club decide who can enter their club. And the citizens of a country decide who can enter their country. The government is not destroying rights by denying entrance to certain people to the country it governs. It is merely expressing the rightful will of the owners of the country.

Challenging Liberal Statism

American voters are ready for this kind of common sense campaign in which a nationally prominent libertarian-conservative challenges the Democrat-Republican monopoly. It was too early in 1992 when Ross Perot made his run. Now it’s not. The people are fed up and ready for an alternative political party. An anti-amnesty, freedom candidate running as an Independent would electrify the country’s conservatives, libertarians, independents, and blue-collar Democrats. He would get 38-40% of the vote and win in a three-man race.

This then is AFR’s goal – to build an Ark of Freedom for America, to rekindle that spirit that exists eternally in the hearts and minds of all those who will not kowtow to tyranny. We are the “New Sons of Liberty.” We intend to take back our country from the statist black limousine crowd and all its collaborators – the academic cheerleaders for multiculturalism, the vast legions of obtuse bureaucrats, the liberal media apparatchiks, the mobs of unthinking voters – who are selling the greatest country in history down the river for an illusion of security and wealth via government pork and privilege.

America was meant for the free, for the self-reliant, for those individuals who are willing to live on their own wits, energy, and courage. She was never supposed to have a powerful centralized maze of bureaucracies regimenting and subsidizing every aspect of our lives. She stood in the beginning for “limited government,” “personal independence,” and a “small, selective flow of immigrants gaining entrance to the country.” Unless she restores that stand, there will be no true liberty or justice for men on this earth in the future.

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Sons of Liberty: A Review

January 31st, 2015

By Nelson Hultberg.

The History channel’s new miniseries, Sons of Liberty, will anger the purists and the prudes. But it will delight the swashbuckler in the rest of us. It is a big, bodacious screening with superb production values that covers the lead-up years to the American Revolution, 1765-1775. Yes, certain liberties are taken with some of the facts and events. The main characters are glamorized. But the essential theme of America’s birth is kept intact: we as a nation were spawned by a band of rebels made up of assorted firebrands, smugglers, and philosophers all coalescing together under the rubric of Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man.” Besides, what depiction of history is not romanticized by making the main characters a bit handsomer and younger than they, perhaps, were. Certainly not any depiction made for television.

The main character striding through Sons of Liberty is the famous Samuel Adams, played robustly by British actor, Ben Barnes, who doesn’t give us an actualization of Adams’ role in history, but rather a symbolization of it. First of all, Barnes is in his early thirties, and Adams was 51 years old when he fomented the Boston Tea Party. So the producers of Sons of Liberty are trying to give us the symbolic Sam Adams and what his role was in the creation of America. Sam Adams was the quintessential rebel mind. He didn’t have the scholarly genius of Thomas Jefferson, but he had a brilliant revolutionary mind. And valor permeated his entire life. He blended mind and defiance as well as, and perhaps better than, any of our Founders.

Sam Adams told his fellow patriots in 1773 in the build-up to the Boston Tea Party, “It does not take a majority to prevail…but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

This is what brings about all revolutionary change in history – small minorities of men and women fervently committed to a cause that will require courage and resourcefulness to bring into fruition. Yes, luck is also necessary, but mostly courage and resourcefulness because luck eventually descends upon us all. It’s the ones with courage who ride the luck into history and change the fate of mankind. Sam Adams and the “Sons of Liberty” were these kind of men. They seized the opportunity that the arrogant, blundering British gave to them.

The valor of Sam Adams was the spark that made him one of our most important Founders. As we all know, the colonists were by no means united. Sons of Liberty portrays this Rebel-Tory division clearly, and it demonstrates how remarkable the likes of Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and Dr. Joseph Warren were. They were willing to break from the security and stability of life under the British Crown to venture into uncharted waters for a new future – a break that offered them certain death or prison if they failed, yet they eagerly proceeded. In the process they galvanized a band of rebels and lit the match to “the shot heard round the world.”

