New Year's Resolutions

A Libertarian's New Year's resolutions - Harry Browne, 1998

70 Resolutions - Jonathan Edwards, 1722-23

New Year's Substitutions - Gary North, 2004

A Resolution of Heart - D. James Kennedy

Nazis in America

John W. Whitehead at The Rutherford Institute is warning us about Nazis in America.

If you've never heard of "Project Paperclip" or the importation of high-ranking Nazis into the United States at the end of WWII, Whitehead's article is a good place to start. (If you really want to get into anti-Nazi conspiracy theories, Dave Emory is your man.)

Without disagreeing with any facts Whitehead presents, I'd like to go a little deeper.

Whitehead paints a picture of Nazis being brought into the U.S. for their weapons expertise to be used by the U.S. in the Cold War and for U.S. imperialism in general, and U.S. intelligence agencies covering-up their Nazi backgrounds to make it easier for them to work for the U.S. government, particularly in the military-industrial complex. Whitehead quotes one writer who describes them as "ardent Nazis" who had carried out war crimes -- "crimes against humanity."

I'm wondering if anyone in a position of power is really an "ardent Nazi" in a way that an "ardent American" in a position of power is not.

I'm not talking about trailer-park losers on the fringes of society who move from one part-time job to another to finance the purchase of Nazi memorabilia. (But I think my theory also applies to them.)

I think someone who exercises political power for one regime will easily and smoothly make the transition to a rival regime if the first regime appears to be the loser, the rival regime appears to be the winner, and the power-holder is promised a position of equal power, with an equal number of ribbons on his chest, in the winning regime.

For scientists, the carrot is a nice lab and a hefty government grant, or the promise of publication in the leading scientific journals of the winning regime.

Ideologies on the left and the right are cosmetic. They are propaganda for the benefit of the trailer-park losers who buy the memorabilia and pay their taxes.

I remember hearing a story about Hans F. Sennholz, an admired figure in Free Market Economics. Born in Germany in 1922, he became a fighter pilot for the Nazis. Presumably, he killed people in France, Russia, and North Africa. He was shot down by New Zealand while killing Allies in Egypt, and became a POW in South Africa, New Zealand, and ultimately in U.S. prisoner of camps in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas. As I heard the story, his "conversion" from patriotic German to patriotic American was instantaneous, logical, dispassionate, and pragmatic. "Germany lost. The U.S. won. I'm with the winner." That kind of thing. His political loyalty was not based on ideology. (I can't remember if I heard this from Sennholz himself, whom I met at a summer seminar at the Foundation for Economic Education, or from someone like Rushdoony or Gary North.)

I'm not sure when Sennholz became an "ardent Austrian economist." His story doesn't appear to parallel that of Ludwig von Mises, who was an "Austrian economist" before the war and had to flee the Nazis. It appears that Sennholz began his studies in economics after he made the pragmatic decision to become a U.S. citizen, and at some point became more "capitalist" than "socialist" (though again, I'm not using those terms in a purely ideological sense). Sennholz' was not brought into the U.S. for his expertise in the field of Austrian economics (which is arguably more valuable to our society than weapons expertise anyway).

[Sidebar: I had a somewhat disagreeable conversation with Sennholz at FEE. I had brought all my Sennholz books with me for him to autograph. (He was impressed that I had a copy of his How Can Europe Survive?) While he was autographing, I asked him a question about inflation. I argued that inflation was an ethical and moral problem, not a purely political one; that the real blame for inflation lies with covetous borrowers, who were the root of the problem, and the Federal Reserve was just the branches. If ordinary people had a stronger moral compass and would underconsume, save for the future, and eschew debt, like our great-grandparents did, they wouldn't have to ask the government to create money for them through the fractional reserve banking system. There would be no inflation without borrowers.

