Vox Popoli: Liberalism: the dying faith

Pat Buchanan rightly observes that Europe is awakening to fact that liberalism is a societally suicidal lie:

Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more democratic — and the model for mankind’s future.

Equality, diversity, democracy — this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state at whose altars Liberal Man worships.

To traditionalist Europeans, our heaven looks like their hell.

But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting what America has on offer... Europe is rejecting, resisting, recoiling from “diversity,” the multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual future that, say U.S. elites, is America’s preordained mission to bring about for all mankind.

This is the dilemma facing conservatives now. For sixty years, their tango with liberals was a simple matter of saying "yes, but not so fast". Now, like the liberals, they are being forced to confront the ugly reality that the end game of their ideology is the end of their society and their civilization. Not only has conservatism conserved nothing, it has aided and abetted the destruction of that which it purported to be defending.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/10/liberalism-dying-faith.html?m=1

Is Liberalism a Dying Faith? - The Unz Review - PAT BUCHANAN

Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more democratic — and the model for mankind’s future.

Equality, diversity, democracy — this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state at whose altars Liberal Man worships.

But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting what America has on offer.

In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.

The right-wing People’s Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria’s vote, delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!

Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.

South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians are talking of separation.

By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington Post, Babis “makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO’s mission is outdated.”

Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.

To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many may nod at Thomas Jefferson’s line that “All men are created equal,” but they no more practice that in their own nations than did Jefferson in his.

On Oct. 7, scores of thousands of Poles lined up along the country’s entire 2,000-mile border — to pray the rosary.

It was the centennial of the Virgin Mary’s last apparition at Fatima in Portugal in 1917, and the day in 1571 the Holy League sank the Muslim fleet at Lepanto to save Europe. G. K. Chesterton’s poem, “Lepanto,” was once required reading in Catholic schools.

Each of these traditionalist-nationalist movements is unique, but all have a common cause. In the hearts of Europe’s indigenous peoples is embedded an ancient fear: loss of the homeland to Islamic invaders.

Europe is rejecting, resisting, recoiling from “diversity,” the multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual future that, say U.S. elites, is America’s preordained mission to bring about for all mankind.

Indeed, increasingly, the indigenous peoples of Europe seem to view as the death of their nations and continent, what U.S. liberal elites see as the Brave New World to come.

To traditionalist Europeans, our heaven looks like their hell.

Thus Poles fall on their knees to pray to the Virgin Mary to spare them from threats of an Islamic future, as their ancestors prayed at the time of Lepanto, and of Vienna in 1683, when the Polish King John Sobieski marched to halt the last Muslim drive into the heart of Europe.

European peoples and parties are today using democratic means to achieve “illiberal” ends. And it is hard to see what halts the drift away from liberal democracy toward the restrictive right. For in virtually every nation, there is a major party in opposition, or a party in power, that holds deeply nationalist views.

European elites may denounce these new parties as “illiberal” or fascist, but it is becoming apparent that it may be liberalism itself that belongs to yesterday. For more and more Europeans see the invasion of the continent along the routes whence the invaders came centuries ago, not as a manageable problem but an existential crisis.

To many Europeans, it portends an irreversible alteration in the character of the countries their grandchildren will inherit, and possibly an end to their civilization. And they are not going to be deterred from voting their fears by being called names that long ago lost their toxicity from overuse.

And as Europeans decline to celebrate the racial, ethnic, creedal and cultural diversity extolled by American elites, they also seem to reject the idea that foreigners should be treated equally in nations created for their own kind.

Europeans seem to admire more, and model their nations more, along the lines of the less diverse America of the Eisenhower era, than on the polyglot America of 2017.

And Europe seems to be moving toward immigration polices more like the McCarran-Walter Act of 1950 than the open borders bill that Sen. Edward Kennedy shepherded through the Senate in 1965.

Kennedy promised that the racial and ethnic composition of the America of the 1960s would not be overturned, and he questioned the morality and motives of any who implied that it would.

So, why is liberalism dying?

Because it is proving to be what James Burnham called it in his 1964 “Suicide of the West” — the ideology of Western suicide.

What we see in Europe today is people who, belatedly recognizing this, have begun to “rage, rage, against dying of the light.”

