In early 1976 the National Enquirer published a story that shocked the elite political class in Washington, D.C. The story disclosed that a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was a divorced spouse of a high CIA official named Cord Meyer, had been engaged in a two-year sexual affair with President John F. Kennedy. By the time the article was published, JFK had been assassinated, and Mary Pinchot Meyer herself was dead, a victim of a murder that took place in Washington on October 12, 1964.

The murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer is the subject of a fascinating and gripping new book by Peter Janney, who was childhood friends with Mary Meyer’s three sons and whose father himself was a high CIA official. Janney’s father and mother socialized in the 1950s with the Meyers and other high-level CIA officials.

Janney’s book, Mary’s Mosaic, is one of those books that you just can’t put down once you start reading it. It has everything a reader could ever want in a work of nonfiction – politics, love, sex, war, intrigue, history, culture, murder, spies, racism, and perhaps the biggest criminal trial in the history of our nation’s capital.

Just past noon on the day of the murder, Mary Meyer was on her daily walk on the C&O Canal Trail near the Key Bridge in Washington, D.C. Someone grabbed her and shot a .38-caliber bullet into the left side of her head. Meyer continued struggling despite the almost certainly fatal wound, so the murderer shot her again, this time downward through her right shoulder. The second bullet struck directly into her heart, killing her instantly.

A 21-year-old black man named Raymond Crump Jr., who lived in one of the poorest sections of D.C., was arrested near the site of the crime and charged with the murder. Crump denied committing the crime.

There were two eyewitnesses. One witness, Henry Wiggins Jr., said that he saw a black man standing over the body wearing a beige jacket, a dark cap, dark pants, and dark shoes, and then he identified Crump as the man he had seen. Another witness, William L. Mitchell, said that prior to the murder, he had been jogging on the trail when he saw a black man dressed in the same manner following Meyer a short time before she was killed.

When Crump was arrested, he was wearing dark pants and dark shoes. Police later found his beige jacket and dark cap in the water near the trail.

It certainly did not look good for Ray Crump, as he himself said to the police. Nonetheless, he steadfastly denied having anything to do with the murder.

Crump’s family retained one of D.C.’s most renowned and respected attorneys, an African American woman named Dovey Johnson Roundtree, who was around 50 years old at the time. (See Justice Older than the Law: The Life of Dovey Johnson Roundtree, an autobiography co-authored by Katie McCabe.) Roundtree met with Crump and became absolutely convinced of his innocence. She agreed to take the case for a fee of one dollar.

When the case came to trial, the prosecution, which was led by one of the Justice Department’s top prosecutors, called 27 witnesses and introduced more than 50 exhibits. Dovey Roundtree presented 3 character witnesses and then rested her case, without calling Ray Crump to the stand.

The jury returned a verdict of not guilty.

As Janney documents slowly and meticulously, the case against Ray Crump had all the makings of a good frame, but not a perfect one. For example, the two eyewitnesses had stated that the black man they saw was about 5 inches taller than Ray Crump and about 40 pounds heavier. Moreover, there wasn’t a drop of blood on Ray Crump’s clothing. Furthermore, there wasn’t a bit of Crump’s hair, blood, or bodily fluids on the clothing or body of Mary Meyer. Despite an extensive search of the area, including a draining of the nearby canal and a search of the Potomac, the police never found a gun.

After 35 years of researching and investigating the case, Janney pins the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer on the Central Intelligence Agency. What would have been the CIA’s motive? To silence an independent-minded woman who apparently did not accept the official lone-nut explanation for the assassination of John F. Kennedy – and who had apparently concluded instead that Kennedy was the victim of a high-level conspiracy involving officials of the CIA.

Immediately after Kennedy’s assassination, Meyer telephoned famed LSD guru Timothy Leary, with whom she had consulted regarding the use of LSD, not only for herself but also for unidentified important men in Washington to whom she wanted to expose the drug. Highly emotional, she exclaimed to Leary, “They couldn’t control him anymore. He was changing too fast. They’ve covered everything up. I gotta come see you. I’m afraid. Be careful.”

Meyer was referring to the dramatic shift that took place within President Kennedy after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the seminal event that had brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. As James W. Douglass carefully documents in his book JFK and the Unspeakable, a book that Janney mentions with favor, Kennedy was seared by that experience, especially given that his own children might well have been killed in the nuclear holocaust.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy began moving America in a dramatically different direction; he intended to end the Cold War through personal negotiations with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, who desired to do the same thing. The idea was that the United States and the Soviet Union would peacefully coexist, much as communist China and the United States do today. Kennedy’s dramatic shift was exemplified by his “Peace Speech” at American University, a speech that Soviet officials permitted to be broadcast all across the Soviet Union. That was followed by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which in turn was followed by an executive order signed by Kennedy that began the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam.

Perhaps most significant, however, were Kennedy’s secret personal communications with Khrushchev and Kennedy’s secret personal outreach to Cuban president Fidel Castro, with the aim of ending the Cold War and normalizing relations with Cuba. Those personal communications were kept secret from the American people, but, more significantly, Kennedy also tried to keep them secret from the U.S. military and the CIA.

Why would the president do that?

Because by that time, Kennedy had lost confidence in both the Pentagon and the CIA. He didn’t trust them, and he had no confidence in their counsel or judgment. He believed that they would do whatever was necessary to obstruct his attempts to end the Cold War and normalize relations with Cuba – which of course could have spelled the end of the U.S. national-security state, including both the enormous military-industrial complex and the CIA. Don’t forget, after all, that after the disaster at the Bay of Pigs and after Kennedy had fired CIA director Alan Dulles and two other high CIA officials, he had also promised to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

Janney’s book places Meyer’s murder within the context of the Kennedy murder, which had taken place 11 months before, in November 1963. The book brilliantly weaves the two cases into an easily readable, easily understandable analysis.

In Janney’s book, there are two revelations about Mary Meyer’s murder that I found especially disturbing:

1. The eyewitness who claimed to be jogging on the trail when he saw a black man following Mary Meyer does not seem to be who he claimed to be.

The man told the police that his name was William L. Mitchell and that he was a U.S. Army 2nd lieutenant who was stationed at the Pentagon.

Janney relates that according to a contemporaneous “news clip” in the Washington Star, by the time the trial began, Mitchell was no longer in the military and instead was now serving as a math instructor at Georgetown University.

Janney’s investigation revealed, however, that Georgetown had no record of Mitchell’s having taught there. His investigation also revealed that the CIA oftentimes used Georgetown University as a cover for its agents.

Janney investigated the personal address that Mitchell gave both to the police and at trial. It turns out that the building served as a CIA “safe house.” What was Mitchell, who supposedly was a U.S. Army lieutenant and then a Georgetown math instructor, doing living in a CIA “safe house”?

Janney was never able to locate Mitchell. You would think that a man who had testified in one of the most important murder cases in D.C. history would have surfaced, from time to time, to talk about his role in the case. Or that friends or relatives of his would have popped up and said that he had told them about his role in the trial.

Nope. It’s as if William L. Mitchell just disappeared off the face of the earth – well, except for some circumstantial evidence that Janney uncovered indicating that Mitchell was actually an agent of the CIA.

For example, in 1993 an author named Leo Damore, who had written a book entitled Senatorial Privilege about the Ted Kennedy/Chappaquiddick episode, was conducting his own investigation into Mary Pinchot Meyer’s murder, with the aim of writing a book on the case. Damore ended up committing suicide before finishing his book. But in the process of his investigation, he telephoned his lawyer, a former federal judge named Jimmy Smith, telling Smith that after a long, unsuccessful attempt to locate Mitchell, Damore had finally received a telephone call from a man identifying himself as Mitchell. According to Smith’s written notes of the conversation, a copy of which are at the back of Janney’s book, the man purporting to be Mitchell admitted to having murdered Mary Pinchot Meyer as part of a CIA plot to silence her.

In 1998, an author named Nina Burleigh wrote her own book about Meyer’s murder, entitled A Very Private Woman, in which she concluded that Crump really had committed the murder despite his acquittal.

Just recently, Burleigh published a critical review of Janney’s book at The Daily Beast, in which she acknowledges the likelihood that given the large amount of evidence that has been uncovered over the past decade, the CIA did, in fact, play a role in the assassination of President Kennedy.

In her review, however, Burleigh ridiculed the notion that the CIA would use its assassin in the Meyer case to also serve as a witness to the murder. It’s a fair enough critique, especially given that the information is hearsay on hearsay and Damore isn’t alive to relate the details of his purported telephone conversation with Mitchell or to provide a tape recording of the exchange.

But what I found fascinating is that Burleigh failed to confront the other half of the problem: even if Mitchell wasn’t the assassin, there is still the problem of his possibly having been a fake witness who provided manufactured and perjured testimony in a federal criminal proceeding.

I couldn’t understand how Burleigh could fail to see how important that point is. I figured I’d go take a look at her book. Imagine my surprise when a search for “Mitchell” in the Kindle edition turned up no results. I asked myself, How is that possible? How could this author totally fail to mention the name of one of the two eyewitnesses in the case?

So, I decided to read through her book to see if I could come up with an answer. It turns out that she describes Mitchell simply as a “jogger” (without mentioning his name) who said that he had seen a black man following Meyer and described the clothing the man was wearing. What is bizarre is that while she did point out, repeatedly, the name of the other eyewitness – Henry Wiggins Jr. – not once does she mention the name of the “jogger.” The omission is conspicuous and almost comical, given sentences such as this: “Wiggins and the jogger both guessed the presumed killer’s height at five foot eight” and “The shoes gave Crump the extra inches of height to make him the size described by Wiggins and the jogger.”

Why this strange treatment of one of the two important eye witnesses in the case? Only Burleigh can answer that one. But given her extensive investigation of the case, I wish she would have included in her critique of Janney’s book a detailed account of the efforts, if any, she made to locate “the jogger” and the fruits, if any, of those efforts. Perhaps The Daily Beast would be willing to commission Burleigh to write a supplemental article to that effect.

We should keep in mind that a criminal-justice system depends on the integrity of the process. If one side or the other feels free to use fake witnesses and perjured testimony with impunity, knowing that no one within the government will ever investigate or prosecute it, then the entire criminal-justice system becomes worthless or, even worse, tyrannical.

Prior to the publication of his book at the beginning of April, Janney issued a press release in which he stated that he planned to mail a request to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to reopen the investigation into the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer based on the evidence that Janney uncovered as part of his research for the book.

He need not bother. In 1973, nine years after the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, 31-year-old American journalist Charles Horman was murdered in Chile during the U.S.-supported coup that brought military strongman Augusto Pinochet into power. Twenty-six years later – 1999 – U.S. officials released a State Department memorandum confessing the CIA’s participation in Horman’s murder. The CIA’s motive? Apparently to silence Horman, who intended to publicly disclose the role of the U.S. military and the CIA in the Chilean coup. Despite the official acknowledgment by the State Department of CIA complicity in the murder of this young American, not one single subpoena has ever been issued by the Justice Department or Congress seeking to find out who the CIA agents who murdered Horman were, why they murdered him, and whether they did so on orders from above.

How much trouble would it be for the Justice Department to issue subpoenas to the Pentagon and the CIA for all records relating to William L. Mitchell, including military and CIA service records and last known addresses? Or a subpoena for records relating to the CIA “safe house” in which Mitchell resided? Or a subpoena for records pertaining to the CIA’s use of Georgetown University as a cover for CIA agents? Or a subpoena to Georgetown University for records relating to William L. Mitchell and records relating to the CIA’s use of Georgetown University as a cover for CIA agents?

No trouble at all. But the chances of it occurring are nil.

2. The second especially disturbing part of Janney’s book relates to Mary Pinchot Meyer’s diary. On either the night of Meyer’s murder or the following morning, the CIA’s counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton, burglarized Meyer’s home and art studio and stole her personal diary, which very likely contained detailed descriptions about her affair with President Kennedy. It also might have contained her suspicions that Kennedy had been the victim of a high-level assassination plot orchestrated by the CIA. Angleton took the diary with the aim of destroying it, but it’s still not certain what exactly he did with it.

Angleton later claimed that his actions were done at the request of Meyer’s close friend, Anne Truitt, whom Meyer had supposedly entrusted with the diary in the event anything happened to her. But Truitt had no legal authority to authorize Angleton or anyone else to break into Meyer’s house or studio and take possession of any of her personal belongings.

Unless the diary ever shows up, no one will ever know whether Kennedy and Meyer discussed the transformation that Kennedy was undergoing after the Cuban Missile Crisis. But one thing is for sure: given Meyer’s deep devotion to peace, which stretched all the way back to her college days, she and Kennedy were certainly on the same wavelength after the crisis. Moreover, given Meyer’s fearful statement to Timothy Leary immediately after the assassination, as detailed above, there is little doubt as to what Meyer was thinking with respect to who had killed JFK and why.

Angleton also arguably committed obstruction of justice by failing to turn Mary Meyer’s diary over to the police, the prosecutor, and the defense in Ray Crump’s case. After all, even if the diary didn’t point in the direction of the CIA as having orchestrated the assassination of John Kennedy, at the very least it had to have described the sexual affair between Meyer and the president. The police and the defense were both entitled to that information, if for no other reason than to investigate whether Meyer had been killed by someone who didn’t want the affair to be disclosed to the public. The fact that Angleton failed to disclose the diary’s existence to the judge, the prosecutor, and the defendant in a criminal proceeding in which a man was being prosecuted for a death-penalty offense speaks volumes.

One of the eerie aspects of this case is that prior to her murder, Meyer told friends that there was evidence that someone had been breaking into and entering her house. Now, one might say that the CIA is too competent to leave that type of evidence when it breaks into someone’s home. I agree. But the evidence might well have been meant to serve as a CIA calling card containing the following message to Mary Pinchot Meyer: “We are watching you, and we know what you are doing. If you know what’s good for you, cease and desist and keep your mouth shut.”

But Mary Pinchot Meyer wasn’t that kind of woman. She was independent minded, strong willed, and outspoken. In fact, when she attended CIA parties with her husband, Cord Meyer, she was known to make negative wisecracks about the agency. One of the other CIA wives commented that Mary just didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.

If the CIA did, in fact, orchestrate the assassination of John F. Kennedy – and, as Nina Burleigh observes, the overwhelming weight of the circumstantial evidence certainly points in that direction – Mary Pinchot Meyer, given her relationship to the CIA, her close contacts within the Kennedy administration, and her penchant for being outspoken, could have proven to be a very dangerous adversary.

In his introduction to Mary’s Mosaic, Janney places the murders of John Kennedy and Mary Pinchot Meyer in a larger context:

The tapestry of President Kennedy’s killing is enormous; the tapestry of Mary Meyer’s, much smaller. And yet they are connected, one to another, in ways that became increasingly apparent to me as I dug ever more deeply into her relationship with Jack Kennedy and the circumstances surrounding her demise. To understand the complex weave of elements that led to her death is to understand, in a deeper way, one of the most abominable, despicable events of our country’s history.

Therein lies the cancerous tumor upon the soul of America. The CIA’s inception and entrance into the American landscape fundamentally altered not only the functioning of our government, but the entire character of American life. The CIA’s reign during the Cold War era has contaminated the pursuit of historical truth. While the dismantling of America’s republic didn’t begin in Dallas in 1963, that day surely marked an unprecedented acceleration of the erosion of constitutional democracy. America has never recovered. Today in 2012, the ongoing disintegration of our country is ultimately about the corruption of our government, a government that has consistently and intentionally misrepresented and lied about what really took place in Dallas in 1963, as it did about the escalation of the Vietnam War that followed, and which it presently continues to do about so many things.

Once revered as a refuge from tyranny, America has become a sponsor and patron of tyrants. Like Rome before it, America is – in its own way – burning. Indeed, the Roman goddess Libertas, her embodiment the Statue of Liberty, still stands at the entrance of New York harbor to welcome all newcomers. Her iconic torch of freedom ablaze, her tabula ansata specifically memorializing the rule of law and the American Declaration of Independence, the chains of tyranny are broken at her feet. She wears ‘peace’ sandals – not war boots. While her presence should be an inescapable reminder that we are all “immigrants,” her torch reminds us that the core principles for which she stands require truth telling by each and every one of us. As long as any vestige of our democracy remains, each of us has a solemn duty to defend it, putting our personal and family loyalties aside. “Patriotism” – real patriotism – has a most important venue, and it’s not always about putting on a uniform to fight some senseless, insane war in order to sustain the meaningless myths about “freedom” or “America’s greatness.” There is a higher loyalty that real patriotism demands and encompasses, and that loyalty is to the pursuit of truth, no matter how painful or uncomfortable the journey.

Buy Peter Janney’s book Mary’s Mosaic. But be sure to set aside a couple of days for reading it, because once you start, you won’t be able to put the book down.

Reprinted from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Best of Jacob Hornberger

The Daily Bell is pleased to publish an exclusive interview with Jacob G. Hornberger.

Introduction: Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, publisher of Ideas on Liberty. In 1989, Mr. Hornberger founded The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is a regular writer for The Foundation’s publication, Freedom Daily.

Daily Bell: You have a military background. Tell us about it and how it affected your perception of libertarianism – of which you are certainly a prime exponent.

Jacob Hornberger: My four years at Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and, to a lesser extent, my 8 years in the Army Reserves, taught me that I never want to live in an environment in which military officials take care of me, watch every move I make, regulate my every act, and tightly control my behavior. It was a great lesson in learning to despise socialist systems and to love free societies. On the other hand, VMI taught me the importance of personal integrity, provided me with an excellent education and convinced me that a free society depends on citizen soldiers, not a professional standing army, to defend the nation from invasion.

Daily Bell: You are a lawyer as well. As a person with a military background and a law degree, it is something a miracle that you ended up being as iconoclastic as you are. How did this happen? Is it a personality trait?

Jacob Hornberger: I was born a libertarian but I didn’t realize it until a few years after I had started practicing law. My practice of law gave me a deep appreciation for the vital importance of the Constitution and of civil liberties in a society – and the threat that zealous and even well-meaning government officials pose to our liberties. If it weren’t for criminal-defense lawyers zealously guarding the rights of their clients, there would be a lot more people in jail or executed. That’s why totalitarian regimes hate lawyers.

Daily Bell: You were a trial attorney, and trained as so. So let’s ask some legal questions if you don’t mind. What do you think of American justice and the court system?

Jacob Hornberger: The system of criminal justice established by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and which stretches back into centuries of resistance to British tyranny by the English people certainly has its faults, but given the protections of habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights, America’s criminal-justice system has always been the finest in the world – that is, until federal officials used the pretense of the war on terrorism to circumvent the protections and guarantees in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Daily Bell: We have arrived, at long last, as the conclusion that tribal justice is the best. The system that seems to have worked in the world for tens of thousands of years was one that combined family feuds (unto the seventh generation) with honor feuds (duels with deadly weapons) and negotiated settlements with or without "wise men." In other words, the system was familial, tribal and laissez faire and depended on the threat of force to discourage illegal acts. It had no state involvement except when the tribal/clan leader was approached for settlement purposes. It was not even a Common Law system, as it predates British common law. It predates Roman law as well and we call it "tribal law" as a catch-all, or "private justice." Do you have some thoughts? Is this practical in any way? Is it even worth discussing within the context of the current judicial juggernaut?

Jacob Hornberger: I believe that justice depends on a judicial system in which people can fairly present their case before an independent tribunal, preferably with juries composed of regular citizens, and where the state has a monopoly of force to enforce the judicial judgments. It doesn’t guarantee perfect justice but no system can. At least it ensures that people will have the opportunity to be heard, especially with lawyers to present their case, and that winners will have the ability to enforce their judgments without gun battles in the streets.

Daily Bell: Is the American system of justice now Admiralty justice? Is it true lawyers are instructed not to cite precedent before 1930 and that courts will not recognize previous precedent?

Jacob Hornberger: Under the Constitution, U.S. federal district courts have jurisdiction over admiralty or maritime cases, but I assume you mean by the term "admiralty justice" the claim that some tax protestors make that American courts are admiralty courts and, therefore, have no jurisdiction over such tax protestors. I agree with the conclusion reached by the courts that such a claim is meritless and frivolous. No, it is not true that lawyers are instructed not to cite precedent before 1930 or it is not true that courts will not recognize previous precedent. Lawyers are free to cite any precedent that is pertinent to their case.

Daily Bell: What do you think of the ICC? We think there is no such thing as a crime against humanity. One might as well commit a crime against a paper bag. Your thoughts?

Jacob Hornberger: I have mixed feelings about this. I understand the desire to have an international criminal court to bring to justice officials who engage in criminal conduct but whose government won’t do anything about it (e.g., the U.S. officials who waged their undeclared war of aggression against Iraq or kidnapped, tortured, renditioned, or executed people without due process). On the other hand though, I don’t see how such a court acquires jurisdiction over the world and I agree that a "crime against humanity" is too nebulous. Also, the procedures of the ICC aren’t ideal either, including no regard for trial by jury.

Daily Bell: Is an illegal system of justice being erected around the world?

Jacob Hornberger: The judicial system that the Pentagon has established to compete against U.S. federal district courts in terrorism cases is illegal under our form of government, but there is little chance that the Supreme Court will declare it unconstitutional, in large part because the Court knows that the president and the Pentagon wouldn’t comply anyway. This is a very bad thing and has brought disgrace and shame to our country. Our criminal justice system – the one the Framers established in the Constitution – with the guarantees provided in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, and habeas corpus in the Constitution – is the best criminal justice system in the world, including for the crime of terrorism.

Daily Bell: Let’s switch gears. Tell us about your relationship with Richard M. Ebeling and how you came to found the Future of Freedom Foundation, whose mission is to present an uncompromising moral, philosophical, and economic case for the libertarian philosophy.

Jacob Hornberger: I met Richard when I was practicing law in Dallas, Texas, and he was teaching economics at the University of Dallas. We became good friends, and I hired him to give me a personal chapter-by-chapter tutorial in Ludwig von Mises’s magnum opus Human Action. In 1987, I gave up the practice of law to accept the position of program director at The Future of Freedom Foundation, and Richard later moved to Hillsdale College where he became the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics. Two years later – 1989 – I left FEE to establish FFF and Richard served as vice president of academic affairs for FFF in addition to his duties at Hillsdale, providing invaluable counsel and contributing a regular monthly article from January 1990 continuously until 2003, when he became president of FEE.

Daily Bell: Tell us about some of the accomplishments of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger: FFF is the recipient of Ron Paul’s Liberty in Media Award for Outstanding Freedom Website. In 2007 and 2008 we had two of the finest conferences on foreign policy and civil liberties in the history of the libertarian movement, the lectures of which are posted online at our website (www.fff.org). Every month since January 1990, we have published our monthly journal of essays, Freedom Daily, all of which are posted on our website. For the past several years, we have published our daily FFF Email Update, one of the best libertarian commentary pages on the Internet. We also have a monthly Economic Liberty Lecture Series in conjunction with the George Mason University Econ Society, a student group interested in libertarianism and Austrian economics. Prior to that, we had a great lecture series on libertarianism and Austrian economics for several years entitled The Vienna Coffee Club.

Daily Bell: You’d served three terms on the platform committee of the national Libertarian Party by 2000. In 1996, the Libertarian Party awarded you the Thomas Paine award for outstanding communication of libertarian principles. Are you going to try to run as a Libertarian candidate for president again?

Jacob Hornberger: My three terms on the LP platform committee were very enjoyable and rewarding. I was particularly struck by the ideological purity of the platform, which is why I agreed to serve on the committee. I always considered the platform to be the anchor by which the LP protected itself from LP candidates who were tempted to compromise libertarian principles in the hopes of garnering votes. It one of the biggest honors of my life when the LP awarded me its Thomas Paine award. I have no plans to run as an LP candidate for president again. I think political activity is a great vehicle for spreading libertarianism but I love the educational-foundation arena much more.

Daily Bell: You’ve written a number of books. Please describe the following BRIEFLY so our viewers can purchase them as they wish.

The Dangers of Socialized Medicine (co-written with Richard M. Ebeling) (1994) ISBN ISBN 0964044706.

Jacob Hornberger: This book shows how government intervention into the healthcare arena, with Medicare and Medicaid, occupational licensure, and regulation, are the root cause of America’s healthcare woes. It calls for a complete separation of healthcare and the state, entailing a complete repeal, not reform, of these programs and interventions.

The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars (co-written with Richard M. Ebeling) (1996) ISBN 0964044765.

Jacob Hornberger: This book explains how America’s foreign wars have been a disaster and calls for the total dismantling of America’s foreign military empire, which would entail closing all the foreign bases and bringing all the troops home and discharging them.

Liberty, Security, and the War on Terrorism C) (2003) ISBN 1890687049.

Jacob Hornberger: This book shows how U.S. foreign policy is the root cause of the anger and hatred toward the United States that has led to a constant threat of terrorism, which government officials then use to infringe upon our fundamental rights and freedoms. It calls for an end to foreign intervention and a repeal of all measures that infringe on liberty and privacy.

Daily Bell: Back to politics. Why doesn’t the Libertarian party do better in national elections?

Jacob Hornberger: One reason is the horrible ballot-access restrictions placed by the Democrats and Republicans, including ridiculous petitioning requirements. Libertarians have to spend so much money on that that they then lack the money to run campaigns.

Another reason is campaign-donation limits. If people were free to give unlimited amounts of money to candidates, Libertarian candidates could call on a few wealthy libertarian donors to fund their campaigns. And another reason is the propensity of people to vote only for major party candidates.

Finally, the Republicans and Democrats abandoned their principles long ago in exchange for votes, which is why they preach such things as "free enterprise and limited government" and "loving the poor, needy, and disadvantaged" while supporting such socialist, imperialist, and interventionist programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, the drug war, the war on immigrants, torture, wars of aggression, and denial of due process. Statists like to mock the LP for its lack of electoral success, but the fact is that the LP has always placed a higher value on libertarian principles than getting votes, which has made its job in the electoral process more difficult. After all, while things seem to be changing now, American voters have historically oriented toward statism, despite its manifest immorality and destructiveness.

Daily Bell: Was Ron Paul right to position himself as a libertarian republican? It’s probably killing the Libertarian party, yes?

Jacob Hornberger: I think he was right because as a practical matter, I don’t think voters would have elected him to Congress as an LP candidate, and he has been a tremendously positive force for libertarianism in Congress. No, I don’t think he’s killing the Libertarian Party. On the contrary, I think he’s bringing libertarianism and the Libertarian Party to the attention of ever-increasing numbers of people. One of the most admirable things about Ron Paul is how he has consistently embraced libertarians and the Libertarian Party throughout his congressional terms and during his campaign for president.

Daily Bell: What do you think of Ron Paul? Rand Paul?

Jacob Hornberger: Ron Paul is one of my real-life heroes, and he has been one of the libertarian movement’s most effective advocates ever. Rand Paul is not as libertarian as his father, especially when it comes to foreign policy and the war on terrorism, but he is certainly heads and shoulders above standard Republicans when it comes libertarian philosophy, economic principles, and civil liberties. Moreover, Rand Paul’s positions on monetary policy and his attacks on the Patriot Act have been extremely admirable.

Daily Bell: Have you become a gradualist about government change or do you remain a radical "Libertarian Outlaw."

Jacob Hornberger: I ardently oppose gradualism and I remain a radical "Libertarian Outlaw." If there were button that could be pushed that would immediately repeal every since welfare-state program, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and every since warfare-warfare-state program, including the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, I’d push it. When a thief is caught embezzling funds, do we gradually reduce his dependency on the money or do we terminate it immediately? Moral principles are immutable. They’re either followed or not.

Daily Bell: You’re a born-again Christian and a libertarian. We’re always amused by those who believe that a libertarian society would be godless or at least non-religious when the reverse is true. The freer the society, the more spiritual or at least religious it usually is because people need some sort of moral or behavioral structure. We can see this in pre-revolutionary America. How do you see it?

Jacob Hornberger: As a Christian and as a libertarian, I believe people should be free to live their lives any way they want, so long as their conduct is peaceful. That might mean living life in an irresponsible, immoral, and even self-destructive manner.

I agree with you and I do believe that a free society tends to nurture the values that most of us hold dear, such as morality, compassion, and responsibility. But by the same token, it is impossible to predict the outcome of a free society, which scares a lot of people. One of my beefs with conservatives is when they intimate that such values are a prerequisite to having a free society and that people can’t be trusted with freedom until they are responsible, moral, and compassionate. As a libertarian, I say nonsense to that. Freedom entails the right to be irresponsible, uncaring, and immoral, so long as your conduct is peaceful (i.e., no murder, rape, theft, fraud, etc.)

Daily Bell: Isn’t it true the more government there is, the more corrupt and lawless society becomes?

Jacob Hornberger: Yes, but only when the government is doing things that it shouldn’t be doing, such as regulating economic activity or criminalizing the possession or distribution of drugs. When government is limited to doing the things it should be doing – such as going after murderers, rapists, and thieves – more government might be better and society will less corrupt and lawless.

Daily Bell: Should drugs be legalized? Is the war on drugs a failure?

Jacob Hornberger: Yes, absolutely, immediately. With the possible exception of public (i.e., government) schooling, it would be difficult to find a better example of a failed, immoral, and destructive government program. Not only has the drug war not achieved its purported end, it has actually made society much worse off in terms of violence, death, and destruction.

Daily Bell: We think the Internet like the Gutenberg Press before it is collapsing the Anglo-American empire. Reaction?

Jacob Hornberger: The Internet is certainly helping us libertarians educate people to the reality of their government has become – a socialist, imperialist, interventionist monstrosity that is taking our country down the road to moral debauchery, government dependency, and financial bankruptcy. Time will tell though whether a critical mass of Americans decide to restore a free-market, limited-government republic to our land.

Daily Bell: We think the Internet like the Gutenberg Press before it is creating a new Renaissance and new Reformation – Internet Reformation, if you will? Response?

Jacob Hornberger: It certainly is providing people with the means to circumvent the long-established mainstream media outlets, which is a great thing.

Daily Bell: Many believe that a New World Order is being created by an elite group of banking families residing in the City of London. Conspiracy theory?

Jacob Hornberger: It’s a conspiracy theory that I don’t personally find persuasive. But whether one believes that such a conspiracy exists or not, our goal should be the same – to end all the socialist, imperialist, and interventionist programs and establish a total separation of economy and state, money and state, healthcare and state, and education and state, dismantle our nation’s overseas military empire, its standing army, and its military industrial complex, and restore civil liberties to our land.

Daily Bell: Is the US Dollar on the way out?

Jacob Hornberger: It might well be on the way out since the government keeps spending and borrowing and the Federal Reserve keeps inflating and debasing to enable the government to continue spending and borrowing.

Daily Bell: We will see a gold backed currency in your lifetime?

Jacob Hornberger: Possibly, but I would prefer a free-market in money – what Friedrich Hayek, the libertarian Nobel Prize winning economist, called "the denationalization of money." Government has no more business in currency and money than it does in health care, education, or charity. Separate money and the state by repealing legal tender laws, abolish the fed, and free the market so that people can use any type of money they want.

Daily Bell: Interesting point. Can you give us your take on free-banking, clearinghouses and private fractional reserve banking? We’re all for money competition generally.

Jacob Hornberger: Yes, I favor free banking, along with the likely possibility of fractional reserve banking, and private clearinghouses. The argument that fractional reserve banking in a free market is fraud, which some libertarians make, is, in my opinion, ill-founded because fraud involves an intentional misrepresentation of a material fact (or omission of a material fact) with the intent to deceive. If the bank represents up front that it is engaged in fractional-reserve banking and the customer agrees, then there cannot be fraud. The customer voluntarily takes the risk of a bank run and the bank’s going under. Those customers who don’t want to take such a risk can find banks that don’t engage in fractional reserve banking and serve simply as warehouses for people’s money.

Daily Bell: Let the market decide … Maybe because the market has been so powerfully regulated it’s having difficulty operating. Are we in the midst of a rolling, global depression?

Jacob Hornberger: It sure seems like it to me. In fact, we might actually be in a perfect storm of failure and destruction of statism all over the world, including our nation’s own socialism, imperialism, and interventionism.

Daily Bell: Is the war on terror a phony war?

Jacob Hornberger: It’s more a fraudulent war. The U.S. government goes abroad and provokes people with things like sanctions, foreign interventions, invasions, support of dictatorships, and foreign aid. Then when the victims retaliate, as they did on 9/11, the government cries, "Oh, it had nothing to do with what we did to provoke them. It’s all because they hate us for our freedom and values." And then feds use the terrorist threat to do more of the same, including invasions and occupations, thereby producing a perpetual need for government "protection," which comes in the form of ever-growing infringements on our privacy and freedom, such as the fondling at the airports, the Patriot Act, the spying on Americans, the secret searches of financial information, and so forth.

Daily Bell: Is al-Qaeda a made up enemy?

Jacob Hornberger: No. Its roots go back to the extremist Muslims that the U.S. government was supporting when they were trying to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. After the Soviets were evicted, al-Qaeda committed itself to ousting the U.S. Empire from the Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East.

Daily Bell: Is there ever a justification for "wars of overseas aggression?"

Jacob Hornberger: No.

Daily Bell: Does the US seek overseas conflict to further domestic repression?

Jacob Hornberger: Perhaps but regardless of whether they intend it or not, that is the logical outcome of its overseas interventions. James Madison pointed out that the officials of the Roman Empire were famous for inciting foreign crises whenever the Roman citizenry became restless over the Empire’s ever-growing taxes, debt, and regulations.

Daily Bell: Is the US becoming a police state?

Jacob Hornberger: The U.S. has become a police state. Federal officials now have many of the powers wielded by the Middle East dictatorships that the U.S. government supports. These include the power to label people as suspected terrorists, arrest and detain them indefinitely without trial, ignore verdicts of acquittal in federal court terrorism cases, torture people, execute people after kangaroo tribunals, kidnap people and rendition them to friendly dictatorships for torture. Also, we’ve got the Patriot Act, the CIA, the ATF, and the NSA. Then when you combine the powers being wielded in the war on terrorism with the powers wielded by increasingly militarized cops in the war on drugs, that’s what a police state looks like. Doesn’t the United States jail more people per capita than communist China and every other country? I think we’re Number 1 in this regard.

Daily Bell: Is Obama a better president than George W. Bush?

Jacob Hornberger: They are both the same. Obama is Bush’s third term. He is an absolute disaster. Not only does he embrace socialist economic policies and big spending and big borrowing, he’s been as big a disaster on civil liberties and foreign policy as Bush.

Daily Bell: Is the EU on the way out? How about the euro?

Jacob Hornberger: I don’t know. For sure the welfare states of Europe are collapsing before our eyes, especially given the enormous spending and borrowing burdens placed on their citizenry. Where it will lead is anyone’s guess, but I have a feeling it’s not going to be pretty.

Daily Bell: Is every law a price fix?

Jacob Hornberger: I’m not sure what you mean by that. Laws against murder, rape, stealing, and other violent crimes place a price on violation, but I consider such laws perfectly valid. Economic crimes, such as minimum-wage laws or price controls, fix prices and are invalid and destructive.

Daily Bell: Are laws and regulations ever necessary, hypothetically speaking?

Jacob Hornberger: Laws that punish actions in which people initiate force against others are necessary. Murder, rape, stealing, fraud, etc., are examples. Laws and regulations that punish peaceful conduct are illegitimate. Examples including drug laws, insider-trading laws, and minimum-wage laws.

Daily Bell: Are central banks necessary? Should they be done away with?

Jacob Hornberger: No, central banks are unnecessary and are highly destructive. They are one of the twin engines by which the federal government confiscates people’s wealth. (The other one is the IRS.) It should be done away with immediately. (So should the IRS and the income tax.)

Daily Bell: Are gold and silver going higher in terms of purchasing power? How high?

Jacob Hornberger: Owning gold and silver might not be for the faint of heart because of the stomach-churning plunges in price. But as long as federal spending and borrowing continue soaring, the longer the Fed will be debasing the currency, which means gold and silver will be going higher, at least in terms of the dollar. How high is anyone’s guess.

Daily Bell: Where do you go from here? How about your Foundation?

Jacob Hornberger: We continue fighting for a free society by spreading sound ideas on liberty. With crisis comes opportunity – to opportunity to restore a free, peaceful, and prosperous society to our land. We invite everyone to subscribe to our daily FFF Email Update and to our monthly journal "Freedom Daily" and to support our work with tax-deductible donations and bequests. Our work depends on the financial support that people give us. As Mises pointed out, when society is headed toward destruction, none of us can stand aside. We all have a stake in the outcome. We must all throw ourselves vigorously into the battle.

Daily Bell: Are you working on any other books?

Jacob Hornberger: No, we are using the Internet as our primary means to disseminate our libertarian perspectives.

Daily Bell: Is this an exciting era in which to be a libertarian?

Jacob Hornberger: This is the most exciting time ever to be a libertarian. People are finally figuring out that something is fundamentally wrong in our country. If they can only achieve the breakthrough that we libertarians have achieved – that long ago America abandoned its philosophy of freedom, free markets, and a limited government republic and embraced socialism, imperialism, and interventionism, then we’ve got a real shot at ridding our nation of the statism that afflicts our land, along with all the horrible consequences it has wrought. More people are becoming interested in libertarianism than ever before, especially young people. With two libertarians who can competently and eloquently defend libertarianism now running for the Republican presidential nomination – Ron Paul and Gary Johnson – this will certainly add to libertarian excitement.

Daily Bell: Any other thoughts?

Jacob Hornberger: Thank you for the interview. It’s an honor to be added to your cast of interviewees, many of whom have been heroes of mine for a long time.

Daily Bell: Thanks for sitting down patiently through an extensive interview and answering the "tough" questions. It’s been a pleasure and honor to interview you.

Daily Bell After Thoughts

Like so many others, we’ve admired Jacob Hornberger’s dedication to the spread of libertarianism and the eloquent writing he’s produced. The Future of Freedom Foundation is an essential free-market voice, and he’s been an effective spokesperson throughout his career.

As a former military man and lawyer, he could have aimed his life’s work toward a number of areas. There are certainly more lucrative ways to make a living, but he decided to focus on what he loved and believed in. He was "born" to do what he’s doing and his passion is evident.

We learned a lot in this interview, as we expected to. Jacob Hornberger is a widely read individual, and that comes through in his books and articles as well as his interviews and radio appearances. His remarks on religion, free banking and the West’s growing militarism were most thoughtful in our opinion. One issue where we still have questions (though admittedly his opinion is more mainstream than ours) is his perspective on the American justice system.

We pointed out some of our conclusions about tribal and clan justice as a workable and ancient system that predates British Common Law and emphasized familial as well as "elder" negotiation. His reply, as you can see in the interview, above, emphasized the system as it had evolved, including a trial by jury before an independent tribunal "where the state has a monopoly of force to enforce the judicial judgments."

Of course, once the state has a monopoly of force, doesn’t that allow the state a good deal of latitude? It seems to us that we’re reaping the unfortunate results of a monopoly of force, today, given the growing government lawlessness both in America and Europe. We also asked him about the idea that modern US courts operate under Admiralty law. He seemed to answer this question carefully: "I agree with the conclusion reached by the courts that such a claim is meritless and frivolous."

He was far blunter in regard to the how US courts evolved in the 20th century. His answer was unequivocal: "No, it is not true that lawyers are instructed not to cite precedent before 1930 or it is not true that courts will not recognize previous precedent. Lawyers are free to cite any precedent that is pertinent to their case."

He was clear about the ICC, stating that he doesn’t see how "such a court acquires jurisdiction over the world" and that a "crime against humanity is too nebulous." We certainly agree with that and were not surprised by his perspective or willingness to speak out.

We thanked him at the end of the interview for answering "tough" questions but he’s been taking on tough issues throughout his professional career. Those in the libertarian community are lucky to have his eloquence and influential think-tank the Future of Freedom Foundation to call on. The fight for freedom has never been more necessary than today.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Bell.

