'Atlas Shrugged' and Contemporary America

All individuals must effectively protect and defend capitalism if they seek to live in a society that respects individual rights, cherishes human ability, and demands the best in everyone. This is the major theme of the book entitled “Atlas Shrugged” authored by a Russian-born American philosopher Ayn Rand. Despite being published over fifty years ago in 1957, the book is still in print today and continues to influence young people from all nations.
In my own opinion, this fiction book of Ayn Rand about a feisty and strong-willed woman named Dagny Taggart, who persistently pursued the inventor of a mysterious motor, is actually a business book. Most of the book characters are capitalists like Dagny Taggart, the vice-president in charge of operation of the Taggart Intercontinental, Hank Rearden, the sole owner of a company that manufactures a new metal alloy, Francisco d’Anconia, the heir to a great wealth and who engages in ore mining, John Galt, the creator of a mysterious motor that generates electricity out of static energy, among others.
The book presents two kinds of people in business— those who only rely on their own ability and competence on the one hand, and those parasites who maintain connection with the powers-that-be and who get rich by bribery, graft and corruption and unfair competition on the other hand. The author is right in presenting in the book the value of capitalism which must be protected and supported by individuals if they want to improve their status economically and live peacefully with other human beings.
In a capitalist society, all able and competent individuals are permitted to improve their economic or financial standing through hard work, ability, competence, intellect, and skills. Competition is the standard of good in a true capitalist society wherein businesses compete with each other, wherein the government neither regulates the natural flow of trade and business nor favor any business or individual, and wherein the people offer their services to the highest bidder.

The strike
One of the most interesting parts of the book is the puzzling disappearance of wealthy and thriving businessmen in the United States. Nobody knows the whereabouts of these departed businessmen who decided to close their establishments and vanished. Among those disappeared who later on labeled by the Thompson government as deserters are namely, Ellis Wyatt, an oil mogul who abandoned his oil company in Colorado, Midas Mulligan, a flourishing banker who owned the valley where the strikers reside, Judge Narragansett, a judge who champions individual rights, Dan Conway, the owner of another railway in Colorado who vanished due to unfair competition.
The disappearance of these successful and morally upright capitalists popularized the expression “Who is John Galt,” which means do not ask a question that has no definite answer. The concept of the strike result in the following: a) loss of business confidence due to lack of suppliers and manufacturers of raw materials; b) rampant unemployment; c) monopoly by those corrupt businessmen who maintain Washington connection;’ d) inflation and price increase; e) more government regulations and socialist policies; f) lack of moral economic foundation; and g) economic collapse or depression.
The strikers took their way out of the corrupt social and political system because of the following factors: a) excessive government regulation; b) graft and corruption in the government system; c) unfair competition supported by laws like the ‘Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule’ that discourages competition; d) limitation of property rights and individual rights on the premise of “common good”; and e) replacement of capitalism by socialism.
This picture shows that honest and incorruptible people of ability will not exist in a corrupt society. The same is true with corrupt and dishonest individuals who will never exist in a moral and just society. In my opinion, capitalism is good because it produces only ‘the good,’ and it demands the best in everyone. All individual rights— the right to life, property, liberty, and to pursuit of happiness— are protected in a capitalist state. For example, workers in a capitalist society are paid according to their ability not according to their need. They are given incentives, bonuses, healthcare benefits, allowances, and fringe benefits, among others. In contrast, a socialist state regards its subject as mere fodders to be sacrificed to the whole community. That socialist slogan sums it all— “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

The motor
The book presented the following argument— that a single man can stop the motor of the world. The concept of man here should be interpreted as the one who ought to live and deserves to live on earth. In the book, Ayn Rand presented his ideal man in the character of John Galt, who is the inventor of the motor which produces electricity out of static energy. It was John Galt who started the strike. His friends— Francisco and Ragnar Danneskjold, the reverse of Robin Hood who takes away the loot from the parasites and returns them to their true owners— followed suit.
It was Dagny Taggart who found the motor abandoned by its inventor in the crumbling factory of the long defunct Twentieth Century Motor Company. The Company itself presents a symbolism. A formerly successful company that treasured competence and human ability, the Twentieth Century went into the hands of people who drove it to the ground. The last management of the company subscribed to socialist ideals. They hired people because the latter needed job and not because of their ability and competence. They rewarded need rather than ability. John Galt could not exist in such a situation, so he left.
The motor represents the product of human mind. The through man’s intellect and ability, man can create what is usually regarded as ‘the impossible.’ The abandoned motor means one thing— that people who seek the death of capitalism do not deserve to benefit from its by-products and positive consequences.