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

Copyright 2017 Creators.com.

http://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/is-liberalism-a-dying-faith/

A WORLD OF LIES BUT GOLD WILL REVEAL THE TRUTH | Matterhorn - GoldSwitzerland | Matterhorn - GoldSwitzerland

The dollar is dead but the world doesn’t know it.

It has been a slow death and the final stages will be very painful for the US and for the rest of the world. The US empire is finished financially and militarily.

NIXON WAS CONVICTED FOR THE WRONG CRIME

It all started with the establishment of the Fed in 1913 and escalated with Nixon. For anyone old enough to still remember him, they will think about the Watergate scandal. This was corruption and bribery at the highest level in the Nixon administration, including the president himself. In order to avoid impeachment which would have been a certainty, Nixon resigned. All this broke out 11 months after Nixon’s disastrous decision to take away the gold backing of the dollar on Aug 15, 1971. Nixon should not have been impeached for the Watergate scandal but for his decision to end the gold backing of the dollar. That disastrous decision is what will lead to a total collapse of the world economy and the financial system, starting sooner than anyone can imagine.

DE GAULLE UNDERSTOOD GOLD

By 1971, the US had already been running chronic budget deficits for 10 years consecutively. At the end of the 1960s, President Gaulle of France realised what would happen to the dollar and demanded payment in gold instead which was his right. This led to Nixon closing the gold window since this was the only way that the US could continue to live above its means. And this is exactly what the US has done for more than half a century now. Not only have they run a real budget deficit every year since 1961 but also a trade deficit every year since 1975.

THE UNHOLY TRINITY

Three things have allowed the US to do this: 1) The dollar being the reserve currency of the world, 2) The Petrodollar system. 3) Having a mighty military machine.

But the rest of the world now knows that the weakening US empire is losing out on all three fronts. The dollar has lost 50-70% against most major currencies in the last 46 years. And against gold, nature’s only permanent money, the dollar has lost 97% since Nixon’s fatal decision.

The US military superiority has been crumbling for many years. In spite of a military spending higher than the next 8 biggest countries together, the US has not been successful in any military action for decades from Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and many, many more. This weakening of the US military power, will make it impossible in future to enforce the petrodollar. The US attacks on Iraq and Libya were as result of these countries intention of abandoning the petrodollar.

CHINA AND RUSSIA UNDERSTAND GOLD

China and Russia are now seeing what de Gaulle saw in the late 1960s. They know that it is only a matter of time before the dollar will lose its status as reserve currency. They also know that before this happens, the dollar will start crumbling and eventually disappear into a black hole resulting in an implosion of all the dollar assets and debts.

CHINA AND RUSSIA WILL ORCHESTRATE THE END OF THE DOLLAR

China and Russia are not waiting for this to happen They are actually going to orchestrate the fall of the dollar. Not by attacking the dollar itself but by killing the petrodollar. China will start to trade oil in yuan with Russia, with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey etc. All these countries are now negotiating a number of agreements to facilitate the trading of oil and other commodities in yuan and rubles. These agreements cover a wide area such as new payment system and Forex trading between Russia and China as well as gold imports by China from Russia.

The intention of the Trump administration to repudiate the Iran nuclear agreement and to impose new sanctions will further strengthen the resolve of these countries to abandon the petrodollar. Sadly, it is also likely to lead to yet more terrorism in the West.

This is all happening at a much faster pace than the world is realising. And this time, the US cannot do anything about it. Because the US is unlikely to attack, China or Russia or Iran. A US attack with conventional weapons on any of these countries would be guaranteed to fail. The US wouldn’t stand a chance except in a nuclear war which would be the end of the world as we know it.

A BANKRUPT EUROPE

But it is not only the US empire which is crumbling. The decadent socialist system in Europe will not survive either. Socialism works until you run out of Other People’s Money. And this is happening fast in many European countries. Greece is totally bankrupt and should have defaulted on their debts many years ago and introduced a new devalued Drachma. This is the only way that Greece can ever progress and prosper. Instead, the EU insisted on them staying and imposed yet more loans that Greece will never repay leading to massive poverty and misery for the Greek people.

