The American Way
columnist: Ivan from Oregon

Topic: Politics
Corruption in Government - Why We Need Ron Paul

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A brief history of how we got there and the major things we need to fix to get back our liberty.

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by Ivan from Oregon
(Libertarian)
Wednesday, February 20, 2008

If you ask a mountain climber why he climbed a mountain, he'll say, "because it's there". If you wonder why our government is corrupt, the answer is, "because it can be". I've read opinions on some blogs that our government corruption has happened over the last couple of decades. I would agree that the degree of corruption has increased, especially measured in money, but the multitudinous dimensions of corruption have been with us a long time. For those who need a tutorial of the various nefarious predilections of our "elected " "representatives", I would recommend, as a must read, Ron Paul's speech to Congress in 1984.

The founding fathers were very smart men and structured the central government to minimize the inevitable corruption and to give the people a chance to correct undesirable things. The underlying principles were subsidiarity (implementing functions at the lowest level of government possible where they can be easiest to correct), limited, enumerated powers of the central government, protection of the people from the tyranny of either majorities or minorities (hence the unusual election system and the two Houses in Congress), and honest money.

Our "servants" in the Federal Government have been trying to get around the Constitution from the very beginning. How did we get to where we are today? Let's highlight a few of the steps along the way.

Under the influence of Hamilton and in blatant violation of the freshly-minted Constitution, a Central Bank was established during Washington's presidency, making certain individuals very rich indeed. When Jackson refused to extend the bank's charter, 20 years later, they tried to kill him, but were not successful.

The next major step was the throttling of States' powers by Lincoln in the War for Southern Independence (it was not about slavery), establishing "federalism" as supreme. The one good thing Lincoln did was to print his own interest-free money, for which he got killed.

The Sixteenth Amendment was another blow to the Constitution, establishing an "income tax" in 1913, along with the Federal Reserve Act, establishing a private, unaccountable corporation for the creation of all our money, to be borrowed into existence. The main engineer of this was Warburg, along with other bankers like JP Morgan. (Read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" for details.)

Once this was accomplished, Warburg publicly stated that now "World Government" was inevitable and the only question was the degree of violence to get there. There were still a few obstacles to bypass to get there.

One of these was the way States maintained power in the Congress by State Legislatures appointing Senators. This was taken care of by the Seventeenth Amendment.

Another pesky problem was the limited "enumerated powers" of the central government. FDR took care of this by "fixing" the Fed-created recession by an alphabet-soup of Federal Agencies (WPA, TVA, etc).

FICA, if memory serves, was justified by a Treaty with Germany. FDR sill had a problem, however - how to pay for all this. He did two things. The first, in 1933, was to sever the dollar's tie to gold, which allowed the government to borrow whatever money was needed. But there was the final problem - the enumerated powers.

The final death blow to the Constitution came in 1936, after FDR stacked the Supreme Court. This Court ruled, in its decision on the "Agricultural Adjustment Act", that, never mind what the Constitution says, the Congress can spend money on whatever they want.

With the absence of anything backing the currency, unlimited amounts of which can be created at the expense of the people, the creation of a welfare class, most of the benefit of wealth creation going to a relatively small elite, the dumbing down of the populace, with all of us who should have known better, but didn't want to see it, it's no wonder that we are where we are.

We are perilously close to the point of no return of a repeat of Germany in the 30's. I read on the blogs that many of us don't want to "fix" the Republican Party, but go "independent", yada, yada. The independent route is a waste of time that we don't have. We need to invade the GOP en masse at all levels regardless of our past affiliation and get back to Constitutional government, just like our leader says. This may be our last chance.

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2008 Ivan from Oregon, all rights reserved.
Published: Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Last modified: Sunday, February 24, 2008

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