The Partnership

In the first segment, we see Sam Adams and John Hancock initiate their partnership, which eventually leads to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Adams is a scruffy, roguish firebrand, while Hancock is portrayed as a rich, cautious, unbearably foppish socialite who relies on trade and imports to bring him the lavish life he desires. In dddition, the director, Kari Skogland, has him constantly urging Adams and his band of street rebels to “stop their insanity.” Unfortunately this is not the historical Hancock at all. Yet at every turn, Skogland and her writers insist on painting this false picture of Hancock as timidly opposing the rebellion, even opposing the dumping of the tea into Boston Harbor.

All historical records clearly show Hancock was a vigorous supporter of the colonial protests against the British from 1765 on in concert with Adams. Yet Skogland has him reluctantly and timidly dragging his feet throughout these crucial years. Hancock was not a warrior, but he was very much a willing rebel who financed the agitations and the dumping of the tea. He was upper class, yes, but hardly a fop. He fervently favored the revolution, and served admirably in various roles of political leadership for the American cause from the beginning. For some reason, however, Skogland’s writers have quite incorrectly portrayed him. Not good.

The British Are Coming

In the second segment, we are introduced to the tyrannical British Gen. Thomas Gage (played to menacing perfection by Marton Csokas) and also to the renowned Paul Revere and his epic ride (played forcefully by the rugged Michael Raymond-James). Revere was a silversmith, but he had a warrior persona. The Boston Tea Party is presented in a sensationalized manner with Sam Adams standing astride one of the ships to stare down a regiment of British regulars with muskets raised on the wharf, daring them to shoot him. Quisling Governor Hutchinson arrives just in time to halt the British regiment leader for fear of making the heroic Adams into a martyr.

If director, Skogland, is lacking in historical accuracy, she is certainly not deficient in the ability to entertain her viewers. She gives us action, conflict, suspense, and charismatic characters we care about, as well as a salacious romance between Dr. Joseph Warren and Gen. Gage’s ravishing wife, Margaret, played by Emily Berrington. Ryan Eggold is very appealing as the clever and courageous Dr. Joseph Warren. Berrington is pristinely beautiful as Margaret Gage. Their love affair is total fiction; but it’s insertion into the story allows Sons of Liberty to avoid being just a litany of politics and battles. It becomes a sexy romp as well. After all, America’s rebels were not prudes; they lusted after women in their day as we do in ours. This tale is not meant to be a staid documentary with sidebar commentaries by dreary Doris Goodwin types. It is meant to be a TV blockbuster. Sex is necessary for that.

Lexington and Bunker Hill

The third and final segment begins with the British rout of the rebels at Lexington Green on April 19, 1775 and the following rebel victory at the Concord munitions storage. Thus begins our War for Independence. These and the later battle scenes are carried off spectacularly with big sophisticated production values. The Concord surprise victory for the rebels shakes Gage and his troops severely, which is demonstrated by Gage’s hurried request to London for more troops and his demand to recklessly attack the rebels at Bunker Hill despite the certainty of heavy British casualties and warnings from his subordinate officers. Gage is vile and icy in demeanor. He will surely go down as one of the great villains of TV entertainment. There is a grisly inhumanity about the man. Gen. Washington termed him a ruthless cancer.

At John Adams’ insistence, our rebel heroes then pay a visit to Benjamin Franklin for advice and support. Apparently the historical Franklin is not in Skogland’s memory bank either, for the Franklin we encounter here seems more like a brawny biker with a Harley outside at the hitching post. He is played by Breaking Bad’s robustious Dean Norris. He pours forth the braininess we expect from Franklin, but Skogland has injected a few choice morsels of modern dialogue into his part. “You’re talking about a new country,” he informs a startled contingent of Sam and John Adams, and Paul Revere. They reply hesitantly that they guess they are, to which Franklin responds, “That’s a bat shit crazy idea.” But he assures them that he agrees with this crazy idea. Inserting modern slang into the revered mouths of the Founders may be “progressive” and “avant-garde” to Skogland, but to me it is a stink bomb for the script.