In addition, Brussels has forced them to process a massive number of migrants which Greece can ill afford. The same goes for Italy with their massive debt to GDP and crumbling economy. But it doesn’t stop there, Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland and the UK are all economies with massive debts. Since these debts can never be repaid, there are only two alternatives; either a default by the ECB and most European countries or money printing on a scale that the world has never seen. The likely outcome is that we will see both options. First money printing by the ECB in the €100s of trillions and then default, as the Euro becomes worthless.

The Eurocrats in Brussels including the European Commission are only interested in protecting their own position. Their main concern as unelected and unaccountable representatives of 500 million people is to hold their empire together at any cost. What they are doing is not for the good of the European people, but rather to serve these bureaucrats’ self-interest. The Brussels elite is more concerned about their own massive expense accounts and pensions than the Greek or the Irish people.

THE SABOTEURS IN BRUSSELS

The European Commission in Brussels, with Junker leading, is now doing all they can do sabotage the Brexit decision by the UK electorate. They just can’t stand that anyone breaks rank in this very unholy alliance. Interestingly, the word sabotage, derives from the industrial revolution in Belgium when the workers threw their “sabots” (clogs) into the new machines that were taking their jobs away. So the Brussels tradition of sabotage is not a new phenomenon.

THE EU – A FAILED EXPERIMENT

The EU is a failed experiment that will eventually collapse. So will the Euro which is an artificial currency that can never work for 19 Countries with different backgrounds such as growth and inflation rates, productivity, industrialisation and cultures.

The dollar is likely to fall before the Euro as they both compete in the race to the bottom. Just think about it, here we have the two richest regions in the World, North America and Europe, both on the verge of collapse, economically, financially, politically and morally. How can anyone ever believe that all the bubble assets can survive under those circumstances. Well they won’t. That is absolutely guaranteed. It is only a question of how soon it starts and how deep it will be. The sad thing is that no one is prepared for it and it will be a devastating shock the whole world.

A WORLD OF LIES

Having just flown from Europe to the US, I watched “The Wizard of Lies” the film about Bernie Madoff. This was a $65 billion Ponzi scheme that went on for at least 20 years without being discovered. The combination of gullibility (returns 10-12% every year without fluctuations), greed and vested interest led to very few ever questioning this massive fraud. Banks, brokers, asset managers, introducers and investors all loved it and therefore no one suspected foul play.

Just like the world never questioned the massive Madoff Ponzi scheme, no one ever questions the $2 quadrillion (including derivatives and unfounded liabilities) Ponzi scheme that the whole world is now involved in. Madoff was a saint compared to what the world is now being subjected to. So why is no one protesting and why does everyone believe that this will continue. Well, for exactly the same reasons that they believed in Madoff – Greed and Vested Interest. Governments, central bankers, bankers, fund and asset managers and investors don’t want anyone to cry wolf. The whole world wants this wonderful Ponzi fraud to go on for ever. But it won’t. Instead it will come to a very abrupt end in the next few years and no one will be prepared.

INVESTING WITH THE HERD – THE ROAD TO THE PRECIPICE

Currently investors love the stock markets around the world and why shouldn’t they. Everyone is making so much money, just like with Madoff, that their greed prevents them from looking at the risk.

For investors who don’t worry about risk, the current period is absolute heaven. Stocks, bonds, property and bitcoin just goes up and up and up. You just can’t lose! Whatever investors touch today turns into gold. But it isn’t real gold. The winnings today are fake gold in the form of inflated and heavily leveraged paper assets. Like all bubbles this can continue further. But whenever it turns, and we are not far from that point, the move in the opposite direction will be so fast that it will be impossible to get out. Also, like for most of the last 30 years, investors will be certain that central banks will save them. But this time it will really be different. Because the next round of trillions or quadrillions of paper money will only have a very short lived effect. At last the world will understand that printed pieces of paper that governments call money are really worthless.

The coming collapse in all bubble asset markets will therefore be greater than the 80% fall of the Nasdaq in the early 2000s and greater than the 90% fall of the Dow in the 1930s.

Most investors will laugh at this in disbelief. We will see who has the last laugh.

THE CONTRARIAN ROAD TO WEALTH PROTECTION

With Nasdaq up 5x since 2009, investors are oblivious of risk. Silver on the other hand is down 65% since 2011. The chart below shows the Silver / Nasdaq spread. Silver has crashed against the Nasdaq since 2011 and is almost down to the 2001 level when the silver price was $4. This spread is likely to have bottomed and the next move should be back to the 2011 high – a 450% move.