Contradiction by other authors
Ayn Rand’s ideas in Atlas Shrugged are strongly opposed to many political and economic theories of her time, as well as to those of the contemporary era. The book’s concept of capitalism directly attacks communism, socialism, altruism, and statism. In fact in the book, America is depicted as slowly descending towards socialism and dictatorship. In a communist state, there is no such thing as individual rights because of the concept of collectivism and altruism. This means that most rights and power are concentrated on a small unit or collective. This is opposed to the idea of capitalism that regards competition as good and excessive government intervention and anti-competition laws as evil.
I agree with this argument. Only capitalism can produce the good. Because of competition, prices of goods and commodities decline. Because of competition, people are assured of quality products and services. In China where most businesses are owned by the state, most of their products are defective, of low quality, and some items and food products were even found to be poisonous. Under a capitalist system, the best and the competent may be able to trade their services to the highest bidder. Competent individuals are rewarded according to their output and not according to their necessities.
The book opposes Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. I do not see anything to oppose and contradict in this book because I believe in the moral justifications of capitalism. Those who are opposed to it are either blinded by their conservative beliefs like Whittaker Chambers of the conservative National Review who rather focused on the author rather than the contents of the book. Chambers’ review is not actually a book review;’ it was rather a review on the personality of the author whom he branded as “godless” (Whittaker, 1957).

Conclusion
Generally, capitalism is good; however, there are people who are confused simply because they do not actually understand its meaning, concept, and moral goals. As stated above, the book delineates the two groups of people in business— the genuine capitalists and the business parasites. Between the two, it is the first who must prevail, because their ideals truly defend the cause and goals of capitalism. However, if the other group prevailed, it will be the end of capitalism and the birth of an economic felony called monopoly.
Many believe that monopoly is caused by capitalism. Monopoly will not exist in a capitalist society that supports competition. Monopoly exists because of government intervention through business lobbyists, bribery, manipulation, government subsidy, granting of contracts and licenses to those who have political connection, among others.
So basically, Atlas Shrugged gives us a grim picture in case capitalism fails. This is what is happening in the United States following the collapse of the stock market. Economic depression occurs because of government intervention and incompetent economic policies. Business collapse exists because contracts, subsidies, grants, and licenses go to the incompetent or those who occasion expenses in the corridors of power. As a result, The Bush administration proposed a bailout which will in turn be shouldered by middle class taxpayers. This is to say that economic collapse is highly inevitable if there are business parasites who can easily extract lucrative government contracts and hefty licenses from the government.
Therefore, I recommend this book to all individuals who love to live and who strongly protect their individual rights. If people in power succeeded in killing capitalism, then men of evil intent can easily establish monopoly, abrogate individual rights in favor of the so-called common good or national or economic interest, and establish a system of totalitarian rule.

References:
Chambers, W. (1957). Big sister is watching you. National Review, 28 December.
Rand, A. (1992). Atlas shrugged. Centennial Edition. New York: Signet

