"The essential constitutional understanding is that courts are not equipped to execute the law. They are not accountable to the people. And they lack the knowledge and expertise essential for the effective administration of government."
"The latitude and discretion reserved for the president under our Constitution must, of course, be greatest in the areas of national security and foreign relations, especially during times of war and national crisis."
(John Ashcroft - Departing US Attorney General - November 12, 2004)
In the "old" days, the US government was composed of an Executive, a Congress, and a Judiciary. Over all three of these governing bodies stood a Constitution. Every President swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States". Congress held the SOLE power to determine whether the US was in a time of "war and national crisis" since Congress held the power to declare war. And the function of the Supreme Court (the Judiciary) was to measure all laws, rules, and regulations passed by the government against the constraints to government power enumerated in the Constitution (and the Bill of Rights). That was the "old" days.
Nowadays, according to Mr Bush, Mr Cheney, Mr Ashcroft et al, the US government is composed of a President, his Cabinet, and his "mandate". That's about it. Once every two years, the American people get to vote for all the Congressmen and one-third of the Senators. Once every four years, the American people get to vote for a President. For ALL the rest of the time, once the President has declared and then "sold" the idea that the US is in a time of "war and national crisis", he gets to do whatever he likes, aided by his Cabinet and surrounded by the genuflecting members of what once were the "independent" Congressional and Judicial branches of government.
This is something new for the US, but it is depressingly common in the history of the world. It is called a Tyranny.
The best-known tyranny of the twentieth century was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) which lasted from 1917 until 1991. It had a head of state and a governing body. It had a judiciary and a court system. It even had a Constitution. And elections too. Of course, the USSR was in a perpetual state of "war and national crisis" from the day it was born to the day it died. It spent its whole existence fighting against "world imperialism" and against internal wreckers, irridentists, dissidents, terrorists, and assorted other non-conformists. In the end, this perpetual "seige mentality", of which the actual WWII seiges of Leningrad and Stalingrad were slight intensifications caused by an outside agency (Nazi Germany), bled the nation (you should pardon the expression) white and the regime collapsed.
The great historical tragedy of the period since 1991, and especially since 2001, specifically September 11, 2001, is the fact that it is the paragon of liberty of the preceding 200 plus years, the United States of America, which is well on its way to becoming the best known tyranny of the twenty-first century.
Look back at any period in history, and you will find that the great blows wielded against the freedom and liberty of any people in any nation are those which are dealt during times of "war and national crisis". In this regard, it must be said that there have been two great tragedies in the history of the past century.
The first tragedy took place in a period of just over a decade, between the death of Queen Victoria in 1902 and the outbreak of WWI in 1914. Here is a description of that world by the eminent economic historian Benjamin M Anderson taken from his book: "Economics and the Public Welfare - A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914-1946:
"Those who have an adult's recollection and an adult's understanding of the world which preceded World War I look back upon it with a great nostalgia. There was a sense of security then which has never since existed."
"...decade after decade had seen increasing political freedom, the progressive spread of democratic institutions, the steady lifting of the standard of life for the masses of men."
"It was an era of good faith. Men believed in promises. Men believed in the promises of governments. Treaties were serious matters. In financial matters the good faith of governments and central banks was taken for granted. ...No country took pride in debasing its currency as a clever financial expedient."
In mid 1914, Bethmann-Hollweg, the Chancellor of Germany, publicly referred to a treaty (see above) guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium as "a scrap of paper". In August 1914, World War I began. Within weeks if not days, the "pre-war" world described by Mr Anderson above had been wrecked beyond repair. Treaties were shredded left, right and centre. All the contending governments instantly went off Gold as the backing for their currencies. The internal freedoms of those in the contending nations were stripped from them. In 1917, when the US entered the war, this destruction of the pre-war world had become complete.
That world has never been reconstructed. The reason is simple. At the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, the world returned to a PEACETIME footing. It was this, above all other political factors, which led to the century of increasing freedom and prosperity which followed. At the end of WWI, the world, with the partial exception of the US, did NOT return to a peacetime footing. The powers usurped by governments to fight the war were not renounced. The solid global financial and trading system based on Gold and free trade was NOT resumed. It was this above all other political factors which led to the bloodbath which was the subsequent history of the twentieth century. It also led directly to two of history's most notorious tyrannies, that of the USSR and of Nazi Germany.
Nazi Germany was eradicated in 1945. The USSR finally collapsed under its own inertia in 1991. In 1991, the second great tragedy occurred. The US and its allies had the same chance that Britian and her allies had had at the end of the Napoleonic wars. They had a chance to lead the world back to a genuine PEACE, with all that implied and underpinned in terms of genuine security, prosperity, and policial freedom. The US Administration and political establishment chose not do do so, because to do so would be to give up the political POWER which they had so assiduously accumulated over the past century.
The result was the US as the world's only "superpower", a nation which interfered more and more in the affairs of the rest of the world while at the same time relying more and more on the wealth of the rest of the world to finance its actions. The result of that was an increasing resentment against the US, highest in the places where the US interfered most. The result of that was more and more physical attacks against the US and its allies in their facilities overseas, culminating inevitably with a galvanising terrorist attack against the US itself on September 11, 2001.
The central point to be made and repeated is the fact that the US in particular and the world in general have NEVER gone back to peacetime conditions after the outbreak of World War I ninety years ago. The 1920s was a decade of simmering European political tensions, catastrophic European financial collapses, and riding over it all, a gigantic (for the time) US credit expansion. The 1930s was a decade of global depression. The 1940s was a decade of war and the aftermath of war. The 1950s through the 1980s were decades of perpetual "crisis" known as the "Cold War". The 1990s was a decade of increasing terrorist violence, recurring global financial collapses, and riding over it all, a US credit expansion which put the one in the 1920s completely in the shade combined with a growing international net indebtedness.
Then came the twenty-first century which has, since 9/11, been a period of perpetual "crisis" within the US, ramped up to a perpetual and demagogic pitch which far outstrips what was seen during the "Cold War". And with that perpetual crisis has come the inevitable destruction of the rights and freedoms once "taken for granted" by Americans. More tragic still, the election just passed has endorsed the perpetrators and their "agenda" for another four years.
Here is another quote from Mr Anderson's book, published, by the way, in the year of this writer's birth, 1949:
"...a world in which the ill intentioned fear the condemnation of the well intentioned we can rebuild. The same basic human nature which created the fabric of national and international good faith on which we relied in the century preceding 1914 exists today. ...There is no certainty that we can re-create the fabric of good faith which we have destroyed, but ther is no higher duty than to make the effort."
A world of peace, a world which has not been seen for almost a century, does not require many things. It requires above all a universal respect for and defence of the freedoms and liberties of the individual. It requires a rock-bound recognition and defence of private property. It requires the removal of any impediment to domestic and INTERNATIONAL trade and commerce. And to allow all this to function, to develop, and to mature, it requires a SOUND money, a medium of exchange which can be relied upon, and which can be SEEN to be reliable, in its function of preserving purchasing power in the hand of whoever holds it.
The 100 years preceding 1914 was the century in which Gold progressively took over as the world's universal money. The ninety years after 1914 have been the years when Gold has been steadily and then completely barred from ANY functioning role in financial affairs. There is no more important step which can be taken in the drive to return to the peace and freedom once enjoyed by many still living human beings (the mother of this writer's wife was born in 1909) than to re-establish Gold as money.
In any progress from the world described by Mr Ashcroft to the world described by Mr Anderson, Gold indeed has WORK to do. Yes, it is important to hold Gold. It is even more important to know what Gold represents as money. This is what the world, not all of it, just enough of it to matter, must re-learn.