[Peace-discuss] larry flynt on freedom and monetary policy

[C. G. Estabrook]

Flynt's right to recall the "second revolution," Shays' Rebellion, but he's
wrong about its effect.

It led to the secret, treasonous assembly at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787
(treasonous because the participants had sworn allegiance to the Articles of
Confederation). The settler ruling class, panicked by Shays, needed a strong
central government to put down such rabble.  (I recently quoted on this list
Abigail Adams' [1744–1818] opinion of Shays and his associates as “ignorant,
restless desperadoes, without conscience or principals.”)

And they got it. The chief thinker of the Constitutional Convention, James
Madison, wrote that the purpose of the government devised there was “to protect
the minority of the opulent against the majority.” That is of course the 
government we have now.

Political power, Madison explained, must be in the hands of “the wealth of the
nation,” men who can be trusted to “secure the permanent interests of the
country” -- the rights of the propertied -- and to defend those interests
against the “leveling spirit” of the general public. If the public were allowed
to participate freely in elections, Madison warned his colleagues, their
“leveling spirit” might lead to measures to improve the conditions of those who
“labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal
distribution of its blessings.”

Some things haven't changed in 222 years.  --CGE


E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> I am not much of a fan of Larry Flynt's Sade-esque libertine approach to 
> immorality nor his adversary Falwell's truncated and perverted treatment of
> the Good News, but I would even quote Barack H. Obama if I caught Barry
> telling the truth.
> 
> Flynt accurately attacks the entrenched oligarchy and calls for a National
> Strike.
> 
> Larry Flynt (Publisher of Hustler magazine and free speech advocate) Posted:
> August 20, 2009 08:15 PM Common Sense 2009
> 
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-flynt/common-sense-2009_b_264706.html
> 
> The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been
> taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are
> the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people
> President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our
> elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and
> Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America,
> corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations/ are/
> the government.
> 
> This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the
> very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with
> taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's
> hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives
> multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day.
> They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry
> Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters."
> 
> But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do
> these words of President Obama sound like change?
> 
> "A culture of irresponsibility took root, from Wall Street to Washington to
> Main Street." There it is. Right there. We are Main Street. We must,
> according to our president, share the blame. He went on to say: "And a
> regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th-century economic
> crisis -- the Great Depression -- was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and 
> sophistication of a 21st-century global economy."
> 
> This is nonsense.
> 
> The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did -- knowing
> that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes,
> they most certainly knew that) -- was because the financial elite had bribed
> our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market
> Crash of 1929.
> 
> Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending
> banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization
> Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and
> Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less
> oversight -- and we've all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious
> legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these
> problems.
> 
> Instead, Obama wants to increase the oversight power of the Federal Reserve.
> Never mind that it already had significant oversight power before our most
> recent economic meltdown, yet failed to take action. Never mind that the Fed
> is not a government agency but a cartel of private bankers that cannot be
> held accountable by Washington. Whatever the Fed does with these supposed new
> oversight powers will be behind closed doors.
> 
> Obama's failure to act sends one message loud and clear: He cannot stand up
> to the powerful Wall Street interests that supplied the bulk of his campaign
> money for the 2008 election. Nor, for that matter, can Congress, for much the
> same reason.
> 
> Consider what multibillionaire banker David Rockefeller wrote in his 2002
> memoirs:
> 
> "Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best
> interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as
> 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a
> more integrated global political and economic structure -- one world, if you
> will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."
> 
> 
> Read Rockefeller's words again. He actually admits to working against the
> "best interests of the United States."
> 
> 
> Need more? Here's what Rockefeller said in 1994 at a U.N. dinner: "We are on
> the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis,
> and the nations will accept the New World Order." They're gaming us. Our
> country has been stolen from us.
> 
> Journalist Matt Taibbi, writing in /Rolling Stone/, notes that esteemed 
> economist John Kenneth Galbraith laid the 1929 crash at the feet of banking
> giant Goldman Sachs. Taibbi goes on to say that Goldman Sachs has been behind
> every other economic downturn as well, including the most recent one. As if
> that wasn't enough, Goldman Sachs even had a hand in pushing gas prices up to
> $4 a gallon.
> 
> The problem with bankers is longstanding. Here's what one of our Founding
> Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, had to say about them:
> 
> "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of
> their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and the
> corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all
> property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their
> father's conquered."
> 
> 
> We all know that the first American Revolution officially began in 1776, with
> the Declaration of Independence. Less well known is that the single strongest
> motivating factor for revolution was the colonists' attempt to free
> themselves from the Bank of England. But how many of you know about the
> second revolution, referred to by historians as Shays' Rebellion? It took
> place in 1786-87, and once again the banks were the cause. This time they
> were putting the screws to America's farmers.
> 
> Daniel Shays was a farmer in western Massachusetts. Like many other farmers
> of the day, he was being driven into bankruptcy by the banks' predatory
> lending practices. (Sound familiar?) Rallying other farmers to his side,
> Shays led his rebels in an attack on the courts and the local armory. The
> rebellion itself failed, but a message had been sent: The bankers (and the
> politicians who supported them) ultimately backed off. As Thomas Jefferson
> famously quipped in regard to the insurrection: "A little rebellion now and
> then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
> with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
> 
> Perhaps it's time to consider that option once again.
> 
> I'm calling for a national strike, one designed to close the country down for
> a day. The intent? Real campaign-finance reform and strong restrictions on
> lobbying. Because nothing will change until we take corporate money out of
> politics. Nothing will improve until our politicians are once again
> answerable to their constituents, not the rich and powerful.
> 
> Let's set a date. No one goes to work. No one buys anything. And if that 
> isn't effective -- if the politicians ignore us -- we do it again. And again.
> And again.
> 
> The real war is not between the left and the right. It is between the average
> American and the ruling class. If we come together on this single issue,
> everything else will resolve itself. It's time we took back our government
> from those who would make us their slaves.