A Nation of Servants?: A Big Lesson for Filipinos

Most Filipino people have openly denounced the politically loaded statements made by a Hong Kong columnist who called the Philippines a “nation of servants." But they protested without thinking, and this is the worst tragedy of this melodrama. All television stations, daily broadsheets, and tabloids bannered this derogatory column of one misguided communist patriot based in Hong Kong. Now some lawmakers in the House of Representatives expressed their outrage over the statements made by HK Magazine’s columnist Chip Tsao.
I would like to share my two cents regarding this outrageous issue, and I’d like to say that some really missed the point. Those deprecating comments made by communist Tsao should be taken as a lesson by the Philippine government. In his column, Tsao was really trying to show who the boss is— that being the master of thousands of Filipina maids and factory workers, Hong Kong-China should be the one to call the shots. Tsai was trying to say, “know your status in life and obey only your master.”
Rather than protest and shout in indignation, the Filipino people, most especially those in the government sector, should take it as a challenge to improve Philippine’s economy. The Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo Government should start this process by fighting graft and corruption. But it seems that this proposal is impossible because almost all of the people around and behind the president is benefiting from graft and corrupt practices. The only solution to our economic mess is real free-market system.
Under the Arroyo administration, the Philippines has become a semi-socialist nation under a corrupt government. The spirit of free-market capitalism is now inexistent in the Philippines because only those people who established close political and economic ties with the government enjoy subsidies, licenses, contracts and favors. Take the case of one of president Arroyo’s political aides, Mike Defensor, who was able to corner a multi-million contract despite his lack of experience in his line of business.
In the Philippines, most businessmen trade favors, not goods, a system that is prevalent in a communist country like China. I see some irony in this particular issue for several reasons.
First, the Arroyo government had sealed some sweetheart deals with China over the past years. Some of these deals include the controversial multi-million dollar National Broadband Network (NBN) project. The Arroyo government also received multi-billion dollar loans from communist China. Since the Philippines under president Arroyo received billion dollars of loans, it had to award beefy projects to the Chinese government. It’s political quid pro quo. Now, Mrs. Arroyo and her political aides should be ashamed to call Chip Tsao hypocrite. They’re all hypocrites!
Secondly, look at the lawmakers who openly expressed their outrage over Tsao’s statement. Are they not ashamed of their own skin? Do you see some contradictions? Is it not ironic that most communist and socialist lawmakers are the ones denouncing this misguided and politically intoxicated HK communist? These people wanted to reverse the law of causality. They ignored that the law of identity exists— that A is A.
The Philippines is not a capitalist economy; it is mixed economy, which is quickly embracing communist ideals. Who’s to blame? Blame some of the so-called Philippine’s top universities like University of the Philippines, Ateneo De Manila University, University of Santo Tomas, San Beda, De La Salle University, to name a few! Why? Because these self-claimed elite schools preach the ideals of altruism and collectivism. In case you don’t know, communism survives on these ideals. Check your premise and study the law of identity.
Now before you try to openly express your outrage, make an effort to determine why you should get mad. You have no right to get mad if you’re guilty politically and ideologically— which means Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros and her colleagues in the House of Representatives have no right to protest if they believed in the ideals of socialism and communism— which means Mrs. Arroyo, her husband and her political allies have no darn right to gripe if they openly pushed, consented to, supported, and benefited from a number of multi-million dollar sweetheart deals with China. A is A!
Now, who is the guiltiest of all?!

The following is Tsai’s column titled War At Home:

"The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen on board. We can live with that—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That’s no big problem—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.
"But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: there are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.
"As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell every one of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.
"Grimly, I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.
"Oh yes. The government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East. "They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher. Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout “China, Madam/Sir” loudly whenever they hear the word “Spratly.” They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, “Long live Chairman Mao!” at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution. I’m not sure if that’s going a bit too far, at least for the time.

Gold and Economic Freedom

Personal Note: This splendid article is not mine; it was written by Alan Greenspan, former chair of the Federal Reserve. Before he became the head of the Fed whose goal is to destroy Capitalism and print paper money out of nothing, Greenspan was a staunch believer of the gold standard. But this man who could have been lost his way and sold his soul to the vultures of fiat money. I don’t think Mr. Greenspan will ever recognize this well-written, spirited article he wrote five decades ago, so I am now posting it not because I believe in the man who created it, but in the spirit of the article inspired by Ayn Rand.