Sennholz quickly went from flattered to angry. I think I had one more book to autograph, but he stopped autographing. He vehemently insisted the problem was all on the part of the government. The change in Sennholz' demeanor was palpable. As Sennholz walked away, David Chilton, who was with me at the time, was bug-eyed to see the abrupt turn-about. (I believe Chilton was writing Productive Christians In An Age Of Guilt Manipulators at that time, and we had been talking about the primacy of morality and ethics over politics.) End Sidebar.]

Did the CIA do something remarkably evil by removing all traces of Nazi loyalty from the files of German scientists in order to employ them in the U.S. military machine? I don't think so. I don't think German weapons experts were clandestinely reserving their ultimate loyalty to Germany or a future Fourth Reich. I doubt that they were Aryan blood-worshipping White Supremacists. Their ultimate loyalty was to power, regardless of the flag or the uniform. The personnel files are just a formality. Even the Germans themselves did this, after the war, if I correctly understand one recollection.

The problem is not ex-Nazis in the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex, as though that Complex would be morally pure without the ex-Nazis. We are no longer that "City upon a Hill" because we put our faith in military imperialism and refuse to beat our swords into plowshares.

Birth of a Ruler

If Christmas were taken seriously, today's secular government would make it illegal.

Thomas Jefferson edited the New Testament and compiled it into a book he called "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth: Extracted Textually from the Gospels Greek, Latin, French, and English." He described it in a letter to John Adams dated 13 October 1813:

“In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurges, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of … or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines.”

Internet infidel Ed Darrell says this about "the Jefferson Bible":

“Jefferson removed all supernatural events, all miracles, all claims that Jesus was divine.
Jefferson treated Jesus as a philosophical teacher, perhaps along the lines of Socrates or Aristotle.”

I wonder how many people who believe this about Jefferson and his "Bible" have actually read the "Jefferson Bible." On Pages 67-68 of Jefferson's original hand-pasted version of the New Testament, with parallel columns of Greek, Latin, French, and English, Jefferson has Matthew 25:31ff., presumably because it reflects Jefferson's views of the authentic Christ:

Matthew 25:31
31 ¶ When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

If Jesus is a mere man, and Ed Darrell is a mere man, then Ed Darrell, after his death, ought to be able to come again in glory, with all the holy angels, and sit on the throne of his glory.

"Angels?" Aren't those "supernatural" beings?
Ed says Jefferson removed them all from "the Jefferson Bible."
Nice try, Ed.

Jefferson's basic Christian doctrines were set out in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse in 1822:

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man:
1. That there is one only God, and He all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.…But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of . . . the false shepherds foretold [in the New Testament] as to enter not by the door into the sheepfold, but to climb up some other way. They are mere usurpers of the Christian name, teaching a counter-religion made up of the deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign from Christianity as is that of Mahomet. Their blasphemies have driven thinking men into infidelity, who have too hastily rejected the supposed Author himself with the horrors so falsely imputed to Him.
Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian.

Who is it that hands out these "rewards and punishments?"

Anyone who did not join with Jefferson in believing in God and in future rewards and punishments could not take an oath in nearly every jurisdiction in America for decades after the Constitution was ratified.

http://KevinCraig.us/deism.htm#infidel
http://vftonline.org/TestOath/21atheists.htm

That means only Christians could hold public office.

Continuing from Jefferson's Bible:

32 And before him shall be gathered all nations:
and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

The "Devil?" "His angels?"
These are usually considered "supernatural" beings.
Ed says they were "all removed."

Continuing from Jefferson's Bible:

42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

So Jefferson believed that Jesus was the Judge of the entire world, who comes in glory and sits on his throne of glory. Jefferson believed Jesus was the Great Shepherd who sends all the goats off to everlasting punishment. That's quite a feat for a "philosophical teacher, perhaps along the lines of Socrates or Aristotle."

Jefferson compiled "the Jefferson Bible" as a means of teaching the Indians the life and morals of Jesus, as a way of civilizing them.

What would Ed and the ACLU say if Christians started taking over school boards and making "the Jefferson Bible" a required school text?