Wealth preservation investors should of course not go short Nasdaq (the bubble can get bigger) but if they get out of their stocks and buy silver, they are likely to avoid the most massive wealth destruction in the next few years.

GOLD TO VASTLY OUTPERFORM BITCOIN

Bitcoin is continuing its meteoric rise and is almost at $6,000. This is a massive speculative bubble and like all bubbles, it can get bigger before it bursts. But this has nothing to do with wealth preservation. The price explosion in Bitcoin has been spectacular. Just in the last two years it is up 25x! Once gold and silver start to move, we are likely to see a similar price explosion. But the big difference is that the precious metals represent real wealth preservation and tangible wealth.

I might sound like the Roman Senator Cato who always finished every speech with “Praeterea censeo Carthaginem delendam esse.” – “Furthermore I consider that Carthage should be destroyed.”

I also always have the same message for an oblivious world which doesn’t realise what will hit them:

To avoid total wealth destruction, buy insurance in the form of physical gold and silver while there is still time. When history’s biggest Ponzi scheme is found out, it will probably be impossible to get hold of physical gold and silver at any price.

https://goldswitzerland.com/a-world-of-lies-but-gold-will-reveal-the-truth/

Banana Republic: Judicial Watch Chief of Investigations Says United States Is Becoming a Failed State - By Alex Christoforou

Entire US Justice Department is compromised.

Judicial Watch Director of Investigations, Chris Farrell, appeared on Fox News to discuss with Lou Dobbs the entrenched and all powerful Deep State, which is working daily to bury the United States in never ending scandals, and reverse the nation statism movement ushered in by Trump’s Presidential victory over their preferred globalist candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Via The Gateway Pundit…

Chris Farrell: It’s really a giant Socialist organ operating that protests itself. Offense after offense and you find laws are for the little people. The Clinton gang walks away. People say, “Hey where’s the Department of Justice investigation? Where’s the FBI?” Half the time they’re complicit… The people with direct firsthand knowledge, they’re the ones who kept their mouths shut for years… This is evidence that we are becoming a failed state. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that. When the entire Justice Department is paralyzed. When the entire Justice Department is compromised when there is no investigations. There’s these make-believe congressional hearings that are nothing more than soundbites..

http://theduran.com/banana-republic-judicial-watch-chief-of-investigations-says-united-states-is-fast-becoming-a-failed-state-video/

The Case Against Gold as a Central Bank Asset

What I'm about to write here, I have believed for close to 40 years. I wrote about it decades ago in Remnant Review. I'm not going to look through all of the published issues to find when I wrote it.

What good is gold in the vaults of any central bank? I understand why it's a good idea to have bullion gold coins in your "vault." I don't understand why it's a good idea for central bankers to put gold bullion bars in their vaults.

Central banks buy gold from the general public. They also buy gold from each other. Why do central bankers buy gold? They have to pay good money for it, meaning bad central bank fiat money.

They can buy any financial asset. Why do they buy gold bullion? They never intend to sell gold to the public. So, they don't intend to make a profit on their holdings of gold. It just sits there.

Central bankers don't own the assets that the banks hold. It doesn't matter to them personally whether it's gold or government bonds.

THE GOLD COIN STANDARD

In the era of the gold coin standard, when citizens could bring in paper money and demand gold coins from a local bank, this transferred tremendous authority into the hands of the general public. The public could participate in a run on a local bank's gold. If this took place nationally, this would cause a run on the central bank's gold. This would force the central bank to stop inflating through fiat money. That was the great advantage of the gold coin standard. It transferred power into the hands of the general public. The general public could veto central bank policies of monetary inflation.

This is why all the governments of Western Europe outlawed the gold coin standard soon after World War I began in August 1914. Commercial bank runs began almost immediately. So, central banks and governments allowed commercial banks to break their gold contracts with their depositors. Then the central banks confiscated the gold in the commercial banks. They wound up with the public's gold. It was a gigantic act of theft. It was the end of the gold coin standard. There was a huge loss of liberty.