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense-perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire — that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.
In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society.
Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium of exchange, is universally acceptable to all participants in an exchange economy as payment for their goods or services, and can, therefore, be used as a standard of market value and as a store of value, i.e., as a means of saving.
The existence of such a commodity is a precondition of a division of labor economy. If men did not have some commodity of objective value which was generally acceptable as money, they would have to resort to primitive barter or be forced to live on self-sufficient farms and forgo the inestimable advantages of specialization. If men had no means to store value, i.e., to save, neither long-range planning nor exchange would be possible.
What medium of exchange will be acceptable to all participants in an economy is not determined arbitrarily. First, the medium of exchange should be durable. In a primitive society of meager wealth, wheat might be sufficiently durable to serve as a medium, since all exchanges would occur only during and immediately after the harvest, leaving no value-surplus to store. But where store-of-value considerations are important, as they are in richer, more civilized societies, the medium of exchange must be a durable commodity, usually a metal. A metal is generally chosen because it is homogeneous and divisible: every unit is the same as every other and it can be blended or formed in any quantity. Precious jewels, for example, are neither homogeneous nor divisible. More important, the commodity chosen as a medium must be a luxury. Human desires for luxuries are unlimited and, therefore, luxury goods are always in demand and will always be acceptable. Wheat is a luxury in underfed civilizations, but not in a prosperous society. Cigarettes ordinarily would not serve as money, but they did in post-World War II Europe where they were considered a luxury. The term “luxury good” implies scarcity and high unit value. Having a high unit value, such a good is easily portable; for instance, an ounce of gold is worth a half-ton of pig iron.
In the early stages of a developing money economy, several media of exchange might be used, since a wide variety of commodities would fulfill the foregoing conditions. However, one of the commodities will gradually displace all others, by being more widely acceptable. Preferences on what to hold as a store of value, will shift to the most widely acceptable commodity, which, in turn, will make it still more acceptable. The shift is progressive until that commodity becomes the sole medium of exchange. The use of a single medium is highly advantageous for the same reasons that a money economy is superior to a barter economy: it makes exchanges possible on an incalculably wider scale.
Whether the single medium is gold, silver, seashells, cattle, or tobacco is optional, depending on the context and development of a given economy. In fact, all have been employed, at various times, as media of exchange. Even in the present century, two major commodities, gold and silver, have been used as international media of exchange, with gold becoming the predominant one. Gold, having both artistic and functional uses and being relatively scarce, has significant advantages over all other media of exchange. Since the beginning of World War I, it has been virtually the sole international standard of exchange. If all goods and services were to be paid for in gold, large payments would be difficult to execute and this would tend to limit the extent of a society’s divisions of labor and specialization. Thus a logical extension of the creation of a medium of exchange is the development of a banking system and credit instruments (bank notes and deposits) which act as a substitute for, but are convertible into, gold.
A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus to create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the production requirements of the economy. Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits (which means that he holds claims to gold rather than gold as security of his deposits). But the amount of loans which he can afford to make is not arbitrary: he has to gauge it in relation to his reserves and to the status of his investments.
When banks loan money to finance productive and profitable endeavors, the loans are paid off rapidly and bank credit continues to be generally available. But when the business ventures financed by bank credit are less profitable and slow to pay off, bankers soon find that their loans outstanding are excessive relative to their gold reserves, and they begin to curtail new lending, usually by charging higher interest rates. This tends to restrict the financing of new ventures and requires the existing borrowers to improve their profitability before they can obtain credit for further expansion. Thus, under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy’s stability and balanced growth.
When gold is accepted as the medium of exchange by most or all nations, an unhampered free international gold standard serves to foster a world-wide division of labor and the broadest international trade. Even though the units of exchange (the dollar, the pound, the franc, etc.) differ from country to country, when all are defined in terms of gold the economies of the different countries act as one — so long as there are no restraints on trade or on the movement of capital. Credit, interest rates, and prices tend to follow similar patterns in all countries. For example, if banks in one country extend credit too liberally, interest rates in that country will tend to fall, inducing depositors to shift their gold to higher-interest paying banks in other countries. This will immediately cause a shortage of bank reserves in the “easy money” country, inducing tighter credit standards and a return to competitively higher interest rates again.
A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World Was I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.
But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing a business decline-argued economic interventionists — why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely — it was claimed — there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913. It consisted of twelve regional Federal Reserve banks nominally owned by private bankers, but in fact government sponsored, controlled, and supported. Credit extended by these banks is in practice (though not legally) backed by the taxing power of the federal government. Technically, we remained on the gold standard; individuals were still free to own gold, and gold continued to be used as bank reserves. But now, in addition to gold, credit extended by the Federal Reserve banks (”paper reserves”) could serve as legal tender to pay depositors.
When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve’s attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain’s gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates.
The “Fed” succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market — triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
With a logic reminiscent of a generation earlier, statists argued that the gold standard was largely to blame for the credit debacle which led to the Great Depression. If the gold standard had not existed, they argued, Britain’s abandonment of gold payments in 1931 would not have caused the failure of banks all over the world. (The irony was that since 1913, we had been, not on a gold standard, but on what may be termed “a mixed gold standard”; yet it is gold that took the blame.) But the opposition to the gold standard in any form — from a growing number of welfare-state advocates — was prompted by a much subtler insight: the realization that the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state). Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.
Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy’s tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government’s promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds which — through a complex series of steps — the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual deposit, i.e., as the equivalent of what was formerly a deposit of gold. The holder of a government bond or of a bank deposit created by paper reserves believes that he has a valid claim on a real asset. But the fact is that there are now more claims outstanding than real assets. The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy’s books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion.
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.

