From Ronald Holland's upcoming fourth book, Restoring Our American Legacy. Get ready for a new 21st century reappraisal of how Americans should look at domestic and foreign investing, real estate investments, wealth preservation, American history and our global foreign policy. He asks if it is time to consider an improved political paradigm utilizing successful Swiss style direct democracy and the confederation model along with our existing political structure to return our nation back to the limited Republic form of government established by our Founding Fathers. In this new century of instant communications, 24 hour news, the War on Terror, exploding government and private debt, a falling dollar and America's declining status around the world it is time for a change. Conservative Americans must retake control over our government policies at home and abroad by restraining politicians, the bureaucracy and special interests to restore the control of productive American citizens back over our own government. Our wealth, prosperity and ultimate liberty depend on Restoring Our American Legacy before it is too late!
Talking Points: The original American Republic with limited powers, state sovereignty and individual freedom was built on the guarantees of liberty, private property and secure wealth. Today, due to past political actions primarily during wars and financial emergencies, we have exchanged much of the original American Dream for big government with an inefficient bureaucracy, permanent military conflicts and federal government power grabs. Will the existing American political system continue to defend your wealth and liberty in the future? I believe the answer is no.
Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery." -- Thomas Jefferson
We Are Losing Our Historic Guarantees of Liberty, Limited Government, the Sanctity of Private Property and Secure Wealth - Our patriot Founding Fathers created the American Dream in a war of secession and independence which lasted for seven years. Sadly during the late 20th century and new 21st century, it is taking politicians only a few decades to destroy it.
In the Declaration of Independence, our nation's most cherished document of liberty, Thomas Jefferson eloquently expressed the conviction in the minds and hearts of the American people when he stated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…"
It is apparent that our nation has moved a long way from the foundations on which it was established on July 4, 1776. To George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, the American Dream was more ideological than material. It meant maximum individual liberty, the sanctity of private property and a very limited, decentralized representative government for the sovereign states in the United States. Their goal was a limited republic structure at the federal level that would protect the States from foreign invasion, provide a court system and levy minimal taxes, tariffs or fees for these services. All other group-oriented functions or potential government services needed by society would be handled at the state, local, or private individual and church level.
Thomas Jefferson also warned future generations not to let government become their provider lest it also become the policymaker. He once wrote; "We must make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under pretense of caring for them, they will be happy."
This was in essence the patriot dream of our nation's Founding Fathers. Regrettably, their dream of liberty and justice for all is now turning into a nightmare for millions of productive Americans. The utmost fear of these great men was the rise of a central authority that would threaten and destroy individual freedoms and private property. I believe their fears are now being realized and will likely come to pass in the United States.
Today individual freedoms and civil liberties have fallen by the wayside as a result of actions by the federal government, Washington political demands, court actions and parasitic bureaucracies. Private property and private wealth are now at real risk to government and legal actions from some in our failing political and legal system. Overall taxation at all levels of government along with government revenues continues to rise year after year.
With taxes taking over 50% of the annual income from wealthy Americans each year, we in fact have little more actual representation than did our colonial Founding Fathers over 225 years ago which drove them to seek secession and independence from the British Crown. The original form of representative voting and political action established in our republic with limited powers has been turned into a free for all of special interests and lobbyist groups all out to take as much as they can get away with from productive elements of society. We have indeed lost the American Dream and original vision of our patriot Founding Fathers.
One Step Forward and Two Steps Back
The case can certainly be made in earlier American history that during times of war and economic upheaval our government has often flirted with tyranny by excessive attacks on our economic rights and personal liberties. Still history shows that generally these threatening measures have been temporary in nature, and usually the rights and powers of the people and representative government have reasserted themselves after these attacks on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and individual liberties. The history of America has been one of temporary excesses by government followed by a partial pullback to appropriate measures after the crisis. It is the partial retention of more power and authority by the federal government in recent years which has helped to weaken the American Dream.Few would question the premise that governments have the legitimate right to take extraordinary, but temporary, actions during times of real crisis or threats to the citizenry in order to defend the nation. However, one should question the retaining of severe emergency legislation, Presidential Executive Orders and other government intrusions which then become a permanent part of government and regulatory policy that in turn controls and limits personal and financial freedoms to a greater degree every decade.
A Brief History of Washington Emergency and Wartime Attacks on Wealth
During the Lincoln Administration’s War Between the States, extreme excesses such as the imprisonment of political enemies without trial, the closing of newspapers that editorially spoke out against the administration and the war, and the suspension of habeas corpus were enacted against Northern political and press opponents. Lincoln even imprisoned the grandson of Francis Scott Key, author of The Star Spangled Banner, in Fort McHenry where the song was originally inspired. Still these actions were for the most part discontinued in the North at the end of the war and after the long period of Reconstruction in the conquered Southern states.