Anthony Wile is an author, columnist, media commentator and entrepreneur focused on developing projects that promote the general advancement of free-market thinking concepts. He is the chief editor of the popular free-market oriented news site, TheDailyBell.com. Mr. Wile is the Executive Director of The Foundation for the Advancement of Free-Market Thinking — a non-profit Liechtenstein-based foundation. His most popular book, High Alert, is now in its third edition and available in several languages. Other notable books written by Mr. Wile include The Liberation of Flockhead (2002) and The Value of Gold (2002).

The Best of Anthony Wile

Dear Troops:

Yesterday – Memorial Day – some people asserted, once again, that you are “defending our freedoms” overseas.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Those people are just repeating tired old mantras. The reality is that you are not defending our freedoms with your actions overseas. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Your actions overseas are placing our freedoms here at home in ever-greater jeopardy.

Consider your occupation of Iraq, a country that, as you know, never attacked the United States, making it the defender in the war and the United States the aggressor. Think about that: Every single person that the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Yet, the countless victims of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have friends and relatives, many of whom have become filled with anger and rage and who now would stop at nothing to retaliate with terrorist attacks against Americans.

Pray tell: How does that constitute defending our freedoms?

It was no different prior to 9/11. At the end of the Persian Gulf War, the troops intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water and sewage facilities after a Pentagon study showed that this would help spread infectious illnesses among the Iraqi people.

It worked. For 11 years after that, the troops enforced the cruel and brutal sanctions on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. (See “America’s Peacetime Crimes against Iraq” by Anthony Gregory.) You’ll recall U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.”

By “it” she meant the attempted ouster of Saddam Hussein from power. You will recall that he was a dictator who was the U.S. government’s ally and partner during the 1980s, when the United States was furnishing him with those infamous WMDs that U.S. officials later used to excite the American people into supporting your invasion of Iraq.

The truth is that 9/11 furnished U.S. officials with the excuse to do what their sanctions (and the deaths of all those Iraqi children) had failed to accomplish: ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a U.S-approved regime.

That’s what your post-9/11 invasion of Iraq was all about – to achieve the regime change that the pre-9/11 deadly sanctions that killed all those children had failed to achieve.

No, not mushroom clouds, not freedom, not democracy, and certainly not defending our freedoms here at home. Just plain old regime change.

In the process, all that you – the troops – have done with your invasion and occupation of Iraq is produce even more enmity toward the United States by people in the Middle East, especially those Iraqis who have lost loved ones or friends in the process or simply watched their country be destroyed.

In principle, it’s no different with Afghanistan. I’d estimate that 99 percent of the people the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in that country had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

Why did you invade Afghanistan or, more precisely, why did President Bush order you to do so?

No, not because the Taliban participated in the 9/11 attacks and, no, not because the Taliban were even aware that the attacks were going to take place

President Bush ordered the troops to invade Afghanistan – and, of course, kill Afghan citizens in the process – because the Afghan government — the Taliban – refused to comply with his unconditional extradition demand. You will recall that the Taliban offered to turn bin Laden over to an independent tribunal to stand trial upon the receipt of evidence from the United States indicating his complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

Bush responded to the Taliban’s offer by issuing his order to the troops to invade Afghanistan, kill Afghans, and occupy the country. In the process, U.S. officials installed one of the most crooked, corrupt, and dictatorial rulers it could find to govern the country, one who is so incompetent he cannot even hide the manifest fraud by which he has supposedly been elected to office.

In the process of installing and defending the Karzai regime, the troops have killed brides, grooms, children, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, and countrymen, most of whom never attacked the United States on 9/11 or at any other time. They simply became “collateral damage” or “bad guys” for having the audacity to oppose the invasion and occupation of their country by a foreign regime. (It should be noted for the record that U.S. officials considered these types of “bad guys,” as well as Osama bin Laden and other fundamentalist Muslims, to be “good guys” when they were trying to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan.)

Was there another way to bring bin Laden to justice? Yes, the criminal-justice route, which was the route used after the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

That’s right. Same target, different date. In fact, the accused terrorists – Ramzi Yousef in 1993 and Osama bin Laden in 2001 – were ultimately located in the same country, Pakistan.

In Yousef’s case, he was arrested some three years after the attack, brought back to the United States, prosecuted, and convicted in federal district court. He’s now serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary.

No invasions, no bombings, no occupations, no killing of countless innocent people, no torture, no war on terrorism, and no anger and rage that such actions inevitably would have produced among the victims, their families, and friends.

In bin Laden’s case, we instead got a military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, where the troops have killed, maimed, tortured, and hurt countless people who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

How in the world have your invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq defended our freedoms here at home? Indeed, how have the assassinations and bombings in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and who knows where else defended our freedoms?

All these things have accomplished is keeping foreigners angry at us, thereby subjecting us to the constant and ever-growing threat of terrorist retaliation here at home. As I have pointed out before, the U.S. military – that is, you, the troops – have become the biggest terrorist-producing machine in history. Every time you kill some Iraqi or Afghan citizen, even when accidental, ten more offer to take his place out of anger and rage.

That’s the same thing that was happening prior to 9/11. In fact, there were some, including those of us here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, who were warning prior to 9/11 that unless the U.S. Empire stopped what it was doing to people in the Middle East (including the deadly sanctions on Iraq, the support of Middle East dictators, the stationing of U.S. troops near Islamic holy lands, and the unconditional money and armaments to the Israeli regime), Americans would be increasingly subject to terrorist attacks. On 9/11, we were proven right, unfortunately. (See Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson.)

How does the constant threat of terrorist retaliation arising from your actions in Iraq and Afghanistan make us freer here at home, especially when you – the troops – are responsible for engendering the anger and rage that culminates in such threats, owing to what you are doing to people over there?

Consider also what the U.S. government does to our freedoms here at home as a direct consequence of the terrorist threat that you, the troops, are producing over there. It uses that threat of terrorism to infringe upon our freedoms here at home! You know what I mean – the fondling at the airports, the 10-year-old Patriot Act, the illegal spying on Americans, the indefinite detention, the torture, the kangaroo tribunals, Gitmo, and the entire war on terrorism – all necessary, they tell us, to keep us safe from the terrorists – that is, the people you all are producing with your actions over there.

In other words, if you all weren’t producing an endless stream of terrorists with your invasions, occupations, torture, assassinations, bombings, and Gitmo, the U.S. government – the entity you are working for – would no longer have that excuse for taking away our freedoms.

This past Sunday, the Washington Post carried an article about American wives who were recently greeting their husbands on their return from Afghanistan. Newlywed Anne Krolicki, 24, commented to her husband on the death of one of her friends’ husband: “It’s a pointless war,” she said.

That lady has her head on straight. She’s has a grip on reality, doesn’t deal in tired old mantras, and speaks the truth. Every U.S. soldier who dies in Iraq and Afghanistan dies for nothing, which was the same thing that some 58,000 men of my generation died for in Vietnam.

Please don’t write me to tell me that you all are good people or that you’re “patriots” for simply following whatever orders you are given. All that is irrelevant. What matters is what you are doing over there. And what you are doing is not defending our freedoms, you are jeopardizing them

Sincerely,

Jacob G. Hornberger President The Future of Freedom Foundation

Reprinted from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Best of Jacob Hornberger

All of us have been born and raised within a statist box, one in which the federal government’s primary roles are to take care of people, regulate their economic activities, and maintain an overseas military empire that intervenes in the affairs of other countries.

Both liberals and conservatives have come to accept this statist box as a permanent feature of American life. Even worse, they have convinced themselves that life in this statist box is actually freedom.

What makes libertarians different from liberals and conservatives is that, although we too have been born and raised within the statist box, we have broken free of it, in an intellectual and moral sense. Moreover, unlike liberals and conservatives, we recognize that statism isn’t freedom at all. It’s the opposite of freedom. Genuine freedom, libertarians contend, entails a dismantling of the statist box in which we all live.

Let’s set aside, for the purposes of this discussion, the warfare state, and consider the welfare state, which is an economic system in which the federal government taxes people in order to transfer the money to other people, after deducting hefty administrative costs associated with making those transfers.

Welfare-state programs include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, grants, subsidies, foreign aid, and bank bailouts. Every one of those programs involves the federal government’s forcible taking of people’s money in order to give it to other people.

Most people living today have been raised with all or most of those programs. They are considered a core element of American life. While people often call for reforming the programs, hardly anyone other than libertarians questions the propriety of their existence. The attitude seems to be that the welfare state is here to stay and that we just need to continue devoting our efforts to trying to make it work and continue telling ourselves that it is equivalent to the free society.

It is not surprising that most people view the welfare state as freedom. From their earliest years, American children are taught that they live in a free country. The message that America is a free country is repeated and reinforced in school five days a week for 12 years. Those who are sent into government schools (i.e., public schools) receive an extra-strength dose of the freedom message, oftentimes beginning with the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. Those who resist the message are inevitably provided with such drugs as Ritalin or Adderall to make their minds more receptive to the official freedom message.

So by the time American children are 18 years old, the vast majority of them have no doubts that they live in a free country. They may even find themselves singing, “I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.” At some events, they stand to proudly recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which of course all of them will know by heart, even if they’re not aware that it was authored by an avowed socialist. Those who go to church on Sunday are exhorted by the minister to pray for the troops who are somewhere overseas protecting and defending the freedoms enjoyed by Americans.

In the mindset of the average American, freedom entails having the government take care of people, which it does by having the IRS take money from those who own it and giving it to others. Presumably, the more the government takes care of people (and, therefore, the more money it takes from people), the freer Americans are. In other words, the more people are taken care of with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, grants, subsidies, and aid, the freer the American people become.

North Korea, Venezuela, and America

Suppose we asked Americans whether, in their opinion, people living in North Korea are free. Most would say no. When asked why, most of them would respond, “Because North Korea is a communist dictatorship, not a democracy.”

Very few Americans would focus on North Korea’s socialist economic system in framing their answer.

Now, suppose Americans were asked the same question about people living in Venezuela. They might be tempted to say that Venezuelans are free because there are elections in Venezuela, ignoring the fact that a democratically elected ruler can be a dictator.

Again, few Americans would focus on Venezuela’s socialist economic system in responding to a question that asks whether Venezuelans are free. It simply would not enter their minds.

The fact is that North Korea and Venezuela have the same welfare-state programs as the United States: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, grants, subsidies, and aid. And people in those countries are as convinced that all that welfare-statism is freedom as the average American is.

This is one of the things that distinguish libertarians from statists. We oppose all welfare-state programs, including the crown jewels of the welfare state – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We favor the immediate termination of all those socialistic programs.

The libertarian concept of freedom

Libertarians view freedom differently from statists. Our concept of freedom, in an economic sense, is as follows:

We believe that people should be free to engage in any occupation or profession without any government-issued license, permit, or other form of official permission. Let consumers, not the government, decide who engages in different lines of work.

We believe that people should be free to enter into mutually beneficial transactions with anyone else in the world, without interference by the government. That includes such things as hiring a housekeeper from Mexico and selling food to a Cuban.

We believe that people should be free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth and, equally important, to decide for themselves what to do with it – spend, save, invest, or donate it. Thus, we hold that people should be free to plan for their own retirement (or not), to donate to their church or other causes (or not), and to help out their elderly or ailing parents (or not).

For us libertarians, that is what genuine freedom is all about, in terms of economic activity.

Compare the statist interpretation of freedom, an interpretation that libertarians consider to be false, fraudulent, and counterfeit. The statist version of freedom holds that government, not the individual, is sovereign and supreme. If people want to engage in a line of work, they’ve got to ask the government for permission. The government restricts them from engaging in mutually beneficial transactions with others, through such devices as minimum-wage laws, trade restrictions, and immigration controls. Everybody’s income is subject to being taxed in any amount deemed proper by government officials and redistributed to others. People are forced to share their money with others, be it the elderly, the sick, or simply the politically privileged.

Thus, when libertarians are asked whether they live in a free country, our answer is opposite to that of liberals and conservatives. Our answer is “no,” because an essential aspect of freedom is economic liberty. If people in a society don’t have economic liberty, then they cannot truly be considered free. And statists are not free merely because they think they are. A denial of reality, no matter how severe, doesn’t affect reality itself.

It is how libertarians view freedom that befuddles and confuses, and sometimes even angers, American statists. They’re simply unable to comprehend how libertarians are able to honestly believe that Americans are not free. That’s because in the minds of American statists, it’s obvious that Americans are free. Everyone knows that the United States is a free country.

The reason for this phenomenon is, again, that, while all of us are living within a statist box, most Americans have not been able to break out of the box, mentally speaking, and question and challenge the legitimacy of the statist box itself. Undoubtedly, that is in large part because of the powerful indoctrination that takes place in people’s formative years – a period in which their minds are molded so that they believe that the welfare state is, in fact, freedom. Thus, when a statist encounters a libertarian, who wants to bring freedom to America, the statist becomes confused, befuddled, and even angry because in his mind he’s already free, thanks to the welfare state.

The managed economy

Here’s another example of how different libertarians are from statists in the realm of economics – the concept of the managed economy. What is the standard debate that takes place between liberals and conservatives in the political arena? It is that the party in power has “mismanaged the economy.” Most of the time, the accusation is directed at the president. When President George W. Bush was causing federal spending and debt to soar through the roof, what did the Democrats say? “He’s mismanaging the economy!” And what have Republicans been saying about President Obama’s exorbitant federal spending and borrowing ever since he took office? “He’s mismanaging the economy!”

The entire process is simply a game in which voters transfer power back and forth between the two wings of what is really just one big political party – the Statist Party.

Sometimes, liberals and conservatives will ask libertarians, “What’s your plan for managing the economy?” Our answer: “We don’t have a plan for managing the economy,” which causes statists to go ballistic. They respond, “Oh, you libertarians are so impractical. How do you expect to win elections if you don’t have a plan for managing the economy?”

Well, there is a very simple reason that libertarians don’t have a plan for managing the economy. We don’t believe that it’s a rightful role of government in a free society to manage the economy. We believe that people should be free to manage their own economic activity and that government should stay out of the process entirely.

Thus, there are fundamental differences between libertarians and statists over the concept of freedom and the role of government in a free society.

Statists hold that freedom entails the government’s having the power to seize money from people in order to take care of others and to manage and control economic activity.

Libertarians, on the other hand, hold that freedom entails people’s having the right to manage their own economic activity in any way they want, including engaging in enterprise free of government control, accumulating unlimited amounts of wealth, and deciding for themselves what to do with it.

Another big difference between libertarians and statists relates to morality. Liberals and conservatives see nothing wrong, in a moral sense, with government’s forcibly taking money from people in order to give it to other people. In fact, for both liberals and conservatives, the welfare state is the epitome of morality. The forcible seizure and redistribution of wealth, they say, actually reflects how good, caring, and compassionate the American people are.

Libertarians hold the contrary. We say that it’s wrong for government to forcibly take money that belongs to one person in order to give it to another person. We call that stealing. And we say that stealing is immoral even when the thief puts what he steals to good use, such as funding the education of a poor student, helping a destitute elderly couple, or paying for a medical operation for a sick person.

Interesting enough, statists would agree with libertarians when the stealing is done by a private thief. They would say that such theft is morally wrong, even when the money is used for some good purpose.

The difference arises when government enters the picture. For the statist, what would ordinarily be considered to be an immoral act is suddenly converted into a moral act when the government is doing it. In other words, if the thief is a private person, the statist joins the libertarian in condemning the act. If the thief is the government, the statist praises the act, while the libertarian condemns it.

Finally, we must consider the economic consequences of the welfare state and the managed economy. Imagine a spectrum that has libertarianism at one end and total statism at the other end. At the statist end, the government owns and controls everything, and everyone is working for the state. At the libertarian end, people engage in free enterprise (that is, enterprise free of government control or management), have the right to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth (that is, no income taxation), and are free to decide what to do with their own money (that is, no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, grants, subsidies, or other welfare-state programs).

Drifting to total statism

What liberals and conservatives fail to realize is that the totally statist society will be one that is on the verge of starvation. At the other end of the spectrum – the libertarian end – people will be enjoying the benefits of a rapidly growing, prosperous economy, one in which people are using their resources in different ways – consumption, saving, donating, et cetera.

The reason for this economic outcome lies in savings and capital. When people are free to keep everything they earn, they inevitably save a part of it. Their savings provides the capital that businesses use to expand their operations. The expansion produces higher revenues and profits, enabling firms to pay higher wages. In that way, standards of living rise. In the totally statist society, where the state owns everything, private savings and capital are squeezed out of existence, thereby dooming everyone to a life of extreme impoverishment, possibly even starvation.

In the middle of the spectrum are the welfare state and the managed economy, whereby the state attempts to extract sufficient wealth from the private sector to sustain its ever-growing welfare sector. What inevitably happens, however, is that the welfare sector becomes so large and so voracious that the private sector shrinks to a point where it cannot sustain the burden. The result is an environment of crisis and chaos, one in which people in the parasitic sector are demanding that the government do something to save them.

Because statists are convinced they’re free, they inevitably blame the economic woes on freedom and free enterprise rather than on the government’s socialistic redistributive programs and its interventionist economic policies. Thus, statists call on the government to move further along the spectrum toward more government control over economic activity and wealth.

It comes as no surprise then, that libertarians have an entirely different diagnosis of the problem. It’s the welfare-state programs and the interventionism that are the root of the economic woes, libertarians hold. The solution lies not in more government control but rather in more freedom. The solution lies in repealing the welfare-state programs and separating economy from the state.

For decades, libertarians have been telling Americans that the welfare state is not freedom and that it would inevitably lead to economic hardship, maybe even destitution. Americans haven’t listened, in large part because their minds have been trapped within the statist mindset that was mostly molded during their 12 years of childhood schooling.

Today, an increasing number of Americans are asking questions and challenging out-of-control federal spending, debt, and even inflation. Time will tell whether they’re able to do what libertarians have done – recognize the statist box for what it is, break free of it, and call for its dismantling rather than for its reform. If so, we libertarians will have a much better chance of overcoming the decades of statism under which our nation has suffered and restore a free, prosperous, and harmonious economic system to our land.

Reprinted from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Best of Jacob Hornberger

The standard
explanations for the Arizona killings are now being set forth, such
as widespread violence in America and right-wing extremism. I’d
like to weigh in with another possible factor, one that I can’t
prove but one that I think Americans ought to at least consider:
the fact that killing has now become an accepted, essential, normal,
and permanent part of American life.

No, I’m
not referring to the widespread gun violence in America that liberals
point to as part of their gun-control agenda. I’m not even
referring to the widespread violence that accompanies the decades-long
drug war, especially in Mexico. I’m instead referring to the
U.S. government’s regular killing of people thousands of miles
away in Afghanistan and Iraq, killing that has now gone on regularly
for some 10 years and that has become a fairly hum-drum part of
our daily lives.

Six people
were killed and 14 were injured in the Arizona shootings, including
a woman who was shot through the head and a 9-year-old girl whose
life was snuffed out. Everyone is shocked over the horror, which
is detailed on the front page of every newspaper across the country.

But let’s
face it: Such killings go on every week in Afghanistan and Iraq
and have for some 10 years. Parents, children, brothers, sisters,
cousins, grandparents, friends, brides, grooms, and wedding parties.
People are killed in those two countries every week, and the killing
has now expanded to people in Pakistan.

We don’t
see those deaths on the front pages of American newspapers. They’re
buried on page 14 of the papers in small news reports, if at all.

Why don’t
those killings get front-page coverage?

One, the killings
have become commonplace. They’re now just considered normal.
Massive death on a massive scale, but normal. We just put all the
deaths at the back of our minds. The football playoffs are this
weekend. Got to pay the bills this month. Life demands our attention.
Anyway, it’s not as if we, the American citizenry, are doing
the killing. It’s the military and the CIA that are doing it.

Two, our public
officials say that we’re at war and that people are always
killed in war. Never mind that what we have in Afghanistan and Iraq
are military occupations, not war. The idea is that a military occupation
is a sort of war and, therefore, we shouldn’t let the daily
killings affect our consciences. Moreover, since we’ve been
told that the war on terrorism is considered permanent, we just
have to get used to the fact that the weekly killings will be a
normal and regular part of our lives for as long as we live.

Third, we are
told that the people being killed are terrorists, enemy combatants,
or unfortunate collateral damage. Never mind that our public officials
have had 10 years to kill terrorists and enemy combatants to their
hearts’ content but apparently still haven’t gotten them
all. Never mind that the terrorists and enemy combatants might well
now consist primarily of people who are simply trying to oust their
country of a foreign occupier, like people did when it was the Soviet
Union that was doing the occupying. Never mind that the number of
terrorists and enemy combatants continues to rise with each new
killing. It’s all just part and parcel of the new normality
for American society.

In the process,
life is cheapened – well, the lives of Afghans, Iraqis, and
Pakistanis. The weekly killings of adults and children from those
three countries are relegated to page 14 of the newspaper because
they’re just Afghans, Iraqis, and Pakistanis. It’s not
as if they’re Americans, after all, people who place a much
higher value on human life than others.

We mustn’t
forget how, for the last 10 years, the lives of Afghans and Iraqis
have been expendable for the greater good of their society. How
many times have we been reminded, for example, that the deaths of
countless Iraqis have been worth the effort to bring democracy to
Iraq? In fact, one of the most fascinating phenomena about the Iraq
War, an illegal and unconstitutional undeclared war of aggression
that the U.S. government waged against a country that had never
attacked the United States or even threatened to do so, is that
there has never been an upper limit on the number of Iraqi deaths
that would justify the achievement of democracy in Iraq. Any number
of Iraqi deaths, no matter how high, has been considered worth it.

We saw this
same reasoning through 11 years of brutal sanctions on Iraq, which
were imposed for the purpose of achieving regime change – the
ouster of Saddam Hussein from power and his replacement by a pro-U.S.
regime. When Bill Clinton’s U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine
Albright, was asked by Sixty Minutes whether the deaths of half-a-million
Iraqi children had been worth it, her answer perfectly reflected
the mindset of Washington officials for the past two decades: “I
think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think
the price is worth it.”

How much value
is placed on the life of people, including children, who are sacrificed
for the greater good of society? Not much value at all. Life is
supposed to be sacrosanct. But then again, those are Iraqi people
we’re talking about.

How can all
this massive, regular, permanent death and destruction not affect
and infect a society? Sure, it all takes place thousands of miles
away. Sure, it’s buried on page 14 of the newspaper. We don’t
see the caskets or the burials. We don’t see the crying, the
anguish, or the anger of the survivors. We just go about our daily
business, deferring to authority. Our public officials know what
is best. That is their job. We have to trust their judgment. If
they say that American soldiers and CIA officials have to stay in
Afghanistan and Iraq permanently and just go on killing people forever,
then we, the citizenry, just have to accept that. If they say they
have to expand the killing to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia or wherever,
then that is just the way things are. They are the experts. They
are in charge.

In the process,
everyone convinces himself that the people who are being killed
are “bad guys” or people who just happened to be too close
to the bad guys, including their wives, children, other family members,
or friends.

Of course,
the possibility that the U.S. government – the invader, the
occupier, the interloper – is the “bad guy” doesn’t
even enter into most people’s minds. The thought is too horrible,
too terrifying. It might cause citizens to have to search their
consciences. Easier to simply continue “supporting the troops”
who are “defending our freedoms” by killing all those
people on a regular, weekly basis.

The news media
are reporting that the accused Arizona shooter, Jared Loughner,
tried to join the U.S. military but was unsuccessful. The irony
is that if he had been successful, he would have gone to Iraq or
Afghanistan and participated in the weekly death-fest and, upon
his return, public officials, pundits, media personalities, and
even some church ministers would be hailing his heroism and thanking
him for serving his country by killing Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis,
and others in the “defense of our freedoms” here at home.

Did the normalization
and trivialization of killing and the denigration and devaluation
of life in Afghanistan and Iraq trigger something inside the apparently
disturbed mind of the accused Arizona killer? I don’t know.
But how can such actions not have a horrible long-term adverse effect
on people whose government is permanently engaged in such evil?

Reprinted
from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

January
13, 2011

Jacob
Hornberger [send him mail]
is founder and president of The Future
of Freedom Foundation.

The
Best of Jacob Hornberger

Last November
a new book entitled The
Kennedy Detail: JFK’s Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence,
by Gerald Blaine and Lisa McCubbin, promised to “reveal the
inside story of the assassination, the weeks and days that led to
it and its heartrending aftermath.”

Unfortunately,
however, while providing details of the events leading up to the
assassination, the assassination itself, and President Kennedy’s
funeral, the book provided hardly any information on one of the
most mysterious aspects of the assassination: what happened when
Kennedy’s body was delivered to the morgue at Bethesda Naval
Hospital on the evening of the assassination.

For almost
50 years, people have debated the Kennedy assassination. Some claim
that the Warren Commission got it right – that Kennedy was
assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone-nut assassin. Others contend
that Kennedy was killed as part of a conspiracy.

It is not
the purpose of this article to engage in that debate. The purpose
of this article is simply to focus on what happened at Bethesda
Naval Hospital on the evening of November 22, 1963, and, specifically,
the events that took place prior to Kennedy’s autopsy. What
happened that night is so unusual that it cries out for truthful
explanation even after 47 years.

U.S. officials
have long maintained that Kennedy’s body was delivered to the
Bethesda morgue in the heavy, ornamental, bronze casket in which
the body had been placed at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.

The problem,
however, is that the evidence establishes that Kennedy’s body
was actually delivered to the Bethesda morgue twice, at separate
times and in separate caskets.

How does one
resolve this problem? One option, obviously, is just to forget about
it, given that the assassination took place almost a half-century
ago. But it seems to me that since the matter is so unusual and
since it involves a president of the United States, the American
people – regardless of which side of the divide they fall on
– lone-nut assassin or conspiracy – are entitled to a
truthful explanation of what happened that night at Bethesda. And
the only ones who can provide it are U.S. officials, especially
those in the Secret Service, the FBI, and the U.S. military, the
agencies that were in control of events at Bethesda that night.

The facts of
the casket controversy are set forth in detail in a five-volume
work that was published in 2009 entitled Inside
the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s
Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the
Assassination of JFK. The author is Douglas P. Horne, who
served as chief analyst for military records for the Assassination
Records Review Board. The ARRB was the official board established
to administer the JFK Records Act, which required federal departments
and agencies to divulge to the public their files and records relating
to the Kennedy assassination. The act was enacted after Oliver Stone’s
1991 movie,

I can’t help but comment on the latest liberal attack on libertarians because the entire episode is so humorous. This newest attack comes from Joshua Holland, senior editor at Alternet.org, one of the most liberal organizations in the country.

The controversy involves a decision by a fire department in Obion County, Tennessee, to stand by and watch a house burn down because the owner hadn’t paid the $75 fee to be protected by the fire department.

Holland went on the attack, describing the episode as an example of libertarianism and “Ayn Rand conservativism” at work. Holland wrote: “It’s a picture of a society in which u2018rugged individualism’ run amok means every man for himself. Call it Ayn Rand’s stark, anti-governmental dream come true.”

Well, except for one important detail: It was a government-owned, government-operated fire department!

In other words, Holland took a decision made by a socialist enterprise and used it to attack libertarianism!

How’s that for liberal logic at work?

One of the principal tenets of liberals is their overarching belief in the goodness of government.

Indeed, whenever libertarians call for the repeal of socialist welfare-state programs, what is the standard attack leveled by liberals?

“You hate the poor, the needy, and the disadvantaged!”

The implication, of course, is that government can be trusted to love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged.

Well, I don’t know how poor that homeowner was whose house burned down or how disadvantaged he was, but I do know one thing: He was quite needy at the time his house was burning down.

Where was the much-vaunted government compassion when his house was burning down? It was nowhere to be found!

Needless to say though, liberals aren’t going to condemn a government-owned enterprise. That would be akin to blasphemy. Better to use the lack of compassion by government bureaucrats to attack libertarians instead!

Let’s assume that the fire department was entirely private, as libertarians call for. Would a private fire department have made the same decision as the socialized, governmental-owned fire department?

Holland says yes because he obviously thinks that people in the private sector would be just as uncaring and indifferent to the sufferings of people as those government bureaucrats were.

Sure, it’s entirely possible that a private fire department would have made the same decision as the socialized, government-owned fire department.

But not very likely.

You see, Holland ignores a critical difference between the private sector and the government sector: the profit motive. The private company exists to make money. Therefore, a private fire department would have the incentive to have pre-written contracts in which an owner who had failed to purchase fire protection would be asked to agree to pay, say, double the costs of putting out the fire.

When that guy whose house was burning down offered to pay the costs of putting out the fire, the government bureaucrats not only didn’t accept the offer, they didn’t make a counter-offer. Socialized institutions aren’t driven by the profit motive.

In a follow-up post to his article, Holland displayed a surprising navet about another point about government operations that libertarians have long made: that people are “taxed at gunpoint.”

(This isn’t the only area in which liberals have a blind spot. Another one is their support of minimum-wage laws, as I pointed out in my article “Why Do Daily Kos and Alternet Support a Racist Program?”)

Holland writes: “Fun fact: if you don’t pay your taxes, you get a letter in the mail informing you that your wages will be garnished or a lein (sic) is being placed on your property. No guns involved!”

I hate to burst Holland’s bubble but he’s obviously unfamiliar with what happens after the government places a lien on someone’s house. It’s not fun, if the property owner steadfastly refuses to pay his taxes. Here’s what happens. The government will proceed to foreclose its lien by advertising a foreclosure sale. At the foreclosure sale, a government official auctions the property and sells it to the highest bidder. A deed transferring ownership of the property is given to the new owner. He now legally owns the property.

The new owner calls the taxpayer and says, “Get out of my house.” The taxpayer says, “Nope. This is my house, not yours.”

The new owner goes to a judge and secures a writ of possession and an order commanding the taxpayer to get out of the house. The writ and order will be served by deputy sheriffs (or deputy U.S. Marshalls in the case of IRS liens), all of whom have loaded guns on them. What happens if the taxpayer refuses to vacate? What happens if he decides to use force against those deputy sheriffs who are charged with evicting him? They will pull their guns out and they will use them against the recalcitrant taxpayer who is using his guns to resist the eviction. The final outcome of the encounter will be called “resisting arrest.”

As libertarians have long pointed out, the entire socialist paradigm is founded on force, which is antithetical to principles of individual liberty, free markets, and voluntary charity. That’s reason enough to reject such collectivist notions as government-owned fire departments as well as such immoral and destructive socialist programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education grants, agricultural subsidies, bank bailouts, food stamps, foreign aid, and other welfare programs.

Reprinted from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Best of Jacob Hornberger

Whenever government officials are assassinated, the normal reaction of law enforcement is to pull out all the stops in an attempt to ensure that no one who was involved in the crime escapes punishment.

Yet the more one reads about the Kennedy assassination, the more one gets the uneasy feeling that the reaction of the FBI and other federal officials was precisely the opposite. They seem to have been overeager to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin and overpassive in investigating the possible involvement of others in the killing.

For example, there were several witnesses who were certain that a shot had been fired from the grassy knoll. Whether such a shot was fired or not, one would naturally expect law-enforcement officials to aggressively pursue that possibility, given that a senior federal official had just been shot and killed. Yet, having settled on Oswald as a lone assassin who fired from behind the president, federal investigators not only did not aggressively pursue the possibility of shot’s having been fired from the front, they often actually belittled and berated witnesses who were certain that such a shot had been fired.

That makes no sense to me. That just isn’t the way law-enforcement officials operate when a federal official is killed.

For example, consider what happens when a DEA agent is murdered. Federal agents focus not only on the likely perpetrator but also on all other “likely suspects” who might have been involved in the plot. In fact, that’s one reason that criminal elements generally avoid killing law-enforcement officials. They know that the investigatory hammer is going to fall heavily on the entire criminal community.

I recall this phenomenon in the case of federal Judge John Wood of Texas, who was assassinated in 1979. After Wood was murdered, federal officials embarked on one of the biggest, most expensive, and most aggressive criminal investigations in U.S. history. They were relentless, even going so far as to secretly record jailhouse conversations between a convicted drug kingpin named Jimmy Chagra and his lawyer-brother, Joe Chagra. The investigation ultimately led not only to the conviction of the man who fired the shot, Charles Harrelson, but also to conspiracy convictions for Joe Chagra and Jimmy’s wife, Elizabeth. Jimmy Chagra was also prosecuted for the murder but was acquitted.

Suppose that immediately after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. officials had made the following announcement: “Our fellow Americans, we have completed our investigation into this heinous act and have concluded that the only people who were involved in committing it were the deranged terrorist fanatics who hijacked the planes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We are closing the case.”

Even if that later proved to be true, wouldn’t you think to yourself, “Wait a minute! That’s not the way the feds operate, especially when federal officials are killed. They pull out all the stops to determine whether there were others involved.”

And in fact, as everyone knows the feds did pull out all the stops after 9/11, rounding up and jailing thousands of people, many of them innocent, establishing secret prison camps around the world, kidnapping and torturing hundreds of suspects, and invading and occupying two countries.

That’s how we expect the feds to react in such a case.

Yet, what is odd is that that was not the way federal officials reacted after the president of the United States was assassinated. Instead, having fairly quickly fixed on Oswald as a lone assassin, federal investigators seem to have then directed their efforts to establishing that thesis and failing to aggressively pursue the possibility that others might have been involved in the shooting.

Why?

Targeting the CIA

One possibility is that early on, federal officials might have begun reaching an uncomfortable suspicion, one that pointed in the direction of the CIA, a suspicion that would be fueled by information provided to the Warren Commission by Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr, who was heading up the state’s investigation into the murder, indicating that Oswald had been on the payroll of the FBI, an allegation denied by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

If federal officials did in fact consider the possibility that the federal government’s primary intelligence agency might have to be accused of murder, conspiracy, and a coup, it is not difficult to imagine their concluding, “This is not a road we want to go down,” especially at the height of the Cold War, when the prospect of an all-out war against the CIA could easily have been seen as a genuine threat to national security.

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the CIA was actually involved in the Kennedy assassination, but it is to say this:

First, with one exception, there is virtually no possibility that anyone in the federal government, including the president, the FBI, the Warren Commission, and Congress, would have been willing to openly support targeting the CIA in a criminal investigation into whether it killed the president. The only exception might have been Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, but his ability to initiate such an investigation was nonexistent, not only because the assassination of a president wasn’t a federal criminal offense in 1963 but also because there is no way that President Johnson and Hoover, both of whom hated the younger Kennedy, would have ever supported such an investigation.

Second, there would have been no way that such a conspiracy could have ever been pierced in the absence of a fierce and honest criminal prosecutor, one who had the full support of the president and the FBI, along with an incorruptible and fearless presiding judge willing to enforce subpoenas served on the CIA with contempt charges.

Obviously, the appointment of a federal special prosecutor wasn’t a realistic possibility, not only because the president’s murder didn’t violate a federal law but also because, as a practical matter, Johnson would never have ever gone down that road anyway.

That would have meant that it would have been left to a Texas state prosecutor to have initiated such an investigation. But as we all know, the state of Texas quickly accepted the official federal position that Oswald was a lone-nut assassin and never initiated an investigation specifically targeting the CIA as a possible suspect in the assassination.

To quell concern within the public that Kennedy might have been the victim of a conspiracy, Johnson appointed a political commission composed of prominent, establishment politicians. However, none of them was the type of person who would have had any interest in specifically targeting the CIA as a possible assassin and doing the aggressive investigatory work that would have been needed to pierce such a conspiracy.

After all, don’t forget that the Warren Commission included two U.S. Senators, two U.S. Representatives, the Chief Justice of the United States, a former member of the World Bank, and even the former director of the CIA whom Kennedy had fired after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

Not exactly the type of people who are going to tear the federal government apart in a war in which the CIA is suspected of having assassinated the president of the United States.

“Offensive on its face”

Last October the New York Times published a story that shone a spotlight into one of the CIA’s best-kept secrets involving the Kennedy case; that story can be accessed here. The story involved a CIA agent named George Joannides, whose interesting involvement in the Kennedy case did not become public until after his death in 1990. A former Washington Post reporter, Jefferson Morley, became aware of Joannides’s role from documents that the CIA had released in response to a congressional law enacted after Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, which posited that the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies had conspired to kill Kennedy.

I’ll return to the Joannides story later because it reveals some important things about the CIA and its relationship to the Kennedy assassination. For now, I’d like to focus on a statement made to the Times in that article by a CIA spokesman named Paul Gimigliano, who was defending the CIA’s continued efforts to keep its files on Joannides secret from the public. Responding to implications that the CIA might be hiding something nefarious about possible CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassination, Gimigliano stated that any such suggestion was “offensive on its face.”

What Gimigliano was essentially saying is that it is absolutely inconceivable that the CIA would ever commit such a dastardly act as killing the president of the United States. It is a mindset that simply cannot imagine that any such thing is reasonably possible.

Ever since the Kennedy assassination, there have been vast numbers of people on both sides of the divide. One side has steadfastly maintained that Kennedy was killed by a lone-nut gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald.

The other side has steadfastly maintained that Kennedy was killed as a result of a conspiracy involving the CIA, U.S. intelligence, the Mafia, right-wing extremists, anti-Castro Cubans, Fidel Castro, the Soviets, or others.

The lone-nut proponents claim that the overwhelming weight of the evidence supports but one conclusion: that Oswald, a disgruntled communist sympathizer who had defected to the Soviet Union and who returned to the United States, where he lobbied for fair treatment for Cuba, gunned down the president. The lone-nut proponents point to the vast amount of circumstantial evidence that the conspiracy crowd has amassed over the years and pooh-pooh it for lacking a “smoking-gun” quality.

In doing so, however, the lone-nut proponents miss a critically important point: If the CIA was actually involved in the assassination of John Kennedy, there was no way that such involvement could ever have been definitely determined without a fierce, independent, fearless, and incorruptible criminal prosecutor charged with the specific authority of targeting the CIA for investigation, and fully supported by the president of the United States and the FBI, under the auspices of an incorruptible and courageous presiding judge.

A political or bureaucratic panel, such as the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee, never had a chance of piercing such a conspiracy, not only because of the mindset that characterizes people like Gimigliano, the mindset that finds such a notion “offensive on its face,” but also because of the extreme reluctance that members of such a group would have had to target a federal agency that was considered absolutely essential to the national security of the United States, especially at the height of the Cold War.

In other words, suppose a member of the Warren Commission had the same mindset as Paul Gimigliano, which I hold is a very likely possibility. He would have considered the possibility that the CIA was involved in the assassination to be ludicrous on its face and, therefore, would never have permitted the aggressive investigation that would have been needed to pierce such a conspiracy.

But there might well have been members of the Warren Commission — and indeed, many other federal officials — who had a different mindset, one in which they would not have discounted the possibility that the CIA had done such a thing but who would have believed that aggressively targeting the CIA for criminal investigation would have ripped apart the federal government to such an extent that the nation would have been made vulnerable to a surprise attack from the Soviet Union.

Don’t forget, after all, that Kennedy was killed just 13 months after the Cuban missile crisis, which involved the Soviets’ basing nuclear missiles aimed at the United States only 90 miles away from American shores.

Thus, regardless which of these two mindsets characterized the members of the Warren Commission — the one that holds that it is inconceivable that the CIA had done such a thing or the one that holds that we just couldn’t afford to go down that road — the result would have been the same: no aggressive criminal investigation that specifically targeted the CIA.

Was there sufficient evidence to warrant targeting the CIA as a specific suspect in the Kennedy case?

There can be no question about it. Again, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the CIA was, in fact, involved in such a plot. It is simply to say that there was more than sufficient evidence to warrant a criminal investigation specifically targeting the CIA and that U.S. officials should have supported such an investigation.

Let’s examine that evidence.