America: An Obituary

The United States of America is no longer the nation founded by its great founding fathers. It’s no longer the nation of laws, of the brave and the free, and of civil liberties. What we know as the USA today is a possessed territory run by mystic men of evil power, fueled by an evil order, governed by an evil code of morality, and motivated by an evil purpose.
This country was founded by men who believed in individual rights, in civil liberties, and in the essence of freedom. At a time when the whole of Europe was engulfed by collectivist monarchs and corrupted by men of looters persuasion, America’s founding fathers created, established and developed a nation that would soon become an antidote to ideological bromides that poisoned the world.
America rose from the serene prairie of its 13 states, mounted a battle against its British colonizers, established an order based on objective constitution, and adopted an honest monetary system that would represent the industry, competence, and greatness of its people. It fought the greatest war this earth has ever known. It fought not merely war against slavery, heavy taxation, and collectivism. It was a war against an evil ideology that effectively stagnated progress in Europe and the whole world.
It was the United States that introduced the most moral constitution that guarantees individual rights. It is the first nation in the world that recognizes man’s right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. With this credo, which was never hampered by contradictions, America achieved progress, economically, technologically, and militarily. By adopting an honest monetary system backed by gold, the United States showed the world the meaning of progress and the true essence of freedom.
For hundreds of years, the whole of Europe was ruled by collectivist monarchs funded by men of evil purpose whose intention was to destroy the long-established honest money system. But for hundreds of years the whole of Europe and the world were trapped in a state of stagnation, beholden to a system of deceit, of murder, of plunder. Without man’s right to life, with liberty regarded as evil, and with property rights perceived as immoral, that part of history— when the world was clutched by mysticism, royal plunder, and aristocracy of pull— never saw progress as progress was effectively waylaid by men’s way of thinking and by society’s evil structure.
But in a very short span of time, America, which effectively reversed men’s course of thinking, single-handedly pulled the world out of mysticism and global poverty. It was the United States that showed the world that progress can be achieved by the spirit of individualism— that it can be attained with self-interest as a moral virtue and not by welfare statism, or by somnambulistic government interference. America effectively reversed the code of morality— that self-interest and not need is man’s moral motivation— that sacrifice is evil— that big government is immoral— that man is an end in himself.
But did you ever know what made the United States the greatest nation in the world? Its Constitution. A constitution that recognizes man’s right to his life and liberty puts man above any collective or group— that justice means the observance of due process and legal system means the existence of rational legal procedures and codes. A constitution that guarantees property rights indubitably invites the greatest and the brightest in the world to practice their profession, develop their skills, and create technological wonders. A constitution that respects man’s right to pursuit of happiness states that man is an end in himself.
But did you ever know what determines a nation’s life and death? The answer— its monetary system. Those men of evil purpose whose code of morality is based only on their evil understanding of self-interest knew the answer to this question long ago and acted on the same with utmost cleverness and impiety. They— whose successors are now in control of the world’s monetary system— knew that money is the root of all goodness— that money is the source of life and virtues.
Money is the source of man’s virtues. But today we hear people whine that money is now the root of all evil— that money goes only to the wicked, the plunderer, and the corrupt! This is not surprising because they simply speak the language of our time. They do not have an objective understanding of reality simply because they believed in historical accounts based on lies, deceptions, and illusion.
In the past when money was still backed by gold, silver and precious stones, money simply represented man’s virtues. Man’s virtues such as competence, skills, ability, knowledge, industry, and patience have values which must be paid with a thing of real value like gold.
Man does not live by mooching, by using pity to make people guilty of their virtues, and by deception. Man’s growth cannot be achieved by collective efforts, otherwise that would send the best and the competent to sacrificial altars, to be sacrificed for the common good. He does not live by bread alone; he lives by having a righteous philosophy for living on earth.
But a few evil men whose purpose was to reverse the law of causality attempted to turn money against man, and did. These men of looters persuasion effectively accomplished the dream of their predecessors in 1913 when— after a deliberately triggered economic recession due to a synchronized liquidity crisis— the Federal Reserve System was effectively sold to the American people as a solution to the nation’s economic trouble straight from the Jekyll island where it was created by men like Paul Warburg, Sen. Nelson Aldrich, J.P. Morgan, and their pals to the great walls of New York.
The American people that time failed to see the men behind the Federal Reserve Act and to analyze the events that preceded its creation. The people believed what they were told— that the Federal Reserved Act’s purpose was to “break the money trust.” No one dared to use his own mind. Some did, but were deceived by the absurd and strategically written wordings of the Act. How could you fight an Act whose aim was to break the money trust, to bring money back to the people, to serve the common good? How could you mount an informed opposition against it if the men behind the money trust exhibited their expressed disagreement with it? Why fight the act if most academics, intellectuals and media columnists said it was for the good of everybody, for the benefit of the nation? Why oppose it if it is euphemistically named “Federal Reserve”— it is a government institution, anyway? Idiot! Idiocy is so generous a word to describe the people who lived during that stretch of history.
The US President who signed the Act— Woodrow Wilson— soon expressed his regret after he realized he committed the worst treason a leader could ever commit in history. Wilson said after betraying his own people and the nation of John Adams and Andrew Jackson: “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” But it was too late.
With the death of the US dollar, America was also buried six feet under. As former US Pres. Thomas Jefferson said: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
Quo vadis, America?