This happened in the United States on Monday, March 6, 1933, at 1 AM. President Roosevelt unilaterally allowed the federal government to steal the public's gold at $20 an ounce. Then, when the government had a lot of the gold, Congress hiked the price to $35 an ounce, thereby enriching the federal government by 75% on the stolen gold. This was a gigantic act of theft. The public did not care. Most of the economists did not care.

The only logical case for having government ownership of gold was under a gold standard. The government had to sell its gold at a fixed price. Because the government always asserts a monopoly over the monetary system, and because the gold coin standard did allow a veto of central bank policies, there was a case -- weak -- for a central bank's vault full of gold.

It would have been far better if the governments of the world had never been allowed to exercise any control at all over the monetary systems. Money is like anything else of value. It is best managed under liberty. It is best managed by private ownership of the means of production. Government monopolies over money always lead to inflation, and the inflation creates the boom bust business cycle. But economists, other than Austrian School economists, do not believe this.

As soon as the gold coin standard is abolished, there is no further economic case for letting the government hold gold. If the public cannot veto central bank policies of monetary inflation by joining bank runs across the country, then there is no free market case in favor of the government ownership of gold. There is no free market case for the government ownership of any of the means of production.

Calling for the government ownership of gold is, in principle, the same as calling for the government ownership of the railroads, the airline industry, and the housing mortgage markets. Oh, I forgot. That is what we have today: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and VA loans. The public loves it. The public loves government-subsidized mortgages. Does this come as a surprise?

Similarly, gold bugs love government-subsidized gold prices.

ADAM SMITH ON MERCANTILISM

The argument in favor of large amounts of gold in government vaults goes back to mercantilism in the 17th century and 18th century.

Mercantilists believed that it was a good policy for the government to build up gold reserves. They believed this was a mark of the wealth of the nation. In order to build up these reserves, governments were supposed to pursue policies that would lead to more exports then imports. Mercantlists discouraged imported goods. They encouraged subsidies to exports. This would lead to an inflow of gold into the country, they argued. Then the government could tax businesses and stick more gold in the government's vault.

The great opponent of this argument was Adam Smith. Smith argued that the government should not interfere with trade. It should not subsidize exports. It should not restrict imports. It should let the free market work.

Smith argued that the basis of national wealth is the nation's economic output, not the amount of gold held in a government vault. Free trade leads to increased output. Therefore, interventionist policies that are designed to increase the amount of gold in a government vault should not be implemented. Here is a summary of Smith's position by Eamonn Butler, head of Britain's Adam Smith Institute.

The first theme in The Wealth of Nations is that regulations on commerce are ill-founded and counter-productive. The prevailing view was that gold and silver was wealth, and that countries should boost exports and resist imports in order to maximize this metal wealth. Smith’s radical insight was that a nation’s wealth is really the stream of goods and services that it creates. Today, we would call it gross national product. And the way to maximise it, he argued, was not to restrict the nation’s productive capacity, but to set it free.

Smith also said that the gold will not do the government much good. In a war, the gold would be depleted rapidly. The only way for governments to build up their own wealth is to encourage freedom of exchange. Let the economy grow. Then, if the government needs money, it taxes a growing economy instead of a stagnant or shrinking economy.

How can the government do this? By abandoning its programs of intervention.

GOLD BUGS AND MERCANTILISM

Gold bugs still hold the mercantilist position. They think that the essence of wealth for a nation is for the national government to increase its gold holdings. They will not accept the arguments of Adam Smith. They have never read Smith. They know nothing about his arguments.

Consider this question. "Is it better for private citizens to hold a valuable asset, or is it better for the government to hold it?" Let me put it another way. "Is it better to have wealth in private hands or the government's hands?"

In matters other than gold, gold bugs say that they want to strengthen the private economy. They don't want government interference in the economy. They think that liberty is better for the creation of wealth. But if you ask them about gold, they love to hear about central banks buying gold and putting it in government or central bank vaults.

This is an economically self-interested argument. They want government intervention into the private sector: gold's price. They want central banks to issue fiat money to buy gold. They want the price of gold to go up. They want a central bank subsidy for the price of gold. They cheer when a central bank buys gold. "This is liberation. Let's have the governments of the world issue lots more fiat money, come into the market, buy gold, and thereby raise the price of gold!"