A few decades later during the early months of World War I, President Wilson shut down all U.S. stock and commodity markets for four months. During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt confiscated all privately held gold in the United States and forced its sale to the Federal government at an artificially low price. He also closed all banks and restricted withdrawals and even the cashing of checks and bank drafts. Roosevelt used his war powers to prohibit the import, export or holding of currency, securities or precious metals as the pretext for this massive gold confiscation and theft.During World War II, Roosevelt followed in the footsteps of Lincoln by eliminating the right of habeas corpus and jailing and bringing “accused political criminals” before military tribunals for trial and summary execution. This is the same kind of actions now taking place in Cuba at the Guantanimo Naval Base with the "so called" Al-Qaida and Taliban suspects. While I'm not much concerned with what happens to the actual Islamic terrorists, once a nation in crisis steps over the line like this with military tribunals and detention without legal protections and due process, the next step can be to apply these same unconstitutional actions to American citizens.
Nixon imposed wage and price controls in 1971 again to defend the dollar and later presidents imposed confiscatory and punitive taxes on income or certain foreign investments to support the dollar and hold down the American capital deficits.
Freezing assets has also been a popular form of American government attack on wealth. It started when Roosevelt froze Swiss assets held in the United States in 1941, when both Switzerland and the U.S. were still neutral in the war. The United States has since repeated this action many times over. Just in the last 20 years, Washington has frozen the assets of many nations including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Kuwait, Serbia, Iraq, Nicaragua, South Africa, and Panama; as well as the assets of countless individuals.
Phony Wars and Emergencies All For Public Consumption
1. Washington's War on Poverty: This war, declared in the State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, was an attempt by President Lyndon B. Johnson to break the cycle of poverty affecting nearly 35 million Americans or so the administration claimed. This was also the initial use of the term “war” to describe government actions for or against specific social problems or government needs. Since then the United States has spent more than $5 trillion trying to ease the plight of the poor and what we have received for this massive investment is, primarily, more poverty.
Obviously the War on Poverty did not solve the problems it was designed to fix as poverty continues to exist today. Instead of helping the needy and poverty stricken, the new welfare programs simply trapped many at the bottom of the economic ladder as their dependence on the dole became incapacitating. The “war” became little more than a wealth transfer scheme from productive working Americans to "make work" government bureaucracies and special interest voters at the cost of the loss of property rights and liberty. Those in real poverty and in need of assistance received little while the bureaucracies bloated their payrolls and new programs with the money. Presidents from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge have warned about the dangers of taking public monies to support private citizens.
Economist Murray Rothbard observed, "these problems [are] demonstrably far worse two or three decades after the innovation and expansion. At the same time, the government Problem Solving Machine: taxes, deficits, spending, regulations, and bureaucracy, has gotten far bigger, stronger, and hungrier for taxpayer loot." The results of the War on Poverty and the Great Society, the "massive and expensive attempt to stamp out poverty, inner-city problems, racism, and disease, has only resulted in all of these problems being far worse, along with a far-greater machinery for federal control, spending, and bureaucracy."
Only private sector productivity and national prosperity from the private sector can eliminate poverty and we all understand government is never productive. Students of history know that no government in the history of mankind has ever created any wealth. Historically when governments attempt to help the needy, the improvements have been minimal at best and, in the long run, usually resulted in more poverty and less freedom and after-tax earnings for the poor and productive working population. Therefore one could say that the War on Poverty was, in effect, a war on opportunity. It impoverished those it claimed to help with lost opportunities, destroyed personal responsibility and hurt all of us with higher taxes and lost liberties.
2. Washington's War on Drugs: Following the failed War On Poverty came the War On Drugs, which must have our Founding Fathers turning in their graves. Their vision of a limited government republic with maximum individual freedoms has certainly been a victim of the War on Drugs and the bureaucratic state. Of course, our personal freedom is the real target here as pointed out by the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court as he stated: “If the zeal to eliminate drugs leads this state and nation to forsake its ancient heritage of constitutional liberty, then we will have suffered a far greater injury than drugs ever inflict upon us. Drugs injure some of us. The loss of liberty injures us all.”
In a nutshell, the War on Drugs has resulted in the use of tax revenues to build another useless bureaucracy with police state powers in order to attack financial privacy, offshore banking and enhance the looting of private property through government forfeitures and seizure. Even worse is the power it gives to law enforcement officials allowing them to spy, snoop, and seize property, and even arrest on suspicion without a warrant or proof of guilt. There has been no government program in our history other than the income tax that has failed so completely in its alleged public goal but has done so much to destroy liberty and freedom. Here's just one example:
"A police dog scratched at your luggage, so we're confiscating your life savings and you'll never get it back.