Quotations Related to this Article:
“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” – Mayer Amschel Rothschild
“Who controls the food supply controls the people, who controls the energy can control whole continents, and he who controls money controls the world.” – Henry Kissinger
“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” – John Adams
“The mischief springs from the power which the monied interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges which they have succeeded in obtaining…and unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away.” – Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, 1837
“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.” – John F. Kennedy
“I can say—not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic roots—that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.” – Ayn Rand
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A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus to create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the production requirements of the economy. Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits (which means that he holds claims to gold rather than gold as security of his deposits). But the amount of loans which he can afford to make is not arbitrary: he has to gauge it in relation to his reserves and to the status of his investments.” — Former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan before be became an enemy of Capitalism

No, I Strongly Disagree, Dr. Peikoff

I strongly disagree with Dr. Leonard Peikoff’s ideological stance on Iran. Peikoff, the founder of Ayn Rand Institute and the intellectual heir of Ayn Rand, has been suggesting that the United States should deal with Iran and the Iranian theocratic government as soon as possible. It is his opinion that the US has the moral duty to protect itself under the principle of self-defense and that being the world's superpower, it has the moral duty to get rid of Iran by any means and as fast as practicable. I try to be very objective and clear on this, because I deal with a sensitive issue and because I believe in the ideals of Ayn Rand, the author of two bestselling books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Being a defender of Objectivism, the philosophy created and popularized by Ms Rand, Peikoff is standing on an ideological platform that could influence America’s foreign policy and military decisions. Although he said that since he is a civilian, he lets the US defense to draw the best military strategy that can be used to deal with Iran and to ensure less American casualties.
Dr. Peikoff appeared on the talk show of Bill O’Reilly last year to express his stand on the “war” issue (please click this link to watch the Youtube video). In that interview, Peikoff said that Afghanistan should not have been made the battle place. He said, to wit: “If we hit the right country, which is Iran, with the full effective force of the United States and unseated the Iranian government and made clear the principle why I say you would terrify the terrorists, governments, and the rest of the… (garbled).”
In response to this statement, O’Reilly, who ironically supported the invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq, asked, “what if you’re wrong?”
Peikoff responded: “You don’t ignite a global conflict by exterminating an enemy that’s trying to exterminate you. Otherwise you can say that I’m afraid of the repercussion of defending myself.”
Very well said, but there’s seems to be a colossal problem in this simple statement of Peikoff. So let’s try to know how Dr. Peikoff thinks in order to determine whether his premise is correct or flawed.
Dr. Peikoff in this video speaks of self-defense, terrorism, nuclear warfare, and the duty of the US to exterminate Iran by any means and at any cost, albeit with the assurance that there should be less American casualties.
There is a belief here that Iran has been and is trying to “exterminate” the United States. Because of this belief it is now the moral duty of the US military to defend its territory and its people by “exterminating” the right target, which is Iran. Reports, coming mostly from American media, revealed that Iran has been plotting to wage war on the United States. At this point in time, the Iranian government is pushing for its nuclear program on the ground of technological advancement. Its current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is fully aware of the US government’s plan to include Iran in its war list.
But what cannot be denied is the statement of Ahmadinejad on Israel. His exact words were: “As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map.” This freaked most people in the world particularly the Jews, Americans and the rest of Europe who then called for the total cancellation of Iran’s uranium enrichment and nuclear programs.