What would the anti-federalist Jefferson say if he could return to America in the year 2011 and find out that Ed and the ACLU have given the federal judiciary the power to force municipal schools to remove "The doctrines of Jesus, which are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man" from their classrooms?

Isaiah 33:22 says:

For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; He will save us.

Too many Americans today believe that the State is our Judge, the State is our Lawgiver, the State is our King, The State will save us.

http://KevinCraig.us/salvation.htm

On Christmas, true Christians celebrate the birth of the true King, the true Lawgiver, and the Judge of all mankind. The Herods and EdDarrells of the world seek to kill this Christ, or at least strip Him from public schools. They want to protect their own political power to rule, legislate, and judge.

In his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789, George Washington said

it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour . . . that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions....

This is our national duty every day, but especially on Christmas Day, the day we celebrate the birth of the great Lord and Ruler of nations.

“ But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Though you are little among the thousands of Judah,
Yet out of you shall come forth to Me
The One to be Ruler in Israel,
Whose goings forth are from of old,
From everlasting.”
Micah 5:2 (c. 720 B.C.)

For every warrior’s sandal from the noisy battle,
And garments rolled in blood,
Will be used for burning and fuel of fire.
For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of His government and peace
There will be no end,
Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom,
To order it and establish it with judgment and justice
From that time forward, even forever.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
Isaiah 9:5-7

He shall judge between many peoples,
And rebuke strong nations afar off;
They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war anymore.
But everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree,
And no one shall make them afraid;
For the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.
Micah 4:3-4

Healing Our World

Healing Our World
by Mary Ruwart

Missionary to the Tea Party

The gut reaction of the missionary is to say, "You're doomed! Repent!"

The pagan marketer tries to sell you what you need by promising what you want.

Is there anything I can learn from the marketers? Leave your advice in the comments section.

http://MissionarytotheTeaParty.com

Amazon is Un-American

Gene Healy says "the campaign against WikiLeaks Is lawless." Healy writes (and I add the links):

Last week in the Wall Street Journal, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., demanded that Assange be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act. After all, she wrote, the First Amendment isn't "a license to jeopardize national security," any more than it's a license to "yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater." A poor choice of metaphor: It comes from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' 1919 opinion in Schenck v. United States, when the Supreme Court allowed the Wilson administration to imprison a man for the crime of publicly arguing that the draft was unconstitutional.

We've since done a much better job protecting the First Amendment. In 1971's New York Times v. United States, the Supreme Court rebuffed the Nixon administration's attempt to stop the paper from publishing classified documents showing that the government had lied America into the Vietnam War.

WikiLeaks stands in the same position as the "gray lady" in New York Times v. United States, and since that case, the Congressional Research Service reports, no "publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it." "First Amendment implications" would likely "make such a prosecution difficult."

Even so, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., has suggested that U.S. newspapers could still be punished for publishing WikiLeaks' leaks. Unsatisfied with mere threats, Lieberman has also gone outside the law, throwing his weight around to get Amazon.com to boot the site off its servers.

As new-media analyst Clay Shirky puts it, Myanmar and Russia "can now rightly say to us, 'You went after WikiLeaks' domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations,' all without the slightest legal authority. 'If that's the way governments get to behave, we can live with that.' "

Healy is too optimistic. The law is too vague. Nobody can depend on courts to defend freedom.

I have many links to Amazon.com on my websites, and I stand to make some money when people click my links and buy books from Amazon.com. I hope I don't lose my status as an Amazon affiliate by denouncing Amazon's cowardly unwillingness to stand up against government tyranny.

Please Don't Feed the Amazon - KN@PPSTER

A Day that Does Not Live in Infamy

Local blogger Randy Turner had the most interesting reflection on The "Day That Will Live in Infamy." Turner, a public school teacher, recalls the Q&A session following a talk by Dick Ferguson, retired President at Financial Federal Savings and Loan, to a middle school classroom. Ferguson was stationed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Turner recalls:

After he spoke to one of my eighth grade classes, he asked if the students had any questions. A girl in the back row, raised her hand and said, "Mr. Ferguson, your stories are so interesting. Who won that war?"