Adam Smith was right: we cannot trust capitalists to do the right thing when their personal profits are under consideration. They will sell out liberty every time in order to line their pockets with money.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary. (Wealth of Nations, Chapter X, Part II)

Think this through. Most gold bugs have not thought it through.

Central banks buy investment assets with newly created money. They never sell assets, such as government bonds, in order to get money to buy gold. They always create money out of nothing in order to buy gold.

Therefore, asking the government's central bank to buy gold is asking for fiat money inflation. This fiat money is going to go into the economy. Prices are going to rise, or else not fall. People who own gold benefit. Most people do not benefit. People on fixed incomes are hurt. For them, the central bank's purchase of gold is a liability. Prices go up. Their income does not go up. They have to cut back on spending.

Here is the reality of civil government intervention into a private market. If one group is benefited by government action, some other group is hurt by the same action. This is as true of the purchase of gold by a central bank as it is true of the purchase of government bonds by a central bank. Somebody wins. Most people lose. That's the nature of civil government.

Gold bugs say they understand this. But they do not believe it as soon as their personal profits are on the line. Whenever they can make a buck, meaning a digital buck, they rush to get the government to take action. They love intervention as long as it lines their pockets.

Am I cynical? You bet I am. I have read Adam Smith on collusion, and I believe him.

CENTRAL BANKS SHOULD SELL ALL OF THEIR GOLD

Central banks should sell every ounce of gold in their vaults. Why do I say this? Because gold is a valuable asset. Valuable assets should be owned by individuals, not governments.

I don't want to see the expansion of government. I don't want to see a government get richer as a result of creating money out of nothing, and then buying assets from private citizens.

Governments tell their central banks to buy foreign bonds by going into the market with newly created fiat money and buying these bonds. The central bank could buy the domestic government's bonds just as well. But politicians want to hold down the value of the domestic currency in order to subsidize exports. This is mercantilism. It was a bad idea in 1650. It was a bad idea in 1776. It is a bad idea today.

If a central bank buys gold from another central bank, this increases the amount of money in circulation in the nation's commercial banks. This lowers the value of the domestic currency. This is a bad thing for the economy. The same is true if the central bank buys gold from South African gold mines. It doesn't matter what the government buys. The central bank is going to create money in order to buy it. This is inflationary. It is an intervention in the economy. This is a Bad Thing.

What can the governments do with the gold? It's useless to them. They don't sell it.

I wish they would sell all of it.

RETURNING STOLEN GOLD

Most people can't follow long chains of economic reasoning. Actually, most people can't follow short chains of economic reasoning. Most people also love to see whatever they own as an investment asset get subsidized by the government. So, gold bugs abandon all traces of free market theory, and they call for more gold purchases by central banks. They don't care which governments buy the gold. As long as governments are buying gold, they rejoice.

I do not. Gold is a tool of monetary stability, but only when it is in private hands. It is a tool of production, but only when it is in private hands. Gold is an economic asset, which is why I do not want governments or central banks to have vaults full of gold.

They stole the gold in 1914 and 1933. Why should anybody who promotes the free market want these thieving governments not only to hang on to the stolen goods, but increase the amount of goods stolen from the public by issuing central banks' counterfeit money to buy more? Why is a policy of theft in 1914 and 1933 a bad thing, but exactly the same policy today -- theft through monetary inflation -- a good thing?

Ludwig von Mises had a term for this outlook: polylogism. He said that people don't apply the same logic of economics to every market. They exempt certain markets from the logic of economics. This is surely the case of gold owners who believe in the gold coin standard, but who also believe that central banks can and should buy the people's gold with newly created counterfeit money, and put the gold into the banks' vaults. This makes no economic sense, but it is almost universally believed by gold bugs.

CONCLUSIONS

End the Fed. (Deadline: next week. November 1 at the latest.)

Mint gold coins. (Deadline: end of fiscal year 2019: September 30)

Sell the coins. (Deadline: as soon as they are minted)

https://www.garynorth.com/public/17271.cfm

Vox Popoli: There is no black extremism

Steve Sailer points out that the New York Times has claimed that there is no such thing as racist black extremism:

Wait, what exactly is black identity extremism? The answer is: nothing. It’s a fiction, as others have powerfully argued, including Andrew Cohen, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice.