Next comes the Battle of Bunker Hill, and it is as gritty and grotesque as a battle can be. Huge casualties are suffered by the rebels as they are overrun by the monster British war machine and Gage’s fanaticism. In the aftermath, Gen. Washington, who up till now has remained a non-participant in the rebel hostilities, manifests as the heroic leader we know from history and assures the rebels that all is not lost. A fierce war is coming, but he will lead them.

The finale is a stirring speech for liberty by Sam Adams in front of the delegates of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in July of 1776 that prefaces the signing of the Declaration of Independence. John Hancock inscribes his now famous signature to the storied document, a war begins, and a new country is born.

The Lesson for Us Today

In conclusion, Sons of Liberty is far from accurate history, but it is splendid entertainment. Most importantly it is true to the fundamental fount of America – that we were spawned by a new philosophical vision of strictly limited government instituted to protect men’s rights rather than manipulate men’s lives.

How did these scruffy “Sons of Liberty,” and the rag-tag army they morphed into, pull off defeating the most powerful military force in the world at that time? They did it because there exists a dynamic force in our lives that all tyrannical systems lack and all rational revolutionaries possess – moral truth! This is what brings the most powerful of tyrannies down. No matter how much military or regulatory control they possess, no matter how ruthless they are – they are always vulnerable in face of men and women who are in possession of truth and willing to take a moral stand against overwhelming odds. Moral truth connected to unbending human will is what eventually destroys the most entrenched of evil.

We have this force on our side today in the crisis we now face, which is identical in principle to the crisis our Founders faced. We possess the same moral truth that they had, and we can use it to overcome today’s Washington tyrants. We just have to design the right strategy to implement it. There are countless Americans out there just waiting for the right mix of political savvy and passion to come along and sweep them up into a crusade.

In 1776, the Tories timidly hid behind closed doors where it was safe and popular. They wallowed in pessimism and lamented that nothing could be done. The British were too strong. Why make a big fuss? But the rebels – men like Samuel Adams and John Hancock, Paul Revere and Joseph Warren – would have none of it. They knew they had moral truth on their side, and that the British Gargantua would fall precisely because of that. And if they weren’t absolutely certain they would prevail, they knew they still must fight, or their lives were meaningless. This is the lesson we glean from the Sons of Liberty for our lives today.

Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and Dr. Joseph Warren are eternal archetypes of what is required as human beings to live freely and justly. If you missed this original History channel presentation of their fight, it will come around again. Don’t miss its rerun.

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What Keynes has done to us

June 17th, 2014

By Nelson Hultberg.

The essential economic problem we confront today is that our dominant Keynesian intellectuals have abandoned reality. They do not grasp what they have wrought with the mountainous loads of debt and malinvestment that are overwhelming us. Much of this burden must be liquidated before genuine demand and growth can be restored, which will require radical reform if we are to evoke a genuine cure.

To try and solve today’s debt created crisis with more debt (as the Keynesians are presently doing) can only bring on a bigger bust the next time around, which will require still larger “debt injections” to stave off a still larger crisis. Eventually the economic implosion will be so monstrous that it can no longer be rectified with “corrective debt injections.” Consumers and businesses will have reached their limit. The Keynesian system will have met its Waterloo. Perhaps this denouement has already arrived.

This dilemma began because we altered the creation of money in a profoundly dangerous way with the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Government expansion of the money supply today does not have to be redeemed in gold as the banks’ fractional reserve loans were in the nineteenth century. What the Fed does now is pyramid excessive levels of credit upon totally irredeemable currency. It can print as much money as it wishes, and banks can loan out nine dollars in credit for every printed dollar. The Fed has been creating, over the past 100 years, far more excessive debt than the worst banking systems of the 19th century. This must end in an eventual collapse.