My horror grew as another student chipped in and said, "I'd like to know, too, Mr. Ferguson. Who won the war?"

Obviously the day does not live in infamy any more.

Perhaps government schools don't cover World War II until after the eighth grade.

But even then, students will not be told the truth about Pearl Harbor: that FDR knowingly permitted the attack on Pearl Harbor to take place. Not only that, but inciting Japan to attack was a crucial part of Roosevelt's foreign policy.

As we noted before, on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush wrote in his diary:

"The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."

Like FDR, Bush not only permitted 9/11 to take place, but making sure it took place was the linchpin of the Bush-Cheney foreign policy.

And government school students will not be told the infamous truth about World War II as a whole: the communists won the war.

Other notable articles du jour on Pearl Harbor:

It’s Pearl Harbor Day — Trot Out the Official Fable - The Beacon

Pearl Harbor: A Successful War Lie

Antiwar Radio: David Swanson - ScottHortonShow.com

Tuesday's Pearl Harbor Anniversary Spurs Reflection - Stanley Kober - Cato Institute: Commentary

Review:

2006: Pearl Harbor and 9-11

2007: Pearl Harbor, 1941-2001

2008: FDR and the Communists Won WWII

Swords into Plowshares

Pearl Harbor Archive - The Independent Institute

Missouri Boy on Jobs

Benjamin McAlester Anderson, Jr. was a well-known Chase economist during the New Deal.

Anderson (1886-1949) was born in Columbia, Missouri, and entered the University of Missouri in Columbia in 1902 and was awarded the A.B. degree in 1906. He was appointed professor of political economy and sociology at Missouri Valley College in Marshall in 1906 and was named as the head of the department of history and political economy at the State Normal School at Springfield the following year.

He went on to earn his A.M. degree in 1910 from the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University in 1911. The prestigious Hart, Schaffner & Marx prize in economics was awarded to him in 1910 for part of his dissertation that was subsequently published in 1911 as Social Value: a Study in Economic Theory, Critical and Constructive.

Anderson served on the faculty of Columbia University for two years and then at Harvard for five.

In 1918 he joined the National Bank of Commerce in New York City. In 1918 he joined the National Bank of Commerce in New York City. His book, Effects of the War on Money, Credit and Banking in France and the United States, was published in 1919. Chase National Bank hired Anderson in 1920 as economist and editor of the influential Chase Economic Bulletin. There he wrote a stream of learned articles critical of progressive policy in such diverse areas as money, credit, international economic policy, agriculture, taxation, war, government debt, and economic planning. He was a leading opponent of the New Deal and an enthusiastic supporter of a free market gold standard. He served as president of the Economists National Committee on Monetary Policy and often testified before Congress on matters of monetary and economic policy.

In 1939 he became professor of economics at the University of California at Los Angeles and was named the Connell professor of banking in 1946. He died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California just prior to the publication of his magnum opus, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914-1946, in which he draws the following conclusions on the ability of the government to create jobs:

• "Prior to 1924 we had not regarded it as a federal government function to make employment. Employment was a matter for the people themselves to work out."
  "When the federal government took over and undertook to solve the problem for them, grave disasters followed.
  "President Roosevelt inherited a huge volume of unemployment. He did not cure it. The figures for 1933 are worse than the figures for 1932. The years 1933 to 1939, inclusive, show unemployment exceeding 10 million for three years, including 1938, and show unemployment exceeding 9 million for five years out of the seven"
  "The historical record is damning. The New Deal, viewed as an economic policy designed to promote employment, is condemned by the historical and statistical record."
  "The New Deal policy ... had made capital timid in the extreme and had greatly retarded the application of new technology." (pp. 477-478)
• "... the Great Depression of 1930-1939 [arouse out of] the efforts of the governments, and very specially of the government of the United States, to play God." (p. 483)

Polyarchy Documents : Statism economy