But that doesn’t make the report any less sinister. As Cohen pointed out, the F.B.I. has a “history of surveillance and intimidation of black Americans that frequently goes beyond legitimate law enforcement into paranoia, racism, and political expediency.”

The F.B.I. document takes pains to say that the mere exercise of constitutional rights to protest and even the “rhetorical embrace” of violent tactics “may not” constitute extremism. But the danger — or even the aim — is that the entire racial justice movement gets painted with the brush of terrorism.

The next time there is an act of violence by an African-American against police officers, brace yourself for the right-wing media or the attorney general or the tweeter in chief to seize on the phrase “black identity extremists.”

 Neither Mr. Rosenthal nor Mr. Sailer appears to have noticed that the inevitable conclusion of this line of reasoning is that murderous violence and other criminal behavior is simply normal black behavior.

Is that really the position the New York Times wishes to publicly assert?

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/10/there-is-no-black-extremism.html?m=1

The Mythical Far Right - By Bruce Walker

Few ideas are as silly or destructive as the idea that there is an "ideological spectrum" that has at one extreme Nazis and fascists and at the other end communists.  There is no "far right" that connects in any way with conservatism.  The communists and Nazis are not simply totalitarians, but totalitarians who believe in almost identical values.  That is why Orwell in 1984 could describe an Inner Party that everyone understands but fits nowhere on an "ideological spectrum."

Moving too far in the direction of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater never, ever leads to totalitarianism, but moving too far in the direction of Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi always leads to totalitarianism.  All totalitarians believe in is power and all the goodies that flow from a monopoly of power.  That is why the vast majority of German communists joined the Nazi Party after it came to power and why practically all the Nazi leadership was composed of Marxists and radical socialists.

There was a reason why the word commu-Nazi was once on the lips of pundits in the free democratic West.  Nazis, communists, and fascists were virtually indistinguishable in their rhetoric, programs, and actions.  All hated God, particularly Christianity; all loved statism, particularly highly centralized statism (the destruction of the individuality of the states of Germany was noted in 1934 as the salient political change wrought by Nazis); and all demanded the rule by political party and not by normal government.

What is meant, then, by the "danger of the far right" – like what we have seen in recent European elections, particularly last month in Germany and this month in Austria?  If that danger is anti-Semitism, then we must grasp the grim fact that the notional "left" is anti-Semitic and has been for a long time.  The Soviets were virulently hateful toward Jews and treated Jews worse than the tsars did.  Iran, which routinely threatens the destruction of Israel, could be placed on the "far left" rather than the "far right" if we must subscribe to the illogical "ideological spectrum."

What about grievances to victim groups?  Again, the Nazis based their entire argument for power on the victimization of the German people.  As with all lies by totalitarians, there was a smidgen of truth in Nazi complaining.  The Allies starved Germans after the Armistice to force better terms, and the Allies either denied plebiscites (in Austria and in Alsace-Lorraine) or ignored the results of plebiscites (in Silesia).  But this minor oppression of Germans never justified another world war or a holocaust. 

Why, then, do totalitarians continue to profess the existence of "extremist" groups on the ends of the "ideological spectrum"?  If there is no ideological spectrum, then facts, policy positions, and intellectual integrity are the only arguments for asking people to trust anyone with power.  We see in America some people who would love that to be the determining factor in elections and some people who would recoil in horror at that consequence.

What does the manifestation of so-called "far right" electoral successes really mean?  It means that some politicians are brave enough to deny the consolidation of power in tighter and smaller groups, which means an assertion of nationalism (or in America, federalism) and a rejection of such farcical illusions as the European Union or the United Nations.  It also means that voters are beginning to see the light, perhaps just before sunset.  This "far right" means also the decentralization of power right down to the individual and away from the state. 

It also means the assertion of historic values of Western civilization, and it means a defense of those values against totalitarians, which means radical Islam, Marxism, and all other groups who are intent upon the destruction of Western civilization.  These political movements in Britain, France, Germany, and Austria, and elsewhere in Europe, are "extremist" only in defending these vital and noble traditions against the real mobs and gangs of our planet.  We should hope these movements prevail in Europe and the rest of the Western world.  They are, in many ways, our only hope.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/10/the_mythical_far_right.html