Keynesian rationale, however, maintains that the “total catastrophe” scenario can be averted by use of this credit pyramiding process. The Fed can continue injecting fiat money into the economy indefinitely and thus bring about an expansion of purchasing power for consumers and businesses. Why? Because somebody is always willing to sell bonds to the Fed, and that’s all it takes. The Fed prints billions in new money to make the purchases. Liquidity is thus injected into the system, which will eventually recharge all producers and consumers to begin anew the boom cycle. Keynesianism has solved the “total catastrophe” dilemma.

But what Keynesians conveniently ignore is that the fiat money from those bond sales does not become credit until a banker offers it for a loan, and a borrower desires to borrow it. If consumers and businesses become overloaded with debt, and if bankers become worried about prospective borrowers’ credit worthiness, then much of that fiat money remains just fiat money. It sits in the banks and does not find its way into the 9-1 fractional reserve lending process whereby $9 in credit is generated for every $1 of fiat money printed by the Fed for its periodic “liquidity / debt injections.” In other words, the newly printed money does not so easily expand into mega-purchasing power via Fed credit pyramiding, which is what is needed to bring recovery from a recession.

Therefore the Fed becomes basically ineffective in its efforts to restore real growth after a deflationary credit contraction that results from consumer and business debt saturation. This is because the Fed’s only effective policy tool is the offering of more debt, which is the very poison that is destroying the system. Sure, the Fed can stop the deflation with massive “debt injections,” but at what cost? The cost will be either runaway price inflation because of the size and repetition of the debt injections needed, or a pseudo-growth economy where relentless stagflation prevails and the stock market registers nominal gains rather than real gains.

The Wildest Credit Binge In History

Our economy today is so top-heavy with credit and debt that it is unlike all other economies in the past. Keynesians somehow believe that consumers and businesses will continue to borrow still more in face of this. Reason tells us they will not. There has to come a saturation point, and it appears we have reached it with the credit crisis and Dow collapse of September 2008. We have experienced, over the past 43 years, the wildest credit binge in our history. This time the inevitable hangover will be more than a regular hangover.

Because the Fed must fight the economic crisis with massive monetary inflation, the dollar must depreciate disastrously in the upcoming decades. Eventually holders of U.S. dollars, stocks, and Treasury bonds will sell their dollar related investments, which will bring severe deterioration to our economy and to the standard of living that Americans enjoy as either heavy price inflation or prolonged stagflation invade our lives.

In response to all this, our government leaders will continue to put forth an array of market manipulations, financial gimmickry, and bailouts for Wall Street such as what we saw with Hank Paulson’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) in 2008. Our leaders will grasp at straws. They will jawbone and delude themselves. They will stonewall and try to dump the more insurmountable problems into the next administration’s lap. And, of course, they will continue to relentlessly inject massive debt into the system in hopes of not having to descend into the nastiness of a full blown depression.

What has worked for the Keynesians for 78 years is now in its death throes. The policies of interest rate rigging and debt injections mixed with confiscatory taxes, which they have used since 1936 to manage their booms and busts, could conceivably have one more stimulatory credit bubble left, but it’s doubtful.

Will Credit Reflation Work?

Hopefully the reader is now beginning to grasp that our present economic problems are far more serious than just another “recessionary cycle” in need of reflation. Because many of the debt injections being utilized by the Fed are being monetized (i.e., paid for by printing new money) this must bring price inflation down the road. But Fed and Treasury bureaucrats figure they can get away with such monetization.

In fact they think they can monetize any number of assets (U.S. bonds, mortgage securities, commercial paper, corporate bonds, etc.), and thus stem any deflationary spiral without incurring price inflation in the aftermath. Their reasoning is that afterwards they can then mop up all their injections of liquidity. They can sell the bonds and other assets later which will withdraw liquidity from the economy. In this way, they can avoid serious price inflation problems in the future.

