In the following video clip, former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson makes clever use of satire to expose the folly of current economic proposals. [View Thompson video clip.] His insightful satire is right on the mark and worth sharing, IF it is supplemented with leadership regarding what to do about the problem (see below).
Thompson argues forcefully and correctly that the “medicine” being widely offered to get us out of our economic mess is the same “medicine” that got us in the mess. The president-elect, in particular, regularly avoids discussing what policies brought on our economic problems. Otherwise, his insistence that government spending is the cure would appear ridiculous.
As much as we admire the cleverness of the Thompson video clip, it suffers from two vital omissions: It doesn’t answer why politicians and economic “experts” behave the way they do, and it doesn’t suggest what must be done to fix that horrible situation. These two issues are critically important; otherwise we just laugh or cry or, worse yet, pursue ineffective solutions through partisan politics, as we continue toward disaster.
Why do we have this problem?
No short answer to that question would be credible, because the American people have been bombarded with so much misinformation.
Certainly, part of the driving force is supplied by politicians who seek more government spending as the route to their re-election. But the problem goes much deeper than that.
We are facing a dangerously incorrect illusion — that the driving force for expanding government spending and authority has the interests of the people at heart. In fact, that driving force has operated through deception and targets our middle class and even our liberties. Here are two nuggets hinting at the deeper problem:
• Government got the power to inflate the money supply (and control of the so-called currency printing press, referred to by Senator Thompson) through the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913.
In 1910, the members of the National Monetary Commission, established to address credit and banking problems of that day, held a secret meeting at the Jekyll Island Hunt Club owned by J.P. Morgan. One of the attendees, Frank Vanderlip, President of Kuhn-Loeb’s National City bank, admitted decades later (in a February 9, 1935 Saturday Evening Post article, “Farm Boy to Financier”):
“[T]here was an occasion, near the close of 1910, when I was as secretive — indeed as furtive — as any conspirator. I do not feel it any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System…. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen….”
• And in the April 1958 issue of American Opinion, the late great patriot Robert Welch discussed a subversive agenda being promoted under the pretext of fighting Communism. That agenda included:
“(1) Greatly expanded government spending … for every conceivable means of getting rid of ever larger sums of American money as wastefully as possible….
“(3) An increasingly unbalanced budget, despite the higher taxes.
“(4) Increasing and ever more rapid inflation of our currency, leading … to its ultimate worthlessness and complete repudiation.”
What to do about it
We highly recommend reading Organize for Victory! Organize for Victory! opens with a more complete analysis of what ails us, providing many authoritative references. It then offers a solution. The two topics really depend on each other. Only if the agendas and influence of those who would destroy our Republic are understood, combined with an understanding of our inherited constitutional strengths, can one appreciate the type of organization and commitment necessary to preserve liberty.