Among the reasons the CIA should have been made a specific target of a criminal investigation in the John Kennedy assassination were: (1) the CIA was the world’s premier expert in assassination and coups; and (2) the CIA was in a partnership with one of the most crooked and murderous private organizations in history, the Mafia, a partnership whose express purpose was the assassination of a public official, Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

In 1953 — 10 years before the Kennedy assassination — the CIA pulled off a coup in Iran. The operation was conducted secretly and surreptitiously and successfully. It ousted the democratically elected prime minister of Iran and replaced him with the unelected shah of Iran, a man who would be loyal to the U.S. government for the next 26 years but who also would brutalize his own people in the process.

It is no surprise, then, that the CIA celebrated this regime-change operation in Iran as a great victory for the United States. Never mind that the CIA’s coup installed a cruel dictator who would terrorize and brutalize his own citizenry until the Iranian people ousted him from power in 1979.

One year later — 1954 — the CIA pulled off a similar coup in Guatemala. Successfully employing deceptive tactics, including radio broadcasts reporting a fake military invasion of the country, the CIA induced the democratically elected president of Guatemala to abdicate in favor of an unelected military strongman who was loyal to the U.S. government. The CIA, once again, celebrated its interference with Guatemala’s internal affairs as another great victory for the United States. Of course, it could not know that its coup would precipitate a three-decade civil war in which more than a million Guatemalans would be killed.

Nine years later — 1963 — the CIA pulled off another successful coup, this time in Vietnam. That regime-change operation occurred in October, one month before Kennedy was murdered. Dissatisfied with South Vietnam’s corrupt, autocratic president Ngo Dinh Diem, Kennedy authorized the CIA to oust him from power. With the support of the CIA, the operation was successfully carried out by South Vietnamese generals, who then proceeded to assassinate Diem, albeit apparently without Kennedy’s foreknowledge or approval.

Now, let’s spring forward 10 years — 1973 — to the Chilean coup that ousted communist President Salvador Allende and replaced him with right-wing military strongman Augusto Pinochet. Granted, that coup took place a decade after the Kennedy assassination, but I think it nonetheless holds valuable lessons about how the CIA operates and its attitude toward assassination.

It is commonly claimed that the CIA had nothing to do with the Chilean coup or, at least, that no smoking-gun has ever been uncovered evidencing CIA involvement. However, that claim rings hollow for two reasons. One, it is undisputed that ever since Allende’s election, the U.S. government had been actively trying to figure out how to get rid of him. Second, and much more important, the circumstantial evidence conclusively establishes that the CIA did participate in the Chilean coup, for how else to explain the fact that the CIA played a role in the murder of an American journalist during the coup? In other words, if the CIA really wasn’t playing a role in the coup, why would it have been helping to murder an American during the coup?

The case of Charles Horman

The murder of the 31-year-old American, a man named Charles Horman, reveals quite a lot, not only about the CIA but also about how U.S. public officials respond to a CIA murder of an American citizen.

For one thing, the Horman murder shows that 10 years after the Kennedy assassination, the CIA was not above murdering Americans. Sure, the coups in Iran, Guatemala, and Vietnam produced some deaths, but they were foreigners’ deaths. In Chile, among the dead was an American — well, actually, two Americans, for another American journalist named Frank Terrugi also was killed, but it’s not clear yet whether the CIA was involved in his murder too.

But there’s no question about whether the CIA played a role in Horman’s murder. According to an entry on Horman on Wikipedia, “Horman was in the resort town of Vina del Mar, near the port of Valparaiso, which was a key base for both the Chilean coup plotters and U.S. military and intelligence personnel who were supporting them. While there, he spoke with several U.S. operatives and took notes documenting the role of the United States in overthrowing the Allende government.”

For years, the CIA denied any role in Horman’s murder, just as it denied playing any role in the Chilean coup. But at the very least, the first denial turned out to be false, intentionally false. In 1999 — more than 25 years after Horman’s death — the State Department released a document stating that the CIA had, in fact, played an “unfortunate role” in Horman’s murder.

What role exactly? We don’t know. After the release of that document, the CIA did not come forward and explain why it had lied about its participation in Horman’s murder, what its operatives had done to kill Horman, or whether CIA higher-ups had approved the assassination. Even more telling, neither Congress nor the Justice Department pursued the matter with a congressional investigation or with grand-jury subpoenas and indictments.

Think about that. Here was evidence, some 25 years after the fact, that U.S. government officials had helped to murder an American citizen. Yet not one congressional subpoena was issued to any CIA official demanding to know what the CIA’s role in the murder had been, why the CIA had lied and covered up the matter for so long, or whether there were murderers still alive and on the loose. Moreover, no federal grand jury was requested to issue subpoenas to the CIA demanding the production of a single relevant witness to the murder and its cover-up or documents regarding them.

In other words, the CIA got away with obstruction of justice and murder, the murder of an American citizen, because for some reason U.S. officials decided that it would be better to let sleeping dogs lie, at least with respect to the CIA assassination of American Charles Horman.

Now, none of this, of course, establishes that the CIA was involved in the Kennedy assassination. In fact, it’s not even circumstantial evidence that it was. But it is to say that the CIA’s successful coups in Iran, Guatemala, and Vietnam should have made the CIA a suspect in the Kennedy assassination and, consequently, a specific target of a criminal investigation. Moreover, the CIA’s post-Kennedy involvement in the murder of American Charles Horman should have caused people after 1973 to reflect upon the fact that the CIA was fully capable of assassinating an American citizen and lying about it and covering it up.

The CIA-Mafia partnership

The CIA’s expertise in regime-change operations wasn’t the only the thing that should have justified a particular and specific investigatory focus on the CIA. There was also the CIA’s partnership with the Mafia, one of the most crooked, corrupt, and murderous organizations in history.

The whole idea simply boggles the mind. Imagine: A primary agency of the U.S. government, the CIA, actually enters into a partnership with a private organization whose methods involve violence, illegality, murder, narcotics, bribery, perjury, and, well, probably just about every crime on the books.

What was the purpose of the CIA-Mafia partnership? Murder! The partnership was formed for the specific purpose of assassinating Fidel Castro, the president of a sovereign and independent country. The CIA and the Mafia, two organizations whose expertise involved murder, got together to pull off the murder of a foreign public official.

But that’s not all. What is also noteworthy here, at least with respect to the Kennedy assassination, is the fact that U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the brother of the president, was actually waging a federal war against the Mafia during the time that the CIA-Mafia partnership was operating. He was securing federal grand-jury indictments against Mafia leaders, prosecuting them, and doing everything he could to get them incarcerated. In effect, his goal was actually to destroy the Mafia, the very organization that the CIA had chosen to be its assassination partner.

Again, that’s not to say that such facts warrant a conclusion that the CIA assassinated Kennedy out of loyalty to its partner, the Mafia, which the Kennedys were trying to destroy. But it is to say that, once it was known, that relationship — and the specific purpose of the relationship — i.e., murder of a country’s president — should have been more than enough to warrant a specific and targeted investigation of the CIA, to determine whether the CIA-Mafia partnership had turned its sights away from Castro and toward Kennedy.

There’s another interesting aspect to the Mafia-CIA partnership that is worth mentioning here. One of the common things that one hears about the Kennedy assassination is that if the CIA were, in fact, involved in the assassination, someone would have leaked the information by now. That’s not necessarily true. Both the CIA and the Mafia are experts at keeping secrets, especially when it comes to murder.

After all, how much do you know about the Horman murder? Don’t forget that the CIA successfully kept its role in that murder secret for more than 25 years, and that involved just the murder of an ordinary American citizen. Do you know the identities of the CIA agents who were involved in Horman’s murder? Do you know the actual extent of their involvement?

No. And the reason you don’t know these things is that the CIA has successfully kept them secret.

But there is a much more relevant example of silence when it comes to murder, the murder of Mafia kingpin Johnny Roselli. He was the Mafia mobster who served as liaison to the CIA as part of the CIA-Mafia partnership to assassinate Fidel Castro. In 1976, Roselli testified before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the Kennedy assassination and was recalled for further testimony. Before he could respond, however, he was murdered. On August 9, 1976, his body was found in a 55-gallon steel drum floating in the waters off Miami. He had been strangled and shot and his legs had been sawed off. According to an entry on Roselli on Wikipedia, “Some believed that boss [Santo] Trafficante ordered Roselli’s death [because he felt] Roselli had revealed too much about the Kennedy assassination and Castro murder plots during his Senate testimony, violating the strict Mafia code of omerta (silence).”

The Roselli murder shows that the Mafia can keep secrets, especially when it comes to murder, for as of this date it is still undetermined who killed Roselli. As we know from the Horman case, the Mafia’s assassination partner, the CIA, can keep secrets too.

Moreover, one who decides to leak information about Mafia operations, especially those involving murder, know that they probably won’t be long for this world. One can wonder whether the Mafia’s partner, the CIA, wouldn’t feel the same way. After all, who can say with certainty that Roselli’s murderers were from the Mafia and not part of the Mafia-CIA partnership?

Did the CIA employ its expertise pulling off coups here in the United States in November 1963? Did the CIA-Mafia partnership to murder Fidel Castro switch its sights from Fidel Castro to John Kennedy? At the very least, that expertise and that partnership warranted making the CIA a specific target in a criminal investigation.

Let’s now examine, in the context of motive, the animosity that existed between John Kennedy and the CIA after the Bay of Pigs debacle and the Cuban missile crisis.

Even though the CIA was the premier government agency in the world whose expertise was assassination, coups, and regime change, it does not necessarily follow that it employed its talents and abilities here in the United States in November 1963. But it’s an important factor that should have been considered in determining whether to target the CIA in a special criminal investigation.

Another important factor was motive. In my opinion, the overwhelming weight of the evidence establishes that the CIA had much more motive than Oswald to kill Kennedy.

In fact, after all these years, I still don’t have a clear understanding of what Oswald’s motive in killing Kennedy was supposed to have been. If he was nothing more than a disgruntled, unhappy, confused communist sympathizer who was seeking fame for killing the president, then why did he deny committing the offense and, even more mysterious, why did he claim to have been set up? Wouldn’t you think that someone who was seeking fame would glory in his achievement? And if he were planning to deny the offense, then why would he leave such an obvious trail behind him, such as purchasing his rifle by mail order rather than over the counter with cash?

Moreover, one big problem is that Oswald’s strange background, on which the lone-nut proponents base a large part of their case with respect to motive, is entirely consistent with his being an operative for the CIA or military intelligence.

How many committed communists join the U.S. Marines? How did Oswald become fluent in the Russian language while he was in the Marines, given the enormous difficulty in learning a foreign language, especially without a tutor?

Why was a communist Marine assigned a military security clearance? Why wasn’t Oswald arrested on his return from the Soviet Union, where he tried to defect, and hauled before a federal grand jury to face the possibility of indictment for treason? After all, this was the height of the Cold War, when communism was considered a much greater threat to the United States than terrorism is considered today.

When Oswald was living in New Orleans, why did he stamp a return address on pro-Cuba pamphlets that was located in the same building as an ex-FBI agent named Guy Bannister? Was that just a coincidence? When he was jailed for disorderly conduct after an altercation with the head of an anti-Castro group, why did the FBI grant his request to send an agent to talk to him? After Oswald was killed, why did an FBI agent tear up a note that Oswald had delivered to him prior to the assassination?

The questions go on and on. Of course, if it were ultimately to turn out that Oswald was a U.S. intelligence operative, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t assassinate Kennedy. But it would certainly require the lone-nut proponents to totally reevaluate their case. Obviously, the CIA would have some explaining to do as well.

Possible CIA motives

What about the CIA’s motive for killing Kennedy? The best book that sets forth the various factors establishing a CIA motive is JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, by James W. Douglass, which I highly recommend.

Consider, first, the Bay of Pigs disaster. The CIA’s invasion of Cuba had already been planned when Kennedy took office. When he was asked to approve the plan, the CIA assured him that no air support would be needed. But that representation was false and the CIA knew it was false. CIA officials were setting Kennedy up. They felt that once the invasion was under way, he would have no choice but to send in the required air support in order to avert a disaster.

But the CIA miscalculated. Even as CIA operatives and friends were being killed and captured at the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy refused to send in the air support, an action that would earn him the everlasting enmity of anti-Castro Cubans and the CIA itself.

While Kennedy took responsibility for the debacle in public, he knew what the CIA had done. He fired the CIA director, Allen Dulles (who would later serve on the Warren Commission!), and vowed to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”

We should bear in mind that while Kennedy was threatening to dismantle the CIA, his brother Robert, the U.S. attorney general, was doing his best to dismantle the CIA’s partner, the Mafia.

To make matters worse, from the standpoint of the CIA, to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy vowed that the United States would not invade Cuba, a vow that essentially meant that Castro would remain permanently in power. Kennedy’s pledge served to fuel the rage and distrust that were already boiling within the CIA (and the anti-Castro community).

Did the CIA’s anger over losing friends and associates at the Bay of Pigs and suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of archenemy Fidel Castro, combined with what could have been construed as a vow to dismantle and abolish the CIA, motivate CIA officials to take out Kennedy? Maybe; maybe not. But it was certainly a matter that needed to be investigated fully in a criminal proceeding.

Equally important, as Douglass sets forth in his book, was the epiphany about the Cold War that Kennedy seemed to have reached after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Realizing how close the world had come to nuclear war, he began raising his vision to a higher level, one that involved figuring out a way to end the Cold War. As part of that process, he indicated to close associates his intention to withdraw all U.S. troops from Vietnam after the 1964 elections. He also established communications not only with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who, according to Douglass, was experiencing the same type of epiphany as Kennedy, but also with the CIA’s sworn enemy, Fidel Castro, whom the CIA was committed to assassinating.

Kennedy’s actions were not taken lightly by the CIA, the Pentagon, or the military-industrial complex. It is impossible to adequately describe how dangerous and grave those agencies viewed the international communist threat to America during the 1960s. Communism was considered a thousand times more dangerous than the terrorist threat against America today. The Pentagon and the CIA both felt that unless the United States took an aggressive stand against communism, including an aggressive military stand, a communist takeover of the United States was all but certain. In fact, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, many members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were calling on Kennedy to attack Cuba, which they knew would mean war with the Soviet Union. They had calculated that a nuclear war would cost the Soviet Union many more millions of citizens than it would America.

So here you had a young, inexperienced president who had supposedly double-crossed his own intelligence agency at the Bay of Pigs, threatened to destroy that intelligence agency at the height of the Cold War, permanently surrendered Cuba to the communists, and effectively pledged to surrender Vietnam to the communists, and was now reaching out to communist leaders in an attempt to reach a peaceful accord with them.

What better evidence of a threat to national security than that, at least from the perspective of the CIA? If the CIA honestly believed that the American people had made a mistake in electing Kennedy to office, a mistake that was threatening to place America under communist rule, would that agency, charged with guarding the national security of the country, do what was necessary to save America, no matter how distasteful the task was?

Perhaps; perhaps not. But it was certainly a matter that deserved the close scrutiny of a criminal investigation. After all, other nations’ intelligence agencies had killed their rulers to protect their national security. Consider, as just one example, South Vietnam, where military officials in that country assassinated their president in a coup, a coup that was fully supported by the CIA.

Finally, there was Kennedy’s philandering with Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe; Mafia girlfriend Judith Exner; Mary Meyer, wife of CIA official Cord Meyer; and others. The sexual escapades could have easily been considered more evidence that the American people had made a grave error in their 1960 election, one that jeopardized the security of the nation.

George Joannides

In the 1990s, pursuant to the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, the CIA released documents that raised some serious questions about the CIA. The documents revealed that one of its agents, named George Joannides, who was dead by that time, had played at least two interesting roles.

First, prior to the assassination Joannides had served as the CIA’s liaison to a fiercely anti-Castro group named the Directorio Revolucionaro Estudiantil (DRE) and, in fact, had funneled large sums of CIA money into that organization. The DRE was the group I mentioned previously with which Oswald had had an altercation while he was handing out pro-Castro literature.

On the surface, Joannides’s relationship to the DRE doesn’t seem to be any big deal. For some reason, however, the CIA chose to keep it secret — secret from everyone, including the Warren Commission.

Why did the CIA do that? We don’t know. The CIA refuses to say. Here’s a good article to read on the CIA’s stonewalling in the matter, entitled “CIA Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery,” published last October in the New York Times:

Second, in the 1970s, when the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated the possibility of a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination, the CIA called Joannides out of retirement to serve as the liaison between the House Committee and the CIA. His job ostensibly was to facilitate CIA cooperation with the investigation.

There was a big problem, however: Again, the CIA did not disclose the connection between Joannides and the DRE prior to the assassination, which meant, at the very least, that Joannides had a serious conflict of interest serving as a liaison to the House committee.

Did the CIA call Joannides out of retirement to serve as a legitimate liaison or to serve as a loyal blocking force for the CIA? Again, we don’t know. The CIA isn’t talking.

What we do know is that the CIA’s conduct verges on obstruction of justice with respect to the House’s official investigation. G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel of the committee, stated, “[Joannides's] conduct was criminal. He obstructed our investigation.” Federal Judge John R. Tunheim, who chaired the 1990s Assassination Review Board, stated, “I think we were probably misled by the agency. This material should be released.” Even Gerald Posner, author of the famed anti-conspiracy book Case Closed, stated, “The agency is stonewalling. It’s a perfect example of why the public has so little trust in the CIA’s willingness to be truthful.”

The person who discovered the Joannides matter within the CIA’s documents was a journalist named Jefferson Morley, who used to be a reporter for the Washington Post. For more than 10 years, Morley has fought a relentless battle in the courts seeking the release of the CIA’s files on Joannides. The CIA has battled the lawsuit every step of the way, and continues to do so. Morley’s articles on the subject make for fascinating reading, and I highly recommend them. They are listed and linked at the bottom of the article I wrote last year entitled “Appoint a Special Prosecutor in the JFK-Joannides Matter.”

Did the CIA assassinate John F. Kennedy? No one can say with any certainty, one way or the other. What we do know is that there was no intelligence agency in the world that was more capable of pulling off such a feat than the CIA. We also know that if there was ever an agency with a motive for murdering a ruler, it was, again, the CIA.

Safe from prosecution

It bears repeating, though, that motive, ability, and opportunity do not automatically mean that the CIA did, in fact, kill Kennedy. It’s only to say that the CIA should have been made a target of an aggressive criminal investigation. As I stated in the first part of this article, if the CIA did, in fact, participate in Kennedy’s assassination, there was no possibility that a political or bureaucratic panel or commission would have been able to break through the stone wall that the CIA would have constructed to keep its role in the assassination secret. Only a fierce criminal prosecutor, backed by a fearless and incorruptible judge, could have broken through such a wall.

If the CIA did conspire to kill Kennedy, it would have known that the possibility of such an investigation was virtually nonexistent. For one thing, the CIA would have known that it would not have to fear a criminal investigation at the federal level. Why? Because assassinating a president wasn’t a federal crime at the time Kennedy was shot, a fact that the CIA would have been well aware of. That means that the CIA would not have had to fear taking on the FBI, the Justice Department, or an aggressive special federal prosecutor.

The CIA would have also known that it could easily stonewall a political or bureaucratic commission, such as the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee, which generally lack the will and tenacity that characterize a criminal prosecution. The CIA’s successful stonewalling regarding the Joannides matter fully demonstrates that. Moreover, Lyndon Johnson’s appointment of former CIA Director Allen Dulles, whom Kennedy had fired after the Bay of Pigs disaster, to the Warren Commission effectively blocked the possibility of any serious investigation into the CIA’s possible role in the assassination.

Thus, the only thing that the CIA would have had to be concerned about was a criminal prosecution by the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas, where the murder took place. But what was the likelihood that a local district attorney would take on the CIA in such a proceeding? Not very high, especially if the president of the United States, a Texan, was calling for all investigations to cease except the one that was to be conducted by the Warren Commission.

In fact, as Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney who initiated his own criminal investigation into the Kennedy assassination, discovered, a state-level prosecution had virtually no chance of succeeding without the full cooperation of the president of the United States and the Justice Department. Not only did U.S. officials do their best to obstruct his investigation, they also sent a powerful message to all future district attorneys in Dallas County, which had continuing jurisdiction over the murder, by retaliating against Garrison with a bogus federal criminal indictment for bribery, a charge on which he was ultimately acquitted.

If the CIA conspired to kill Kennedy, it would have known that the chances that Johnson would authorize the Justice Department and the FBI to cooperate with a state criminal investigation targeting the CIA were nil. After all, don’t forget that we’re talking about the Cold War, when U.S. officials genuinely believed that the United States was in grave danger of a communist takeover. And they were even more convinced then that the CIA was absolutely essential to national security than they are today under the war on terrorism.

Therefore, the CIA would have known that the last thing the new president would do was involve himself and his administration in an enormously vicious war between state and federal officials, a war in which state officials would be targeting an agency that most federal officials, including those in Congress, considered absolutely vital to national security.

Persistent doubts

But that’s precisely what Johnson should have done. He should have made it clear from the outset that he expected the Dallas district attorney to pursue all leads, including targeting a very likely suspect in Kennedy’s murder, the CIA. That would have included an order to the Secret Service to cease and desist its efforts to whisk Kennedy’s body out of the state, given that an autopsy was required under Texas state law and was essential to a criminal investigation.

Did the CIA do it or not? Those who say yes will undoubtedly continue to add to their stockpile of circumstantial evidence indicating CIA complicity in the murder. Those who say no will continue to proclaim that there is no “smoking gun” firmly establishing a CIA conspiracy to kill the president.

An aggressive criminal investigation making the CIA a target of interest wouldn’t necessarily have been definitive one way or the other, but at least the American people would have gotten a sense that justice had been served with such an investigation. Given the failure to pursue such an investigation, a cloud of doubt will always hang over whether the CIA played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Reprinted from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Best of Jacob Hornberger

Liberals claim to combat poverty in two principal ways.

First, they use the force of government (e.g., income taxes) to take money from those who have earned it in order to give it to the poor.

Second, they restrict people’s use of their property to enable the poor to have access to such property.

What liberals fail to understand, however, is that the very means they choose to combat poverty — socialism and interventionism — actually exacerbate the problem that they claim to address. Their war on poverty hurts the very people they say they are trying to assist.

In proposing welfare-state programs, by necessity liberals always make an important assumption. They assume that there is wealth in society. After all, if there is no wealth then what good would welfare-state policies do? The welfare state operates on the assumption that there are people who are earning wealth or have accumulated wealth. Those are the people from whom the government takes money in order to redistribute it to the poor.

Let’s consider a hypothetical case based on science fiction. Astronomers discover that an inhabitable planet is hurtling toward our solar system and will soon join the other planets in orbit around the sun. Faced with overcrowding of its prisons, the federal government decides to exile 50,000 prisoners on a spaceship to the planet. Everyone is given six months of supplies on which to survive — food, water, and clothing — and nothing else.

When the prisoners arrive on the planet, they call into existence a federal government, democratically elected. Federal officials are empowered to do everything and anything they can to combat the extreme poverty that is immediately facing society.

Liberals are elected to the presidency and to Congress. They propose a massive welfare-state program modeled on Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid. Public housing. Food stamps. Grants to education. Agricultural subsidies. Unemployment relief.

Do you see the problem? The federal government isn’t a fountain of wealth. It has no money. Its coffers are empty. In order to get the money to distribute all these welfare benefits to people, it must first impose a tax on people.

But do you see the next problem? There are no wealthy or even middle-class people who can be taxed because everyone in this society is poor.

In proposing their array of welfare programs to help the poor, liberals operate under the mindless assumption that wealth exists naturally in a society. Even worse, they give nary a thought to the possibility that a society in which wealth is growing is the greatest benefit to the poor. Worst of all, they don’t consider the distinct possibility that their own tax-and-redistribute policies tend toward destroying the base of wealth in society, thereby relegating everyone to poverty.

Let’s return to our hypothetical example regarding the prisoners on the new planet. Everyone is poor. Welfare-state policies to combat the poverty will obviously not work because there are no wealthy people to take money from in order to redistribute it to the poor. So what can be done to combat poverty?

Ownership, collective and private

The liberals come up with a novel solution. They adopt a system by which the government owns everything and by which everyone works for the government. People will be assigned houses to build, businesses to run, or places in fields to grow crops. Government officials will be in charge of planning everything — which crops will be planted, which occupations people will be assigned to, which houses will be built, which consumer goods will be produced. Central planners will distribute food, housing, clothing, and other essentials in accordance with the needs of each person and each family.

Everyone seems happy with the scheme, especially since it mirrors much of the prison life to which the prisoners had been accustomed. But a problem arises, one involving human nature. No one feels like working very hard. Agricultural workers are constantly getting sick. People are doing jobs for which they are ill-suited. Goods and services are scarce, and the situation is getting worse for everyone.

Actually, this hypothetical society isn’t far from reality. It is pretty much what happened when the first colonists arrived at Plymouth Rock. They formed a society in which most property would be collectively owned and shared.

The result? Starvation and famine.

One day, Governor Bradford changed the system. From that day forward, everyone would be entitled to own his own property and keep the fruits of his labor for himself and his family. No longer would people be forced to share their earnings with others.

Immediately, everyone began working harder and accumulating wealth. No more starvation and famine. The bounty produced by this private-property system formed the foundation for the first Thanksgiving.

What would be the solution to poverty in our hypothetical example? It would a libertarian one, a solution based on private property and free markets. Everyone would be free to go into any business he chose. In that way, people could pursue their own interests and talents in an attempt to provide goods or services that other people would be interested in purchasing.

People would be free to engage in any economic trade with anyone else, without interference or regulation by the government.

People would also be free to accumulate the fruits of their earnings. There would be no income tax imposed on the people.

Obviously, at first there would still be manifest poverty, given the difficulties in accumulating wealth. People struggling to survive have a difficult time saving any money. But by the time of the second generation, things will have improved a bit, with families actually accumulating savings that they would then be free to pass down to the third generation.

Within a few decades, such a system of free enterprise would not only generate millionaires but also raise the standard of living for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Equally important, the poor would know that they had a chance to join the ranks of the middle class and wealthy simply by working hard and providing a product or service that other people were willing to pay for.

This, too, is not as hypothetical as it sounds, as it pretty much describes the situation in the United States after the adoption of the Constitution in 1787 and continuing through the early 1900s. For the first time in history, people were able to engage in enterprise freely (that is, without government regulation or control) and accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth (that is, without their incomes’ being taxed).

That’s not to say, however, that the process of wealth creation was an immediate one. For the first few decades, life was very difficult, as it would be in any society in which there exists only a small base of wealth.

Liberals often point to the Industrial Revolution as an example of the horrors of the free-market system. Factory conditions, for example, were horrific for those working there, including wives and children, as liberals are so fond in reminding us.

But liberals miss an important point. Those factories, as bad as they were, offered a chance for survival to those who were working in them. A society in which there is no foundation of wealth and no chance of accumulating wealth will inevitably have people starving to death.

A society in which there is limited wealth but in which people are free to engage in enterprise and accumulate wealth will inevitably have people struggling to survive but at least having a chance to survive.

That’s what was occurring during the Industrial Revolution. American husbands and fathers were sending their wives and children into factories not because they hated them but because they knew that that was the only chance they had to keep them alive.

Then, as families began accumulating wealth, the need to send the entire family into the factories became less desperate. It was not government but rather capital — the accumulation of savings — that ultimately brought wives and children out of the factories.

The key, then, to a rising standard of living in a society lies in savings and capital. Let’s examine how this is so.

The role of capital

Let’s assume that a farmer owns a 100-acre tract of land on which he grows various crops. He employs one worker, whose sole piece of equipment is a hoe. The farmer pays the worker $10,000 per year and has additional expenses of $5,000. At the end of the year, the farmer sells his crops at market for $20,000, earning him a profit of $5,000.

Since the farmer has earned a profit of $5,000, he can use part of that money to give his worker a raise. But let’s assume that a $5,000 profit is the minimum amount of profit that the farmer has concluded he needs to remain in business. Since farming is a risky business, one in which a crop could sell for much less than anticipated, the farmer just doesn’t feel it’s worth his while to engage in farming if he can’t earn at least $5,000 for himself and his family.

Assuming that things stay the same from year to year, that means that the worker’s income simply cannot go up. It must remain the same, given that the farmer lacks the financial means by which to pay the worker more money.

But what if the farmer can somehow increase production? Suppose he can double the output on his 100-acre tract of land? If he’s able to do that, he’s then able to give his worker a pay raise.

So how does the farmer pull that off? That’s where capital comes into play. Each year, the farmer puts away $500 of his profit. After a few years, he uses his savings to purchase a used tractor. Now, the worker is no longer using a hoe. He’s got a tractor to plant, cultivate, and harvest the crops. Let’s say that production doubles, which increases the farmer’s profit to $10,000.

That means that the farmer now has more money at his disposal to increase the pay of the worker.

Does the worker need to rely on the beneficence of his employer to guarantee the pay raise? No, because the worker knows that there are surrounding farms that are also employing workers. All that he has to do is check around and see what competing farms are offering and ask his employer to match it. If the farmer fails to do so, the employee can accept a competing offer, leaving his employer with no one to work on his farm.

Thus, the people who are among the primary beneficiaries of capital accumulation are the poor — those who are wage-earners at the bottom of the economic ladder. They have as much interest in the success of the company they’re working for as the owner has. The more the company invests its profits in productive capital, the more profits the company stands to earn, enabling more money to be devoted to pay raises. Moreover, the more other companies are doing the same, the more they are able to bid up the real wage rates of the wage-earning class.

Return to poverty

Now, let’s return to our science-fiction example where the prisoners are living on that new planet. Let’s propel them forward by 100 years. By that time, people have accumulated massive amounts of wealth and everyone has a very high standard of living. There are, of course, those who are much wealthier than others but by the same token, those who are the poorest have a nice living standard. Everyone understands that the high standard of living depends, in fact, on the savings and capital accumulation engaged in by the very wealthy and by everyone else.

Reenter the liberals. Seeing all this wealth, they exclaim, “Notwithstanding God’s injunction against coveting, it’s simply not fair that some have more when others have less. We wish to declare war on poverty. Let us rid ourselves of this libertarian free-market scourge and establish a socialistic welfare state, one in which the federal government will take from those at the top of the economic ladder and redistribute it to those at the bottom of the economic ladder.”

People succumb to the liberals’ siren song. At first, everything works fine. Old people are getting free retirement payments and health care. Poor people are getting free housing, food, and clothing. Producers are getting free subsidies. Children are getting free education.

People fail to notice, however, a disquieting phenomenon. The ranks of the wealthy slowly start dropping because those who are barely on the margin of the wealthy and middle class drop back into the lower category, owing to the new income taxes imposed on them to fund all the free programs.

As the process grows, the tax base shrinks, causing federal officials to extend their income tax to the middle class. That causes people on the margin between the poor and middle class to begin dropping back into the lower category.

Gradually, taxes continue to expand and rise to keep the socialistic system going, bringing about an ominous development — a gradual reduction in savings and capital accumulation, the keys to a rising standard of living.

In fact, our hypothetical case is not so hypothetical. It describes the economic history of the United States for most of the 20th century. After 19th-century Americans had brought into existence an unprecedented accumulation of capital and, consequently, the highest standard of living in history, 20th-century liberals saw a golden opportunity, one that would enable them to tax the wealthy, and later the middle class, to help out the poor. That is what Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society were all about — using government to take money from those who had earned it and giving it to those who had not earned it.

Over time, socialism returns people to a state of poverty, one in which everyone is equal by virtue of everyone’s having nothing. Cuba is a good example. By taking everything away from the wealthy and middle class, including their businesses, homes, and bank accounts, with the alleged intent of helping the poor, Fidel Castro carried the socialist principle to its logical conclusion.

The result? Manifest poverty. In fact, if it hadn’t been for loans and grants from the Soviet Union (which itself was based on the socialist confiscation-and-redistribution principle), Cubans would have faced the same result as the people at Plymouth Rock — starvation and famine.

The only reason that the U.S. standard of living continued rising during the era of American socialism was that the private sector continued accumulating savings and wealth faster than federal officials were confiscating it. The invention of computers, for example, almost immediately made workers much more productive.

But it is impossible to say how much more productive Americans would be — how much higher our standards of living would be — if the wealth-producing process that our American ancestors had brought into existence had been free to continue. If Americans had never adopted the income tax and the welfare state, it boggles the mind to think how much better off the American people would be, especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

When it comes to economic policy, liberals suffer from two major weaknesses.

One, they believe that all that matters with respect to policy are good intentions. As long as liberals mean well, they think that the policies they implement, especially with respect to the poor, are justified.

Two, they have a woeful lack of understanding of economic principles, which inevitably leads them to think that they can change the natural laws of economics through the simple act of enacting legislation.

Arguably, the people who have paid the highest price for these two liberal weaknesses are the poor, the class of people around whom liberal domestic policy has claimed to primarily revolve since at least the time of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

It would be difficult to find a better example of all this than minimum-wage laws. These are laws by which liberals claim to help the poor by requiring employers to pay their employees a minimum hourly rate set by the government. The notion is that this helps the poor by preventing employers from paying less than a subsistence wage. In the absence of a minimum-wage law, the liberals say, employers would be paying workers so little that the poor would be starving in the streets.

The truth, however, is that no matter how well intended liberals might be, a minimum-wage law actually serves as a monumental attack on the poor. It is a classic example of how a lack of understanding about economic principles leads liberals into harming the very people they claim to want to help.

Let’s examine some fundamental economic principles to show how the poor — those at the bottom of the economic ladders — are damaged by minimum-wage laws.

In every exchange, both sides give up something they value less for something they value more. It’s a natural principle on which trade is based.

Let’s assume that I have 10 apples and you have 10 oranges and that I give you 7 apples and you give me 3 oranges. Someone might say that that’s an unequal exchange because I gave up more than you did. Not so. I gave up something I valued less — 7 apples — for something I valued more — 3 oranges. But you did the same — you gave up something you valued less — 3 oranges — for something you valued more — 7 apples.

Both of us have benefited from the exchange. We have both given up something we value less for something we value more. We have improved our respective standard of living through the simple act of exchange.

Employment and subjective value

This principle applies not only in the trading of goods, but also in the trading of labor services. When an employer and employee enter into a labor agreement, each of them is giving up something he values less for something he values more.

The employer gives up a certain amount of money in exchange for the labor services of the employee. He values the money less than he values the work that the employee is performing.

By the same token, the employee gives up his time and labor in exchange for the money he receives from the employer. The employee places a higher value on the money than he does on the time and labor he’s devoting to the employer.

There is an important economic principle involved here: Value is entirely subjective. It lies in the eyes of the beholder. The value that I place on a particular item is likely to be different from the value that you place on it. Thus, I might well be willing to pay a higher price for certain things than you would, and the same applies to you.

This principle of subjective value applies to employers when they’re hiring employees. When contemplating whether to hire a certain worker, employers subjectively determine the applicants’ value. By the same token, the subjective determination of the worker will determine whether he takes the job.

Whether a person is hired or not will ultimately turn on the subjective determinations of both employer and worker. An employer might think to himself, “That person is worth $5 an hour to me.” The worker might think to himself, “I’m worth $6 an hour.” If neither side budges, then no trade will take place. That means that the worker will not be employed at that business and must seek other employment where the employer says, “That worker is worth $6 an hour to me.” And the first employer has to continue looking for someone who will work for $5 an hour. There will be a meeting of the minds when each side gives up something he values less for something he values more, enabling an employment contract to come into existence.

This is an area in which liberals go astray. They simply do not understand the concept of subjective value. They think that everything and everybody has some sort of objectively determined value, one that can be legislatively imposed.

Let’s consider an example. Suppose an 18-year-old man is looking for a job. He comes from a very poor family, dresses very badly, and speaks poor English. He has no work experience.

Everywhere he goes looking for a job, he is met with the same answer: No. No matter how many businesses he visits, he simply cannot get a job.

Finally, he walks into a business and says, “I’m willing to work for a dollar an hour. I’ll do whatever you want me to.” For his part, the employer finds that offer extremely attractive. He has menial tasks to be performed and it is worth it to him to pay $1 an hour to get them done.

Thus, both sides — the employer and the worker — have arrived at a meeting of the minds. Each is willing to give up something he values less for something he values more. Their decisions are based on their subjective valuation of the elements being exchanged — labor and money.

Creating unemployment

Will the deal go through? Not today. The reason? The federal minimum-wage law, which requires employers to pay workers at a minimal rate of $7.25 per hour.

The reasoning employed by liberals goes like this: Nobody can survive earning a dollar an hour. To sustain one’s life, liberals say, requires a minimal rate of $7.25 an hour. Therefore, liberals enact a law that requires employers to pay their workers that minimal rate. In the process, liberals portray themselves as great heroes for the poor.

But there’s obviously a problem here, one involving subjective value. In our example, that 18-year-old is unable to find any employer willing to pay him $7.25. All they’re willing to pay him is $1 an hour, a rate that he is willing to accept but is precluded from doing so because of the minimum-wage law.

What happens to that 18-year-old? As a result of the minimum-wage law, he goes unemployed, permanently. He simply cannot get a job at the federally established minimum because employers do not place that value on his labor.

That leaves the worker with the following choices: die by starvation, live on charity, engage in criminal conduct, or go on government welfare.

Keep in mind that when a minimum-wage law is enacted, the government does not require employers to hire people at that rate. Instead, what the government does is to require people who are hired to be paid at that minimal rate.

The obvious question arises with respect to subjective value: What happens to people whose labor is valued by employers at less than the governmentally established minimum?

The answer is as obvious as the question, but unfortunately it’s one that liberals simply fail to consider. Those people are laid off and, even worse, permanently locked out of the labor market, assuming that valuations remain the same.

That is, as long as employers place a subjective value on the labor of unemployed people that is lower than the governmentally established minimum, those people are going to be out of work. Employers will simply refuse to hire them.

To make the matter clearer, suppose that Congress enacted a minimum wage of $1,000 an hour. Wouldn’t that be a great thing for workers? No, because it’s easy to see that lots of people would be laid off. The reason? Subjective value. All those workers whose labor is valued by employers at less than $1,000 an hour would be terminated.

Liberals will rail against this natural law of economics. They’ll exclaim, “Every employer should place a high value on the work of employees. The value they place should at least equal the amount we set in our minimum-wage law.”

But that’s not how life works. Again, value is subjective, not objective. Employers have their own personal, subjective valuations. For their part, so do workers.

Thus, in an unhampered market economy — that is, one unhampered by such governmental interventions as minimum-wage laws — there will be no permanent unemployment because people will be able to find jobs at wage rates that are acceptable to them and to their employers, even if it is at rates that liberals consider too low.

Liberals say that it is abhorrent that that 18-year-old would have to work at a dollar an hour. They say that no one could survive at that rate. They say that it’s unconscionable that anyone should have to work at that less-than-subsistence wage rate.

But in their paternalistic approach to this situation, they block out of their minds some important things. Even though the young man is making only a dollar an hour, he’s not only earning a bit of money he’s also learning work skills and a work ethic. He’s learning the business he’s working for. He’s building up his stock of knowledge, which will enable him to become more marketable down the road or perhaps even open his own business to compete against already-established businesses.

Unemployment and crime

But when a teenager willing to work is locked out of the labor market, thanks to the minimum-wage law, he doesn’t acquire any of those things. As a result of the supposedly good intentions of the liberals, the minimum-wage law locks him out of the labor market and relegates him to a life of charity, illegal activity (e.g., theft or drug dealing), or welfare.

Liberals cry, “But the boy could never survive on a dollar an hour.” Nonsense! There are all sorts of things he could do to make do, especially knowing that the situation is likely to be temporary. He could live with family or with a large bunch of friends who are sharing expenses. He would do what was necessary to survive during the time he was improving his work skills.

With their minimum-wage laws, liberals never give that 18-year-old a chance. With their supposedly good intentions, they make him permanently unemployable.

Is there a real-life example of this phenomenon? Last October the New York Times published a news story about runaway teenagers in America (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/us/26runaway.html?_r=2), the number of which has soared because of family financial problems arising from the recession. Citing federal studies and experts, the article stated that 1.6 million juveniles become runaways annually.