But three flaws in the Keynesians’ reasoning exist. First, the government is buying and / or guaranteeing all kinds of loans and debt paper that no one in the marketplace wants. They are, in essence, buying trillions of dollars of “crappy paper” as the street defines it. But who will buy this crappy paper from the Fed and Treasury when they decide to re-sell it, which they will have to do if they intend to withdraw liquidity from the system later on? The re-sell argument sounds good coming from Keynesian spinners, but it will play out very badly when the time comes to implement it. Crappy paper that has no buyers in 2009 will have the same dearth of buyers in 2015. Time cannot turn dross into gold.

Second, the Keynesian spinners are ignorant of the fact that each succeeding decade in the evolution of a fiat paper money economy requires larger amounts of debt to be floated in order to maintain the same amount of economic growth. (See Keynesianism’s Ugly Secret) This means that more and more massive amounts of liquidity will have to be injected in the effort to stave off depression and then withdrawn from the system in order to bring about a cessation of the inflationary pressures building up. These amounts will be far larger than the spinners are anticipating. It sounds plausible to say that all excess monetizations will be withdrawn later on. But it will be very difficult to mop up such massive amounts of liquidity in a smooth and practical manner. And what’s more, it will be very difficult to pull the trigger on such withdrawals.

Will the Fed and Congress have the courage to withdraw liquidity from Wall Street in the midst of the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s? Are we to believe that Yellen and the FOMC are going to raise interest rates to American consumers and businesses who are already ignoring record low rates? Very doubtful. Moreover who will determine what constitutes “excess liquidity?” Junkies are the world’s worst judges of whether or not they are engaging in excess, and this is who we have running Washington and Wall Street today – “liquidity junkies.”

When all is said and done, such a massive injecting and then mopping up of liquidity will bring about a terribly volatile economy in which business calculation is unreliable, capital expenditures measly, real growth nil, and countless decisions “politicized” by a growing herd of corporate-banking bureaucrats assuming the role of new economic Czars for the 21st century.

Third, there is the problem of “money velocity.” As the massive amounts of liquidity for the bailouts begin to diffuse out into the economy and cause price escalation, consumers will begin to get nervous about the credibility of the dollar. They will perceive the currency debasement taking place and will act accordingly. In other words, they will spend their money faster (thus speeding up the velocity of money), which will create a chaotic inflationary price spiral rather than the productively growing economy anticipated by Keynesians.

The Sinister Inflation Game

This level of ignorance is embarrassing. Keynesians do not understand the sinister nature of the inflation game they are so desirous of playing. They think they can manage its explosive dangers with their sophisticated debt instruments, econometric models, and logarithmic forecasting programs. They overlook the mysterious vagaries of human nature. They are blind to the unpredictable reactions of human beings because they think only in terms of X’s and O’s on a graph. But society’s real economy is comprised of real “human beings” and real “human actions.” It is these human beings and their actions that always confound Keynesian central planners.

Here then is the major source of our problem: Keynesian statists in Washington can’t grasp that a human economy, like an ecology in nature, runs on natural laws (supply and demand, profit and loss, diminishing returns, Say’s Law, etc.). Its hundreds of billions of convoluted emotions, preferences, actions and reactions are self-correcting through these natural laws whenever excesses and miscalculations take place. When bureaucrats intervene into this complex ecology, they cause severe distortions, inflations, malinvestments, shortages, etc., which then require more government interventions, which then create more distortions until the entire ecology becomes stultified and collapses.

Unfortunately Keynesian bureaucrats have been creating ever-increasing distortions in our economy for many decades, which has now brought us to stultification and collapse. How all this will play out over the long run cannot be known precisely. But a monstrous “government induced” crisis is now upon us, and the wisdom of history says it will not unfold benignly. The structure is too corrupted within.

Our policies and perspectives are too warped, our excesses too huge. Too much damage has been done to monetary integrity and ethical propriety. Too many political humbugs and parasites, too many barnacles have accumulated on the ship’s hull of our life’s energy. The Rubicon was crossed in 1971. When Richard Nixon closed the gold window to the world, he opened the lid to Pandora’s Box. He tore down the last prevailing bulwark of economic sanity.

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