I agree with Dr. Peikoff to some extent. Most Objectivists said that Iran must be stopped because it is anti-reason and because it propagates Islamic fundamentalism that is dangerous to the world. This proposal is largely based on ideological differences. But what is unthinkable is when you mount an aggression against your neighbor just because he is a defender of anti-reason and that his beliefs, based on your judgment or opinion, is a threat to your life or existence. Unless this belief is not concretized, one cannot act merely on beliefs, conjecture, or the whims of the moment. You cannot stop or harm your neighbor just because you think he has the intention to kill you. Unless that intention is put into action, that’s the time you have to defend your life, property and liberty at all cost.
But this is not just the matter which I do not agree with Dr. Peikoff.
There is one statement made by Peikoff that totally struck me. In that same interview, he said: “You overstate the threat of people who destroyed the World Trade Towers?” This is not clear to me, but if I have to infer the gist of this statement from the whole subject of the interview, it seems that Peikoff blamed the destruction of the World Trade towers on Iranians or the Iranian government. Where is objective reality here? The official report of the Bush administration states that Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda group were responsible for the September 11 attack. Now it seems that Dr. Peikoff is trying to input his own historical account on this particular matter by putting the blame on the Iranian government. Is it not a distortion of historical reality?
Sure the Iranian government is one of the worst regimes in history. The terms individual rights, civil liberties, bill of rights among others are totally banned or immoral in this totalitarian country. But to invade or to turn it into rubbles on the ground of this notion is unthinkable. The United States is known for invading and destroying communist and socialist regimes. Actually it even advertised this track record and told the world that it has the duty to spread democracy. But the US is also known for installing and supporting murderous dictators who slaughtered their own people, who abolished individual rights and who did not practice what the Americans preach. Before invading Iraq the US under the Bush Sr. administration helped Saddam Hussein establish absolute dictatorship in Iraq. Before invading Afghanistan the US trained the Talibans to fight the Russians in the past. To understand how the US betrayed the goals of its founding fathers, the following is a list of the dictators it helped install and supported.

This is the reason why I believe that we must seek objective reality— objective historical reality in particular— with respect to this discussion. The question is not whether the world should agree with Dr. Peikoff. The question that must be answered objectively should be the following:
Who are the people responsible for the destruction of the World Trade towers that killed thousands of people?
Why is it that the Bush administration refused to conduct or allow for an objective 9/11 investigation?
What is the motive behind this destruction?
I believe that objective answers to these objective questions will lead to man’s understanding of the current predicament of the world and his objective anticipation or projection of the future. If we cannot, or refuse to, understand the past by simply accepting official or governmental pronouncements and justifications on faith we can never understand the present and can never make objective judgments of what we perceive as “objective reality.”
Objective reality can be destroyed or distorted. A lone freak like Emmanuel Kant can destroy it through mangled or anti-reason philosophy. Evil men can distort historical reality by distorting history.
The fate of the world now hangs in the balance because of September 11. So many wars and so many lies have been waged and perpetrated because of September 11. We cannot solve the problem of the moment by do-goodism and by irrationality. Part of the solution is to follow September 11: Who did it?— why the cover up?— why the spread of lies and half-truths?
Dr. Peikoff staunchly believed the terrorists who exist in his mind are responsible for the September 11 attack. He now tries to use this belief or conviction as a justification to “exterminate” Iran by any means necessary.
But the question is: what if the real terrorists are just under the nose of America?
Late Aaron Russo, a businessman and a former pal of Nicholas Rockefeller, made an statement before he died that some wealthy people who controlled America’s monetary system predicted the happening of a great event nine months before 9/11 (please check this video to confirm this statement). Russo tried to run for president in 2004, but lost.Why do we need historical objective reality? To have an objective judgment of reality. We can never have an objective judgment or opinion if we are deprived of historical truth! The cycle of lies will go on forever, and the true perpetrator of lies and the conspirator of evil deeds will go on with impunity— unpunished and even regarded as defenders of truth.