According to the article, “Legitimate employment was hard to find in the summer of 2009; the Labor Department said fewer than 30 percent of teenagers had jobs.” The runaways supported themselves by selling drugs, panhandling, and prostitution.

Why weren’t the runaway teenagers choosing to work at legitimate jobs to support themselves?

The answer: minimum-wage laws. There are no jobs being offered at low wage rates to 14-year-old runaways with minimal education, rates that many of the runaways might well be willing to work at. All the available jobs are being offered at the minimum wage because that’s what the law requires. And employers simply do not place that value on the work of runaway teenagers who lack an education and work experience.

(A related factor here is teen work permits, another ludicrous regulation that most states require.)

Suppose there was no minimum-wage law. Then there would be all sorts of jobs being offered on the market at hourly rates of $5, $4, $1. Runaway teenagers would have an array of available options open to them from which to choose.

But those options are never permitted to come into existence because of the government’s minimum-wage law. It relegates runaway teenagers to surviving by working in such activities as drug dealing and prostitution.

High wages

Liberals say that in the absence of minimum-wage laws, employers would pay everyone below-subsistence wages.

But that’s obviously ridiculous, for the labor market is filled with instances of employers paying their workers more than the minimum wage. How do liberals explain that?

In other words, if employers would pay everyone below-subsistence wages in the absence of a minimum-wage law, why would so many employers today be paying many of their workers more than the minimum? Wouldn’t you think that they would be paying the minimum amount established by law and not a penny more?

The answer lies, again, in the concept of subjective value. The reason that employers pay some workers higher than the minimum wage is that they subjectively place a higher value on the labor of such workers. Thus, some employers are willing to trade, say, $20 an hour in exchange for the labor of their employees.

Why would employers do that? Why not pay less rather than more, even if you place a higher valuation on the labor of the workers? Because there are other businesses that are competing for the labor of those workers, which tends to send labor rates upward.

Thus, it is in the interests of workers to have as many businesses operating as possible. More businesses mean greater competition for workers.

Yet, because of minimum-wage laws and other such governmental interventions, many businesses cannot survive. For example, a company that is barely operating at the margin cannot afford to give its workers a governmentally established pay raise. With the increase in the minimum wage, such a business has no choice but to close down, thereby laying off its workers.

Add to that all the businesses that have to shut down as a result of other governmental interventions. Among the people who are hurt are the poor because there are fewer businesses competing for their services.

Liberals operate under the quaint notion that such natural laws as the law of supply and demand can be repealed by public officials. They cannot be.

Minimum-wage laws are just one example among many of a government intervention that hurts the poor. Other examples include price controls, welfare, protectionism, licensure, and subsidies.

Good intentions don’t matter and a lack of understanding of economic principles is no excuse. What matters are the actual consequences of government policy. Those whom liberals claim to love — the poor — are the ones who suffer the most from liberal economic policies.

Reprinted from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Best of Jacob Hornberger

For example, consider these links to two of the most prominent liberal websites on the Internet: Dailykos.com and Alternet.org: here and here, respectively.

Those two links take the reader to lists of articles on those two websites that extol the virtues of the minimum wage. Indeed, the devotion that these two liberal websites have to the minimum wage was just recently reflected by their publication of an article entitled, “What Conservatives Mean When They Say ‘Libertarian’,” in which the author, John Sumner, criticized me for praising the virtues of economic liberty in 1800, a period characterized by the absence of a federal minimum-wage law and other interventionist programs. (My response to Sumner’s article, entitled “Economic Ignorance and Liberal Hypocrisy at Dailykos.com,” can be found here.)

The first thing one notices whenever liberals advocate the minimum wage is their stinginess, for they always limit their calls for a minimum wage to no more than $10 an hour. Despite their supposed love for the poor, you never see liberals calling for a minimum wage of, say, $100 an hour. They always keep it down to the $10-an-hour area.

Let’s examine why it’s a good thing, at least for the poor, that liberals don’t call for a $100-an-hour minimum wage. It will help us to see how liberals attack the poor, and especially the poor who are black, with their $10 or lower minimum wage.

In every economic trade, people are giving up something they value less for something they value more. That’s why they trade. They aim to improve their economic well-being through the trade.

For example, suppose A has five apples and B has five oranges. Let’s say they enter into a trade in which A gives B four apples in return for one orange. Is B the winner and A the loser in this exchange? No. They’re both winners because they both have gained from the exchange. Each of them has given up something he values less for something he values more.

It’s no different in a labor exchange. In any consensual labor relationship, each side gives up something he values less for something he values more.

Suppose, for example, an employer hires a worker at a monthly pay of $1,000. Both sides have gained; otherwise they wouldn’t have entered into the exchange. The employer values the money less than he values the work provided by the employee. The employee values the money more than the other things he could do with his time.

What’s important to keep in mind, however, is that all these valuations are entirely subjective. That is, they are in the eyes of the beholder. A person’s subjective valuation of something, including an employee, will inevitably turn on an infinite array of factors, including the amount of wealth he happens to possess and how he prefers to allocate it.

An employer, for example, will place a subjective valuation on a prospective employee. He will subjectively determine how much in additional revenue that person is likely to bring to the firm, especially compared to how much the firm is paying him. How much to offer him will be based on such factors as availability of capital and how much other firms are offering.

Suppose one day in June, a company’s employment office encounters 10 teenagers who have just graduated from high school, all of whom are seeking a job. The company and the teenagers reach a deal in which the company agrees to pay each of them $15 an hour. All of them are hired.

What that means is that the company has made a subjective valuation of their work potential, one that makes it worthwhile for the company to pay them $15 an hour. It also means that the teenagers are happy with the deal, again from an entirely subjective standpoint.

The teenagers begin work. One week later, the liberals enact a minimum-wage law requiring companies to pay their workers $100 an hour.

Do you see the problem? While the company concluded that those teenagers are worth $15 an hour, it is quite unlikely that it is going to feel the same way about paying them $100 an hour. After some quick deliberation, the company decides that it’s just not worth it to pay the higher, mandated wage rate. Its subjective determination is that the teenagers are worth no more than $15 an hour and certainly not $100 an hour.

So the law leaves the employer with no effective choice. The company lays off the teenagers. They go in search of new jobs, but every company tells them the same thing: “It’s just not worth it to us to pay you $100 an hour. We don’t have that kind of money, your skills aren’t yet sufficient to bring in significant revenues, and we’d soon go broke if we paid you that amount of money.”

So what do those teenagers do? Well, they starve to death. Or they steal. Or they push drugs. What other alternative has the $100 minimum law left them? Oh, they can also go on welfare because liberals, always concerned about the plight of the poor, enact a law that taxes the company that laid them off and uses the tax money to provide a welfare dole for the teenagers. Thus, unable to break into the labor market and learn a work ethic because of the $100 minimum-wage law, the teenagers remain on the dole through adulthood and possibly through their entire lives.

You see, the $100 minimum wage has permanently locked them out of the labor market. When libertarians show up and call for the minimum wage to be repealed, liberals hoot them down with such cries as “You hate the poor! You hate welfare! You believe in exploitation!”

But nothing can change the fact that it is the liberals — with their minimum-wage law — who have locked those teenagers out of the labor market, which then causes liberals to initiate welfare-state programs that make such people helpless, dependent wards of the state.

“But the minimum wage isn’t $100,” liberals cry. “It’s only $7.25 per hour.”

But the economic principles are no different, and this is where the racist aspects of the minimum wage come into play.

Everyone whose labor is valued by employers at less than $7.25 an hour is locked out of the labor market by the minimum wage law. It might well be fewer people than if the minimum wage were set at $100 an hour, but the fact remains: For all those people whose labor is subjectively valued in the marketplace at less than the legally established minimum, the minimum-wage law becomes a death sentence or at least one that leads to a life of crime or welfare-state dependency.

After all, don’t forget that the minimum-wage law doesn’t force any employer to hire anyone. It simply says that if you do hire someone, you must pay the mandated minimum. Thus, the law prevents those whose labor is valued by employers at less than the mandated minimum from working.

That brings us to black, inner-city teenagers, a group of people who oftentimes are extremely poor, not very well dressed, and not very well educated by the government schools they are forced to attend. Employers subjectively place a valuation on their work that is less than the government-established minimum wage.

Yet, in the absence of the minimum wage those black teenagers could find employment. They could out-compete their richer, better-dressed, better-educated, suburban white counterparts by offering to work for less. They simply would keep lowering the wage at which they’re willing to work until they met the subjectively determined valuation of an employer. That might be, say, $1 an hour. But at least the teenager could use the opportunity to learn the trade, thereby enabling him to acquire the skills that could help him start a business down the road, perhaps even competing against his employer. The $7.25 minimum wage law prevents him from ever getting that foothold. It keeps him entirely out of the labor market.

As George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams, who authored the book The State Against Blacks, wrote in a recent article, “The Cruelty of the Minimum Wage,” “One of the more insidious effects of minimum wages is that it lowers the cost of racial discrimination; in fact, minimum-wage laws are one of the most effective tools in the arsenals of racists everywhere….”

Empirical studies have long reinforced this theoretical analysis:

• u201CThe Lost Wages of Youthu201D (Wall Street Journal editorial, April 2010)
• u201CWaging War on Black Teensu201D by Richard W. Rahn and Izzy Santa (March 2010)
• u201CMinimum Wage Teen-Age Killeru201D by Bruce Bartlett (May 1999)
• u201C50 Years of Research on the Minimum Wageu201D by the Joint Economic Committee (February 1995)
• u201COutlawing Jobs” by Murray N. Rothbard (1995)

So why do the liberals at Daily Kos and Alternet and other liberals continue to do it? Why do they continue to support a program that is so clearly an attack on the poor, and a racist one at that?

The most likely explanation is the one I provided in my response to Sumner’s article — economic ignorance. When it comes to understanding economics, liberals have a blind spot. They honestly believe that all that is needed to end poverty in the world is passing laws.

Poverty in Haiti? Just pass a law forcing every employer to pay a minimum wage of $100 an hour, or at least $7.25 an hour. Voilà! Poverty is eliminated.

But as we all know, life is not so simple. If poverty could be eliminated by the enactment of minimum-wage laws and other welfare-state laws, poverty in the world would have come to an end a long time ago. After all, it doesn’t take much for a government to enact a law.

Instead, such laws always have terrible consequences for the very people liberals claim to help — the poor. When faced with such consequences, they always have a ready response: “Please judge us by our good intentions. We really do mean well.”

But why should we care about their good intentions? Why should the poor care about them? Why should inner-city blacks whom they have damaged so severely care about them?

All that matters are the consequences of government programs. The minimum-wage law has done untold damage to the poor, especially inner-city black teenagers. Liberals should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to support this vicious, destructive, and racist program.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Best of Jacob Hornberger

Sumner takes me to task for singing the praises of our American ancestors, who chose a federal government without such statist programs as income taxation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, public (i.e., government) schooling, food stamps, corporate bailouts, foreign aid, a central bank, paper money, drug laws, and many, many more.

Sumner thinks that that type of society was absolutely horrible and cites the terrible things that were taking place in the United States in 1880, the year I pointed to in my article “Up from Serfdom.” Sumner’s response contains all the standard stuff that has long been taught in America’s government-approved schools, where Sumner just happens to work as a substitute teacher.

You know, like the stuff that suggests that our American ancestors hated their wives and children, as reflected in their sending them into dangerous factories to work long hours. You know, like the stuff that suggests that liberals love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged while advocates of the free market just love the rich, greedy, and selfish people in life. You know, like the stuff that suggests that without the coercive apparatus of the welfare state, poor people and old people would just be dying in the streets.

As I have long pointed out, the problem with liberals is their dismally poor understanding of economics, and Sumner’s article is just the most recent example of this phenomenon.

Permit me to explain why.

In their purported concern for the poor, liberals never ask the important question: What is it that causes wealth and prosperity to come into existence? The only question they ask themselves is, “What is the cause of poverty”?

But the latter is a ridiculous question because poverty has always been the natural state of mankind. Throughout history, most people have been poor.

Thus, the real question is: What are the causes of wealth? What is it that enables societies to break free of the chains of poverty? Why are some societies wealthier than others?

You would think that those would be important questions for a liberal, especially since liberals have long purported to be concerned about the poor.

Alas, those questions are unimportant to liberals. Sumner, not surprisingly, doesn’t raise the questions either.

Instead, he points out all the bad things that were taking place in, say 1880, and then concludes that all those statist programs that our American ancestors rejected, and which are so beloved to Sumner, should be embraced. In other words, he’s suggesting that the absence of the statist programs is the cause of the bad living conditions in American society that he laments. But his logic and his conclusions are faulty and fallacious.

No one denies that economic conditions were bad for many people in 1880. No question about it. No dispute there.

But in focusing on those bad conditions, Sumner makes a common mistake. He is comparing those conditions to conditions in which we live today or at least to some sort of ideal economic utopia. In doing that, he misses the important point, which is this: What were conditions for ordinary people prior to the Industrial Revolution? Answer: As Hobbes put it, life was nasty, brutish, and short — that is, much, much worse than it was in 1880 America.

As bad as things were in 1880 America, it was a golden era compared to the pre-industrial age. This point was made as long ago as 1954 in a book entitled Capitalism and the Historians, which was edited by libertarian Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek. As Austrian economist Murray Rothbard stated, “Hayek contributed to and edited a series of essays that showed conclusively that the Industrial Revolution in England, spurred by a roughly free-market economy, enormously improved rather than crippled the standard of living of the average consumer and worker in England. In this way, Hayek led the way in shattering one of the most widespread socialist myths about the Industrial Revolution.”

So, does that help clarify why I would refer to 1880 as a golden era? Not because of the bad things that were still existing (duh!) but rather because for the first time in history, massive numbers of poor people actually had a decent chance to survive and even prosper. In fact, in the 1880s there are countless stories of poor people actually becoming wealthy people! Imagine that!

And why was this so? That’s the critical question, the one that liberals never ask. They just assume that wealth is a given, that there is this big economic pie, and that the state should confiscate the pie and redistribute it in the interests of making everyone have an equal share of the pie. What liberals fail to recognize, however, is that in doing so, they begin a process that ends up condemning people to a life of massive poverty, starvation, famines, and short life spans that characterized the pre-industrial age.

To explain why I consider 1880 to be a golden era, especially for the poor, let’s consider a modern-day example, one that a good liberal like John Sumner would consider to be a model society: the socialist paradise of North Korea. In that country, everyone is equal in terms of economic condition. The state owns everything, and everyone works for the state. There are no profits, speculators, or entrepreneurs. Greed and selfishness have been stamped out of society. Total government ownership and total government control. Everyone works for the benefit of the collective.

In other words, a liberal dream!

Oh, did I mention that there is also horrific poverty, famine, and starvation in North Korea? Let’s assume, just for the sake of argumentation, that each year some 10 percent of the North Korean population is dying from malnutrition or illness.

Now, suppose we asked Sumner to give us his recommendation for ending poverty in North Korea. What would he say? He would say: “Adopt a welfare state and a controlled economy! Create bureaucratic departments, modeled on the IRS and U.S. welfare agencies, whose job it is to confiscate wealth from the rich and give it to the poor!”

Do you see the problem though? Sumner would be doing what liberals always do: they assume that there is a pie of wealth to confiscate and redistribute. That’s their solution to ending poverty. But he would be missing the obvious point: They already have total socialism in North Korea, which is precisely why there is no pie for Sumner to confiscate and redistribute. Everyone has nothing.

So, obviously the standard liberal statist solution for ending poverty isn’t going to work in our North Korea hypothetical. Instead, we have come up with another solution.

Let’s try a free-market-oriented solution, similar to the one that our American ancestors adopted and embraced. (I say “oriented” because freedom isn’t really freedom when government is permitting people to exercise it.) Let’s assume that the North Korea authorities place 60 percent of the land and buildings in North Korea under private ownership. They also enact a law that permits 60 percent of the North Korean populace to engage in any economic enterprise they want, without any permission or interference from the state. The people in that sector will be free to engage in any mutually beneficial exchange with anyone in the world. There will be no income tax, and people will be free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth. There will be no economic regulations whatsoever, including price controls, minimum-wage laws, and anti-speculation laws. There will be no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other government welfare plan. No central bank and no paper money; the market will determine the media of exchange. No one will be coerced into helping another person but will be free to do so if he wishes. There will be no restrictions on emigration or immigration.

After 10 years, Sumner and I make a visit to North Korea. We discover that there is now an enormous difference between the liberated sector and the government-owned sector. In the liberated sector, there are no more famines, no more starvation. People’s real standard of living is soaring.

That’s not to say though that things are easy in the liberated sector. There is still much poverty given that it was only 10 years ago that people had absolutely nothing and were on the verge of starvation. People are having to work long hours in difficult working conditions, and that includes spouses and children. But everyone knows that those conditions are a blessing, compared to what is still happening in the government-controlled sector, where everyone is suffering much more horrific poverty and where 10 percent of the populace continues to die, year after year.

Now, I would call that a golden era, one in which 60 percent of the population was not only being saved but actually prospering.

What would Sumner say in response? He would say, “Why, that’s just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! That’s no golden era because the people in the government-owned sector are still suffering and dying. Hornberger must think that all that misery and death is a good thing. And look at how much poverty there still is in the liberated section.”

Even worse is what Sumner would propose. Furious over the fact that people in the free-market sector now have more wealth than people in the government-owned sector, he would propose statist programs that would restore government control and ownership over the free-market sector. As a good liberal, what would matter to him is that everyone should be made equal, even if everyone is made equally poor.

Would his criticism leveled at me be valid? Would I really be praising the government-owned sector when I referred to this period as a golden one? Of course not! What I would be praising is that libertarian economic means — i.e., the free market — have been used to bring 60 percent of the population out of horrific poverty and given them a chance to survive and even to prosper, especially as the generations progress.

What would be my solution to the bad things still remaining? That’s obvious — I would expand private-property, free-market principles to the 40 percent sector, enabling everyone in North Korean society to experience the benefits of the unhampered market economy.

And this is precisely what was going on in the United States throughout the 1800s, notwithstanding the fact that there were a large number of people to whom free-market principles were not being applied, such as the slaves. But for the sector that was liberated, it was the most phenomenal era in history, insofar as living standards were concerned. People were actually going from rags to riches into one, two, or three generations.

The proof of the pudding was the thousands of penniless immigrants who were fleeing the lands of government control and regulation to come to the land of little or no income taxation, regulation, or welfare. They just wanted a chance to make it, all on their own.

Did I mention that 19th-century America was not only the most prosperous nation in history but also the most charitable nation in history? In a land with no income tax and no welfare state, it was voluntary contributions that built the churches, opera houses, museums, and so much more.

So, what was the obvious solution to those Americans who were not permitted to experience the benefits of economic liberty? Expand it to them! What was the solution to the restrictions on liberty still being enacted in the 19th century? Repeal them!

In fact, the best thing Americans could ever do today is enact a constitutional amendment for economic liberty similar to the one our American ancestors enacted for religious liberty: “No law shall be passed respecting the regulation of commerce or abridging the free exercise thereof.”

The worst thing that could have ever happened was to return to the old, bankrupt idea of government ownership and control. But that’s precisely where liberals took us, with their socialistic welfare state. Gripped by envy and covetousness and unable to control themselves as they saw the enormous wealth coming into existence because of the free market, liberals (or “progressives” as some of them like to call themselves) brought into existence in the 20th century a massive confiscatory and redistributive socialist system, one that has been taking our country down the road to serfdom, impoverishment, and loss of liberty, the road that humanity has traveled throughout the ages.

Liberals have long justified their socialist and interventionist schemes under the pretense of loving the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. And their favorite justification whenever their programs go awry is, “But we have good intentions.” But good intentions are irrelevant. All that matters is reality, especially in terms of the immorality and destructiveness that have accompanied socialism and interventionism.

Sumner piously points out that 1880, the year that I used as an example of economic liberty, was characterized by the Chinese Exclusion Act. Of course, that couldn’t be true given that the Act wasn’t enacted until 1882. (Oh well, what’s a couple of years?) But his real point in bringing it up was to imply that the period wasn’t really golden because there was an immigration restriction on Chinese immigrants.

But let’s use Sumner’s example to show the rank hypocrisy with which liberals have long suffered. He complains about a law that excluded Chinese from freely immigrating to America, and rightfully so. Yet, look at what 20th-century liberals have done for decades: They’ve used immigration controls to exclude not only Chinese but also Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Africans, Haitians, and, well, the poor of just about every country in the world.

Isn’t it the liberals — the lovers of the poor — under liberal icon Barack Obama who are continuing the building of that fortified fence along our southern border, to keep the poor from coming here and trying to sustain their life through labor? Isn’t it the liberals who are conducting those raids on businesses all across the land, rounding up poor people who just want to work and improve the lot of their families, deporting them to their home countries where they can experience a life of hardship and poverty?

In fact, wasn’t it under the regime of liberal icon Bill Clinton that U.S. forces were attacking defenseless poor people, including women and children, who had escaped socialist and communist tyranny in Cuba and were trying to make it to the United States? Didn’t liberals forcibly repatriate those refugees to Cuba? Oh well, maybe Sumner would argue that is was for their own good, since in Cuba there is free education, free health care, and free everything else in that paternalistic society.

Please, Sumner, remind me again how much you liberals love the poor, because I’m tempted to say that an era in which there is only one group of people who are being excluded is golden compared to the massive numbers of poor people that you liberals have been excluding from our country for decades under the guise of immigration controls.

In fact, would you, as a good, poor-person-loving liberal, explain something to me that I’ve always had trouble understanding. As you know, the premier icon for you people is Franklin D. Roosevelt. You liberals say that his enactment of Social Security, the crown jewel of the socialistic welfare state, showed how much he loved the poor, needy, and disadvantaged.

Well, if that’s the case, would you please explain to me FDR’s attitude toward German Jews during the 1930s? Would you please explain to me why he refused to permit them to come to America when Hitler was willing to let them go? Weren’t they poor? And while you’re at it, can you please explain to me why he refused to let those poor Jews traveling on the SS St. Louis to disembark at Miami Harbor in the infamous “voyage of the damned”?

You see, I’m having a difficult time understanding why a man who purports to love the poor would do that to poor Jews. And I’m also having a difficult time understanding why you liberals would extol a man who did that sort of thing to poor Jews.

Please provide me with your best explanation on this, because I’m tempted to conclude that Roosevelt’s Social Security plan had nothing to do with any purported love of the poor but instead everything to do with the love of power and with making as many people dependent on the federal government as possible.

Oh, and while you are at it, would you explain to me something about FDR’s protg, the liberal icon Lyndon Johnson, who brought Medicare and Medicaid into existence because of his purported love for the poor, needy, and disadvantaged? LBJ, as I hope you know, killed some million Vietnamese people, most of whom were poor, in an illegal war that was based on nothing but lies. He also sent some 58,000 of my generation to their deaths in Vietnam, many of whom were poor because that’s who they were drafting to fight in that war.

Would you be so kind as to reconcile that one for me, because I’m getting real tempted to conclude that LBJ’s Medicare and Medicaid plans were nothing more than a political power grab designed to put more Americans under the yoke of federal power and dependency?

While we’re on the subject, I also have a question about liberal icon Bill Clinton, another purported lover of the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. During the entire 8 years he was in office, he killed hundred of thousands of Iraqi children with the brutal sanctions that he enforced against that country. His U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, another liberal icon, said that those deaths were worth the attempt to oust Saddam Hussein from power.

That’s always been difficult for me to swallow. How can the deaths of poor, innocent children ever be worth a political goal such as regime change, especially given that Saddam had once been the partner of the U.S. government?

Of course, I’d be remiss if I failed to mention the vicious attack by liberal icon Janet Reno (and Bill Clinton) on the poor people inside the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, including innocent children, given that today is the 17th anniversary of that horrific slaughter.

Oh, one final thing, Sumner. Please don’t lump conservatives with libertarians, especially since there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between liberals and conservatives. Both of you are statist to the core, and both of you are lovers of big government, big spending, big debt, and big inflation. And both of you are taking our nation down the road to serfdom, bankruptcy, and moral debauchery.

The only solution to the woes that you statists, both liberals and conservatives, have foisted onto our nation lies with libertarianism. Our American ancestors discovered the truth, and lots of Americans are now re-discovering it, which is precisely why you statists are so terrified.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Best of Jacob Hornberger

That was especially true if a protester happened to be combining freedom of speech with the right to bear arms, as some protesters in New Hampshire and Arizona did. That drove liberals up the wall, given their deep antipathy toward gun rights and the Second Amendment.

But who really are the crazies around here? Let’s examine the issue. Among the points that liberals made to buttress their claim that the protesters were crazy was the comparison that some of the protesters made between Obama’s economic philosophy and that of the National Socialists under Hitler.

Indeed, according to the liberals, the notion that Obama’s plan for America was socialistic was itself just crazy. After all, everyone knows that America has a free-enterprise system, one that was saved by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, an economic program that Obama, like other liberals, extols and wishes to build upon.

Yet, let’s analyze that comparison that some of the protesters were making and the insanity and irrationality that liberals claim it represents. I believe we’ll find that when it comes to sanity and rationality, those protesters had a much firmer grip on reality than the liberals who are criticizing them.

Contradictions

First of all, let’s talk about the economic system that existed in the United States from the inception of the nation to the latter part of the 19th century. The principles are simple to enumerate: No income taxation (except during the Civil War), Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, economic regulations, licensure laws, drug laws, immigration controls, or coercive transfer programs, such as farm subsidies and education grants.

There was no federal department of labor, agriculture, commerce, education, energy, health and human services, or homeland security. There was no SEC, DEA, FEMA, OSHA, or EPA.

There was no Federal Reserve System and no paper money or legal-tender laws (except during the Civil War). People used gold and silver coins as money.

There were no foreign military bases and no involvement in foreign wars. The size of the military was small.

Now, I ask you a simple question: Does that way of life resemble even in the remotest way the way of life under which Americans live today? Of course it doesn’t, because the way of life under which we live today is precisely opposite to that under which our American ancestors lived. Today’s Americans do live under all those programs, departments, and agencies, and principles that were absent during the first 125 years or so of American history.

Why is this important? Because both sets of Americans — our ancestors and Americans living today — operate under the same assumption when it comes to freedom. Our ancestors prided themselves as a free people. But modern-day Americans pride themselves on being free, too.

But how likely is it that people who live under economic and political philosophies and programs that are contradictory to one another can both be free? Not very likely at all! In fact, the likelihood is that one of them is suffering a very serious case of self-deception and self-delusion bordering on what psychiatrists might call psychosis.

American freedom

Why did early Americans consider themselves free? The answer is rooted in the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. As Thomas Jefferson observed in that document, people have been endowed by their Creator with certain fundamental and inherent rights. These include, but are certainly not limited to, the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The reason that people call government into existence is to protect the exercise of such rights. But Jefferson recognized that sometimes government becomes worse than the murderers, rapists, thieves, invaders, and marauders that it is supposed to protect the people from. In such a case, it is the right of the people to alter or even abolish the government and institute new government. Since violent revolutions inevitably involve massive death and destruction, Jefferson observed that people will often choose to put up with lots of tyranny before they finally decide to revolt.

A critical question arises: What do the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness connote?

For our American ancestors, such rights meant more than the absence of physical constraint, e.g., not being incarcerated in jail.

Freedom also meant the right to criticize government officials and protest their actions without being punished for it.

It meant the right to worship, each in his own way, or, on the other hand, not to worship at all.

It meant the right to keep and bear arms, not only as a protection against criminals and invaders but also to ensure that the right to resist tyranny was retained by the people.

It meant the protection of centuries-old procedures in the event of federal criminal prosecutions, including habeas corpus, right to counsel, trial by jury, bail, due process of law, and protection from coerced confessions, unreasonable searches, and cruel and unusual punishments.

To our ancestors, however, freedom meant even more than that, and there arises the rub with today’s liberals. Freedom, our ancestors maintained, also meant the right to keep everything you owned and to decide for yourself what to do with it. Everyone had the right, they contended, to pursue an occupation or trade without seeking the permission of the government. They had the right to enter into mutually beneficial trades with others who were doing the same thing. They had the right to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth as part of that process. They had the right to decide for themselves what to do with their own money — spend, save, invest, speculate, or whatever. They, not the government, were responsible for how they lived their lives and how they used their money. For our American ancestors, freedom entailed the right to handle their own retirement, health care, food, clothing, transportation, charity, and other parts of everyday life.

Now obviously that’s precisely opposite to what today’s liberals believe. They say that freedom entails the power of government to take whatever portion of a person’s income or wealth it deems appropriate and give the money to people who government officials feel need it more. They say that freedom entails the power of government to require people to secure governmental permission before engaging in many occupations and trades. They say that freedom entails the power of government to control and regulate the trades that people make with others. They say that freedom entails the power of government to take care of people, especially with respect to retirement, health care, unemployment compensation, housing, and welfare.

American socialism

How did liberals arrive at a conception of freedom that is so different from that which our American ancestors had? A clue lies in the comparison that people were making between Obama’s economic philosophy and that of the National Socialists in Germany.

Take a look at this URL. There you will see an engraving. It is not an engraving of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, or any of the Founding Fathers. Instead it is an engraving of Otto von Bismarck, who served as chancellor of Germany from 1862 to 1890.

You may have noticed that the URL has the letters “ssa.gov” in it. That is the Internet domain name for the U.S. Social Security Administration.

You might then ask, What in the world is the U.S. government doing glorifying a chancellor of Germany rather than America’s Founding Fathers?

The answer is provided on the SSA’s website itself: Bismarck was the world’s first political ruler to adopt a social security program. On that web page, the SSA states, “Despite his impeccable right-wing credentials, Bismarck would be called a socialist for introducing these programs, as would President Roosevelt 70 years later. In his own speech to the Reichstag during the 1881 debates, Bismarck would reply: ‘Call it socialism or whatever you like. It is the same to me.’”

In mocking that claim of socialism, however, what the SSA doesn’t tell you is where Bismarck got the idea of social security and, for that matter, the whole idea of a paternalistic welfare state. He got the idea from German socialist intellectuals, who saw social security as an ideal way to use the state to implement the Marxian principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

As the years went on, the German people became accustomed to having the government care for them, with their own money of course. Thus, by the time that Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the paternalistic welfare state had become a permanent feature of German life. Given Hitler’s devotion to National Socialism (abbreviated by the term “Nazi”), it was hardly surprising that he embraced such socialist programs as social security, national health care, and public (i.e., government) schooling.

In fact, Hitler embraced not only socialism but also fascism, an economic philosophy that leaves property in private hands but subjects it to government control and regulation. Another feature of Hitler’s fascism was partnerships between government and private industry, whose aims were to further the interests of the nation.

As Jonah Goldberg points out in his book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, in principle there was no difference between socialists and fascists, notwithstanding historical animosity between the two groups. They shared a deep antipathy toward economic liberty, the free market, and private property. They shared a commitment to the socialist and fascist concepts of government ownership or control of the means or results of production, albeit in different variations and degrees.

That brings us to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. For decades, and especially in the public schools and the state-supported colleges and universities across America, officials have indoctrinated American students with the notion that Roosevelt’s New Deal was nothing more than a series of government programs that saved America’s free-enterprise system. The idea is that free enterprise failed and caused the Great Depression and that all that Roosevelt did was to save the system by adopting needed free-market “reforms.”

Living a lie

It would be difficult to find a better example of a life of the lie and a denial of realty than that. For what Roosevelt actually did was adopt the principles of socialism and fascism that were spreading across the world, including the premier examples of Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany.

After all, ask yourself: How can social security be a socialist program in Germany and, at the same time, a free-enterprise program in the United States? How can programs that entail government control over business and industry and government-business partnerships be fascism in Italy and Germany and, at the same time, be free enterprise in the United States?

Consider the thesis of another book, Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933—1939, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, a book that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune called “controversial, well written, and convincing.” It is a scholarly comparison of Hitler’s socialism, Mussolini’s fascism, and Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Schivelbusch carefully draws the parallels between the economic programs of Hitler, Mussolini, and Roosevelt, and anyone who reads his book is left with but one conclusion: Roosevelt’s New Deal was not free enterprise at all, as liberals have maintained for decades. Instead, it constituted a wholesale abandonment of the principles of economic liberty, free markets, and private property that had guided the United States for more than a hundred years.

A close examination of the programs that Roosevelt adopted reflects that they were no different in principle from those of Mussolini and Hitler. Social Security was based on the socialist principle of forcibly taking money from one group of people and giving it to another group. Mortgage moratorium laws entailed government interference with private contracts. The National Industrial Recovery Act converted American industry into cartels, with the power to set their own prices.

Moreover, just as Mussolini and Hitler were doing in their countries, Roosevelt resorted to propaganda and intimidation to effect compliance and conformity with his programs. That’s what his “Blue Eagle” was all about — a means by which federal officials could threaten and bludgeon American businessmen to get onboard Roosevelt’s new world order. It was also what Roosevelt’s infamous court-packing scheme was all about — to intimidate the Supreme Court into ceasing to declare his alien programs unconstitutional.

Is it surprising, then, that Hitler, the chancellor of Germany, expressed admiration for what Roosevelt was doing and how he was doing it in the United States? Not at all. Was it surprising that Winston Churchill expressed admiration for Hitler’s “New Deal”? Not at all. Was it unusual that officials in the Roosevelt administration admired Benito Mussolini for his fascism and Joseph Stalin for his socialism? Not at all.

But through it all, the lie and the denial of reality have been steadfastly maintained. From the first grade on up through college, American students are ingrained with the idea that America’s economic system is — and always will be — a free-enterprise system and that the paternalistic welfare state and controlled economy are simply needed modifications and reforms of that system.

Is it any surprise, then, that liberals feel so threatened by people who are exposing this life of the lie and this denial of reality? In a sense, such people are therapists. Through their exposition of truth, they are causing liberals to face reality, which, as the eminent late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck pointed out in his book The Road Less Traveled, is a necessary precondition to a healthy mindset.

You see, the liberal notion is that as long as people believe a lie, then everything will be okay. Sure, socialism has failed all over the world, but Americans don’t need to worry because they haven’t adopted socialism. When the programs move into chaos and crisis, it’s not that socialism has failed; it’s that free enterprise has failed, again. Thus, all that’s needed is more “reform” to further save “free enterprise.”

Then, along come people speaking the truth, pointing out that this is all sheer nonsense. What is failing are the socialistic welfare programs, the ones that have their roots in Roosevelt’s New Deal and, going back even further, to Bismarck’s Germany.

What is needed to restore a healthy society to America? The most important thing Americans need to do is get a grip on reality with respect to the type of socialist economic system that liberals have imported to their land.

Once people are ready to acknowledge the socialism that the United States has embraced, then there can be a real debate, one that focuses on whether America should continue going down the socialist road or whether the time has come to cast America’s disastrous experiment with socialism into the dustbin of history and restore its heritage of economic liberty, free markets, and private property to our land.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Best of Jacob Hornberger

With the possible exception of the Internal Revenue Service, the federal agency that is the greatest threat to the financial well-being and freedom of the American people is the Federal Reserve. This is the agency that has the power to wipe you out. It can destroy all your savings and the value of your income. Worst of all, it can do all this secretly and surreptitiously.

I would assume that most of you are not independently wealthy. You work for a living. You bring home a paycheck. You try to make ends meet. You try to save a portion of your income, perhaps to help pay for your children’s education, to provide for a rainy day, or for your later years in life.

But if you’re like most Americans today, you’re having a difficult time making ends meet. Moreover, not only are you not saving a large portion of your income, you’re likely not saving anything at all. You’re just getting by.

The reason for this is the Federal Reserve, in conjunction with the Internal Revenue Service.

Here’s how the process works.

With a few notable exceptions, such as Ron Paul, the federal government attracts the type of people who love spending money, as long as that money has been forcibly taken from others. This love of spending other people’s money knows no bounds. These big spenders are able to come up with an unlimited number of programs that they are convinced are essential to the security and well-being of the nation. Their imagination on how to spend other people’s money has no bounds.

Of course, we see this phenomenon play out with both the welfare state at home and the warfare state abroad.

Here at home, we have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education grants, SBA loans, food stamps, public housing, corporate bailouts, stimulus plans, payments to cronies on Wall Street, and much, much more.

There are also the never-ending array of regulatory agencies and programs, with the 35-year-old failed and destructive war on drugs being the premier one. There is also the SEC, with its ridiculous insider-trading laws and other silly regulations. Or the FTC. The list goes on and on.

It’s the same with the warfare state. New planes, bombs, drones, soldiers, coups, assassinations, sanctions, embargoes, invasions, wars of aggression, and occupations. The list of things on which to spend other people’s money abroad is endless. And like the welfare state and regulatory programs, they’re all considered vital to the well-being and security of the nation.

To pay for all these programs, government officials turn to the IRS, a vicious and terrifying agency if there ever was one. That’s the agency that is charged with collecting the money to pay for the grandiose welfare-warfare programs that federal officials come up. We all know what happens if someone refuses to pay the money that funds these programs. They will prosecute, incarcerate, and fine those who prove to be recalcitrant.

However, a certain problem always arises: The amount of money the IRS is collecting is not sufficient to cover the costs of the grandiose plans that federal officials come up with to spend other people’s money. The costs of the programs — which, again, have no limit in the minds of government officials — begin to far exceed the amount the IRS is forcing people to send in.

Of course, there is an obvious solution to this quandary. All that U.S. officials have to do is simply order the IRS to go out and collect a higher percentage of people’s income. Instead of requiring people to send in 25—30 percent of their income, for example, people could be ordered to send 40 percent, 50 percent, or higher to cover whatever the programs are costing.

But that approach is problematic. As taxes go higher, the taxpayers starting getting upset. Tax resistance and tax revolts become more popular, inducing the IRS to more severely crack down on people by sending more of them to jail, producing more anger and resentment. High taxes have even been known to result in revolutions. In a democracy, high taxes create a problem for incumbents because a disgruntled citizenry tends to vote them out of office.

So, what’s the solution to this problem? It’s simple. The grandiose big spenders simply go out and borrow the money to cover the difference between what they’re spending and what the IRS is collecting from people.

Now, permit me digress a moment. Some 40 years ago, both liberals and conservatives sent some 58,000 men of my generation to their deaths thousands of miles away, in Vietnam, in one of those foreign wars that are so beloved to both conservatives and liberals. The rationale for sending those men to their deaths, along with killing more than a million Vietnamese people, was the communist threat, a threat that was considered by conservatives and liberals to be even more frightening than the terrorist threat today. We were told that if these American men weren’t fighting and dying in Vietnam, the dominoes would start falling and finally end with a communist conquest of the United States. We were told that the communists were one gigantic block of people, led by the Chinese communists and Soviet communists.

We were constantly reminded of how evil and destructive these communist regimes were, which was about the only truthful thing U.S. officials ever said.

Now, some 40 years later, guess who has become the premier foreign lender-in-chief for the U.S. government. You guessed it: The Chinese communists! Imagine that. That’s where both conservatives and liberals have been borrowing a large portion of the money to fund their grandiose welfare-warfare programs for the past 8 years. What better example of moral debauchery and hypocrisy than that? After all, the Chinese communist regime in China hasn’t changed its essential nature one iota in the last 40 years.

Do you remember when liberals used to travel to China and lecture the Chinese communists on their human-rights abuses? Not anymore. Do you remember when conservatives would puff out their chests and quote Ronald Reagan’s famous line to the Soviet communists: “Tear down this wall!”? Well, you won’t see them in China declaring, “Tear down this evil system!”

The reason for the silence is not difficult to decipher. It’s not wise to antagonize one’s lender. Today, U.S. officials, from the president on down, travel to China to pay homage to their chief foreign lender and plead that it not call in the loans by dumping its U.S. debt instruments onto the market. They arrive in China, kneel before their banker, and kiss the hands of these communist tyrants. And all to fund their grandiose programs without the political costs associated with raising income taxes.

