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January 4, 2010

Obama and the 'Readjustment of Our National Life'

By Robert T. Smith
Barack Obama famously promised -- and is now delivering -- "fundamental change" to America by expanding the role of the federal government more than any president since FDR. Like Rahm Emanuel, FDR never let a crisis go to waste, using the Depression to accomplish a restructuring of the political economy. He knew how ambitious was his program. From his 1934 State of the Union speech:

It is to the eternal credit of the American people that this tremendous readjustment of our national life is being accomplished peacefully.

The revolution overcame America, and it passed without the typical bullets and blood attendant to other revolutionary events. 

In what is now a clearly prophetic discussion of our current political dilemma, Garet Garrett explains the Marxist template for the conquest of America that fomented via FDR's New Deal. As an author and editorial-writer-in-chief of the Saturday Evening Post, Garrett wrote among his many works the political monograph The Revolution Was, published in 1944.

In the above-referenced tome, Mr. Garrett lays out the New Deal game plan: the promise of security and stability in exchange for individual freedom. The crisis that provided the opportunity for the revolutionaries to formulate and implement the New Deal was the Great Depression. The following excerpt from Mr. Garrett's referenced literary work, while a bit dated, should look familiar. 

  • Repudiation of the United States Treasury's promises to pay.
  • Confiscation of the people's gold by trickery.
  • Debasement of the currency.
  • Deliberate inflation.
  • Spoliation of the savers, whose little rainy day hoards melted away.
  • Deficit spending to create buying power by conjury.
  • Monetization of debt.
  • The doctrine of a planned economy.
  • A scheme of taxation, class subsidies and Federal grants-in-aid designed ostensibly to redistribute the national wealth for social justice, but calculated in fact to reduce millions of citizens to subservience, bringing forty eight sovereign states to the status of provinces and to create in the executive principle a supreme government with extensive new powers, including the power to make its own laws by simply publishing from its bureaus rules and regulations having the force of law, disobedience punishable by fine or imprisonment.

While these enumerated concepts were unique to the situation at the time of the Great Depression, the general approach remains starkly similar to today's: Manipulate the currency and economy to control the people. 

The federal government has grown extra-constitutionally large and unsustainable over the decades since the New Deal. The function of a constitutional republic is really just forgotten history to most in our country. It's over, and Americanism lost. If a restoration is to occur, a new republic is needed, because the thoughts and character of the former framers and the conditions that gave rise to our once-great republic no longer exist.

While there are many formulas, ideas, and approaches to reverse the current reality, at the root there remains a single concept that must be restored if there is to be any hope: the sovereignty of the individual. The Declaration of Independence spoke of individual life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as the core of the philosophy characterizes our country. The Declaration of Independence did not provide this sovereignty; it simply denoted these sovereign rights, bestowed by our maker, and referenced their authority over all others, targeting government particularly as a construct of, and subservient to, We the People.   

Collectivism abhors individualism. The collective cannot stand for competition from sovereign individuals. All square pegs must fit in the round holes of the society for the collective to be managed and operated. Once, sovereign citizens instituted government; now, We the People are the responsibility of the government. The pot has taken control over the potter. The government will control our banks, businesses, use of energy, and apparently now, even our very bodies.     

Little is left of the American paradigm of the sovereign individual. Symbolically, we can look forward to the next 4th of July for what remains of the idea of America, although most people likely mark the day by celebrating nothing more than a fascination with pyrotechnics and an undying love of hot dogs.
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