Police stopped 49-year-old Ethel Hylton at Houston's Hobby Airport and told her she was under arrest because a drug dog had scratched at her luggage. Agents searched her bags and strip-searched her, but they found no drugs. They did find $39,110 in cash, money she had received from an insurance settlement and her life savings; accumulated through over 20 years of work as a hotel housekeeper and hospital janitor. Ethel Hylton completely documented where she got the money and was never charged with a crime. But the police kept her money anyway. Nearly four years later, she is still trying to get her money back.
Ethel Hylton is just one of a large and growing list of Americans - now numbering in the hundreds of thousands - who have been victimized by civil asset forfeiture. Under civil asset forfeiture, everything you own can be legally taken away even if you are never convicted of a crime."
From The Looting of America by Jarret B. WollsteinThe real tragedy is that the War on Drugs has been a total failure in reducing drug use and availability but a success in destroying civil liberties, financial privacy and individual rights and in creating a vast new source of funding for federal, state and local police forces. In addition, it has made the United States the nation with the largest percentage of citizens jailed in the entire world thus creating an American Gulag and yet another special interest lobbying group constantly promoting tax revenues for prisons. This is not only a problem for those often jailed for victimless crimes but especially for taxpayers who have to fund the bill for new and modernized prisons.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics report that the number of persons incarcerated in prison for drug offenses increased 1222% from 1980 to 2000 (19,000 in 1980 to 251,100 in 2000). But that’s not all. On June 30, 2002, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced that the nation’s prisons and jails held more than 2 million inmates for the first time. This puts the United States matching, or possibly even surpassing, Russia as the country with the highest rate of incarcerations. This is certainly not a statistic to be proud of but rather a symptom of several other problems.
What does this mean for the taxpayer? Between 1990 and 1999 alone, federal anti-drug law-enforcement activities have cost taxpayers $81 billion.1 This does not even include what has been spent on state or local levels. Meanwhile, drug use and availability is on the rise and personal liberties and individual freedoms remain in full retreat against the power and usurpations of leviathan.
Milton Friedman summarized the tragic results of the War on Drugs best with his statement: “Every friend of freedom . . . must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the U.S. into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.”
3. Washington's War on Terror: Now we have the current War on Terror which has, in turn, created the conditions for the new global military doctrine of "Preemptive War." Even though the War on Terror certainly did not start with the September 11th attack and tragedy, this has been the crisis used to destroy most remaining financial privacy, offshore confidentially and tax-haven services for American investors through the resulting Patriot Act and other counter-measures against terrorism. This new legislation has allowed the expansion and concentration of power in the executive branch of government without the long required judicial checks and balances. Washington tells us that they must alter the balance between liberty and security in order to prevent future terrorist attacks. The bottom line means little additional security but far less liberty.
The cruel excess of this alteration of the balance between liberty and security was brought home to my wife Tami in 2003 at the Asheville, North Carolina airport of all places where an "airport thug" threatened and assaulted my wife on two occasions. The one time I was there, I was powerless to intervene on her behalf due to the armed security personnel surrounding me. Take a moment to read about the attack and learn that in fact, Tami did not require any help from me in the essay at the end of this chapter titled: "Meet My Wife Tami: A Domestic Terrorist".
Americans have, over a long period of time, lost the historic guarantees and protections of liberty, private property and safe, protected wealth originally established by our Founding Fathers. This vicious cycle of attacking our civil liberties must stop or America will eventually lose the key attribute that we have fought so hard in previous wars to defend that gave us the American Dream - our freedoms.
Can you guess the senator that made the following statement?
“I fear for our nation. Nearly half of our people receive some form of government subsidy. We have grown weak from too much affluence and too little adversity. I fear that soon we will not be able to defend our country from our sure and certain enemies. We have debased our currency to the point that even the most loyal citizen no longer trusts it.”
This statement was made by a Roman senator made this statement in A.D. 63.
Times, history and politics do not change very much do they? It is time for all Americans to work for a rebirth of the original American Dream of our patriot Founding Fathers.
firm licensed in 47 states.Ronald Holland - For more information go to http://www.ronaldholland.com
Note, Ronald now lives at Asheville NC's Wolf Laurel Resort, where he markets ski property, homes and real estate in one of the highest elevation 4-season mountain resorts in the eastern United States. He is an internationally known financial & marketing consultant & author of 3 books and over a hundred articles & reports, a leading speaker at financial conferences in the US and abroad and editor of several internet based news sites. He invented several financial products & services including the first gold IRA account and the first Swiss franc denominated variable annuity portfolio in the US and was president of a Swiss owned investment
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