During President Obama’s recent visit to China, his lenders demanded assurances with respect to repayment of their loans. What they were referring to is the time-honored way by which governments pay off massive accumulated debts — by simply printing new money and paying off the creditors with it. After all, the alternative is to raise income taxes to pay off the accumulated debt — again, your personal share of this debt is $40,000 — something that might get voters upset.

Enter the Federal Reserve. That’s its job — to monetize the debt — to print the necessary money that pays off federal debt without raising income taxes. This is why the Fed was created. No, it had nothing to do with stabilizing the value of money. The mission of the Fed was — and is — to enable federal officials to spend to their heart’s content on their unlimited number of welfare-warfare state programs.

Now, we all know from Economics 101 that when you increase the supply of something, ordinarily its price is going to go down. The principle is no different when it comes to the supply of a currency. As the Fed cranks up the printing press and begins supplying the market with more dollars, the price of the dollar tends to fall. And there is only one way in which that decrease in price to be reflected — by rising prices of everything that dollars buy. When you see the dollar prices of everything rising, that’s a consequence of lots of newly printed Federal Reserve dollars having flooded the market.

Obviously, creditors get wiped out by this process, as they are receiving payment with money that has a significantly lower value than the money they initially loaned. We often hear that the Chinese would never be stupid enough to dump their U.S. securities onto the market all at once because they would lose a lot of money. But what happens if the Chinese decide that holding onto the securities and receiving debased currency in payment will be more costly to them than simply taking their lumps all at once by dumping the securities on the market? If that day comes, Americans might well have the opportunity of witnessing a monetary crisis that boggles the imagination.

Another group of people that are hurt by this inflationary process are the poor, the people with very low incomes who are least able to withstand a significant decrease in the value of their earnings. Or consider the little old widow whose husband was nave enough to invest in U.S. savings bonds. She soon discovers that her $1,000 in fixed monthly income now buys only $250 worth of goods and services.

Nonetheless, the liberals will continue repeating their mantra about they love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged, and conservatives will repeatedly remind people how compassionate they are.

As prices in society begin rising in response to the devaluing dollar, the average person doesn’t have any idea that the government is behind it, which is precisely why government officials love a central bank so much. They know full well that the average person is going to lay the blame for rising prices on such things as greed, capitalism, free enterprise, and profit. Seeing prices rise, he’ll blame the oil companies, the service station owners, the grocers, and clothing stores. The last thing he’ll consider is that it is the federal government itself, operating through the Federal Reserve, that is responsible.

After all, most people look upon the federal government as a friend, a parent, even a god. Our government is our provider, they say. It provides our retirement, food, unemployment compensation, health care, education, and so forth. It also protects us from the terrorists, the communists, the drug dealers, the illegal aliens, and other scary creatures. It would never do anything bad to us, much less seize our income and earnings secretly and surreptitiously through monetary debasement.

Federal officials themselves feed into this mass ignorance. Behaving as if inflation is akin the flu — like some sort of ailment that just strikes a nation at random, they exhort the citizenry to help defeat the enemy of rising prices. For example, they’ll distribute buttons for people to wear that declare “WIN — Whip Inflation Now.” More ominously, they impose price controls on businesses, which produce shortages, which make people even angrier at private-sector businesses.

Of course, government officials just smile at this entire process because from their standpoint, it is so successful. With the help of the Fed, they’re able to fund all their grandiose programs without paying the political price that would be associated with increasing the amount of money people are forced to pay to the IRS. And when prices rise in response to what the Fed is doing, people blame the private sector rather than the federal government.

Now, there’s another important aspect here to the Fed’s operations. We’ve heard a lot about socialism lately. People are saying that President Obama is moving our nation in a socialist direction, as exemplified by his national health-care plan. Of course, they’re right. After all, national health care in Cuba is the pride and joy of Fidel Castro, a socialist par excellence.

But when Republicans point their finger at Obama, they should keep in mind that three other fingers pointing back at themselves. The fact is that Republicans are as devoted to socialist programs as Democrats are, notwithstanding their pro-free-enterprise rhetoric.

But it’s important that we note that there are different aspects to socialism.

There is the pure socialism, where the government owns everything and everyone works for the government.

But there are also socialistic programs in which the government takes money from one group of people in order to give it to another group, exemplifying the Marxian principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Another aspect of socialism is when the government owns and operates particular businesses, like the communist government does in China … and like the U.S. government does here with insurance companies, banks, and auto companies.

But another aspect of socialism — one that relates directly to the Federal Reserve — is socialistic central planning. This is the process by which a group of public officials plan complex activities that would ordinarily be left to the free market. As the Nobel Prize—winning Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek pointed out, these people have a “pretense of knowledge,” honestly believing that they possess the requisite knowledge to plan and direct complex market phenomena. As the Soviets learned, central planning inevitably leads to chaos and crisis.

A good example of central planning involves public (or government) schools. A bureaucratic or political board, either at a national, state, or local level, plans, in a top-down, army-like fashion, the educational activities of hundreds, thousands, or millions of students. And people wonder why public schooling is such a mess!

It’s no different with the Federal Reserve. Here you have a board of government officials pretending to have the requisite knowledge to determine some ideal quantity of money in society. And so they’re constantly expanding and contracting, in the process producing booms and busts, chaos and crisis.

As libertarians, we understand the importance of capital to prosperity and a rising standard of living. When people save, they place their savings in the bank. That increase in the supply of available capital causes interest rates to drop, sending a signal to businesses that additional capital is available in the marketplace. Businesses borrow the money to purchase tools and equipment that make their workers more productive. More productivity increases the revenue of the firm, thereby making more money available to pay higher wages.

Along comes election time, which is an important time for incumbent public officials. To assist them, the Fed engages in intricate operations that artificially lower the interest rate, thereby sending a false signal into the market. Businessmen rely on that signal, borrow the money, and expand their operations. A couple of years later, things shake out. The so-called bubble bursts, as it has in the home-mortgage market. The irony is that the statists, Republicans and Democrats alike, blame inevitably blame the crises on “free enterprise” and call for socialist measures to solve the problem, as they have in the current mortgage crisis.

One of the most fascinating crises the Fed has caused since it was established in 1913 was the Great Depression. Oh yes, I know the official story we were all taught in our public (i.e., government) schools. The Great Depression was the failure of America’s free-enterprise system and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs saved America’s free-enterprise system.

Long ago, another Nobel Prize—winning economist, Milton Friedman, established that it was actually the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression. Taking the same position were the Austrian economists, most notably Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. By over-expanding the money supply during the 1920s and then over-contracting, the Fed precipitated the 1929 stock-market crash that triggered the Great Depression.

Several years ago, Ben Bernanke, before he became chairman of the Federal Reserve, was speaking at a dinner in honor of Friedman. In what has turned out to be one of the most remarkable admissions by a public official, Bernanke openly and publicly admitted that it was the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression.

Franklin Roosevelt seized on that government-caused crisis to revolutionize America’s economic system, foisting on our land a panoply of socialist and fascist programs, in the name of “saving free enterprise.” In fact, Roosevelt’s programs mirrored what the Benito Mussolini was doing in fascist Italy and what Joseph Stalin had been doing in communist Russia. Indeed, even the chancellor of Germany in the 1930s sent Roosevelt a letter commending him on his economic programs, stating that he were doing the same thing in Germany.

So, what’s the solution to all this mess? The solution involves returning to first principles, the founding principles of our nation. We need to review the heritage of economic liberty of our nation and examine where we got off course. We need to examine why the Founding Fathers and why our American ancestors rejected not only a central bank but also an income tax and an IRS. We need to restore the principles of liberty on which our country was founded.

The Constitution expressly prohibits the states from making anything but gold and silver coins legal tender. How could you have a clearer expression of intent than that? It also prohibits the states from emitting bills of credit, which means paper money. The Constitution also did not grant the power to Congress to issue paper money or to make paper money legal tender.

In other words, the Framers clearly rejected paper money and legal-tender laws. They understood the inflationary horrors that public officials had inflicted on people throughout history. They intended us to have a gold standard.

Now, one of the biggest myths about the gold standard is that it supposedly involved some exchange ratio between paper money and gold. That’s nonsense. All that the gold standard meant was that Americans would use gold and silver coins, and nickel and copper coins for smaller transactions, as their money.

Throughout that time, federal officials would periodically borrow money — that is, borrow gold. They would evidence that indebtedness with promissory notes. Sometimes, in order to finance grandiose programs, they would over-issue notes. When people would discover that the government had issued $10 million in notes and only had $5 million in gold, the notes would begin being traded at a discount. In other words, the gold standard placed a practical limit placed on the ability of government officials to pay for their grandiose projects.

In blaming the Great Depression on free enterprise, Roosevelt and his cronies also convinced people that part of the problem was the fact that the American people were using gold coins and silver coins as their money. Nothing could be more ludicrous. Nonetheless, Roosevelt used the economic emergency to commit one of the most heinous crimes in U.S. history. He ordered every American to turn in his gold to the federal government, at a devalued price. What had been the money standard for more a century now became a federal felony offense.

There are those who are concerned that President Obama might seize their guns. It’s a legitimate concern, especially in the context of a new emergency. People should also be concerned about Obama’s potential seizure of people’s gold. Like his icon Franklin Roosevelt, Obama knows that people buy gold to protect themselves from the Federal Reserve, and statists hate that. Moreover, the re-nationalization of gold would provide a new source of revenue to fund the ever-growing, grandiose programs of the statists.

By prohibiting Americans from owning gold in the 1930s and by converting America to a fiat money standard (without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment), the big spenders in government had finally fulfilled their dreams. Decade after decade, they could spend other people’s money to their heart’s content. It is not a coincidence that the paper dollar today is worth about 5 percent of what it was worth before the Fed was created. That’s what decades of monetary debasement have accomplished.

To restore a free society to our land requires the abolition of many departments and agencies of the federal government. Chief among these are the twin jugular veins of the welfare-warfare state — the income tax and the Federal Reserve. People should be free to choose whatever money they want. It’s what Hayek called “the denationalization of money.”

We must never fall for the siren song of “reform.” We must rid our nation of these statist scourges. In the monetary arena, that can only mean one thing: End the Fed.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

Yes, I know, there are going to be those who resent such a suggestion, exclaiming, u201CJust because the idea might have come from Hitler doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad.u201D They might point, for example, to the U.S. Interstate Highway System, which was inspired by Hitler’s autobahn system. Or they might point to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, whose programs were remarkably similar to the socialist and fascist programs of Hitler as well as those of Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin. (See Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933—1939 by Wolfgang Schivelbusch).

Indeed, such people might even point out the fact that Social Security under Hitler and Roosevelt had a common root — Otto von Bismarck, the so-called Iron Chancellor of Germany, who himself had gotten the idea from German socialists.

In any event, in 1933 soon after Hitler had become chancellor, the terrorists fire-bombed the German parliament building, the Reichstag, destroying most of the building. As you can imagine, the attack threw the nation into a major crisis, just as 9/11 did for the United States.

The crisis in Germany became graver when it was discovered that the suspected terrorists were communists, for that meant that Germany was now facing two major threats to national security at the same time: terrorism and communism. (To get a sense of the magnitude of the crisis, combine the U.S. cold war against the communists with the subsequent war on terrorism.)

Hitler immediately sought a suspension of civil liberties from the Reichstag to deal with the national emergency. National security is at stake, he exclaimed. In this time of national crisis, when the security of our nation is in jeopardy, we cannot afford the niceties of civil liberties, he said. I need temporary emergency powers to deal with this crisis.

The Reichstag granted Hitler’s request, suspended civil liberties, and gave him the temporary emergency powers he sought to deal with the crisis. Civil liberties could and should be temporarily sacrificed to preserve the nation, the reasoning went.

In the meantime, the people who had been charged with the terrorist strike on the Reichstag were brought to trial in Germany’s regular, constitutional judicial system. Only one of the defendants, however, was convicted. All the rest were acquitted.

Needless to say, Hitler was not happy with the court’s verdict. These were terrorists and communists, after all! Hitler and the Gestapo had said so. What more proof did the courts need than that? How dare German judges threaten national security by releasing terrorists and communists back on the street?

Hitler’s solution? To ensure that this didn’t happen again, he established a new-fangled judicial system for handling terrorism cases. It was called the People’s Court. This new judicial system had the trappings of Germany’s regular judicial system but with one big difference: There would be no more u201Cnot guiltyu201D verdicts for people that German officials said were terrorists. No more threats to national security by releasing terrorists back on the streets. Moreover, under the guise of protecting national security, the proceedings could be held in secret to preserve government secrets.

Are the circumstances and reasons for establishing a new tribunal system in Germany similar to those for establishing a new post-9/11 tribunal system in the United States?

Prior to 9/11, it was a well-established principle that terrorism cases could be tried only in federal district court. That’s not surprising given that that terrorism has long been listed in the U.S. Code as a criminal offense — and still is. That’s precisely why terrorists are still being indicted and tried in federal district court even today.

Thus, when the terrorists struck the World Trade Center in 1993, Ramzi Yousef, one of the terrorist perpetrators, was tried, convicted, and sentenced in federal district court. Again, that’s because terrorism is a criminal offense in the U.S. Code, a fact that no one disputes.

Like the Reichstag fire bombing, the 9/11 terrorist strike gave Bush and the Pentagon the excuse to establish a new-fangled judicial system for trying suspected terrorists. Like the People’s Court in Germany, it would exist independently of both the civilian courts and the military justice system. It was a brand new judicial system, one for trying terrorists, just like Hitler’s.

Unlike Hitler, however, Bush and the Pentagon established their new system in a foreign country, Cuba. The reason? To ensure that their system would not be bound by the rights and guarantees in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and to ensure that there would be no interference by the federal courts.

The primary reason for establishing a new judicial system for trying terrorists was precisely the same as Hitler’s: to ensure that terrorists were not acquitted and released back on the streets, where they could commit more terrorist acts against Americans.

In the federal courts, there are numerous obstacles to securing convictions — due process of law, criminal-defense attorneys, cross-examination of adverse witnesses, juries, the presumption of innocence, independent judges, and so forth. There is always a chance of an acquittal, even for defendants that the government is convinced 100 percent are terrorists.

It was the same problem Hitler faced after the acquittal of the Reichstag terrorists.

The solution that U.S. officials came up with was the same one that Hitler came up with: establish a brand new judicial system where convictions would be guaranteed. No more legal technicalities that would enable judges to let terrorists back on the streets. No more pesky defense attorneys ardently fighting for the acquittal of their clients. Just convictions and punishment for the terrorists.

That’s what the new-fangled judicial system in Cuba was all about. It was also what Hitler’s People’s Court was all about.

Now, it’s true that in Germany Hitler had civilian bureaucrats presiding over his tribunals while Bush and President Obama have military officials presiding over theirs. But isn’t that a distinction without a difference? The point is that in both systems tribunal officers are ultimately answerable to their superiors and have every incentive to please their superiors with a correct verdict.

While both systems have the trappings of regular court proceeding, the verdicts are never in doubt, as they are in the federal courts. In fact, both the People’s Court and the U.S. tribunals are nothing more than kangaroo proceedings, ones in which they play like justice is being administered while everyone knows what is actually going on.

Hitler’s tribunal system and the U.S. tribunal system have another characteristic in common — the ability to tightly control the proceedings, even making them secret. This has the benefit of preventing the terrorists from making a u201Ccircusu201D out of the trial by providing them a forum from which they can describe their motives to the world.

Nothing scares U.S. interventionists more than any proceeding that might focus on the bad things that the U.S. government has been doing to people overseas, which has engendered the anger and rage that has led to terrorist retaliation. The charade that the terrorists hate us for our u201Cfreedom and valuesu201D must be maintained at all costs.

A federal proceeding, one in which the public and the media have a right to attend, might end up enabling the defendants to publicly explain their motives for attacking the United States, which is precisely what happened at Ramzi Yousef’s sentencing hearing after his conviction for the 1993 terrorist attack. That danger evaporates with the U.S. tribunal system, as there is no possibility a tribunal officer would ever permit an examination into U.S. foreign policy as part of such proceedings.

One of the most fascinating trials before the People’s Court was that involving Hans and Sophie Scholl and the members of the White Rose organization. To gain a sense of how Hitler’s tribunal system operated, go rent the movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, which is based on actual transcripts of the proceedings. As you watch the trial, you will get a good sense of how things operate in the U.S. tribunal system in Cuba — disrespect for criminal-defense lawyers, presumption of guilt for the accused, the false trappings of a regular judicial system, and a preordained verdict.

To ensure that Germans couldn’t hear Hans and Sophie, who were in their early 20s, explain why they had published pamphlets critical of the Hitler regime and exhorting Germans not to support the troops, their tribunal trial was held in secret. When their parents tried to enter the courtroom, they were refused entry, and were told that they should have raised their children better.

Sure, there are differences in the two systems. For example, the U.S. system permits defendants a limited right to summon some witnesses on their behalf while the German system did not. (By the same token, U.S. tribunal prosecutors are entitled to use hearsay evidence and evidence acquired by torture.) Such differences, however, don’t change the essential nature and purpose of the two systems: to ensure convictions and keep defendants from publicly exposing the wrongdoing of the government.

One interesting difference between the two systems is that in Germany, all people accused of terrorism were brought before the People’s Court. That included German citizens. In the American system, the federal system and the new-fangled tribunal system have concurrent jurisdiction to try terrorism cases. That means that U.S. officials have the ad hoc, discretionary authority to treat accused terrorists in two completely different ways — either by sending them down the federal court route or the new-fangled tribunal route. It would be difficult to find a clearer violation of the principles of equal protection and the rule of law than that.

Of course, this dual system of arbitrary and capricious justice is itself a sham, given that U.S. officials wield the post-9/11 power to take any person acquitted by a federal court back into custody as a terrorist.

Was Hitler the inspiration for the post-9/11 U.S. tribunal system, as he was for America’s Interstate Highway System? I don’t know, but given the similarities in the goals, nature, and circumstances of Hitler’s People’s Court and the U.S. post-9/11 tribunal system, it’s certainly a question worth asking.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

Obama demands that the Vatican open the vote to all Catholics. The Vatican responds that its method of electing the Pope is none of the U.S. government’s business. Butt out, the Pope tells Obama.

Obama orders a U.S. invasion of Vatican City, with the express aim of spreading democracy to that part of the world. The troops are ordered to mobilize and prepare for the invasion.

The Vatican condemns the coming war of aggression, pointing out that it violates the UN Charter and the principles set forth at Nuremberg. He also points out that such an invasion would violate the U.S. Constitution since the president has failed to secure the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war against the Vatican. Most important of all, the Pope points out that the killing of Vatican citizens by U.S. soldiers will constitute grave, mortal sins under God’s laws.

The president is not dissuaded. He orders the troops to undertake the invasion, reminding them that people everywhere, especially Catholics, will be grateful for their efforts to spread democracy.

For his part, the Pope orders all citizens of Vatican City, including bishops, priests, and nuns to take up arms to defend against the U.S. invasion.

How would Catholic soldiers react? Would they suffer a crisis of conscience or at least a bit of discomfort over the prospect of having to kill other Catholics, including bishops, priests, nuns, and possibly even the Pope?

Well, it really wouldn’t matter how they would react. Under U.S. military dictates, Catholic soldiers would be expected to follow orders and do their duty. Conscientious-objector status would be out of the question, since the military does not recognize such a status on a war-by-war basis. Soldiers would be counseled by military chaplains, including Catholic priests, that they could in good conscience trust the judgment of their commander in chief. God would understand and approve, the chaplains would tell their men. America is an exceptional nation.

The invasion begins. Interventionists announce that the time for debate is over and that all patriots must now come together and rally to the flag. “Support the troops” stickers immediately appear on people’s cars. Church ministers all across the land exhort their parishioners to pray for the troops, especially those in harm’s way and defending our freedoms. American flags are prominently posted in church altars.

After thousands of deaths and injuries, the U.S. government prevails in the conflict, and Americans celebrate the victory. Democracy is brought to the Vatican. Catholics everywhere now get to vote for the Pope. To ensure that democracy remains, U.S. troops continue to occupy the country, periodically killing insurgent bishops, priests, and nuns who continue to resist the occupation. Obama is hailed as an historic democracy-spreader and is nominated to receive another Nobel Peace Prize.

Meanwhile, American soldiers, especially the Catholic ones, are returning home all screwed up in the head, beating their wives and children, committing murder and suicide, and engaging in other forms of aberrant behavior. Most everyone attributes it to the stress of combat. Hardly anyone considers the possibility that the soldiers might be struggling with having chosen to surrender their consciences by following military orders that violated the laws of God.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

Oh, I can already hear the interventionists exclaiming, “You’re a justifier! You’re justifying what he did!”

Isn’t that what they said after the 9/11 attacks, when we libertarians pointed out that those attacks were motivated by the deep anger and rage that had boiled over in the Middle East because of what the U.S. government had been doing to people there?

“You’re a justifier,” the interventionists cried. “You’re justifying what they did.”

In fact, isn’t that what they said after Timothy McVeigh’s terrorist attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, when we libertarians pointed out that he had been motivated by deep anger and rage arising from the federal massacre of U.S. citizens at Waco, including innocent women and children?

“You’re a justifier,” they said. “You’re justifying what McVeigh did.”

The reason the interventionists go off on this “You’re a justifier” tirade is that the last thing they want to be confronted with is the wrongdoing of the U.S. government and its responsibility for the blowback — the retaliatory consequences — from such wrongdoing.

Think back to the 1993 terrorist strike on the World Trade Center. The following is an excerpt from a statement made by convicted terrorist Ramzi Yousef to the federal judge at Yousef’s sentencing hearing. As you read what he said, see if you detect anger and rage within this man:

“You keep talking also about collective punishment and killing innocent people to force governments to change their policies; you call this terrorism when someone would kill innocent people or civilians in order to force the government to change its policies. Well, when you were the first one who invented this terrorism…. And now you have invented new ways to kill innocent people. You have so-called economic embargo which kills nobody other than children and elderly people…. You are the ones who invented terrorism and using it every day. You are butchers, liars, and hypocrites.”

That terrorist attack at the World Trade Center took place in 1993. That was after the Persian Gulf War, when the Pentagon knowingly and intentionally destroyed the water-and-sewage facilities in Iraq with the specific intent of spreading infectious illnesses among the Iraqi people. It was also the second year of the brutal sanctions that were contributing to the deaths of Iraqi children, many from infectious illnesses.

That was what Yousef was referring to when he mentioned the “embargo which kills nobody but children and elderly people.” That’s just one of the things that the U.S. government was doing to people in the Middle East that were causing people’s anger and rage to reach a boiling point.

Here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, we repeatedly warned — prior to 9/11 — that unless the U.S. government ceased and desisted from its wrongful conduct in the Middle East, the United States would be hit with another terrorist attack. We were repeatedly pointing out that the anger and rage were going to reach another boiling point, just like they had in 1993, and culminate in a terrorist attack on American soil.

Of course, one might say, “But the Pentagon, the president, and the CIA probably weren’t reading your essays prior to 9/11 and so they wouldn’t have known about such warnings.”

Fair enough. But surely many of them were familiar with the works of Chalmers Johnson, professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, who served as a consultant for the CIA from 1967—1973. In his book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Johnson made the same point — that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East was inevitably going to lead to retaliatory terrorist blowback on American soil. His book was published in March 2000, more than a year before the 9/11 attacks.

Did the U.S. government learn anything at all after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center? Did it change its interventionist foreign policy? Did it stop doing bad things to people in the Middle East?

On the contrary, it not only continued its interventionist policies that had precipitated the 1993 retaliatory blowback on the World Trade Center, it expanded upon them for the next several years, until the anger and rage in the Middle East once again reached a boiling point that erupted in full force on 9/11.

For example, consider the brutal sanctions that were contributing to the deaths of countless Iraqi children that had filled Ramzi Yousef and many other people in the Middle East with anger and rage. Those sanctions continued … and continued … and continued, with the death toll mounting year after year after year — along with rising anger and rage.

Click here for a compilation of articles that provide an excellent summary of the nature and consequences of the sanctions on Iraq.

By the mid-1990s the death toll for Iraqi children from the sanctions had reached the hundreds of thousands.

What was the response of U.S. officials to this rising death toll? Nothing but callous indifference. They simply didn’t care. In 1996 U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright expressed the official position of Washington when she responded to a question put to her by “Sixty Minutes” regarding the half-a-million children who had died as a result of the sanctions: She said that such a price was “worth it.” By “it” she meant U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, specifically the attempt to oust Saddam Hussein from power and replace him with a U.S.-approved ruler.

In other words, U.S. officials were willing to trade the lives of any number of Iraqi children, no matter how high such a number might reach, to achieve the U.S. foreign policy goal of “regime change.”

The brutal sanctions continued throughout the 1990s and in to the 2000s, amidst a growing outcry all over the world, not to mention the rising anger and rage within people in the Middle East. In order to cover its wrongdoing, the U.S. got the UN to enact the infamous oil-for-food program, a crooked, corrupt, bureaucratic, socialistic government program that was nothing more than a charade to cover up the rising death toll and the callous indifference to the horror.

In 2000, in a crisis of conscience, two high UN officials, Hans van Sponeck and Denis Halliday, even resigned their posts in protest to what was being described as genocide. “As a UN official, I should not be expected to be silent to that which I recognise as a true human tragedy that needs to be ended,” von Sponeck stated. “How long the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, should be exposed to such punishment for something that they have never done?” he asked.

Those brutal sanctions continued all way up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t all that the U.S. government did after the Berlin Wall collapsed, when people were questioning the necessity of an enormous Cold War military and military-industrial complex. The U.S. government also did such things as station troops on Islamic holy lands, knowing full well the adverse effect this would have on the sensitivities of Muslims. It also enforced the brutal no-fly zones over Iraq, which were used as the excuse to kill more Iraqis — zones which, by the way, had never been approved by either Congress or the UN. And on top of all this death, destruction, and humiliation, was the never-ending unconditional financial and military foreign aid given to the Israeli government.

I ask you: What better formula for boiling anger and rage among people in the Middle East than that?

Did anything change after the 9/11 attacks? Did the U.S. government learn any lessons from those attacks? Did it abandon any of its interventionist policies?

On the contrary, it not only continued the policies that had given rise to the anger and rage, it used the attacks to expand the interventionist policies.

First and foremost, the 9/11 attacks were used as the excuse to effect regime change not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan.

In other words, what 11 years of brutal and deadly sanctions had failed to achieve in Iraq — regime change — was quickly achieved with a military invasion and occupation.

The U.S. government had provided Afghanistan with millions of dollars in foreign aid immediately prior to the 9/11 attacks, with full knowledge that Osama bin Laden was based in Afghanistan. But when the Taliban refused to comply with President Bush’s unconditional and non-negotiable demand to turn bin Laden over to the United States without the production of any evidence, the U.S. resorted to invasion and occupation to oust the Taliban from power and replace them with a U.S.-approved ruler, in the process killing countless Afghanis who had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Compare the deadly and disastrous consequences from the military approach used to try to capture bin Laden to the criminal-justice approach that was used to capture Ramzi Yousef. Yousef today is residing in a U.S. federal penitentiary as a result of the sentence he received by a federal judge who treated terrorism as the federal crime it is. Also, no one was killed by U.S. bombs in Pakistan, where Yousef was ultimately arrested.

Compounding the invasions and long-term occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan has been the callous indifference to the loss of innocent life in those two countries. Year after year, U.S. officials have professed to be killing and destroying out of love for the Iraqi and Afghani people. Sure, we’re killing you but it’s all for your own good because in the long run, you will have democracy and so it will all be worth it, U.S. officials have exclaimed. Don’t fret about losing your mother or father, or your bride, or your sister, or your friend. In the long run, you will thank us because you will find that democracy will be worth it.

What could be more wrongful, more immoral than that — the intentional killing of human beings in order to achieve a political-welfare goal? And keep in mind that there has never been an upward limit on the number of Afghanis and Iraqis who could be killed to achieve “democracy.” Any number of deaths, no matter how high, would be considered “worth it.”

Longtime supporters of The Future of Freedom Foundation know that ever since our inception in 1989, we have led the way in opposition to a pro-empire, pro-interventionist foreign policy. In fact, one of earliest books was The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars, followed later by Liberty, Security, and the War on Terrorism, published after 9/11, followed by innumerable essays since then.

Since 9/11, we have consistently opposed both the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, arguing fervently that not only were these two wars illegal (no declaration of war, as required by the U.S. Constitution) but that they were nothing more than a continuation of the policies that had produced the boiling anger and rage that had erupted in 1993 and then again on 9/11.

We must never lose sight of the fact that in Iraq, it is the U.S. government that is the aggressor — the invader — the occupier. It is the U.S. government that started this war. It is the Iraqis who are the defenders, the victims of what the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal called a “war of aggression.”

We should also never lose sight of the fact that while Afghanistan bore a tangential relationship to 9/11, the decision to treat the attack as a military problem rather than a criminal-justice one has been an unmitigated disaster. By killing countless Afghanis who had nothing to do with 9/11, the U.S. government has simultaneously swelled the ranks of people whose anger and rage have propelled them into the ranks of those who seek retaliation, including it now seems beyond any doubt, the alleged Ft. Hood killer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Are we here at The Future of Freedom Foundation surprised by the Ft. Hood killings? Why would we be? In fact, what surprises us is that we haven’t seen more of this type of thing. How can it be otherwise?

I’m going to repeat what we’ve been saying since before 9/11: the U.S. government needs to get out of the Middle East and Afghanistan. Pull the troops out now. There is no other genuine way to support them. Stop the killing. End the occupations. The U.S. military and the CIA have had eight years to do all the killing, torturing, humiliating, and destroying they want. Now it is time to bring it to an end. Enough is enough.

And I’m going to repeat our predictions of what Americans should expect should the U.S. government continue its pro-empire, pro-interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East and Afghanistan: Americans should prepare themselves to reap the full bounty of what their government’s foreign policy is sowing. An evil seed will produce an evil tree that will bear evil fruit. As the anger and rage arising from the U.S. government’s foreign policy periodically boils over, everyone should prepare himself for more acts of terrorism, murder, treason, war, insanity or whatever other label you wish to put on the retaliatory killing, not to mention the monetary disaster that looms ahead from all of the out-of-control spending to finance this imperialist and interventionist madness.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

When the Framers were deliberating over the Constitution, they were fully aware of the dangers to people’s freedom and well-being posed by a profligate government. As British subjects, they had experienced firsthand the ever-increasing taxes imposed by their king to finance his ever-growing expenditures. As revolutionaries, they had also experienced the ravages that come with the inflation of a currency to finance government expenditures. That’s what “Not Worth a Continental” referred to. As citizens living under the Articles of Confederation, they knew the damage that irredeemable paper money can bring to a society.

The first thing to keep in mind about the Constitution was its dual purpose: to bring into existence the federal government while, at the same time, protecting the nation from it. While the Framers understood the need for government, they also understood that that same government constituted the greatest danger to their freedom and well-being.

Thus, by its own terms the Constitution limited the powers of the federal government to a small number of powers that were enumerated in the document. To make certain that U.S. officials got the point — that the federal government was considered to be the greatest threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people — our ancestors demanded quick passage of 10 amendments to the Constitution. Naming the federal government as the primary threat to their freedom, the Bill of Rights expressly prohibited U.S. officials from infringing fundamental rights and expressly guaranteed important procedural protections as a prerequisite to searching, arresting, incarcerating, or otherwise punishing people.

Our ancestors realized that not only was the U.S. government the primary threat to such fundamental rights as free speech, freedom of religion, peaceable assembly, and gun ownership, it was also the major threat against personal wealth or private property. That’s why, for example, the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits U.S. officials from taking people’s property without due process of law or without just compensation.

The threat of inflation

The Framers also understood that there was an insidious, even fraudulent, way that government officials could seize people’s privately acquired wealth — through an indirect monetary method known as inflation. To protect themselves from that threat, they again used the Constitution.

First, while the enumerated powers that the Constitution granted the federal government included the power to borrow money, they did not include the power to issue paper money or to make paper money legal tender.

Second, the Constitution expressly prohibited the states from issuing paper money (i.e., “bills of credit”) and from making anything but gold and silver coin legal tender.

Thus, from the inception of our nation our American ancestors intended for the United States to operate under a precious-metals monetary system or, more specifically, under a monetary system in which people used gold and silver coins rather than paper money as the media of exchange.

What is vitally important to keep in mind is the reason our American ancestors did this: to protect the nation from the federal government and, specifically, from the ravages of out-of-control federal spending financed by ever-increasing amounts of freshly printed paper money.

Historically, among the most effective ways that governments have plundered their own citizens has been inflation. Directly taxing people gets them upset and even angry. Such anger can be threatening to government officials, especially when it spills over into rebellion or revolution.

Long ago, government officials figured out that it was much easier to seize people’s property through inflation, in large part because people lacked the astuteness to figure out what the government was doing to them. Even better, when the effects of inflation would begin manifesting themselves through rising prices, government officials knew that the propensity of people was to blame the problem on private businesses that were raising prices rather than on public officials who were inflating the currency. Best of all, government officials knew that as prices began rising, they could appear as saviors to the people by imposing price controls on those greedy businesses.

The inflation scheme had been going on long before the invention of the printing press. Here’s how the process worked:

As people engaged in the process of trading with one another, they found that barter could be a less-than-satisfactory mechanism. For example, suppose John is selling a bushel of wheat that Joe wants to purchase. Joe offers John a bushel of apples in exchange for the wheat but John isn’t interested in apples. He wants oranges. So Joe has to go out and find someone who has oranges before he can trade with John to acquire his wheat. But there’s no guarantee that the person who has oranges is going to be interested in Joe’s apples either.

Thus, over time people began using commonly traded items not only for their substantive use but also as a medium of exchange. Consider, for example, tobacco, an item that has sometimes served as money. Joe would go trade his apples for a bundle of tobacco, not with the intent of using the tobacco but solely as a way to purchase John’s wheat. While John wasn’t interested in Joe’s apples, he would be willing to accept the tobacco because he knew that other people would be willing to accept it in exchange for purchases he wished to make.

Gradually, people began turning to precious metals for this purpose. Businesses would be willing to sell an item for an ounce of gold because they knew that everyone else would be willing to do the same. Although gold supplies could increase owing to new discoveries, thereby lowering the purchasing power of gold, people felt that, by and large, the commodity held its value. Other advantages of gold were that it was easily transportable and easy to hide.

But weighing out a quantity of gold each time a trade took place was cumbersome. In response, private minters began minting coins with a fixed amount of gold in them. To facilitate trades, various gold coins would be minted, each one containing a different quantity of gold — e.g., 1 ounce, 1/2 ounce, or 1/4 ounce. For smaller transactions, silver coins were used, and even copper ones.

As in any other business, people turned to those minters who developed a reputation for honesty and integrity. Coins minted by those minters would be more readily accepted in the marketplace as containing the amount of gold represented to be in the coin.

People would use such coins not only to purchase goods and services but also to pay their taxes. They were the money that people used in their day-to-day transactions.

Clipping the coin

Ever-increasing government expenditures and ever-increasing resistance to high taxes caused government officials to look for other ways to raise revenues. The most effective method they came up with was inflation or what was called “clipping the coin.”

What government officials first did was take over the business of minting the coins. It wasn’t enough for government to simply enter the gold-minting business in competition with the private minters. That would obviously leave people free to choose between coins minted by private businesses and those minted by the government.

So the government would decree a monopoly on the minting of coins. That meant that only the government — or a private business appointed by the government — could mint coins. Every other minter was required by law to close down his operations, and new entrants into the minting business were prohibited.

As people paid their taxes with the government’s coins, government officials began shaving off a slight bit of gold around the edges of the coin before returning it into the marketplace in payment for goods and services. The total amount shaved off the coins added significant amounts of money to the state’s coffers.

Obviously, as government officials shaved off the edges of the coins, what was represented to be a 1-ounce gold coin was no longer a 1-ounce gold coin. As a result of shaving, the coin contained less than 1 ounce. Gradually, people began figuring that out, especially as the coins became smaller and smaller in size.

At that point the coin would begin trading at a discount in the marketplace. That is, a businessman selling an item for a 1-ounce gold coin would require not only the shaved coin but also, say, a couple of silver coins to compensate for the smaller amount of gold in the gold coin.

Needless to say, government officials didn’t like their coins’ being treated in such a shabby manner. It was an affront to the king. It was questioning his honor and integrity. The solution was to make the king’s coins legal tender, regardless of how much gold they contained. What that meant was that people were required by law to accept the government’s coins at face value for all economic transactions, including the payment of debts and the purchase of goods and services.

Inflation and the printing press

The invention of the printing press greatly facilitated the ability of government officials to seize people’s wealth through inflation. Here’s how the process worked. Let’s say the government needed an additional one million gold coins to finance its ever-growing expenditures. Reluctant to tax the citizenry, the government went into the marketplace and borrowed the gold coins from the citizenry. The loan would be evidenced by a promissory note, or “bill of credit,” promising to pay a fixed quantity of gold, e.g., a 1-ounce gold coin.

So far, so good, at least insofar as inflation was concerned. The government might be spending wildly but the money being spent was coming from either taxes or borrowing.

People began realizing that the government’s notes could be used as easily as gold coins to facilitate trade. That is, sellers would be willing to accept a government note promising to pay a 1-ounce gold coin because they were certain that the note was as good as gold. All that anyone had to do was demand that the government redeem the note by paying him the gold coin, and it would be done.

Then the problem started. Government officials, ever in need of more money to finance their ever-growing expenditures, figured out that only a certain percentage of people holding the notes would appear and demand their gold at any one time. Most of the notes would continue to circulate as money.

So government officials began cranking up their printing presses and printing lots of government notes that they then used to pay for goods and services in the marketplace. They had little concern that everyone would show up at the same time demanding redemption of all the outstanding notes.

For example, let’s say that on December 31 the government plans to receive tax revenues of one million 1-ounce gold coins. On January 1, it goes out and borrows one million gold coins, evidenced by the delivery of one million notes with a maturity date of one year, each one promising to pay the bearer a 1-ounce gold coin. On the following December 31, the government receives the million gold coins in tax revenue and the following day is prepared to pay off all the notes it issued when it borrowed the money.

However, on the maturity date government officials notice something important. On the maturity date, only 10 percent of the notes are offered for redemption. The other 90 percent continue being used to facilitate trade in the marketplace, with everyone’s having the assurance that he can cash in the note whenever he wants.

Realizing this, the government issues, say, 100,000 additional notes that it uses to pay contractors and suppliers. Those notes begin circulating in the marketplace just like the other ones. But there is now a significant difference: If everyone appears at the gold window and demands redemption, the government can’t make good on its promises. It has only the 1 million in gold that it collected from the taxpayers, not the 1.1 million that it has issued in notes.

As people begin discovering that there are more notes in circulation than the government is able to redeem, there is a rush for the gold window. Everyone wants his gold. No one wants to be stuck with a promise to pay gold if the promise cannot be fulfilled.

Moreover, the government’s notes start trading at a discount in the marketplace. That is, suppose a seller is selling an item for 1 ounce of gold. When a buyer offers him a government note promising to pay 1 ounce of gold, the seller demands the note plus a bit more to compensate him for the risk of default.

Just like the regimes of old, modern-day governments become outraged when people question their integrity and honor. Refusing to accept government notes at face value is considered a grave insult, one even akin to treason. That’s where legal-tender laws came into play. Under threat of severe punishment, government officials require people to accept their notes at face value, without any discount, no matter how many notes have been issued and no matter how serious the risk of default.

That sets the stage to examine the monetary system of the United States, a system that began with precious metals and has ended up with irredeemable paper money known as Federal Reserve Notes, a process that endangers the well-being of the American people and that threatens their nation with bankruptcy and ruin.

The Framers had experienced the ravages of paper money during the Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation, and they were fully aware of how governments had plundered and looted their own citizenry with inflation throughout history. Therefore, the Framers used the Constitution to ensure that neither the states nor the federal government could ever do that to the American people.

