Philosopher Y.G.G. Drasil reviewed Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve (Free Press, 1994). Following the book’s premise that the Intelligence Quotient is overwhelmingly hereditary, Drasil states,
People with IQs above 130 process information differently from the rest of society. They care a lot less about status. They are self-taught. They will act upon ideas, regardless of what others think. They have far less patience with propaganda than people with IQs below 130. People with IQs between 110 and 120 are far more conscious of status, manners and place. They tend to be a powerful force for social stability.
Not a farfetched conclusion, though not one often arrived at by the mass-media-derived conventional wisdom.
Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story has gotten a lot of Americans thinking about our monetary and banking system. What’s it all about and why is it screwing us? What is its history? As it turns out, we’ve been grappling with the problem since the founding.
Here are a few among many largely unknown statements by prominent early Americans regarding the monetary system and banks:
1.
President Andrew Jackson (1829 – 1837) (best known, ironically, for his visage… on the paper $20 bill!), is quoted, regarding the central banks’ utilization of paper money:
The paper-money system and its natural associations—monopoly and exclusive privileges—have already struck their roots too deep in the soil, and it will require all your efforts to check its further growth and to eradicate the evil.
The bankers roused Jackson’s anger to such lengths that he forced their representatives, physically, from the White House:
…You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, I will rout you out.
(And he did.)
But imagine one of our über-scripted, contemporary U.S. Presidents doing that! Yes indeed, Americans did things differently back then! They ran on principle, principles that they weren’t afraid to put into action for the Republic, instead of letting them float hypothetically or as sound-bites like a Clinton or an Obama. Leaders actually…lead…back then? Apparently they did.
This, in contrast to our electric-shock collared, jump-when-we-tell-you, puppet government hat passes for American democracy these days.
Of course the bankers evidently came back in due course…
President Jackson and other American statesmen were assiduously aware of the risks of a centralized banking and monetary system. They sought to balance laissez-faire capitalism with the uniquely American agrarian↔
manufacturing give-and-take that made the early Republic so special; what separated it from the economically restricted and import-dependent (from the African/Asian colonies) Europeans.
“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies…”
There you are.
From Jefferson in 1816 to Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story in 2009, not much has changed; the central bankers are dug-in; entrenched, and they have clawed along on the underbelly with us for 200-plus years.
Obama’s Justice Dept. still protecting Bush-era “War on Terror” policies. This article says Atty. Gen. Holder is opposing a San Francisco lawsuit over federal warrantless wiretapping:
The moral principle to adopt is: “Judge, and be prepared to be judged.” It is a task that requires the most precise, the most exacting, the most ruthlessly objective and rational process of thought. When one pronounces moral judgment, whether in praise or in blame, one must he prepared to answer “Why?” and to prove one’s case – to oneself and to any rational inquirer.
Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with – their “loved ones” or friends or business associates or political ruler – are not merely mistaken, but evil. If people did not indulge in such abject evasions all the claim that some contemptible liar “means well” – that a mooching bum “can’t help it” – that a juvenile delinquent “needs love” – that a power-seeking politician is moved by patriotic concern for “the public good” – that communists are merely “agrarian reformers” – the history of the past few decades, or centuries, would have been different.
Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible “noble purpose,” but to plain, naked human evil. Observe also that moral neutrality necessitates a progressive sympathy for vice and a progressive antagonism to virtue. It is then that such formulas as “Nobody is ever fully right or fully wrong” and “Who am I to judge?” take their lethal effect.
In Washington D.C. back in 2004 (seems like a whole other era!) I saw Noam Chomsky speak for around 45 minutes. Whatever his supposed political “bent” (and people describe him as a leftist/socialist), his talk was one-hundred percent sincere and full of lucid and penetrating insight. He understands, more deeply than probably anyone, the meaning of, and the meaning behind, society and its constructs.
What is chilling about these brief remarks from San Francisco just last week is Chomsky’s demeanor – he’s not concerned, he is truly troubled. Five years ago I did not hear this tone. And that was at the height of the Iraq War and the Bush administration’s “War on Terror”.
In signature fashion, the Linguistics Professor recognizes and grants the alacrity of the positions on both sides of the political/cultural divide – that people are suffering, that white Americans feel their country has been slipped out from under them, and that many would be willing to head down a desperate path to correct the perceived threat. Chomsky sees analogies with the current U.S. to the conditions of 1920s – 30s Weimar Germany, describing the Weimar Republic era as “the height of civilization”, before its dark “fall” and the rise of dictatorship. Perhaps Chomsky shouldn’t have singled out Germany – Russia became a Totalitarian state under Stalin before Germany did. Two sides of the same coin. For the record, to date Communist countries have killed far more of their own people than have Fascist countries.
Still, Chomsky’s conclusions should be a wake-up call, even if the comparison to Nazi Germany is overkill, and the crimes of the Soviets an oversight (by sheer numbers, , if only because for any who’ve followed Chomsky know that he’s arguably our country’s sharpest commentator on such matters.
You have to take him seriously, and by the tone in his voice, one can see that he is dead serious.
That history repeats is demonstrated time and again, though the shortness of people’s memories clouds the truism.
Here, as many other commentators right and left have done, Professor Chomsky (Linguistics, M.I.T.) singles out Rush Limbaugh as cause and symptom of the cultural divide inflamed during the past year.
But for the record It must be said that Limbaugh, probably the right’s de facto spokesman, was absolutely correct in saying that an Obama presidency would ratchet up a left-right divide like nothing else. He predicted during the ‘08 Presidential race, six months before Obama took office, that an Obama presidency would inflame racial tensions and increase partisanship – NOT “heal divisions” with “hope and change” and all the rest promised by Obama the candidate.He was right.
So it is a fact that unlike Limbaugh’s more measured prediction, which has come to pass, Chomsky’s prognosis of a sick body politic descending into fascism has yet to show itself. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t (maybe we just need to give it a few more years…)
Both make a similar point, the disagreement being on the cause – but quite frankly, in his remarks Chomsky confirms Limbaugh’s 2008 prediction. Ask yourself – if Obama had lost the election would Professor Chomsky have said what he said, how he said it?