The result was that from the founding of the nation and for more than a century, the money that the American people used was coins consisting of gold, silver, nickel, and copper. People became accustomed to transacting business with such coins. It was that type of monetary system — one in which people used coins made of precious and non-precious metals — that became known as “the gold standard.”

It wasn’t a purely free-market standard. The U.S. government was in charge of minting America’s coins and, therefore, of defining the weight and fineness of the coins. Moreover, the government established a policy of defining the exchange ratio between gold and silver, a price control that would inevitably be out of sync with changing market conditions and that often led people to hoard one metal or the other.

What was important, however, was that the monetary standard for the United States was a metallic one, not one based on paper money. It’s important to conceptualize what the u201Cgold standardu201D meant. It did not mean some exchange ratio between paper money and gold. Instead, the “gold standard” meant that gold coins, silver coins, nickel coins, and copper coins were the money that the American people had chosen to use in their society.

Liberty, power, and the Constitution

Let’s examine how the Framers used the Constitution to establish a government of limited powers and then examine how it protected Americans from the ravages of inflation with the establishment of a gold standard.

First of all, keep in mind the overall political philosophy that was guiding the Framers and the Americans during the founding of the nation. While Americans believed that a federal government was necessary, they also believed that it would nonetheless constitute the greatest threat to their freedom and well-being. Unlike so many Americans today, who view the federal government as their provider and caretaker, our American ancestors looked upon the federal government as a very dangerous entity, one that needed to be watched very carefully.

One can see this mindset most clearly in the Bill of Rights, which actually should have been called the Bill of Prohibitions. Behind every one of the prohibitions and guarantees in those Amendments was the conviction held by the people that in the absence of such express prohibitions and guarantees, the federal government would engage in the conduct that was prohibited or proscribed.

The reason that the First Amendment prohibited Congress from enacting any law abridging freedom of speech and freedom of the press, for example, was that in the absence of such an amendment, Congress would enact laws that would infringe such freedoms.

The reason the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms was that in the absence of such an express guarantee, federal officials would confiscate weapons from the citizenry in order to maintain order, stability, and obedience.

The same goes for criminal cases in which the government seeks to incarcerate and punish people. Express guarantees prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments, and relating to due process of law, right to counsel, and right to bail were included because our ancestors knew that federal officials would ignore the people’s rights and liberties in the absence of express restrictions.

The cornerstone of American society was private property, whose protection was guaranteed in the original Constitution as well as in the Due Process Clause and the Just Compensation Clause in the Bill of Rights. Realizing that the institution of private property was a necessary prerequisite for a free society, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights prohibited federal officials from arbitrarily confiscating people’s money, land, and other property. There was also an express restriction prohibiting the states from impairing private contracts.

All those enumerated powers and express prohibitions and guarantees reflected the mindset of the Framers. Since they viewed the federal government as the greatest danger to the freedom and well-being of the American people, they decided to use the Constitution not only to call the federal government into existence but also, at the same time, to limit its powers to those that were expressly enumerated.

In other words, one option would have been to delegate to the federal government general, unlimited powers to take whatever actions federal officials deemed to be in the best interests of the American people. That’s not the option the Framers chose, because they knew that such a government would inevitably oppress the citizenry.

What they did instead was to make it clear that the government the Constitution was calling into existence would be one with very few, limited powers. The federal government’s powers would be limited to those expressly enumerated in the Constitution. If a power wasn’t enumerated, the federal government couldn’t exercise it, even if federal officials deemed it to be in the best interests of the citizens.

The Constitution and gold

How did the Framers protect the American people from the ravages of inflation, which had beset people for centuries?

First, the Constitution granted the federal government the power to coin money and to regulate its value in accordance with a fixed standard of weights and measures.

Second, it did not grant the federal government the power to issue paper money or the power to debase the currency.

Third, while the Framers did grant the federal government the power to borrow, they refused to grant the power to make bills and notes legal tender. In other words, the government lacked the power to force people to accept its bills and notes in ordinary transactions or in payment of debts.

Fourth, the Framers expressly prohibited the states from issuing paper money, or what was commonly called “bills of credit.”

Fifth, the Framers expressly prohibited the states from making anything but gold and silver coins legal tender.

Thus, it was clear that the Framers intended the United States to operate on a precious-metals standard, one in which gold coins, silver coins, and copper coins were the money in society.

In fulfillment of that intention, Congress enacted the Coinage Act of 1792, which established the U.S. Mint and provided for the minting of coins that would be based on a dollar unit of value. For example, there were silver dollars and silver half-dollars and $10 gold Eagles and $5 Half-Eagles.

A heritage of economic liberty

While statists love to regale us with stories of how horrible the Industrial Revolution was, the truth is that compared with what had gone on before, the Industrial Revolution was providing people with the means to escape death by starvation. Before long and as wealth began being accumulated, people were not only surviving, they were actually prospering.

Part of the reason for this remarkable outburst in economic prosperity was the fact that our Americans ancestors had rejected income taxation. Thus, through most of the 19th century, Americans could keep everything they earned and there was nothing the federal government could do about it.

It was also a society in which there was a lack of economic regulation on the part of the government. That’s what “free enterprise” meant — economic activity that was free of government control.

There was no socialism — no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, education grants, foreign aid, or welfare.

There was no large standing army, no foreign aid, no foreign wars, no entangling alliances, and no overseas empire.

There were no controls on immigration, except for a cursory health inspection at Ellis Island.

All those factors contributed to the unbelievable rise in the standard of living of the American people. People were going from rags to riches in one, two, or three generations. They included the thousands of penniless immigrants who were fleeing the lands of taxation, regulation, socialism, conscription, militarism, and empire to come to the land of self-reliance, independence, voluntary charity, and limited government.

Savings, capital, and gold

Another critically important factor in the economic prosperity, however, was the gold standard. For the first time in history, people felt safe from the threat that had besieged people throughout history — the threat that government officials would take away their wealth by debasing their currency.

Equally important was the positive effect that the gold standard had on capital markets. Companies were issuing bonds with a 100-year maturity date, with the proviso that the loan had to be paid back in a specified amount of gold or the same unit of value as when the bond was issued. In other words, no repayment in debased, inflated paper currency. Thus, people were willing to buy such long-term bonds because they didn’t fear being paid back in depreciated currency. The massive accumulation of capital, brought about by the absence of an income tax, the propensity of people to save, and the existence of sound money, were among the critical factors that brought about an enormous increase in real wages in the 19th century.

Since America’s money consisted of gold coins, silver coins, and copper coins, people knew that the federal government couldn’t easily inflate the currency. After all, it’s much more difficult to arbitrarily increase the supply of gold, silver, and copper than it is to increase the supply of paper money. Mining for precious metals can be expensive, while simply printing money off a printing press is much less onerous.

Of course, the federal government could have “clipped the coins,” as regimes of old had done, leaving the coins with less gold and accumulating the shavings for government use. But the federal government didn’t do that. While there were sometimes controversial adjustments in the weight or fineness of U.S. coins as well as in the exchange ratio between the coins, by and large U.S. coins were renowned for their quality and trustworthiness.

That’s not to say that there weren’t periodic increases in the supply of money, but at least they were localized or brought about by unusual market conditions rather than by government policy. A new gold discovery in California, for example, would increase the supply of gold overnight, causing prices of everything to go up in relationship to gold. It was the gold and silver coins that were the money, not the federal government’s dollar bills.

By and large, the American people had confidence in the ability of their coins to hold their value. The consequence was that people were saving vast amounts of money, oftentimes passing it from one generation to the next. Thus, not only could people leave their children large sums of money that had been accumulated from the fact that there was no income tax, but they knew that federal officials lacked the power to ravage those savings with inflation.

Borrowing and gold

What about the federal government’s power to borrow, which was among the enumerated powers granted in the Constitution? In principle, the power entailed nothing different from ordinary citizens’ borrowing money. For example, people would lend gold coins to the government.

To evidence the debt, the government would issue a promissory note, which promised to repay the lender the gold that was being borrowed. Everyone understood that it was the gold and silver coins that were the money, not the government’s notes. The notes were promises to pay money, not money itself.

Of course, there was nothing to prevent the federal government from simply printing an excess number of notes and using them to pay for goods and services in the marketplace, except that by doing so, it would run the risk that everyone would show up at the government’s gold window and demand to have the promissory notes redeemed in gold coin. Thus, an excess issue of notes would, at some point, result in the bankruptcy of the government. That possibility operated as a very real constraint on excessive government spending.

All this is like ancient history to today’s Americans. They’ve heard of the “gold standard” but it’s a vague concept in their minds. They might be somewhat aware that gold coins, silver coins, and copper coins once circulated in American society, but most of them have no idea of the integral part the gold standard played in the lives of our American ancestors.

Most Americans today have no idea why a gold standard was important to our ancestors. The notion that a gold standard was established to protect them from the federal government is an alien notion to most people.

To most people today, the gold standard was a system in which the federal government’s paper bills and notes were the real money, which was “linked” to some fixed amount of gold.

When people pull out a Federal Reserve Note from their billfolds or wallets, it never occurs to them to ask why it’s called a “note,” given that it’s not promising to pay anything. They have no idea that the “note” is a cruel reminder of a bygone era in which the American people once had a monetary system based on sound money rather than on irredeemable notes issued by the Federal Reserve.

What happened to the gold standard on which the United States was founded? What happened to all those gold and silver coins that Americans used to use in their day-to-day transactions? Why do people use irredeemable paper money today instead of coins made of precious metals? What happened to bring about such a monumental, even revolutionary, change in America’s monetary system? Why do so few Americans know what happened and why it happened?

The answers to those questions require an examination into the economic policies of two presidents: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were the two presidents most responsible for the abandonment of sound money in the United States. These two U.S. presidents opened the floodgates to the monetary debauchery under which today’s Americans have suffered for their entire lives.

In waging war to prevent the Southern states from leaving the Union, Lincoln was faced with the age-old problem that rulers have faced throughout history: how to pay for the war’s ever-increasing military expenditures. One answer, of course, was taxation, but Lincoln was no fool. He knew that taxes were not popular among the citizenry, especially when they’re continually going up.

Thus, he resorted to another revenue-raising device, one that historically did not engender the same amount of animosity among people that taxes did. He simply borrowed the money through the issuance of government notes.

Keep in mind an important point here: The notes promised to pay dollars, which everyone understood were simply units of value reflecting the value in gold coins and silver coins. Ever since the country’s founding, the money that people used in their everyday transactions was gold coins and silver coins, along with copper coins for smaller transactions.

Since the Constitution permitted the federal government to borrow money, there was nothing unconstitutional about Lincoln’s decision to employ that method to finance the war. The problem arose when the federal government took one additional fateful step: It made the federal notes “legal tender.” That action converted the notes from simple evidence of a loan into “paper money.”

Why was a legal-tender law important to Lincoln and the Congress? They knew that when profligate governments borrow excessive amounts of money, their notes ultimately begin losing value in the marketplace compared with everything else. As more and more notes promising to pay gold are issued, the chances of default increase. If everyone appears at the government’s gold window at the same time and says, “I wish to redeem this promissory note for 10 gold Eagles,” there is a chance that the government will be able to pay off, say, only 70 percent of the note-holders before running out of gold.

Inflation and the Constitution

Thus, as more and more notes are issued, their relative value in the marketplace begins to drop. Suppose, for example, a federal agent walks into a dry-goods store and selects merchandise having a price of 10 gold Eagles. He hands the clerk a federal promissory note promising to pay 10 gold Eagles. The storeowner, however, knows that such promissory notes are trading at a discount. So he tells the federal agent, “Sorry, that’s not satisfactory. Either pay me 10 gold Eagles, or give me the note plus an additional 2 gold Eagles in exchange for the merchandise.”

Lincoln’s legal-tender law avoided that problem by simply dictating that every American had to accept federal notes at face value.

Yet that was precisely the reason that the American people had established a sound-money system in the Constitution. They knew that throughout history rulers had plundered and looted their own citizenry through inflation, first through such devices as “clipping the coin” and later through the issuance of paper money. Through the Constitution, the Framers intended to establish a monetary system by which the American people would forever be protected from the ravages of inflation. Lincoln’s legal-tender law effectively removed that protection.

Let’s assume that in 1860 Peter lends Paul the sum of $1,000 in gold coins. The loan is evidenced by a promissory note in which Paul promises to repay the sum of $1,000 in gold coins. The loan, principal and interest, is due three years from the date of issuance.

When the loan comes due in 1863, Peter demands his money. Paul tenders to Peter federal promissory notes totaling $1,000 and cites Lincoln’s legal-tender law, which permits him to use federally issued paper money to pay his debts. Paul refuses the tender of the notes because in the marketplace the notes are trading for only $700 in gold coins. He demands payment in the money standard that the loan originally called for.

The Legal Tender Cases

That was the issue in the Legal Tender Cases, which are among the most significant cases in the history of U.S. Supreme Court. When Lincoln’s legal-tender law came before the Supreme Court in the case of Hepburn v. Griswold (1870), the Court held that the law was unconstitutional.

However, because of a change in the makeup of the Court — two new justices were named by President Grant (!) within two years of the Hepburn decision — the ruling was overturned and the constitutionality of Lincoln’s legal-tender law was upheld in the cases of Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis.

The thrust of the argument sustaining the constitutionality of Lincoln’s legal-tender law was that since the Constitution granted Congress the power over the nation’s monetary system, it was the prerogative of Congress to use such power to issue paper money and force people to accept it with a legal-tender law.

It was, however, a spurious argument, as the justices who voted against the constitutionality of the legal-tender laws pointed out.

Recall, first of all, that the Constitution expressly prohibited the states from making anything but gold and silver coin legal tender. The Constitution also expressly prohibited the states from issuing “bills of credit,” a term that meant paper money.

Obviously, restrictions on the power of the states do not operate as restrictions on the powers of the federal government. But those specific restrictions on the states do provide a clear expression of the type of monetary system that the Framers intended for the United States — one based on gold coins and silver coins.

Why didn’t the Framers use the Constitution to expressly restrict the federal government in the same way as they did the states?

Recall that the Constitution brought into existence a government of limited powers that were expressly enumerated in the Constitution. Therefore, there was no need for the Framers to impose specific restrictions on federal power. To determine whether the federal government could exercise a particular power, all that people had to do was simply examine the list of enumerated powers. If a power was not listed, then the power could not be legally exercised.

Thus, since the Constitution did not give the federal government the power to issue paper money or bills of credit, such power couldn’t be constitutionally exercised, even though there was no express prohibition against issuing paper money or bills of credit.

By the same token, while the Constitution did give the federal government the power to borrow money, it did not give it the power to make its promissory notes legal tender. Therefore, under the doctrine of limited, enumerated powers there would have been no need to include an express restriction on the power to enact legal-tender laws.

We should also note the importance that the Framers placed on the sanctity of contracts, as reflected by the Constitution’s express restriction on the states from impairing contracts and their decision to not delegate the power to impair contracts to the federal government. That would be especially important to a person who had lent money pursuant to a loan contract that provided for repayment in the same standard of money under which the money had been lent.

Coins versus paper

Was the Constitution silent on federal power with respect to money? Absolutely not. The Constitution expressly gave Congress the power “to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin.” That power made it clear that the intent of the Framers was to bequeath a monetary system to the American people based on gold coins and silver coins.

Obviously “to coin money” means to make coins out of metal, not out of paper. “To regulate the value thereof” obviously means to define how much gold and silver each coin will comprise.

Thus, given the express restrictions on the states prohibiting them from making anything but gold and silver coin legal tender and prohibiting them from issuing paper money, and given no delegation of power to the federal government to do those things, and given the expressly granted power to Congress to coin money and regulate the value therefore, how in the world could anyone rationally arrive at the conclusion that the Framers intended to permit Congress to establish a paper-money system, especially one in which people would be forced to accept devalued or even irredeemable paper notes as money?

Yet that’s precisely what the Supreme Court held after the addition of the two new justices appointed by President Grant. The dissenting justices in Knox and Parker correctly pointed out that the result was that the American people would now be subject to being ravaged by the very inflationary measures that the Framers intended to protect them from. As dissenting Justice Stephen J. Field put it,

Speaking of paper money issued by the states — and the same language is equally true of paper money issued by the United States — Chief Justice Marshall says, in Craig v. State of Missouri, “Such a medium has been always liable to considerable fluctuation. Its value is continually changing, and these changes, often great and sudden, expose individuals to immense loss, are the sources of ruinous speculations, and destroy all confidence between man and man. To cut up this mischief by the roots, a mischief which was felt through the United States and which deeply affected the interest and prosperity of all, the people declared in their Constitution that no state should emit bills of credit.”

After the Civil War, the American people continued operating under a monetary system based on gold and silver coins (as well as copper coins and nickel coins), which was the monetary system that the Framers had brought into existence through the Constitution. Since Lincoln’s legal-tender law applied only to a select group of federal notes issued during the Civil War, its impact was limited in scope. Nonetheless, it set the stage for what would come 70 years later — the nationalization of gold, the repudiation of gold clauses, irredeemable paper money, ever-increasing federal spending, financial chaos and crises, and never-ending inflationary plunder of the citizenry.

On April 5, 1933 — about a month after taking office — President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order commanding every American to turn in his gold to the federal government. The order was soon ratified by Congress, which made it a felony offense for Americans to own gold. The Congress also nullified clauses in both private and public contracts that required payment to be made in gold coin.

Roosevelt’s actions rank among the most horrific abuses of government power in history. For 150 years, the American people had been accustomed to using gold coins as money. Their gold was their property. They were the owners of it. It belonged to them as much as their homes, their automobiles, and their personal effects. It did not belong to Franklin Roosevelt, nor to the members of Congress, nor to any other public official. It was privately owned property.

Nonetheless, the Roosevelt administration simply declared that everyone’s gold suddenly belonged to the federal government. Everyone, including individuals and banks, was required to surrender his privately owned gold to the federal government. Anyone caught failing to do so was subject to being indicted by a federal grand jury and faced a possible jail sentence of 10 years and a fine of $10,000.

Imagine: In 1787 the Framers used the Constitution to establish a system whereby people were going to use gold and silver coins, rather than paper, as money. The reason they did that was to enable people to protect themselves from what governments throughout history had done — plunder and loot people through inflation — e.g., by printing ever-increasing amounts of paper money to finance ever-increasing governmental expenditures. For the next 150 years, Americans used such coins in their everyday transactions.

Then, one day federal officials suddenly made it a felony for Americans to do what they had been legally and constitutionally doing for 150 years.

In fact, the Roosevelt administration’s confiscation of privately owned gold was no different from the nationalization of privately owned property that had taken place at the hands of the communist regime in the Soviet Union. And Roosevelt’s criminalization of gold ownership was no different, in principle, from the types of economic crimes that the Soviet communists were creating and enforcing.

What was Roosevelt’s rationale for this revolutionary action? He claimed that since the Great Depression was a national “emergency,” the federal government had the authority to exercise emergency powers, including the power to confiscate gold, to make gold ownership a felony, and to nullify gold clauses in contracts.

One big problem, however, was that the Constitution didn’t provide for the exercise of emergency powers. In fact, the Framers understood that emergencies are the time that liberties are most at risk. Therefore, it was during emergencies that constitutional restraints were most important.

Nazi admiration

Constitutional restraints, however, didn’t present a problem for Roosevelt. After all, this was the man who would later come up with an infamous Court-packing scheme when the Supreme Court was declaring many of his socialistic and fascistic New Deal programs unconstitutional. He had no intention of letting constitutional restraints stand in the way of his aims and objectives.

Thus, it’s not surprising that one of Roosevelt’s greatest admirers was none other than Adolf Hitler, who was adopting many of the same types of measures to deal with the economic emergency in Germany that Roosevelt was employing in the United States. Here’s what Hitler wrote to U.S. Ambassador Thomas Dodd on March 14, 1934, about a year after the Roosevelt administration had nationalized gold and nullified gold contracts:

The Reich chancellor requests Mr. Dodd to present his greetings to President Roosevelt. He congratulates the president upon his heroic effort in the interest of the American people. The president’s successful struggle against economic distress is being followed by the entire German people with interest and admiration. The Reich chancellor is in accord with the president that the virtues of sense of duty, readiness for sacrifice, and discipline must be the supreme rule of the whole nation. This moral demand, which the president is addressing to every single citizen, is only the quintessence of German philosophy of the state, expressed in the motto “The public weal before the private gain.”

In his excellent book, Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933—1939, Wolfgang Schivelbusch points out,

On May 11, 1933 [one month after Roosevelt's gold decrees], the main Nazi newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter, offered its commentary in an article with the headline “Roosevelt’s Dictatorial Recovery Measures.” The author wrote, “What has transpired in the United States since President Roosevelt’s inauguration is a clear signal of the start of a new era in the United States as well.” The tone on January 17, 1934, was much the same, “We, too, as German National Socialists are looking toward America…. Roosevelt is carrying out experiments and they are bold. We, too, fear only the possibility that they might fail.”… Just as National Socialism superseded the decadent “bureaucratic age” of the Weimar Republic, the Volkischer Beobachter opined, so the New Deal had replaced “the uninhibited frenzy of market speculation of the American 1920s.” The paper stressed “Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies, praising the president’s style of leadership as being comparable to Hitler’s own dictatorial Fhrerprinzip.”

Plundering and looting

Why did Roosevelt nationalize gold? Why were gold clauses nullified?

The answer is simple: to enable the federal government to do what governments throughout history had done — plunder and loot people through inflation in order to pay for ever-increasing government programs and projects.

Let’s review the process to understand what Roosevelt was doing.

The reason the Framers established gold and silver coins as the money that Americans would use was to protect them from the inflationary ravages of paper money.

The Constitution permitted the federal government to borrow money — e.g., gold and silver coins — and issue notes promising to repay the loans. Such notes customarily contained gold clauses requiring repayment in the same gold-coin standard in effect when the loan was made.

Let’s assume that I lend the federal government a gold coin containing 1 ounce of gold. Before the loan is repaid, the government lowers the quantity of gold in coins of that same denomination to ½ ounce. When the loan becomes due, the government tries to repay me in the devalued coin. But the gold clause protects me. It requires the government to repay me in the standard that was in effect when the loan was made — or its equivalent. Because of the gold clause, the government would have to pay me two of the new gold coins containing ½ ounce of gold each.

What constrains the government from issuing too many short-term paper notes — or bills? The fact that people might start demanding gold in payment of such notes! And that’s exactly what was happening by the time Roosevelt assumed office. Americans were doing what people throughout history had done — they were putting their savings into gold coins rather than in the ever-increasing numbers of bills and notes that the federal government was issuing. That’s what Roosevelt called the “hoarding” problem.

Moreover, people continued doing what Americans had done since the start of the Republic — relying on gold clauses in contracts, both government and private, to ensure that their loans would not be repaid in debased, depreciated currency.

Yet, within just a few weeks of taking office, Roosevelt extinguished 150 years of sound money. From the day his executive orders were issued, Americans could no longer use the media of exchange on which their country had been founded and which Americans had used ever since. In fact, while Roosevelt billed his actions as “emergency” measures, most people knew that that was a lie. Everyone knew that the criminalization of gold ownership and the nullification of gold clauses would continue long after the Great Depression ended.

Also remarkable is the fact that this revolutionary and permanent transformation of America’s monetary system occurred without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

Beyond Lincoln

Why didn’t Roosevelt simply do what Lincoln had done during the Civil War? Recall that Lincoln had enacted a legal-tender law that required people to accept paper money at face value, even though it had depreciated against gold in the marketplace. While Lincoln’s actions violated fundamental moral principles, not to mention constitutional principles, at least Americans still had the freedom to continue owning and using gold, and the gold standard was eventually restored after the end of the war.

Why did Roosevelt go so much further than Lincoln? Why did he actually seize people’s gold? Why did he convert millions of peaceful and law-abiding gold-owning Americans into potential felons? Why were gold clauses nullified?

The reason for Roosevelt’s actions was simple: He knew that the federal government was moving in a new direction — in the direction of a socialistic welfare state and an interventionist economy, a direction that he knew would entail massive federal spending in the decades ahead. Obviously, that type of revolutionary change would be impossible under a gold standard. The only thing that would enable the welfare-and-interventionist state to operate, decade after decade, would be the ability to print unlimited amounts of paper money.

Thus, Roosevelt and the statists surrounding him knew that they needed to do much more than simply enact a legal-tender law, as Lincoln had done. They knew they had to smash the concept of gold as money from the consciousness of the American people. It was absolutely necessary, they felt, that people totally forget that Americans once used gold coins as their money as normally and naturally as people today use dollar bills. It would, of course, take a few generations but gradually people would forget the past and just accept the new order of things.

Consequences of debasement

And so it has been. Decade after decade, inflationary debasement was accompanied by periods of panicky constraints on money growth, bringing about the traditional boom-bust cycle. Over time, the primary engine of the monetary debasement became the Federal Reserve, one of the most powerful government agencies in history, an agency whose supposed mission, ironically, had been to stabilize America’s monetary system.

In fact, the most terrible irony is that it was the Federal Reserve itself whose policies had brought about the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression, notwithstanding Roosevelt’s pronouncement that it was all the fault of free enterprise, speculation, and greed. After decades during which public schools and state-supported colleges and universities had deceived students as to the cause of Great Depression, one of most remarkable admissions in U.S. history was made by Bernard Bernanke, the Federal Reserve official who would go on to become its chairman. At a dinner in 2002 in honor of Milton Friedman, who, along with Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and the Austrian school, had long pointed out that the Federal Reserve was the culprit behind the Great Depression, Bernanke stated,

Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve System. I would like to say to Milton and Anna [Schwartz]: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right: we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.

Americans who are 55 or older remember that as children they used dimes, quarters, and half-dollars made of silver, and nickels made of nickel. As such coins gradually disappeared from circulation, Americans just scratched it off to “progress” or “the natural order of things.” The last thing Americans wanted to do was accuse their government of some sort of monetary wrongdoing. After all, as the federal government began playing an ever-increasing paternalistic role in people’s lives with its welfare state and interventionist system, Americans placed ever-increasing faith in their government.

But the reason that those coins disappeared from circulation is the same reason that gold coins were starting to disappear from circulation when Roosevelt took office. The federal government was printing such vast quantities of money, decade after decade, to finance its welfare-state operations that the value of the silver in dimes, quarters, and half-dollars began to exceed the face value of the coins. In other words, it was worth more to people to sell the silver to be melted down than it was to use the silver coins to make purchases at the face value of the coins.

Over the years, the federal government prosecuted Americans caught owning gold, but none of those cases ever reached the Supreme Court. The cases that did reach the Supreme Court were ones that challenged Roosevelt’s nullification of the gold clauses. Those four cases have become known as the Gold Clause Cases.

In 5—4 rulings, the Court ruled in favor of Roosevelt’s actions and against the victims of his policies. The damages suffered by those victims were not small. While people were being paid for the gold they were sending to the federal government, they were being paid in depreciated paper money, for Roosevelt had increased the price of gold, and so had devalued the dollar by some 40 percent. The financial losses suffered by private lenders who had relied on gold clauses to protect them and by private holders of government-issued gold certificates were incalculable.

Not everyone rolled over. One of the finest expressions of opposition to Roosevelt’s monetary horror, from a legal standpoint, appears in the dissenting opinion in the Gold Clause Cases. Writing for the group of justices who would become known in judicial history as the Four Horsemen, Justice James Clark McReynolds wrote,

Just men regard repudiation and spoliation of citizens by their sovereign with abhorrence; but we are asked to affirm that the Constitution has granted power to accomplish both. No definite delegation of such a power exists, and we cannot believe the far-seeing framers, who labored with hope of establishing justice and securing the blessings of liberty, intended that the expected government should have authority to annihilate its own obligations and destroy the very rights which they were endeavoring to protect. Not only is there no permission for such actions, they are inhibited. And no plenitude of words can conform them to our charter….

Under the challenged statutes, it is said the United States have realized profits amounting to $2,800,000,000…. But this assumes that gain may be generated by legislative fiat. To such counterfeit profits there would be no limit; with each new debasement of the dollar they would expand. Two billions might be ballooned indefinitely to twenty, thirty, or what you will.

Loss of reputation for honorable dealing will bring us unending humiliation; the impending legal and moral chaos is appalling.

Restoration of gold ownership

In 1974 — 40 years after Roosevelt confiscated people’s gold and made it illegal for Americans to own gold — and three decades after the “emergency” of the Great Depression had ended, Congress made it legal for Americans to once again own gold. By this time, of course, the notion of gold as money had been wiped from the consciousness of most Americans. After decades of being taught economics in public schools and state-supported colleges, their understanding, at best, was that America once had a paper-money standard that was somehow linked to gold.

Over the past 30 years many Americans have rediscovered the value of owning gold, even if it isn’t being used as official money in society. They discovered what people throughout history discovered — that placing their savings in gold, rather than bills and notes, is more likely to protect the value of their savings, especially if the government intends to continue printing the necessary paper money to fund its ever-growing operations.

Today, there is increasing awareness of what the Federal Reserve has done to destroy what was once one of the soundest monetary systems in the world, one based on gold and silver coins. There are even calls, especially among young people, to abolish the Fed and restore sound money to the nation. More and more people are recognizing that a system of sound money is a necessary prerequisite to a free society.

Yet, there is now the specter of another monetary horror, one in which President Obama decides to mimic the actions of the president he so admires, Franklin Roosevelt. As Obama embarks on one of the biggest federal spending sprees in U.S. history, continued monetary debasement has become a certainty. The risk, of course, is that Obama will resort to the same method employed by Roosevelt and the Soviet communists. To replenish the coffers of the federal government in order to fund his ever-growing socialistic, interventionist, and imperial programs, Obama may well decide to re-confiscate people’s gold in another massive assault on the freedom, private property, and economic well-being of the American people.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

Never mind that the scandal has been brewing since 1998, when it was discovered that the CIA had intentionally covered up a key role that a CIA agent named George Joannides had played in the months leading up the JFK assassination and, later, in the investigation of the assassination itself.

Better late than never, I suppose.

The documents had been released pursuant to the 1992 John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which had been enacted in response to Oliver Stone’s movie JFK and which mandated the release of all government documents relating to Kennedy’s murder.

The documents revealed that Joannides had served as a CIA liaison to an anti-Castro student group known as the DRE and had supervised the funneling of large sums of CIA money into the organization. As I pointed out last week in an article dated October 14, when he was living in New Orleans in the months before the assassination Lee Harvey Oswald had had an encounter with a leader of the New Orleans branch of the DRE, a man named Carlos Bringuier.

Later, in the 1970s when the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated the Kennedy assassination, the CIA called Joannides back from retirement to serve as a liaison between the CIA and the House committee. Ostensibly his job was to facilitate CIA cooperation with the House investigation.

But there was one big problem in all this. No one but Joannides and the CIA knew about Joannides’ prior relationship with the DRE. Not the Warren Commission. Not the House Committee. For some reason known only to the CIA and Joannides, the information was kept secret from the people whose task was to conduct a full and complete investigation into the Kennedy assassination.

Even worse, the CIA had the audacity to select as liaison the person who was the subject of the secret, raising the obvious question: Was Joannides called back from retirement to serve as a barrier rather than a facilitator? Or as the Times put it, “That concealment has fueled suspicion that Mr. Joannides’s real assignment was to limit what the House Committee could learn about C.I.A. activities.”

Discovering Joannides’ role in the documents released in the late 1990s, a relentless journalist named Jefferson Morley, who used to work at the Washington Post, requested the CIA to produce all its files on Joannides, a request the CIA steadfastly refused to grant.

In 2003 Morley filed suit against the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act. Despite a favorable ruling from a federal Court of Appeals, the CIA has engaged in years of stonewalling, absolutely refusing to this day to divulge the Joannides files to Morley and the public.

Last August I published an article entitled “Appoint a Special Prosecutor in the JFK-Joannides Matter,” in which I argued that President Obama should appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and possibly prosecute people in the CIA for fraud and obstruction of justice. (At the end of that article is a list of links to all of Jefferson Morley’s articles on the subject, which I highly recommend, as they make for a fascinating read.)

Federal Judge John R. Tunheim, who was chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board stated, as quoted in the New York Times article, “I think we were probably misled by the agency. This material should be released.”

The Times also quoted G. Robert Blakey, the House Committee’s staff director: “If I’d known his role in 1963, I would have put Joannides under oath — he would have been a witness, not a facilitator. How do we know what he didn’t give us?”

What the CIA’s position? Not surprisingly, it resorts to the old standard bromide for keeping things secret, even when the information is half-a-century old — “national security.”

Or perhaps there are other reasons. As the opening sentence in the New York Times articles asks, “Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy?”

Gerald Posner, whose book Case Closed argued against a conspiracy theory, is a bit more cynical, stating: “Most conspiracy theorists don’t understand this. But if there really were a C.I.A. plot, no documents would exist.”

Presumably, Posner is suggesting that if the CIA really was involved in the plot to kill Kennedy, the agency would have cleaned up and doctored its files a long time ago to ensure that no such evidence ever surfaced in a CIA document.

Nonetheless, the public is entitled to see the Joannides records and to see precisely what role Joannides played with the DRE.

Equally important, people have a right to know why the CIA knowingly and intentionally misled the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee, and the American people by deliberately failing to disclose these material facts.

Forty-five years of misleading the public with secrecy, fraud, and deception in a matter as important as the Kennedy assassination are enough. It’s time for the CIA to stop the stonewalling and immediately release the Joannides documents.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

When Oswald was living in New Orleans in the period prior to the assassination, he got into an altercation with an anti-Castro Cuban named Carlos Bringuier while Oswald was distributing pamphlets promoting The Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Cuba organization that the CIA considered to be subversive.

As a result of that altercation, Oswald was arrested for disorderly conduct and taken to the local jail in New Orleans. While he was incarcerated, he asked to talk to a FBI agent. Lo and behold, a FBI agent named John Quigley came to the jail and visited with Oswald for an hour and a half.

Now, I ask you: How many communist sympathizers have that much influence? Indeed, how many ordinary people do you know who, after being arrested for disorderly conduct by the local police, would be able to summon a FBI agent who would come and visit them in jail?

That seems rather unusual to me. After all, the offense of disorderly conduct, especially at the local level, is as far from being a federal crime as one can get. Nonetheless, here is a FBI agent responding positively to a request by a supposed communist sympathizer jailed for the local crime of disorderly conduct and visiting with him for an hour and a half.

Another oddity is the Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets that Oswald was distributing. Some of the pamphlets had a return street address stamped on them — 544 Camp St. Yet, that was not the address of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee or even Oswald’s address. It was actually an address that housed the same building in which a 20-year veteran of the FBI was running his private detective agency — a man named Guy Banister.

Perhaps just a coincidence, but a strange one at that. But the obvious question arises: What would happen if people responded favorably to the pamphlet by sending letters to that address? How would such letters ever get to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee or to Oswald? I wonder if Oswald thought about that when he was distributing the pamphlets. Wouldn’t you think that that would matter to him?

There is another interesting aspect of the altercation that resulted in Oswald’s arrest. Carlos Bringuier, the man with whom Oswald had the altercation, was associated with a fiercely anti-Castro Cuban group named the DRE. During the House Select Committee hearings on the JFK assassination in the 1970s, the CIA called a man out of retirement named George Joannides to serve as a liaison between the CIA and the House Committee. In the 1990s, after Joannides had died, documents revealed that he had served as a CIA conduit that was funneling money into the DRE during the time of Oswald’s altercation with Bringuier. Yet, that fact had never been revealed to the House Committee or anyone else, including the Warren Commission, and no one was ever able to question Joannides about it.

Since then, the CIA has steadfastly refused to open up and disclose its Joannides files to the public. Several years ago, a former Washington Post journalist named Jefferson Morley sued the CIA seeking disclosure of the Joannides files, a suit that is still pending and which the CIA continues to fiercely oppose even today, on national-security grounds. See my article, “Appoint a Special Prosecutor in the JFK-Joannides Matter.”

Another weird aspect of this case involved a note that Oswald delivered a couple of weeks prior to the assassination to a FBI agent in Dallas named James Hosty. Immediately after Oswald was assassinated, Hosty destroyed the note. Hosty later claimed that in the note Oswald threatened Hosty for harassing Oswald’s wife.

Of course, that’s possible. And it’s also possible that the reason Hosty destroyed the note was to protect the FBI from embarrassment over having received such a note two weeks before Kennedy was assassinated and not having reported it to the Secret Service.

But how often does one see a FBI agent scrambling to destroy evidence in one of the most important murder cases in history? After all, two days after the assassination there was no way that Hosty could have been certain that Oswald wasn’t part of a conspiracy to kill the president, one that would later be prosecuted in court. Thus, Hosty had to know that despite Oswald’s death, Hosty was potentially engaging in obstruction of justice by destroying evidence that could later be pertinent in a conspiracy-to-murder case.

Finally, I think that one of the most fascinating aspects to Oswald’s post-arrest statements was his statement “I’m a patsy.” Ordinarily, when a person is denying guilt, his reaction is simply one that is limited to denying guilt, such as: “I didn’t do it. I’m innocent. They have the wrong guy.”

Oswald did more than that. He not only protested his innocence, he went a step further and suggested that someone or some people had set him up and were framing him. What would cause him to go off in that direction rather than simply claim that he was innocent of the crime?

In his book Brothers, David Talbot writes, “Robert Kennedy had one other phone conversation on November 22 that sheds light on his thinking that afternoon. He spoke to Enrique ‘Harry’ Ruiz-Williams, a Bay of Pigs veteran who was his closest associate in the Cuban exile community. Kennedy stunned his friend by telling him point-blank, ‘One of your guys did it.’”

Some 45 years after the JFK assassination, one cannot help but wonder whether Robert Kennedy was right.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

But if that’s the case, why would Oswald deny that he killed the president? Why would he claim that he was “a patsy,” i.e., someone who had been set up to take the fall? Why wouldn’t he proudly admit that he had killed the president of the United States? If he were seeking glory and fame, how would that be achieved through a successful denial of having committed the act?

Moreover, if Oswald intended to deny commission of the offense, I’ve never understood why he would leave such an easy trail behind him, such as the purchase receipt for the Carcano rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository. If he was going to deny killing the president, wouldn’t he have been better off simply going to a gun shop and purchasing a rifle with cash? There were no background checks back then.

I’m no expert on the Kennedy assassination but it seems to me that many of the things that people point to in support of Oswald’s guilt are also consistent with his having served in a deep undercover role for the CIA or other U.S. intelligence, as many people have alleged.

In fact, early on there were assertions that Oswald was a federal undercover agent. According to a biographical sketch of Waggoner Carr, the Texas Attorney General who led the investigation in Texas into the assassination and worked with the Warren Commission, “Carr testified that Lee Harvey Oswald was working as an undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was receiving $200 a month from September 1962 until his death in November, 1963. However, the Warren Commission preferred to believe J. Edgar Hoover, who denied Carr’s affirmations.”

Yet, the problem is that Hoover could be expected to lie about such an association and thus, his denial is meaningless.

Much has been made about Oswald’s communist sympathies, including his defection to the Soviet Union and his affiliation with a group called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

Yet, those actions are entirely consistent with being a CIA undercover agent. For one thing, Oswald was a Marine. Most people who join the Marines are patriotic individuals who have the utmost loyalty to their government. How likely is it that a person who hates America is going to join the U.S. Marine Corps? Not very likely at all. In fact, wouldn’t the Marines be a likely place that the CIA would do recruiting?

Many people point to Oswald’s dysfunctional behavior, including his propensity for violence, citing the fact that he beat his wife. But the problem is that the CIA has a history of attracting dysfunctional people to work there, including alcoholics and people who have a propensity for violence. Indeed, what better types of people to assassinate and torture than dysfunctional people with a propensity for violence?

The thing that I have long found mystifying is the U.S. government’s reaction to Oswald when he returned from the Soviet Union. Did they arrest and indict the guy? Did they even subpoena him to appear before a federal grand jury? Did they harass him?

No, none of the above.

Don’t forget that Oswald was a former Marine who had security clearance and had worked at a military base in Japan where the super-secret U-2 spy plane was based. He was also a man who purportedly defected to the Soviet Union, supposedly tried to give up his U.S. citizenship, and presumably was willing to divulge all the secret information that he had acquired as a Marine to the Soviet communists, who were a much bigger threat to the United States during the Cold War than the terrorists are today.

Yet, U.S. officials didn’t lay a hand on him when he returned to the United States. Compare that treatment to how they treated, for example, John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban. How come they didn’t subject Oswald, whose case was much more egregious than Lindh’s, to the same treatment?

Moreover, I’ve never understood how Oswald was able to learn the Russian language so well. It’s not easy to teach one’s self a foreign language, especially one as difficult as Russian. It’s even more difficult when one has a full-time job, which Oswald had in the Marines. He certainly couldn’t have afforded a private tutor. Since he obviously learned Russian while he was in the military, how was that accomplished? Did the government provide the language training and, if so, why?

What would have been the CIA’s motive in developing Oswald as a deep undercover operative posing as a communist sympathizer? Well, don’t forget it was during the Kennedy administration that the CIA was in partnership with the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro. Since the CIA was developing such weird assassination schemes as poison pens and infected scuba suits to kill Castro, it doesn’t seem beyond the pale that they would also consider sneaking a trained assassin with communist credentials into the country to get rid of the communist leader.

Of course, the fact that Oswald might have been operating deep undercover doesn’t negate the possibility that he did in fact assassinate Kennedy or participate in a conspiracy to kill the president. If such were the case, the motive for denying commission of the offense would be stronger, along with the CIA’s denial of Oswald’s employment with the agency.

Of course, there are those who claim that it is inconceivable that the CIA, being the patriotic agency it is, would ever have participated in such a dastardly scheme.

Last Sunday, October 11, the New York Times published a book review detailing the history of Ramparts magazine, a leftist publication that was revealing in the 1960s some of the bad things that the CIA was engaged in. What I found fascinating was the CIA’s response:

“Outraged, the C.I.A. retaliated with a secret investigation of Ramparts’ staff and investors in hopes of uncovering foreign influence, but it found nothing…. The agency fought back with even more snooping — clearly illegal — as it ‘investigated’ 127 writers and researchers and 200 other Americans connected to the magazine.”

So, the CIA was clearly not above retaliating against Americans who went after the CIA and was clearly not above breaking the law to do it.

Now, consider the threat issued by President John F. Kennedy to “tear the CIA into a million pieces.” That threat was issued after Kennedy had fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, which occurred after Kennedy had supposedly betrayed the CIA by refusing to provide air support for the CIA-directed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, whose aim was to kill Castro or oust him from power.

Let’s not forget, also, that the CIA was not above using ruthless means against foreign presidents, including assassination. Guatemala (coup), Iran (coup), Cuba (invasion and assassination attempts), and Vietnam (coup and assassination) come to mind, to mention a few.

“But they would never have done bad things to an American?” Oh? What about Project MK-ULTRA, the nasty and infamous mind-control project in which CIA officials conspired to employ LSD experiments against unsuspecting Americans?

“But they never would have employed their assassination talents or their partnership with Mafia assassins against an American president.”

Maybe, maybe not.

But let’s not forget that the CIA sees itself as the ultimate, permanent guardian of U.S. national security. What if it concluded that a young, inexperienced president himself was jeopardizing the national security of our country by establishing secret contacts with communist leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, by plans to surrender Vietnam to the communists by withdrawing U.S. troops, just as he had surrendered Cuba to the communists, by philandering with a Mafia girlfriend, a Hollywood starlet, and even a wife of a CIA agent, and by threatening to destroy the CIA, America’s loyal and permanent guardian of security and liberty?

Would the CIA simply stand by and refuse to protect America from such a threat, even while it was doing everything it could to protect U.S. national security abroad with assassinations and coups? For an excellent discussion of that question, see JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass.

Most likely though, we’ll never have a definitive answer to that question because if the CIA did participate in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, there is virtually no possibility that such a crime would have ever been uncovered without a hard-driving, honest, independent federal prosecutor with grand-jury subpoena powers charged with the specific task of targeting CIA officials for investigation and possible prosecution for murder. And we all know that the CIA and its supporters would never have permitted that to happen.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

What set Krauthammer off was not that Jones had once used profanity to describe Republicans or even that he might have been a self-proclaimed communist. What made Krauthammer angry and outraged was that Jones had had the audacity to suggest that the federal government might have had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and knowingly let the attacks go forward.

There could be two possible reasons for Krauthammer’s reaction to those people in the so-called 9/11 Truth movement, people who believe either that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job masterminded by U.S. officials or that federal officials knew that such attacks were going to take place and did nothing to prevent them.

One possible reason for Krauthammer’s reaction is that he simply isn’t convinced by the evidence that the Truthers have produced to make their case.

Personally, this is the category I fall into. I have no doubts that the 9/11 attacks were no different in principle from the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center: that is, that the attacks were motivated by deep anger and hatred arising from the bad things that the U.S. government has done (and continues to do) to people in the Middle East. Or to use the term that Chalmers Johnson used in his book that makes the same contention, the 9/11 attacks were “blowback” from U.S. foreign policy. The 9/11 Truthers have not convinced me otherwise.

My hunch, however, is that that’s not the reason for Krauthammer’s reaction to the 9/11 Truth movement. My hunch is that he falls within the other possible reason — that it is simply inconceivable that federal officials would ever do such a dastardly thing.

Here’s what Krauthammer says: “Unlike the other stuff (see above), this is no trivial matter. It’s beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It’s dangerous.”

Unfortunately, however, in his article Krauthammer failed to address what is a very discomforting fact, one that unequivocally confirms that U.S. officials are indeed capable of committing such a dastardly act. I’m referring, of course, to Operation Northwoods, the plan conceived in 1962 by a unanimous Joint Chiefs of Staff to implement fake hijackings and fake terrorist attacks, with the objective of serving as a pretext for a U.S. military invasion of Cuba.

Click here for the Wikipedia entry on Operation Northwoods.

Here’s what author James Bamford stated about Operation Northwoods in his book Body of Secrets:

Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.

Now, there’s always the possibility that Krauthammer has never heard of Operation Northwoods. But really, how likely is that? He’s a well-educated and well-read man who serves as a regular columnist for one of the most prominent newspapers in the world.

So, why wouldn’t Krauthammer address the Operation Northwoods problem in the context of his outrage over people in the 9/11 Truth movement?

My hunch is that the problem is psychological. Operation Northwoods is a reality that conflicts with Krauthammer’s innocent but false reality about the federal government. Therefore, he simply chooses, consciously or subconsciously, to ignore the Northwoods reality in order to maintain his own nave and false reality about how the federal government operates.

How about it, Krauthammer? How about explaining your shock and outrage about the 9/11 Truthers to the Washington Post’s readers in the context of a discussion about Operation Northwoods? I’m sure lots of people (including me) — would love to read your explanation.

Fortunately, President Kennedy, to whom the Pentagon proposed Operation Northwoods, rejected it.

Ever since then, has the Pentagon denounced, apologized, or expressed any remorse or embarrassment for Operation Northwoods?

No, not in the least!

Thus, while the case made by the 9/11 Truthers might fail for lack of evidence, given Operation Northwoods how can anyone, especially the Pentagon, be surprised that there are people willing to believe that the federal government is capable of such things? Doesn’t the Pentagon bear some responsibility here?

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

After Pinochet took power in a coup, his agents proceeded to round up communists and other opponents to his regime and torture, sexually abuse, rape, indefinitely incarcerate, and kill them, without any trials or due process of law. It was during that time, in fact, that the CIA, which supported Pinochet, played a role, as yet undetermined, in the murder of a young American journalist named Charles Horman.

Pinochet knew that his war on communism, however, could not be limited to Chile, given that communists were located all over the world. Thus, Chile, along with other South American right-wing regimes, established Operation Condor, a secret program of assassination, torture, and political repression. According to Wikipedia, files discovered in 1992 in Paraguay revealed that Operation Condor succeeded in murdering 50,000 people, “disappearing” another 30,000, and incarcerating 400,000.

One day in 1976, however, Operation Condor hit a stumbling block here in the United States. As part of its global war on communism, it took out Chilean citizen Orlando Letelier with a car bomb that succeeded in killing not only him but also his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt. The killing took place on the streets of Washington, D.C.

What’s wrong with that, you ask? Weren’t Chile and the other members of Operation Condor involved in a major war? Didn’t they have the right to kill the enemy, wherever the enemy happened to be found? Wasn’t the entire world, including the United States, a battlefield in the global war on communism?

After all, what was different about the Letelier assassination and the CIA’s firing of a missile into a car in 2002 in Yemen that was carrying suspected terrorists, including one who was an American citizen? Didn’t the car in Yemen contain people who the CIA was sure were terrorists or terrorist sympathizers? Didn’t the car in Washington contain people that DINA was sure were communists or communist sympathizers, one of whom was a Chilean citizen?

There were some Americans who didn’t feel that Operation Condor should be permitted to extend its global war on communism to the United States. Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt were murder victims, they argued. The wartime analogy was hogwash, they said. Letelier, after all, was really just a former member of the cabinet in Chile’s Salvador Allende regime, which had been ousted in the Pinochet coup, who had continued his political battle against Pinochet’s dictatorship in the United States.

The Operation Condor agents who killed Letelier and Moffitt were ultimately indicted for murder in a U.S. District Court in Washington.

As it turned out, the DINA agent who orchestrated the murder of Letelier and Moffitt was a man named Michael Townley, who also — surprise, surprise — had worked for the CIA. Owing to public pressure, Townley was extradited to the United States to stand trial. The feds ultimately offered him a plea bargain that required him to testify against his underlings and that enabled him to live the rest of his life here in the United States under the federal witness protection program.

Assuming the CIA is telling the truth in its claim that it never carried out its assassination program, did the CIA factor in the Letelier-Moffitt case in deciding not to carry through with its assassination program? Perhaps. After all, if CIA assassins were to be arrested in a foreign country and indicted for murder, how would they be able to distinguish what they did from what Operation Condor did to Letelier and Moffitt?

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

Economic liberty

First, the Obama administration should lift the U.S. government’s 40-year-old embargo against Cuba. Not only has the embargo failed to achieve its purported end — regime change in Cuba — it has contributed to the misery and impoverishment of the Cuban people. Perhaps most important, the embargo constitutes a direct infringement on the economic liberty of the American people.

Economic liberty includes the right to do whatever one wants with his own money. The right to dispose of one’s wealth is as fundamental a right as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. Government no more has the legitimate authority to punish a person for spending his money in unapproved ways than it has to punish a person for his expression of political or religious views. What a person does with his own money reflects his value judgments as much as what he reads or publishes or how he worships.

Thus, under what moral authority does government prohibit a person from spending his own money the way he wants and punish him for violating the prohibition?

Yet that’s precisely what the U.S. government has done for nearly 45 years with its Cuba embargo. While the embargo is ostensibly directed toward Cuba, the attack is actually on the economic liberty of the American people. The embargo prohibits Americans from spending money in Cuba without official permission, on pain of both criminal and civil prosecution by U.S. authorities.

The reason that I include the words “without official permission” is that if an American citizen requests permission of the federal government to spend money in Cuba, under the law the government has the discretionary authority to grant such permission. Thus, the act of spending money in Cuba is obviously not considered bad per se, as are such acts as murder, theft, and robbery. Spending money in Cuba is considered bad only when it’s done without federal permission.

Thus, in order to exercise a fundamental right, one must first ask permission of government officials. In other words, while people have been endowed by the Creator and by nature with the inherent right to do whatever they want with their own money, they are required to ask permission of the government to exercise it. What kind of fundamental and inherent, God-given, natural right is that? Imagine that the same principle were employed with respect to one’s decisions about religion.

Many people believe that it’s illegal for Americans to travel to Cuba. That’s not the case. In fact, it’s perfectly legal for Americans to travel to Cuba. It’s just illegal for them to spend money when they get there.

Why didn’t U.S. officials simply make it illegal to travel to Cuba? Well, that’s where a bit of hypocrisy comes in. While U.S. officials concede that freedom of travel is a fundamental right, they maintain, with straight faces, that they are not infringing it. Americans are free to exercise their inherent right to travel to Cuba whenever they want, U.S. officials say; they just may not spend their money when they get there — not on food, hotels, transportation, or anything else.

Lifting the embargo would enable American tourists to immediately begin traveling to Cuba. While some of the money spent would inevitably end up in the coffers of the Cuban government, much of it would also end up in private hands. That accumulation of wealth would gradually serve as a counterweight to the Cuban communist regime.

Not only would Americans be bringing their money, ideas, and perspectives to the Cuban people, they also would be bringing the possibility of investment and business opportunities. Granted, under Castro’s tightly controlled economy, there is not much room for private enterprise, but as more and more Americans began flooding the island, the chances for private enterprise to develop would magnify. In fact, the people who would begin demanding it most would very likely be the Cubans.

Moreover, Americans concerned about the economic plight of the Cuban people would finally be free to send donations to help them out. It’s difficult to believe but under the U.S. embargo, civil and criminal sanctions are imposed upon those who donate to Cubans without official permission.

Finally, just as Americans should be free to travel to Cuba, Cubans should be free to travel to the United States. That would enable the United States to finally abandon its ridiculous and hypocritical immigration policy toward Cuba, a policy that enables U.S. officials to attack Cuban refugees and repatriate them to the communist homeland if they’re caught on water, but that lets refugees stay if they make it to land. By ending travel restrictions between Cuba and the United States, Cubans and Americans would retain their respective citizenships and simply be free to travel back and forth for tourism, business, or other reasons.

Civil liberty

Second, the U.S. government should immediately close its prison camp at Guantánamo Bay and shut down the alternative “judicial” system that the Pentagon has established there. That would be an important first step in the restoration of civil liberties that Americans lost after 9/11.

Many people think that the general principles of the U.S. government’s “war on terrorism” apply only to foreigners, not to Americans. Since the Pentagon has chosen to jail only foreigners at Guantánamo, the popular belief is that Americans could never be sent there for imprisonment and punishment as “enemy combatants” in the “war on terrorism.”

Not so. The decision to limit Guantánamo to foreign citizens was entirely political in nature. As long as the place remains open, the federal government could quickly change course and subject Americans to the same Gitmo treatment that foreigners have received — indefinite incarceration, torture, sex abuse, sensory deprivation, isolation, denial of counsel, denial of trial by jury, denial of due process, kangaroo military courts, denial of the right to confront witnesses, denial of the right to summon witnesses, the use of coerced testimony, and the presumption of guilt.

In other words, in the midst of any future crisis, Americans suspected of terrorism could be denied all the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights to criminal suspects, without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

Let’s examine how this came to be.

Prior to 9/11, terrorism had always been considered a criminal offense. That’s why, for example, Ramzi Yousef was indicted and convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorism in the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. It’s also why Timothy McVeigh was indicted, convicted, and executed for committing federal criminal offenses relating to terrorism when he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City.

In fact, terrorism is still a federal criminal offense. It’s still listed in the U.S. Code as a criminal offense. That’s why Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 coconspirators, was indicted and convicted of terrorism in federal district court. It’s also why 100 or so other cases involving terrorism have been brought in federal district court since 9/11.

Thus, those who argue that terrorism is an act of war rather than a criminal offense have a big hole in their reasoning. Given that they don’t challenge or oppose the criminal prosecutions for terrorism brought by the Justice Department, what the proponents of this argument really mean is that they want federal officials to have the discretion to treat terrorism as either an act of war or a criminal offense.

There is at least one big problem with that formulation: it would be difficult to find a better example of a violation of the rule of law and the principle of equal treatment under law than that.

While some people claim that the “rule of law” means that people should obey the law, that’s just not true. What it means is that people should have to answer only to a well-defined, well-enunciated law for their conduct rather than to the arbitrary decisions of government officials. The corollary to the rule-of-law principle is the principle of equal treatment under law — that the law should apply equally to everyone regardless of race, color, creed, or nationality.

Let’s assume that two people are accused of conspiracy to commit the same terrorist act. Prior to the 9/11 attacks they would be treated as criminal defendants. That’s what the rule of law and the principle of equal treatment under law require.

Ever since 9/11, however, U.S. officials have had the authority to send one of them down the “enemy combatant” route and the other one down the federal-district-court route. In other words, the same offense but two completely different systems to determine guilt or innocence. The decision of which to use depends on the “rule of men.” The arbitrary judgments of federal officials decide which track each suspected terrorist will be sent down. It’s that type of discretion and arbitrariness that the rule of law and the concept of equal treatment under law are designed to avoid.

How did this double-track system develop? Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials simply announced that the attacks weren’t really criminal offenses but rather acts of war. At the time they made that announcement Ramzi Yousef was in a federal penitentiary as a criminal for having committed a criminal act of terrorism against the WTC, one of the same targets on 9/11.

Thus, what U.S. officials did was simply convert a criminal offense into an act of war. What’s wrong with that? Suppose they did the same thing with the war on drugs that they’ve done with the war on terrorism. Suppose suspected drug dealers were to be treated as enemy combatants in the war on drugs, subject to being tortured for information relating to pending drug deals, and subject to being sent to Guantánamo for treatment as “enemy combatants.” Suppose also that U.S. officials had the discretionary authority to send some suspected drug dealers to Guantánamo as enemy combatants and to send others into the federal court system as criminal defendants, as they do today.

If you’re having trouble seeing why that would be problematic, then let’s simply expand the enemy-combatant concept to other crimes. Let’s have the federal government declare war on organized crime. That way, Mafia members would no longer have to be indicted in court and accorded the rights and guarantees of the Bill of Rights.

But why stop there? Why not give the feds and, for that matter, state officials the power to convert all crimes into acts of war, enabling federal and state officials to have the option of treating suspected murderers, rapists, thieves, and robbers as either enemy combatants or criminal defendants?

Do you see the problem here? Our American ancestors insisted on the passage of the Bill of Rights to ensure that people who were accused of crimes by federal officials could not be deprived of fundamental procedural rights and guarantees. Yet, once federal officials are given the discretionary authority to treat crimes as acts of war and suspected criminals as enemy combatants, the Bill of Rights goes right out the window.

That’s in fact what happened when the Pentagon established its prison camp at Guantánamo. Some people think that the Pentagon set up its camp in Cuba to protect Americans from the possibility that suspected terrorists could escape and do them harm. Not so. The reason that the Pentagon — whose officials ironically all take oaths to support and defend the Constitution — set up its camp in Cuba was to avoid the application of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to its operations.

In an ordinary war between nation-states, prisoners can be held until the war is over. The treatment of prisoners is also subject to the principles of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit, among other things, the torture of prisoners.

The Pentagon, however, took the position that its prisoners at Guantánamo were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions because, as terrorists, they were illegal enemy combatants, as opposed to uniformed soldiers in an ordinary war between nation-states.

Never mind that CIA agents, who are engaged in this war, also don’t wear uniforms. More important, we need to recognize the clearly sleight-of-hand reasoning employed by the Pentagon.

The federal government took a criminal offense — terrorism — and converted it into an act of war. It claimed the authority to treat anyone suspected of terrorism as an enemy combatant involved in war. Then it said that in this particular war, the enemy combatants are illegitimate because they are engaged in terrorism. Yet the only reason that terrorism is an act of war in the first place is that U.S. officials decided to define it that way.

But that wasn’t the end of this sham. The Pentagon then decided to establish its own judicial system to do the same thing that the federal courts do in the United States: try people for terrorism. In other words, what the Pentagon is doing with its military tribunals in Cuba is no different in principle from what the Justice Department is doing with its prosecutions in federal district court. In both forums, prosecutors are prosecuting people accused of committing terrorism.

Thus, what the 9/11 attacks enabled U.S. officials to get away with, without the semblance of a constitutional amendment, is the establishment of alternative judicial systems for trying criminal cases relating to terrorism. One system — the Pentagon system — bears a remarkable resemblance to the one employed by the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and, yes, even Cuba. The one employed by the Justice Department is the one the Framers established in the Constitution.

Empire or republic?

Third, the U.S. government should vacate its Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, abandon all its leasehold rights in the Guantánamo Bay property, and relinquish the property back to Cuba.

The Guantánamo Bay property is an imperial relic from the Spanish-American War. That was the war in which America began its abandonment of a limited-government republic and its turn toward becoming an imperial power. At the end of the war, which supposedly was intended to help the Cuban people free themselves from Spain’s control, U.S. officials extracted a perpetual lease around Guantánamo Bay. The man who signed the lease on behalf of Cuba was Cuba’s first president, a man named Tomas Estrada Palma, who just happened to be an American citizen.

The U.S. government has no more business owning a leasehold right to Guantánamo Bay than the Cuban government would have owning similar rights around Miami Harbor. It’s high time that the Pentagon was required to abandon its imperial outpost on Cuba. In fact, that would be a good first step to finally bringing an end to America’s tragic experiment with imperialism and to restoring a limited-government republic to our land.

Conclusion

President Obama will have the opportunity to initiate real change when it comes to Cuba. Will he follow the same, tired, well-worn road of his predecessors? Will he maintain the cruel and inhumane embargo that has not only infringed on the economic liberty of the American people but has also contributed enormously to the misery and desperation of the Cuban people? Will he continue the Pentagon’s cruel prison camp at Guantánamo and its arbitrary and unjust system for trying terrorists? Will he maintain the vestiges of U.S. imperialism that stretch back to the Spanish-American War by maintaining possession and control of Guantánamo Bay?

Let’s hope not. Let’s hope that he instead raises his vision to a higher level — toward ending the embargo, closing the Pentagon’s prison camp, and giving Guantánamo Bay back to Cuba.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

Our nation was founded on the most unusual set of economic principles in history. It is impossible to overstate the radical, even extreme, nature of America’s economic system from the founding of the republic to the early 20th century.

Imagine: No income tax, no capital-gains tax, and no estate tax. For the first time in history, people were free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, and there was nothing the federal government could do to prevent it. People were going from rags to riches in one or two generations.

Imagine: No economic regulations. People were free to pursue occupations and trades and enter into mutually beneficial economic transactions without any government supervision, control, or regulation. What was meant by the terms “free enterprise” and “free market” was that economic activity — enterprise and markets — was free of government supervision, control, or regulation.

Imagine: No welfare. No Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or education grants. Charity was voluntary. If people wanted to help others, they were free to do so. But people also understood that freedom entailed the right to say, “No.” Thus, government did not wield the power to take money from people in order to give it to other people.

Imagine: No immigration controls. People from all over the world were free to come to the United States. With the exception of a cursory health inspection for such things as tuberculosis, no one was denied admission, no matter how poor, illiterate, or uneducated.

Imagine: No systems of public (i.e., government) schooling. No compulsory-attendance laws and no school taxes. Education was left to the free choices of families and individuals.

Imagine: No Federal Reserve System. Banks were privately owned and there was no government central monitoring authority.

Imagine: No paper money. People believed in sound money, which is why they used the Constitution to establish a gold standard. People transacted their business with gold and silver coins.

I’m not suggesting that there weren’t exceptions to these principles from time to time in the 1800s and early 1900s. Perfection is impossible to attain, but, by and large, these were the overall principles of the paradigm known as “economic liberty” to which our American ancestors subscribed and under which they lived.

Let’s examine the economic system under which Americans live today.

First, extremely burdensome progressive income taxes, capital-gains taxes, and estate taxes.

Second, an enormous regulatory scheme in which government bureaucrats have the power to supervise, monitor, and control people’s financial and economic activities.

Third, a massive welfare system, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, federal deposit insurance, and much, much more.

Fourth, an enormous and complex plan for immigration. The plan entails restrictions on the ability of people to freely enter the United States, with an enforcement mechanism that grows ever more severe.

Fifth, a nationwide system of government education systems, which involve government planning, direction, and control of what is taught to the children of America. While the public-school systems are run by state and local governments, what is taught is strongly influenced by federal officials as a result of federal aid to education.

Sixth, a monetary system in which the federal government has the authority to print unlimited amounts of paper money. The government also closely regulates, supervises, and monitors banks across the United States.

Seventh, paper money. The gold standard is nonexistent and people now transact their business with nonredeemable paper money, whose value has steadily diminished over the decades.

The life of the lie and unreality

Do you notice any differences between the economic system under which our American ancestors lived and the economic system under which today’s Americans live?

Why is that important? Two reasons.

First, throughout the financial crisis mainstream commentators, both liberal and conservative, have been claiming that the crisis reflects a failure of “free enterprise” and, therefore, that government intervention is needed to fix the crisis.

Second, this crisis provides the opportunity for libertarians to raise people’s vision to a much higher level than some “reform” plan, a level that brings to an end the economic system under which we’ve all been born and raised and that restores and builds upon the economic system to which our American ancestors subscribed.

Throughout the bailout controversy, there have been those who have railed against unfettered capitalism, free markets, deregulation, free enterprise, self-interest, and greed. The crisis, they argue, is proof positive that America’s much-vaunted free-enterprise system has failed and, therefore, that it’s necessary for government to step in and save the system.

This mindset is what might be called the “life of the lie” or the “life of unreality.” After all, when we compare the principles that guided the paradigm of economic liberty on which our nation was founded with the principles of today, we find completely opposite principles. If the economic paradigm under which we are living is capitalism and free enterprise, then what was the economic paradigm under which our American ancestors lived?

The key to this life of the lie and life of unreality lies with a monumental event in the life of the republic — the Great Depression, which began with an enormous stock-market crash in 1929 and lasted for more than 10 years. Although the event took place long before most of us were born, it is impossible to overstate the impact that it continues to have on most Americans.

The role of government schools

An important digression is in order at this point. There is a reason that so many mainstream pundits believe (perhaps honestly) that the current financial crisis reflects a failure of free enterprise. The reason is rooted in the Great Depression or, to be more precise, what these pundits have learned about the Great Depression. Here is where the government program known as public schooling plays a critically important role in people’s understanding of what is happening today.

While most people believe that the primary purpose of public schooling is to ensure that everyone receives an education, nothing could be further from the truth. The reason that governments everywhere force the children of the nation into these government facilities is to mold their minds. Long ago, government officials learned that if they could control what children learn every day from the age of 6 through 18, over a course of 12 years they could indoctrinate them into accepting officially approved interpretations of historical events.

No better example of this phenomenon could be found than that relating to the Great Depression. If one conducted a poll of Americans asking whether the Great Depression reflected a failure of America’s free-enterprise system, my hunch is that the overwhelming majority of them would answer, “Yes.” They would also respond that President Roosevelt’s response to the crisis — the New Deal — saved America’s free-enterprise system.

Now, ask yourself: How is it that so many Americans have arrived at the same conclusion about the Great Depression? It’s not a coincidence. It is what American students are taught in public schools and, for that matter, in government-approved private schools. In fact, it is also what most American college and university students are taught in state-supported universities and colleges.

There is just one big problem with what Americans have been taught about the Great Depression and the New Deal. It’s all a lie. It’s that simple. All those years of state indoctrination produced mindsets that are filled with lies and deceptions.

The truth is that the Great Depression reflected not the failure of America’s free-enterprise system but rather the failure of the system that replaced America’s free-enterprise system. And contrary to popular belief, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs didn’t save free enterprise; they instead fully and completely rejected and abandoned the free-enterprise system that America had embraced since our nation’s founding and replaced it with a system in which the federal government’s primary purpose became to confiscate and redistribute wealth and control and regulate economic activity.

Economic liberty versus socialism

There have been economists who have pointed out this uncomfortable truth. They include Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman. Mises and Hayek were members of the so-called Austrian school of economics, a school of economic thought that advances free-market principles. Friedman was an economist in what became known as the Chicago School. Hayek and Friedman were winners of the Nobel Prize.

All three of these economists, along with countless of their students and successors, have long maintained that what failed in the Great Depression was not free enterprise but rather government intervention. They have also long pointed out that Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, based on socialist and fascist principles, actually prolonged the Great Depression. Finally, they have long pointed out that the economic system under which Americans of today were born and raised isn’t free enterprise but rather welfare-state socialism and regulatory interventionism.

Obviously, what Mises, Hayek, and the Austrians, as well as Friedman and the Chicago School, were saying for decades hasn’t sat well with liberals, conservatives, or mainstream pundits. Thus, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that their ideas, philosophy, and policy prescriptions were not likely to be discussed in any history or economics textbook or lectures in government schools or even government-approved private schools.

What is of paramount importance, from the standpoint of those who subscribe to the status quo, is that the indoctrination of America’s young people continue as usual, no matter how false or fallacious. The last thing that federal officials wanted in the 1930s was for people to figure out that the federal government was responsible for the Great Depression. It’s also the last thing they want people to discover today.

While Roosevelt’s New Deal constituted a wholesale rejection of free-enterprise principles, the rejection of economic liberty had actually begun years before. The intellectual battle began in the late 1800s, with economic libertarians on the one side and advocates of government control over enterprise on the other. Slowly but surely, the supporters of socialism and interventionism began making headway with their ideas.

For example, there was the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, a federal law that criminalized voluntary mergers or combinations between businesses. It was the first of many economic crimes that would later be enacted by federal officials. There was also a growing push at the state level for economic regulation, for example, occupational licensure, minimum-wage laws, and inspections of businesses. The movement toward increased government involvement in American economic life was manifested by the Progressive movement, the socialist and interventionist philosophy and ideas of which would later be embraced by both Republicans and Democrats.

Two of the most significant changes in American life took place in 1913. In that year, the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted, which reflected the national urge to permit the federal government to impose taxes on income, something that earlier Americans had abhorred. The Congress also established the Federal Reserve System, a central bank that had the monopoly power to expand and contract money and credit, another program that early Americans had rejected.

As Mises, Hayek, and Friedman pointed out, throughout the 1920s the Federal Reserve was artificially expanding credit. Have you heard the phrase “the Roaring Twenties”? One of the reasons the decade was roaring was that the Fed, through the expansion of credit, was making the economy “roar.”

As prices started to rise, however, in response to the Fed’s inflationary policy, the Fed moved in the opposite direction — contraction of the money supply. The Fed over-contracted, however, sucking massive amounts of money out of the system, which produced a massive recession.

Rather than simply letting things sort themselves out, Roosevelt convinced people that what was actually needed was a major transformation of America’s economic system — a “new deal” in which the primary mission of the federal government would be to tax and redistribute wealth and regulate economic activity.

Here are the roots of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, FDIC, and the rest of the welfare state. Here are the roots of the SEC, the departments of Labor, Agriculture, and Commerce, a multitude of regulatory agencies, and a never-ending stream of tax, banking, labor, economic, and commercial regulations. Here are the roots of America’s 20th-century and 21st-century experiment with socialism and interventionism.

Roosevelt’s political brilliance was not just in bringing about a revolutionary change in America’s economic system. His political acumen was also reflected in how he sold his revolution — as a free-enterprise reform designed to save America’s free-enterprise system.

What could be more brilliant than that? After all, the last thing most Americans wanted was to be called socialists or interventionists. They wanted to be considered as pro—free enterprise as their predecessors. So Roosevelt made them feel good about what he was doing — adopting a paternalistic welfare, regulatory state, but continuing to call it “free enterprise.”

It was important, for both Roosevelt and the American people, that the lie be maintained. It was important that people continued believing that everything was the same as before. So what if early Americans rejected income taxes, welfare, economic regulations, a central bank, drug laws, paper money, and public schooling? So what if their successors embraced all those things? What mattered was that the lie and the myth be maintained, at all costs.

Now do you see why so many modern-day commentators, both liberal and conservative, are maintaining that the current financial crisis constitutes a failure of America’s free-enterprise system? Ever since they were children, they have lived in a system whose economic principles are totally contrary to those of our ancestors, but their minds have been molded into believing that opposites are the same.

Where do libertarians fit in all this? We are the advocates of the principles of economic liberty to which our ancestors subscribed. Is it any surprise that we make government officials and mainstream pundits so uncomfortable? Is it any surprise that they do everything they can to ignore or shun what libertarians are saying? Is it any surprise that they erect mountains of electoral barriers to candidates with libertarian perspectives?

We expose their life of the lie. We cause them to confront reality. We remind them of what they have done. We put their abandonment of principle on display. We show them how they’ve been indoctrinated. That’s not a pleasant experience for someone whose life is dedicated to socialism and interventionism but whose mind has been molded into thinking that he’s an advocate of the free market.

During the recent presidential race, Republican John McCain accused Democrat Barack Obama of being a socialist, owing to Obama’s belief in using the federal government to “spread the wealth.” Obama, for his part, expressed surprise at being accused of being a socialist. Apparently, he’s always believed that he’s a strong supporter of America’s “free-enterprise” system.

The irony is that McCain called Obama a socialist during the very time that McCain was supporting the federal bailout of U.S. financial firms, banks, and insurance companies. What better example of socialistic redistribution of wealth than that? Equally ironic was the fact that the bailout plan entailed the federal government’s taking partial ownership of banks and insurance companies.

While pure socialism entails complete government ownership of the means of production, there are important markers of socialist activity. They include: (1) the government takes money from one group of people and gives it to another group; (2) the government centrally plans economic activity; and (3) the government owns and operates business enterprises.

Don’t those three tenets describe perfectly some of the primary functions of the U.S. government ever since the New Deal in the 1930s? Isn’t the welfare state a good example of government’s taking money from some in order to give it to others?

An example of central planning is the Federal Reserve System, which plans the monetary affairs of the United States.

Examples of public ownership of business enterprises include Amtrak and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Socialism is not the only economic philosophy that has guided the United States for the last 80 years. There is also an economic philosophy known as interventionism. Under interventionism the government intervenes in private economic activity with rules, regulations, subsidies, or tax benefits. That’s what the SEC is all about, along with the Federal Reserve, the departments of Agriculture, Labor, and Commerce, and multitudes of regulatory agencies. Interventionism leaves the means of production in private hands but controls, manipulates, and regulates economic activity.

It would be difficult to find a better example of both socialist central planning and interventionism than the U.S. housing market, that sector of the economy that ignited the financial firestorm that has engulfed the world.

Here is what federal central planners and interventionists did. Primarily through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), they came up with a plan that would ensure home ownership for almost every American. Home ownership is the American dream, or so they said. The problem with a free market, the planners thought, is that banks and financial institutions are ordinarily resistant to lending money to high-risk customers. The inability of many poor and middle-class people to borrow money to purchase a home is a flaw in the free market, the planners felt, so they came up with a plan that would solve the problem.

In 1977, Congress enacted the Community Reinvestment Act, which prohibited banks from discriminating against poorer-risk customers, including those who lived in poorer parts of town. However, the banks didn’t actually have to assume the risk of the loans. That’s where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac came into the picture. They are quasi-government agencies that would purchase the mortgage loans from the banks, thereby relieving the banks of the risk of default.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would then package the mortgages into collateral for debt instruments issued by them. The reason that investors all over the world purchased those debt instruments as investments is that the U.S. government was serving as an implicit guarantor of mortgage-backed securities. The idea was that if borrowers defaulted in payments on their loans, investors wouldn’t lose their money because the federal government would cover the losses.

Ultimately, the entire house of cards came crashing down, as socialist central plans are apt to do. Large numbers of people began defaulting on their home-mortgage payments and investors were facing massive losses on their investments. As expected, the federal government entered the picture and began covering the enormous losses that institutions were suffering as a result of the home-loan scheme.

Free enterprise or interventionism?

Does any of that sound like “free enterprise”? Free enterprise means enterprise that is free of government intervention and manipulation. Here you have massive government intervention in the form of mandatory rules requiring the funding of high-risk loans, government purchase of those loans, government selling of those loans, and government guarantee of those loans, all pursuant to a socialist central plan to help people buy homes.

Yet throughout the crisis there have been those, including McCain and Obama, who have steadfastly maintained that the problem was “free enterprise” itself and, therefore, that the only solution was the heavy hand of government to “save free enterprise.”

Obviously, history was repeating itself. Isn’t that exactly what Franklin Roosevelt and the New Dealers said? Didn’t they claim that the Great Depression reflected the failure of free enterprise when in fact it reflected the failure of monetary central planning and interventionism, as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and other economists have shown?

Why were both McCain and Obama and so many others claiming that “free enterprise” was the culprit in the current economic crisis?

One possibility is that they truly believe that the United States has a free-enterprise system. If a person honestly believes that, then it’s entirely logical for him to conclude that “free enterprise” has produced the current financial crisis.

And why would anyone honestly believe that America is a “free-enterprise” country, when it’s obvious that Americans rejected and abandoned the principles of economic liberty during the 1930s in favor of socialism and interventionism? Because many of these people have absolutely no idea that that is what happened. From the first grade on up, government-approved schoolteachers have ingrained into students’ minds that America has always had the same type of economic system — a “free-enterprise system,” which failed and produced the Great Depression, and which was saved by the New Deal’s welfare state and centrally planned and regulated economy.

But there’s another possible explanation for why some people — extremely intelligent people who should know better — are blaming the financial crisis on “free enterprise.” They know that the crisis goes to the very heart of the socialist-interventionist paradigm under which America has operated since the 1930s. Equally important, they know that libertarians know the truth and are speaking the truth about this entire charade. The last thing they want is for ordinary Americans to begin questioning the myths and lies with which America has been living for almost a century. That could bring down the entire socialist and interventionist paradigm under which America has been operating and bring about the restoration of economic liberty to our land.

Conservatives and libertarians

In blaming the financial crisis on “free enterprise,” socialists and interventionists often level their criticisms at both conservatives and libertarians. In doing so, they oftentimes pretend that libertarianism is nothing more than a subset of conservatism. Since conservatives and libertarians both favor free markets and detest socialism and regulation, the argument goes, what has failed is the free-market policies of conservatives and libertarians.

The criticism is valid insofar as conservatives are concerned but not libertarians. Long ago, most conservatives abandoned opposition to the welfare state and the regulated economy and have devoted their efforts to gaining control over it and running it. Most libertarians, on the other hand, have maintained a steadfast opposition to all socialist and interventionist programs and continue to call for their repeal.

For example, do conservatives call for the eradication, rather than the reform, of such things as the income tax; the Federal Reserve System; paper money; the SEC; the departments of Labor, Agriculture, Commerce, Education, and HUD; Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; education grants; welfare; regulation; and trade restrictions?

No, they don’t. The most they do is call for “reform” and getting rid of “waste, fraud, and abuse.” But libertarians do oppose all these programs and call for their eradication, not their reform.

$12 $8

Thus, when socialists and interventionists claim that “free enterprise” has brought the financial crisis, they’re obviously referring to how conservatives view “free enterprise” — that is, as a warmed-over, reformed welfare state and regulated economy. They are not referring to libertarianism, a philosophy in which there would be no welfare-state or regulatory laws, rules, regulations, departments, or agencies.

Would businesses fail in the unhampered market economy that libertarians seek? Would people’s investments go down from time to time? Would banks go under? Some undoubtedly would. But at the same time, the risk of failure nurtures important values, such as responsibility and prudence.

Like it or not, life is insecure. The socialist illusion is that by surrendering economic liberty, the government can make life secure. It does not and cannot. As the Founding Fathers pointed out, those who trade liberty for security gain neither — and deserve neither.

In his book The Critique of Interventionism, Ludwig von Mises pointed out that government interventions into economic activity will inevitably lead to more interventions. The reason is that the initial intervention inevitably produces chaos and crises which cause people to call for new interventions to solve the problems of the previous interventions. At the end of the interventionist road is the totally controlled economy — omnipotent government.

In the current crisis, that’s what the socialist bailout of financial firms, partial nationalization of banks and insurance companies, a moratorium on foreclosures, proposals for the government to purchase mortgages, and increases in deposit insurance are all about. They are all socialist and interventionist measures that purport to solve the chaos and crises arising from previous interventions. They lead in but one direction: bankruptcy, inflation, chaos, crises, omnipotent government, tyranny, and the loss of liberty.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

For those who still doubt whether terrorism is a crime, their doubts have been laid to rest by several U.S. federal judges, most recently in the Jos Padilla case. Padilla, who is an American citizen, started his long journey as a criminal defendant in U.S. federal court. On the eve of trial, the government transferred him to the control of the Pentagon, converting his status to that of “enemy combatant” in the war on terrorism. For five years, he was tortured and denied a trial, before U.S. officials suddenly transferred him back to the status of a criminal defendant, securing a federal grand-jury indictment against him for violating federal criminal statutes relating to terrorism.

Padilla recently pled guilty to terrorism in U.S. district court. A federal judge accepted his plea of guilty to that criminal offense. Would a federal judge accept a plea of guilty to a federal crime that wasn’t really a crime? Not likely, especially when the crime is written in the federal statute books, having been duly enacted into law by the U.S. Congress.

The federal judge in the Padilla case isn’t the only one who has acknowledged that terrorism is a crime. In the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, a foreigner who was charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, the federal judge accepted Moussaoui’s plea of guilty to a federal crime, to wit, terrorism.

Moreover, there are federal judges around the United States who have sentenced people to terms in the federal penitentiary after they have been found guilty of the federal crime of terrorism. These include Ramzi Yousef, one of the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in 1993.

In fact, to belabor the obvious, the U.S. Justice Department itself has implicitly acknowledged that terrorism is a crime, for it is the Justice Department that has secured grand-jury indictments and prosecuted many defendants for the criminal offense of terrorism.

I repeat: terrorism is a crime. No one can deny that, especially given the federal proceedings involving Padilla, Moussaoui, and many others who have been tried for terrorism.

So why is there a class of people who are accused of terrorism who are being treated differently than Padilla, Moussaoui, and others who have been prosecuted for terrorism in U.S. district courts? That is, under what justification are some accused terrorists provided one route — i.e., the federal court route — for determining their guilt and their punishment while others are subjected to another route — i.e., the military-commission route?

The answer to that question involves an examination of one of the cleverest and most devious processes ever devised by the lovers of power, one that has enabled U.S. officials to circumvent the procedural protections outlined in the Bill of Rights, the very thing that the Framers and our American ancestors tried to prevent.

Let’s first refresh our recollections as to the purpose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Constitution called into existence the federal government. But our American ancestors understood that that federal government might well prove to be the greatest danger to their freedom and well-being. That’s in fact why so many of our American ancestors opposed even establishing a federal government.

Thus, the Framers used the Constitution to ensure that the federal government they were establishing would always remain weak and divided. That was the idea behind setting forth enumerated powers and division of powers.

That wasn’t good enough for the American people, however. They still didn’t like the idea of establishing a federal government, but they went along with the deal on one condition: that immediately after ratification, the Constitution would be amended with a Bill of Rights, which is what happened.

The Bill of Rights contains restrictions on federal power relating to the arrest, prosecution, and punishment of people accused of violating federal criminal laws. These include provisions relating to search and seizure, indictment, a person’s right to remain silent, the right to an attorney, the right to trial by jury, the right to confront witnesses, and the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishments.

Why did our American ancestors insist on the inclusion of those express guarantees in criminal cases? Because they believed that without them, the federal government would simply arrest people, especially people they didn’t like, and inflict harm on them. To ensure that that would not happen, our American ancestors declared, “We’re reluctantly going to permit a federal government to come into existence despite our misgivings. But here are the rules under which you people must operate. If you decide that you want to incarcerate and punish someone, you are required to follow these procedural principles.”

Ever since the inception of the United States, by and large the quest of people who have been attracted to federal power has been to break free of constitutional constraints, oftentimes with the best of intentions and the greatest zeal. What has prevented them from doing so has been a citizenry that has treasured its freedom and has been knowledgeable about the history and nature of the Constitution as well as a federal judiciary determined to enforce the Bill of Rights.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11, however, provided the opportunity that the lovers of power had long been waiting for — the opportunity to arrest and punish people, including Americans, without the constraints of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

How did they accomplish that monumental feat without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment? By simply announcing that a criminal offense — namely, terrorism — would henceforth be treated as an act of war. Since this was war, the argument went, federal officials would no longer be required to comply with procedural requirements outlined in the Bill of Rights when arresting and punishing people, including Americans.

How clever and devious is that? It will undoubtedly go down in U.S. history as the most brilliant — and perhaps the most evil — end-around of the Constitution ever. While there have been, of course, innumerable violations of constitutional provisions in U.S. history, what was revolutionary about the post—9/11 power was that it was intended to a become permanent feature of American life, given the perpetual nature of the war on terrorism.

And, again, what is amazing is how this power grab was accomplished: through the simple act of declaring that a certain federal criminal offense — terrorism — was now being considered by federal officials as an act of war.

Yet, it’s not as though they converted terrorism from a crime into an act of war. As previously noted, terrorism is a federal criminal offense. It was before 9/11 and it continued to be after 9/11. Again, that’s why both Americans and foreigners (e.g., Padilla and Moussaoui) have been prosecuted for terrorism in U.S. district court.

Therefore, after 9/11 U.S. officials did not cancel terrorism as a federal crime. Instead, they simply declared that it could also be considered as an act of war, at their option. Of course, the power associated with that option gave them almost complete control over the American people, an omnipotence that the Bill of Rights was intended to prevent.

If U.S. officials opted to treat a person as a criminal defendant, they would have to accord him the protections of the Bill of Rights. But if they opted to treat a person as a combatant, they could simply ignore the Bill of Rights. Their omnipotence lies in the power to exercise the option.

Let’s keep in mind the reason that the Pentagon established its detention facility in Cuba rather than the United States. It was not to protect the American people from possible prison escapes. After all, convicted terrorists are held in maximum-security prisons around the country and no one loses any sleep over their possible escape. Moreover, in World War II German prisoners of war were imprisoned here in the United States.

The reason that the Pentagon went to Cuba to establish its prison facility was precisely to avoid the application of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and any federal-court interference with its operations. At Gitmo, the Pentagon was going to show America and the world what could be accomplished for law and order in a society without a Constitution and a Bill of Rights — a society in which military power is sovereign and supreme.

One of the fascinating aspects of Gitmo is that the Pentagon was determined to set up not only what it considered an ideal prison facility — one that didn’t coddle criminals — but also a model judicial system, one that would prove superior to the federal court system that is required to accord people constitutional rights.

In fact, one big difference between the Guantanamo prison and World War II prisons immediately became evident: The prisoners at Gitmo were not treated as prisoners of war but rather as criminal defendants — yes, criminal defendants, charged with the crime of terrorism! The only difference — but a big difference — was that these criminal defendants would be tried under the Pentagon’s new judicial system rather than under the judicial system the Pentagon scorned — the one established by the Framers.

So, the fact of the matter is that when it comes to terrorism cases, the United States is now operating under two competing, dual-track federal judicial systems. One system for prosecuting suspected terrorists is being run by the Pentagon at Gitmo. The other system is being run by the federal courts here in the United States under the principles of the Constitution. The government, not the defendant, gets to decide which system the defendant will be tried under.

What are the attributes of the Pentagon&#146s system? In the Pentagon’s system, the accused is presumed guilty (unlike the constitutional system, where the person is presumed innocent), the accused can be tortured into incriminating himself, the accused can be punished before determination of guilt, evidence acquired by torture can be used to convict the defendant, hearsay evidence can also be used, the defendant is denied the right to confront witnesses against him, there is no right of trial by jury, and kangaroo military tribunals are employed.

At Gitmo the Pentagon has established a judicial system that is the dream of those who believe that the procedural protections in the Bill of Rights are nothing more than constitutional “technicalities” that let guilty people go free. No more reading people their rights. No more Miranda warnings. No more coddling of criminals. No more exclusionary rule. Defense attorneys under tight control. Secret proceedings.

In other words, the system that law-and-order types have been dreaming of for decades — one freed of the due-process guarantees outlined in the Bill of Rights — has arrived, and it is at Gitmo.

The English jurist William Blackstone (1723—1780) enunciated the underlying principle of English and American criminal jurisprudence: “Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

The Pentagon’s system is different. It is oriented toward one goal: the punishment of people it has determined are terrorists. The Pentagon’s system operates under the dictum “Better that ten innocent persons suffer than that one guilty person escape.”

Every American should realize what 9/11 enabled federal officials to accomplish — it gave them the ability to do things to both Americans and foreigners that our ancestors feared they would in the absence of a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, the ability to take people into custody and punish them, without having to concern themselves with procedural due process. By wielding the option to treat people accused of terrorism as either criminal defendants or as combatants — an option which, by the way, violates the principles of equal treatment under law and the rule of law — the federal government and its military have upended their relationship with the citizenry, enabling the former to gain supremacy and control over the latter.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

While most Americans now view President Bush’s Iraq War as a “bad war,” the common perception is that Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan was a “good war” (despite the fact that he went to war without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war). The notion is that the U.S. government was justified in invading Afghanistan and ousting the Taliban regime from power because the Taliban and al-Qaeda conspired to commit the 9/11 attacks.

There’s just one big problem with that belief: it’s unfounded.

The reason that Bush ousted the Taliban from office was that the Taliban regime refused to comply with his unconditional demand to deliver Osama bin Laden to U.S. officials after the 9/11 attacks.

The Taliban responded to Bush’s demand by asking him to furnish evidence of bin Laden’s complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Upon receipt of such evidence, they offered to turn him over to an independent tribunal instead of the United States.

Bush never explained why the Taliban’s conditions were unreasonable. After all, as federal judges in the Jose Padilla case, the Zacarias Moussaoui case, and many others have confirmed, terrorism is a federal criminal offense. Thus, while it’s not unusual for one nation to seek the extradition of a foreigner to stand trial for a criminal offense, it’s just as reasonable for the nation receiving the request to be provided evidence that the person has, in fact, committed the crime.

Venezuela is currently seeking the extradition from the United States of a man named Luis Posada Carriles, who is accused of bombing a Cuban airliner over Venezuelan skies, a terrorist act that succeeded in killing everyone on board.

Venezuela and the United States have an extradition agreement. Nonetheless, the U.S. government is refusing to extradite Posada to Venezuela. The reason? It says that it fears that Venezuelan authorities will torture Posada. (Another reason might be that Posada was a CIA operative.)

But if fear of torture is a valid reason for refusing an extradition request from Venezuela, then why wouldn’t the same reason apply with respect to the Taliban’s refusal to extradite bin Laden to the United States? I think everyone would agree that if bin Laden had been turned over to the CIA or the Pentagon, he would have been brutally tortured, perhaps even executed, without ever being brought to trial before a fair and independent judicial tribunal.

What about the Taliban’s request that Bush provide evidence of bin Laden’s complicity in the 9/11 attacks? That request is precisely what is done in extradition proceedings. When one nation seeks the extradition of a foreigner, the rules of extradition require it to provide evidence to support the request.

What was remarkable about the Taliban offer was that there wasn’t even an extradition agreement between Afghanistan and the United States. The Taliban was offering to deliver bin Laden to an independent tribunal even though international law did not require it, so long as U.S. officials provided the same type of evidence that is ordinarily required in an extradition proceeding.

Yet Bush refused to consider either the Taliban’s offer or its request for evidence. His position was effectively this: “We are the world’s sole remaining empire. We have the most powerful military on the planet. We have the capability of smashing you and removing your regime from power. You will comply with our demand, unconditionally and immediately.”

But the Taliban refused to comply with Bush’s unconditional demand. Consequently, when the United States invaded Afghanistan, it not only went after bin Laden, it also took sides in Afghanistan’s civil war, taking the side of the Northern Alliance. Ousting the Taliban from power in a classic regime-change operation, U.S. officials installed Hamid Karzai into office, who has been a loyal, friendly, and compliant member of the empire ever since, but one whose regime is now under constant attack by those who were ousted from power by the U.S. Empire.

While Bush and other U.S. officials promised to disclose evidence that the Taliban regime had conspired with al-Qaeda to commit the 9/11 attacks, that promise was never fulfilled and it was ultimately forgotten. The likely reason for that is that they never had such evidence. After all, if they had evidence of such complicity, they would never have wasted time demanding that the Taliban turn bin Laden over. They would have simply declared war against Afghanistan for having attacked the United States.

What would have been the ideal way of handling bin Laden? The same way that the United States handled Ramzi Yousef, one of the terrorists who committed the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Treating that attack as a criminal offense, U.S. officials simply waited Yousef out, relied on good police work, and finally were able to effect his arrest in Pakistan. He is now residing in a U.S. federal penitentiary. No bombs, no missiles, no destruction, no killing of Pakistani wedding parties, and no needless production of new enemies for the United States.

Instead, treating the capture of bin Laden as a military problem, U.S. officials invaded the country, killed and maimed countless innocent people, wreaked untold destruction on Afghanistan, effected regime change, created new enemies for the United States … and failed to capture bin Laden.

But even given the military invasion of Afghanistan, the aim of that invasion could have been limited to going after bin Laden rather than being used as an opportunity to effect regime change at the same time.

Indeed, that’s precisely what happened after Pancho Villa killed several Americans in a raid on Columbus, New Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution. After the raid, U.S. officials sent an expeditionary force into Mexico to capture him and bring him back to justice. While the expedition was unsuccessful, what was noteworthy about it was that the expedition force limited itself to trying to capture Villa, not taking sides in Mexico’s civil war.

We would be remiss if we failed to keep in mind the role that U.S. foreign policy played in bringing into existence and supporting the Taliban. In a November 5, 2001, article, Congressman Ron Paul pointed out:
We should recognize that American tax dollars helped to create the very Taliban government that now wants to destroy us. In the late 1970s and early 80s, the CIA was very involved in the training and funding of various fundamentalist Islamic groups in Afghanistan, some of which later became today’s brutal Taliban government. In fact, the U.S. government admits to giving the groups at least 6 billion dollars in military aid and weaponry, a staggering sum that would be even larger in today’s dollars.

Bin Laden himself received training and weapons from the CIA….

Incredibly, in May the U.S. announced that we would reward the Taliban with an additional $43 million in aid for its actions in banning the cultivation of poppy used to produce heroin and opium. Taliban rulers had agreed to assist us in our senseless drug war by declaring opium growing “against the will of God.”…

Once the Taliban
regime refused to comply with Bush’s unconditional order to turn over
bin Laden, the U.S. Empire did what it had done and tried to do in
so many other countries — Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, Indonesia,
Iraq, and others — bring about regime change by ousting a recalcitrant
regime that refused to comply with the unconditional orders of the
U.S. Empire — a regime that the U.S. Empire itself had helped
to create — and replacing it with a submissive pro-empire regime.
In the process, the empire succeeded in embroiling the United State
into one more foreign conflict, one that has now spread to nuclear-armed
Pakistan.

It’s just another “success story” in the life of the U.S. Empire and its interventionist foreign policy.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

Let’s first consider the concept of freedom. There is no way to reconcile drug laws with the principles of a free society.

Under basic principles of freedom, a person has the fundamental right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as his conduct is peaceful and doesn’t violate the equal right of everyone else to do the same.

Thus, most people support laws against such actions as murder, theft, fraud, burglary, robbery, and rape because they involve the initiation of force by one person against another. They involve one person’s violating the right of another person to live his life in a peaceful manner.

But there is a wide range of actions that are risky, dangerous, and even harmful to the person engaging in them, actions that do not involve coercion or aggression against another person but that oftentimes involve severe injury to the person engaged in them.

Consider mountain climbing, which can be very dangerous. Every few years, people are killed climbing Mount Everest, K-2, and other mountains around the world.

The same goes for scuba diving, race-car driving, and even cycling. There are higher-than-ordinary risks to life and limb when people engage in certain activities.

Should the government have the authority to make those activities illegal, in order to protect people from loss of life? An advocate of freedom would say no. Freedom entails the right to engage in high-risk activities, even if most people choose not to do so.

What about activities in which people place their money at higher-than-ordinary risk? For example, investing in start-up companies, the futures market, or oil drilling. Gambling would be another example. Should the government make such activities illegal, in order to protect people’s savings?

Again, most of us would say no. Freedom entails the right to do what one wants with his own money, even if he chooses to risk it all on a spin of a roulette wheel.

What about ingesting harmful substances? Here is where some people’s attitude changes. Somehow they’ve come to the conclusion that freedom should simply be tossed out the window in favor of government protection from one’s peaceful choices when the choice involves the ingestion of a harmful substance.

Yet what is considered destructive or harmful is a highly subjective matter. There are people who consider the consumption of meat to be harmful. Should the government have the authority to outlaw the eating of meat? How about sugar? Fatty foods?

Why shouldn’t people be free to make those choices on their own? Why should a person’s consumption habits be subject to the vote of the majority? Why isn’t the exercise of such choices a fundamental right with which no one can legitimately interfere?

The principle is really no different with respect to the consumption of most products, including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and tobacco. While most of us would consider the consumption of such things to be unhealthy, the fact is that some people are willing to incur the potential adverse effects of drugs for reasons that are important to them. Why shouldn’t they be free to make that call? Under what moral authority do governmental officials incarcerate them, fine them, or otherwise punish them for making that choice?

Drug-war proponents often argue that a person’s drug use inevitably affects other people, especially his family. The argument is meant to suggest that the principles of freedom don’t really apply here because the drug user is violating the rights of others.

That argument, however, reflects a woeful lack of understanding of freedom. Whenever a family member makes a choice, especially one entailing high risk to his life, limbs, or fortune, the choice has potentially bad consequences for the rest of the family. If a person gets killed climbing Mount Everest, that will adversely affect his family. The same holds true if he loses all his money investing in a start-up company or if he risks all his money at a roulette wheel in Las Vegas.

Thus, the issue is not whether people’s choices adversely affect others. The issue is whether the choice is a peaceful one — that is, one that does not involve the initiation of force against another person (e.g., murder, rape, robbery). If the choice is peaceful, then a free society ensures that its exercise is protected regardless of its adverse effect on others.

The right to
be left alone

State law-enforcement agents recently raided the home of Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. The agents had tracked a package containing marijuana that had been left on the front porch of Calvo’s house. When Calvo got home, he picked up the package and carried it into his house. Armed with a warrant, the drug agents burst into the house without warning, shot and killed Calvo’s two dogs, and bound Calvo and his mother-in-law.

As things turned out, neither Calvo nor anyone in his home had anything to do with the drug transaction, as law-enforcement officials later acknowledged. The delivery of the package was part of a scheme in which drugs were being shipped to addresses of unsuspecting people, where they would be picked up by others involved in the scheme.

Much of the hullabaloo in the press revolved around the fact that the search warrant did not authorize a no-knock raid, that the mayor and his family turned out to be innocent, and that his dogs were killed. Nearly everyone missed the much more important point: What business is it of the state that the mayor might have been consuming a harmful substance in the privacy of his own home? Why isn’t that his personal business? Why should the government have the power to harass, abuse, and punish him for possessing or consuming marijuana or any other drug in his own home?

In other words, under what moral authority do they punish a person who is doing nothing more than ingesting substances that other people disapprove of?

Moreover, it’s not as if there isn’t a bit of inconsistency in all this. As everyone knows, it’s legal for adults to consume alcohol and tobacco, two drugs that have killed many more people than marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or other illicit drugs. Why is it that people are free to ingest alcohol and tobacco and not free to ingest other harmful substances?

The perpetual,
destructive war

When I began practicing law in 1975, the drug war was in full swing. In fact, my first trial involved a federal drug case in which I had been appointed to represent an indigent defendant. The assistant U.S. attorney and the drug agents who were involved in the case were committed, devoted, ardent enthusiasts of the drug war. They honestly believed they were serving their country by arresting and prosecuting drug-law violators. They honestly believed that their efforts would bring “victory” in the drug war.

Presumably, those agents are now retiring with their federal pensions. Many of the drug agents who are now serving in their stead are no doubt driven by the same level of commitment that characterized agents 33 years ago. However, there is one big difference: The agents of today have a difficult time arguing with a straight face that their efforts are likely to bring “victory” in the drug war sometime soon.

Most people now view the drug war as a permanent fixture of American life. The fact that it has proven to be such an utter failure seems irrelevant to most people. All that seems to matter is that law-enforcement agents continue making drug busts, raiding homes, arresting people, and filling the prisons. That has become the never-ending measure of drug-war success, even if all those actions do nothing to stem the consumption of illegal drugs.

We also shouldn’t forget all the collateral damage from the drug war. Over the years, the illegality has caused prices and profits to soar, as they usually do in a black market. That has attracted drug lords, drug gangs, and drug cartels, which have then proceeded to engage in deadly turf battles, mostly in Mexico and other parts of Latin America.

Drug addicts have gone on theft and robbery sprees to secure the money to purchase the higher-priced drugs, something that alcoholics or tobacco addicts never do, since the price of their addiction is comparatively lower. There is also corruption in the form of bribes paid to law-enforcement officers and judges.

Prisons are overfilled with drug-law violators. Moreover, the adverse consequences of the drug war fall disproportionately on blacks. As the Drug Policy Alliance Network points out,
Although African Americans compromise only 12.2 percent of the population and 13 percent of drug users, they make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 59 percent of those convicted of drug offenses causing critics to call the war on drugs the “New Jim Crow.”

Among the most important adverse collateral damage has been the massive infringement of privacy rights and civil liberties, especially through search and seizure of people’s bodies, homes, automobiles, personal effects, and financial records.

And all for what? Just to keep the drug war going, no matter how much a failure it is and no matter how much damage it causes.

Support for
the drug war

Why do people continue to support the drug war after decades of failure and horrible collateral damage? I suspect that the answer is twofold.

First, many people feel that drug legalization would send a message to people, especially the young, that society approves of drug consumption.

How valid is such a reason? It’s not valid at all. After all, in some states adultery is legal and no one worries about whether society is sending a message that people approve of adultery. People have come to believe that freedom entails the right to commit the nonviolent sin of adultery without being punished by the state for it. The same holds true for the consumption of alcohol and tobacco.

Second, many people are still holding out hope that the continuing drug busts will finally produce “victory,” which will enable the state to end the drug war. But that’s just a pipe dream. For one thing, how much freedom would people have to surrender in order to achieve such a “victory”? A few years ago, the Thai government embarked on a deadly campaign to kill all the drug dealers in the country. After killing thousands of drug suspects, Thai officials are still waging a fierce war on drugs and catching lots of people in the process.

Perhaps many advocates of the drug war have good intentions. Perhaps they honestly want to rid society of the scourge of drugs. But what good are good intentions? What do they matter? Even if we ascribe the best of intentions to drug-war proponents, the fact remains: the drug war is an utter failure and an engine of death, damage, and destruction.

Ending the
drug war

What would happen if the drug war were ended and drugs were legalized? The first thing that would happen is that the drug gangs, drug lords, and drug cartels would go out of business instantaneously. Such people do well in black markets, when an activity is illegal, but they might well find it difficult to compete against legitimate pharmaceutical companies in a free-market setting.

Wouldn’t putting drug giants out of business overnight be considered victory if it were accomplished through the drug war?

The second thing that would happen is that the number of robberies, muggings, burglaries, and thefts would plummet, because drug users would no longer have to pay the exorbitant and artificially high prices for black-market drugs.

Wouldn’t a reduction in violent crime be considered a victory if it were accomplished through the drug war?

The third thing that would happen is that more drug addicts would be likely to seek treatment, because they would no longer have to hide their addiction for fear of being caught and sent to jail. Rehabilitation usually depends on frank and open discussion of one’s addiction, something that the harsh penalties of the drug war don’t encourage.

Wouldn’t an increase in the number of people seeking drug rehab be considered a victory if it were accomplished through the drug war?

The fourth thing that would happen is that corruption among law-enforcement agents and judges would plummet, because the absence of drug prosecutions would dry up the payment of drug-war bribes.

Wouldn’t a decrease in corruption be considered a victory if it were accomplished through the drug war?

The fifth thing that would happen is that a government program whose adverse consequences fall disproportionately on a racial minority would be removed from American society.

Finally, no longer would Americans have to deal with the constant assaults on privacy and civil liberties at the hands of drug agents, because one of the primary excuses for doing so — the war on drugs — would be non-existent.

It is impossible to reconcile the drug war with the principles of a free society. The war has accomplished nothing positive and has done horrific damage. Enough is enough. The time has come for the American people to lead the world out of the drug-war morass. The time has come to repeal all civil and criminal penalties for possession and distribution of drugs. The time has come to end the war on drugs.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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With the possible exception of the war on drugs, it would be difficult to find a greater terrorist-producing machine than the U.S. government’s occupation of Afghanistan. Think about it: For almost 8 years, they’ve been killing terrorists in that country, fulltime. Yet, today there are more terrorists than ever before. From the standpoint of a lover of big government, this is a dream come true. They kill one terrorist, they get 10 more, which means ever-increasing federal power and budgets.

Let me tell you what they’re going to say if one of those terrorists — say, a father who lost his daughter in one of those periodic bombing raids on Afghan wedding parties — comes over here and commits another act of terrorism on American soil. They’re going to say the same thing they said after 9/11 — that the anger and rage that drove that father to blow up that building had nothing to do with the fact that his daughter was killed by American bombs. No, he doesn’t care about that, they’ll say. It’s all because he hates America for its freedom and values.

And that’s not all they’ll do after the next terrorist attack here in the United States. They’ll run to a couple of their lackey attorneys in the Justice Department — those that will say whatever they’re expected to say — who will give them a legal opinion that the president and the Pentagon no longer need to comply with no stinking Constitution. Since the terrorist attack will confirm that we’re still at war against the terrorists, the president and the Pentagon will continue to be empowered to do everything here at home that they’re doing in Afghanistan and Iraq — busting down doors without warrants, unlimited searches and seizures, indefinite incarcerations, extraordinary renditions, torture and sex abuse, and denial of trial by jury and due process of law. After all, as everyone knows, war means dictatorial power, even if the war is perpetual.

It’s important that we put the occupation of Afghanistan in the larger context of U.S. foreign policy, a policy of empire and intervention — a corrupt, crooked, hypocritical, sordid, and morally degenerate policy.

How else can one describe a foreign policy in which the U.S. government ardently supports a dictator like Saddam Hussein? In fact, the reason that they were so convinced that Saddam had those weapons of mass destruction is that they had the receipts — they were the ones who delivered them to him.

Or that supports a dictator like the Shah of Iran, who they installed into power and then supported as he tortured his own people for some 25 years. And then when the blowback occurred with the taking of U.S. diplomats as hostages, U.S. officials innocently exclaimed that they just hate us for our freedom and values. Never mind that the U.S. government ousted the democratically elected prime minister of the country when it installed the Shah into power.

More recently has been the U.S. government’s support of a brutal military general in Pakistan, who took power in a coup and who refused to permit elections, factors that have contributed to the chaos in Pakistan today.

At the same time, the U.S. government has been killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people under the rubric of bringing democracy to them.

Like I say, a morally degenerate foreign policy.

There is only one solution to all this, and it lies with the dismantling of the U.S. government’s overseas military empire. Close all the bases and bring all the troops home and discharge them, not only from Afghanistan and Iraq, but also from Latin America, where their war on drugs is producing nothing but more chaos and violence, Germany, where they’re still fighting the Soviet communists, Korea, and everywhere else.

At the same time, end the policy of isolationism on America’s private sector. Lift all the embargoes and sanctions, including those against Cuba, Iran, and everywhere else, which impose harsh criminal and civil penalties on the American people for exercising such fundamental rights as freedom of travel, freedom of trade, and the freedom to do what you want with your own money.

By their fruits you will know them. Their fruits are death, destruction, and monetary debauchery.

It’s time to return to first principles and restore a constitutional republic to our land and economic liberty to the American people. That is the only way to get America back on the road to freedom, prosperity, morality, and harmony with the people of the world.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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Faced with what the Washington Post described as “grim-faced” prosecutors and “bewildered” defendants, Brinkema imposed the harsh sentences because four other young people had died from “overdoses” of the heroin.

What idiocy. All that Brinkema has accomplished is compounding the tragic deaths of four young people by destroying the lives of four other young people. Will those harsh jail sentences reduce the supply of drugs? No. Will they deter others from possessing, distributing, and ingesting drugs? No. Will they bring those four dead young people back to life? No.

So, what’s the point of those long jail sentences? They have no point at all, except to just impose harsh punishment on people for having the audacity to engage in peaceful, consensual behavior that hasn’t been approved by public officials.

It’s just part and parcel of an immoral and destructive 35-year-old “war,” one in which drug agents, judges, and prosecutors continue to mindlessly play out their respective roles, year after year after year, and act as though they are doing something constructive.

Thirty-five years ago, I graduated from law school and began practicing law in my hometown of Laredo, which is located on the border in South Texas. Among the first cases I was involved in was a federal drug case in which our client and two of his friends, all of whom were about 20, were charged in a one-count indictment with conspiracy to distribute heroin. No one had touched any heroin. They simply had talked about acquiring it and had committed what prosecutors called an “overt act” in the attempt to acquire it.

All three of them were convicted in federal court in San Antonio and had the misfortune of being sentenced by a federal judge, John Wood, who had earned the moniker “Maximum John.” The reason for the nickname was that in drug cases, this judge didn’t much care what the range of allowable punishment was because his personal rule was simply to slap drug-war defendants with the maximum allowable punishment. Apparently Wood believed as Brinkema did — that harsh jail sentences in drug cases would accomplish something constructive.

I’ll never forget the satisfied look of Maximum John and the grim-faced assistant U.S. attorney as the judge glared down at the three defendants and imposed on each of them the maximum possible punishment: “Twenty years! Twenty years! Twenty years!”

And for what? Did it win the drug war? No. Today, the drug-war situation in South Texas is 100 times worse than it was when I was practicing law there. And Maximum John’s decision to damage or destroy the lives of those three young people obviously didn’t deter the four young people who appeared before Judge Brinkema and whose lives have now been damaged or destroyed by long jail sentences.

Maximum John was ultimately assassinated because some drug-war defendants were angry over the fact that he had forsaken his role as a judge and was actively cooperating with prosecutors to secure drug-war convictions. Another tragic casualty in the war on drugs. What a meaningless death.

Like the Energizer Bunny, the drug war just keeps going on and on and on. Law-enforcement officers keep arresting people and confiscating assets. Grim-faced prosecutors continue prosecuting. Judges continue sentencing. And hardly any of them ever stops to think about the sheer idiocy of what they are doing.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob Hornberger Archives

These two rights are the right to keep and bear arms and the right to trial by jury. The gun right is found in the Second Amendment and the jury right is contained in the Sixth Amendment.

We begin with the basic underlying assumption of the Bill of the Rights, which is that the greatest threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people is the federal government. Not terrorists. Not communists. Not Muslims. Not drug dealers. Not immigrants. The federal government is the greatest threat to the American people.

After all, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out whom the crafters were addressing with the Bill of Rights. They were confronting the president and the Congress, along with everyone else in the executive and legislative branches. The reason that the First Amendment, for example, expressly names Congress is simple: the crafters of the First Amendment understood that in the absence of express protection, members of Congress would do what government officials do in other lands — punish citizens for criticizing government officials.

The reason for expressly prohibiting government officials from making gun ownership illegal and for guaranteeing trial by jury was to ensure that the American people could resist, violently or peacefully, the imposition of tyranny by the president, the Congress, or both. Implicit in protecting the exercise of such rights was the assumption that tyranny could conceivably come to the United States.

Tyranny and gun control

There are those who argue that the right to keep and bear arms has to do with hunting and self-defense against robbers and burglars. While guns are an important part of those activities, they are not the primary reason the Second Amendment was enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The main reason for the Second Amendment is one that government officials are usually uncomfortable talking about: the right and the ability of the citizenry to forcibly resist government officials, including those in the FBI, the CIA, the military, and the police, who are carrying out tyrannical orders of their superiors.

This important rationale for the right to keep and bear arms — the ability to resist tyranny — was pointed out by the U.S. Supreme Court in the recent Washington, D.C., gun-ban case, District of Columbia v. Heller. The Court stated,

There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.” See 3 Story 1890. First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections. Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessary — an argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia. The Federalist No. 29, pp. 226, 227 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton). Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.

The Court was, of course, referring to tyranny at the hands of the federal government — and to the right and ability of the American people to employ violence against government officials in the event of such tyranny. The point is that if the worst happens, the American people have an option that people in many other countries don’t have — the option of meeting force with force. In the absence of gun ownership, Americans would have but one option: submit and obey. Submission and obedience were the only options that most German Jews had in Nazi Germany. Weapons would have provided them with another option.

One of the best expositions on the critical importance of the right to keep and bear arms was given by Judge Alex Kozinski, a federal appellate judge in the Ninth Circuit, in the case of Silveira v. Lockyer:

All too many of the other great tragedies of history — Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few — were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Recall the scene early in the movie Braveheart in which the Scottish bride was required to submit to the British law requiring her to have sexual relations with a British lord on her wedding night. Since the Scots lacked the means to resist British troops enforcing the law, the husband and his wife had but one choice — obey and submit. Swords and shields would have provided another option.

The right to keep and bear arms is essentially an insurance policy. Like many insurance policies, people will probably never have to make a claim on it. But if the worst happens, it’s nice to know that one has the insurance.

Jury nullification

The right of trial by jury, enshrined in the Sixth Amendment, provides the American people with a nonviolent means to resist tyranny. Trial by jury provides the citizenry with the means to acquit people who are prosecuted by U.S. officials for violating tyrannical laws.

In federal criminal prosecutions, the accused is guaranteed the option of having a group of ordinary citizens decide his guilt or innocence. Those people are chosen at random from the community.

At the trial, the accused is presumed innocent and federal prosecutors have the burden of providing sufficient evidence to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty of the crime. The accused himself has the right to present evidence showing that he is not guilty of the offense.

After both sides have presented their evidence, the federal judge instructs the jury that its duty is simply to weigh the evidence and decide whether the accused is guilty. The judge’s duty, he explains, is to provide the jury with the applicable law in the case.

What federal judges (and, for that matter, state judges) never explain to the jury, however, is the full extent of its powers. Every jury, whether it realizes it or not, actually has the power to judge the law itself. If the jury decides that the law itself is unjust, immoral, or tyrannical, the jurors can vote to acquit the accused and there is nothing the federal prosecutors or the federal judge can legally do about it.

Once the verdict of acquittal is announced, the judge must discharge the defendant, enabling him to immediately walk out of the courtroom a free man. The jury itself is discharged as well, and neither the prosecutors nor the judge can retaliate against the jurors. The jury verdict is final.

Many years ago, a man in my hometown of Laredo, Texas, was on trial in federal court for a drug offense. He took the witness stand and admitted having sold the drugs, explaining that his family had been in dire financial straits and that he deeply regretted his actions. The jury knew that if they convicted the man, the judge would surely send him to the penitentiary for a long time. They voted to acquit him.

When the verdict of acquittal was announced, the federal judge flew into a rage. He castigated the members of the jury, telling them that they were the dumbest group of people who had ever served as jurors in his court. He ordered that all 12 of them be removed from the jury list and barred from ever serving again in his court. But at the end of his tirade, he had but one choice: to discharge the defendant and the jury. All of them walked away in freedom. The jury’s verdict was final.

When our American ancestors demanded the inclusion of trial by jury in the Bill of Rights, they knew that judges or other federal officials could not be relied on to serve as ultimate checks against tyranny. They knew that when it came to interpreting laws, judges would be bound more by the rulings of the appellate courts than by their conscience.

Not so with ordinary citizens, however. If the citizenry believed that laws that were being enacted were tyrannical, immoral, or unjust, that sentiment could be quietly expressed by the refusal of juries to convict people of such offenses.

Consider, for example, the case of Hans and Sophie Scholl, a brother and sister who were attending college at the University of Munich during World War II. They secretly began publishing anti-government and anti-war pamphlets as part of an informal group called the White Rose. Since that was a serious crime under German law, the SS caught them and arrested them. They were immediately brought to trial before the “People’s Court,” a special court that Hitler established because of his dissatisfaction with a verdict that had been issued in a terrorism case by a duly constituted court.

The Scholl trial was conducted before a panel of judges, and the verdict was never in doubt. As the investigators and judges pointed out, the law is the law and people are expected to obey it. And the nation was at war, after all. Since Hans and Sophie admitted to having violated the law, the judges felt that they were doing their legal (and patriotic) duty by convicting them and sentencing them to death.

Now, imagine that trial by jury had been a guaranteed right under the German system. A jury of ordinary German citizens, rather than a panel of appointed judges, would have been deciding the fate of the Scholl siblings. While it would be entirely possible that the jury would nonetheless have convicted them of publishing the pamphlets, at least the possibility would have existed that the jury, out of conscience, would have voted to acquit, on the ground that the law under which the Scholls were being prosecuted was tyrannical, immoral, and unjust.

Under the right of trial by jury, Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with jury, could have walked out of that German courtroom free people. With trial by tribunal, they never had a chance.

Some people have argued that trial by jury leads to anarchy, a rather silly suggestion, given that the right of jury nullification has existed since enactment of the Bill of Rights and yet the federal government is still in existence. Keep in mind that a jury verdict in a particular case does not serve as any type of precedent for other cases. It simply serves as a message that a particular jury in a particular case voted to acquit the accused.

Resistance to tyranny today

Are the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and the Sixth Amendment right of trial by jury still relevant today?

Well, consider how U.S. officials behave in the absence of constitutional restraints and a Bill of Rights. Don’t they engage in the conduct that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights expressly prohibit?

When U.S. personnel invade a foreign country, what’s the first thing they do? Confiscate guns and impose gun control. Why? To prevent the citizenry from violently resisting what is certain to follow — tyrannical measures. Moreover, when the United States occupies another country, notice that you never see it establish a judicial system that guarantees such things as trial by jury, the right to confront witnesses, the presumption of innocence, or due process of law.

Consider, for example, how the U.S. military has conducted itself in Iraq, where the military operates without the constraints of the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights. The military is holding some 20,000 people in jail indefinitely without charges. U.S. soldiers barge into people’s homes and search their personal effects without a warrant. Prisoners are tortured and sexually abused, as the Abu Ghraib photos documented. U.S. officials guide Iraqi officials into holding kangaroo trials whose outcome is preordained and where the defendant is denied important procedural guarantees, as in the trial of Saddam Hussein. Curfews are imposed. Gun control is implemented. The press is muzzled.

Or consider Guantanamo Bay, the Pentagon’s infamous prison camp, where it has established what it considers to be a model “judicial” system for handling terrorism cases. Unlike proceedings in the United States, in the Gitmo proceedings the accused is denied trial by jury, defendants are presumed guilty, coerced confessions and evidence acquired by torture can be used to convict the accused, and there is no protection against self-incrimination. Cruel and unusual punishments, including torture and sex abuse, are permitted and even encouraged. In fact, the ultimate farce of the entire proceedings is that even if the accused is acquitted, a highly unlikely possibility, given that military personnel are serving as prosecutor, judge, and jury, the defendant can still be kept in custody for the rest of his life.

If it weren’t for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, who doubts that the president, the Pentagon, and Congress would be doing the same things here in the United States? Those people look upon constitutional restrictions on their power with disdain and disgust. Why else, for example, did they establish their prison camp in Cuba, rather than in the United States, if not to escape the applicability of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and any interference from the federal judiciary?

Freedom can never be taken for granted, especially in times of crises, real or contrived, and especially in an era when the president is executing signing statements to avoid congressional laws; entering into illegal partnerships with private businesses for the purpose of illegally spying on the citizenry; declaring war on foreign nations in violation of the Constitution; implementing an independent judicial system designed to easily secure criminal convictions; and claiming a wartime power to arrest, torture, sexually abuse, and indefinitely imprison Americans as enemy combatants, all with the support of Congress.

If the worst were to happen — if Americans were subjected to the sort of tyranny under which the Scots, Germans, Russians, Chinese, and other people have suffered, at least Americans have two means of resistance that most people in history have been denied. Thanks to the courage, wisdom, and foresight of our ancestors, Americans have the right to keep and bear arms and the right of trial by jury.

Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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