Non-Negotiable Political Demands

[GOS_Queen]

I found this yesterday on LewRockwell.com and thought it was refreshing ... what do you think?



Non-Negotiable Political Demands

by Gary North
by Gary North

DIGG THIS

We don't run this country, or any country. Our political ideas are not taken seriously by politicians, editorial writers, or the talking heads on television. They are not taken seriously in the school systems. There is no textbook in any social science that takes them seriously.
What are these ideas? I have compiled a list of non-negotiable political demands. Each demand calls for the abolition of a government practice or a government agency.

• Wars that have not been declared by Congress
• The maintenance of military bases outside the United States
• Military defense treaties (NATO, CENTO, etc.)
• America's membership in the United Nations Organization
• Graduated ("progressive") income taxation
• Tax-funded education at any level
• Government licensing of the right to keep and bear arms
• The Federal Reserve System's monopoly over money
• The Social Security system
• Medicare and Medicaid
• The Central Intelligence Agency
• NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
• The National Parks system
• The Post Office
• The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
• The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
• The Food and Drug Administration

This is my short list. I could have made it longer. But this is long enough.
This list of things to abolish is so far outside of mainstream politics that anyone proposing more than one of them is dismissed as a kook. The vast majority of voters would agree with this assessment. Neither of the major political parties would adopt even one of these demands in its platform, even when most voters who read their party's platform (under 1%) know that political parties rarely push for any plank in their platforms once the election is over.
These practices and institutions are therefore equally non-negotiable by the people who control this country.
Non-negotiable political demands are inescapable concepts. It is never a question of non-negotiable political demands vs. no non-negotiable political demands. It is always a question of whose non-negotiable political demands are in force and which agencies will enforce them at what cost.
For those of us who have adopted this list as our own, national politics is a fruitless waste of time, money, energy, and emotional commitment. With the exception of Ron Paul, no politician committed to this list or anything close to it has run for the Presidency since Grover Cleveland. No one receiving the nomination of his party for any office above Congressman in my lifetime has publicly committed to as many as half of these demands.
Yet I contend that most of these demands will be met within the lifetime of my children. Why am I so optimistic about this list? Because I am optimistic about the costs of continuing to operate everything on the list. They will bankrupt the central government.
WHEN MONEY DIES
People ask me: "When will we get our liberties back?" I always answer: "When checks from Washington D.C. no longer buy anything."
An overnight collapse of the monetary system would be catastrophic. In contrast, the erosion of the dollar to zero over a decade or more would be liberating.
The government is going broke. All over the West, all national governments are going broke. This is the fundamental political fact of our age. This is the elephant in the living room.
Two historians of international repute announced this scenario within a few months of each other: Martin van Creveld, in The Rise and Decline of the State (1999), and Jacques Barzun, in From Dawn to Decadence (2000). In their concluding chapters, both authors predicted the disintegration of the modern nation-state, and for the same two reasons: (1) the inability of the nation-state to defend its citizens from crime and violence: (2) the impossibility of the nation-state to fulfill its promises of income security to retired people.
The nation-state is steadily losing legitimacy. This is the political fact that the pundits refuse to discuss. Without widespread legitimacy – respect that generates voluntary cooperation by citizens – a civil government is doomed. It must resort to power, and the enforcement of power is costly.
The nation-state is growing broke. Local civil governments will then step into the gap. The break-up of the nation-state is assured. This will not be secession in the sense of an armed rebellion at the local level. It will be something far more fundamental: the disintegration of the nation-state. It will not be able to enforce its laws and collect taxes. That is always the end of a unit of civil government.
PLANNING FOR THE TRANSITION
People who have adopted the list of non-negotiable demands should not get excited about any election above the county. If they do, they are wasting scarce resources. They are deluding themselves. Congress is not about to adopt even one of the demands. The framework of modern national government rests on the extension of government power into more and more areas of economic life.
This was described half a century ago by political scientist C. Northcote Parkinson. He was a humorist. He took very serious themes and made them funny. His most famous book was Parkinson's Law. His most famous law was this: "Work expands so as to fill the time allotted for its completion." But his most relevant law really had the characteristics of a law: the hierarchy of promotion. In every government agency, people get promoted in terms of how many employees are under their jurisdiction. Until they get the required number, they will not get promoted.
Government only grows. Budgets only grow. This guarantees the eventual breakdown of government. When tax resources cannot be expanded because government policies have reduced economic growth and therefore the tax base, the government can no longer fulfill its economic promises. This usually occurs very rapidly – "without warning" for those who believe in salvation by legislation, which includes almost everyone. Those who have become dependent on welfare payments find that the government increasingly allocates scarce resources by (1) forcing people to line up or (2) making payoffs to officials. This was the two-fold solution in every Communist paradise.
When this happens, paralysis appears at the top. This creates opportunities further down the chain of command. This is the logic of secession by standing still. The local governments do not formally secede. They just cease cooperating with the national government. This was how the Roman Empire fell. Legitimacy shifted to local agencies of government. The central government maintained the illusion of sovereignty, but this was a sham, especially in the Western half of the empire after Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople.
When Byzantium replaced Rome, its rulers maintained their authority by stable money. For a thousand years, the government did not debase the gold coinage. The government survived.
The Federal Reserve System will not do equally well. Neither will Washington.
CONCLUSION
Those who have mentally adopted the list of non-negotiable demands must face political facts: that list operates, negatively, in every state capital and in Washington. It is non-negotiable for the other side. It will remain non-negotiable for as long as the central government does. This will not be forever.

February 25, 2008

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com.He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

Gary North Archives

Find this article at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north609.html

[chip anderson]

The man in a fool. Many of these things are required for you survival an maintence. Many are abused and over used. There is room for refinement in everything government does. There is room for elimination of a whole lot government does. But doing away with our overseas bases, and the FDA is beyond rediculous.

Chip

[DragonLensmanWV]

Looks to me to be an over-inflated ego.

The VAST majority of voters would agree with him?
Balderdash!
Isolationism just will not work.

[Spexvet]

If our nation-state fails, we would revert to a feudal system, which is what happened after the collapse of Rome. Come to think of it, we already live in what amounts to a Lord/Vassal system now.

[rinselberg]

Isolationism.. will not work.

I remember when Bill Clinton was addressing an assembly at a naval facility of some kind during the U.S.-NATO intervention in Kosovo.

"Twice in this century, Americans have learned the hard way that their fate is inseparable from events in Europe ..."

Not verbatim, but very close. I thought that was rather eloquent in a Clinton-esque way. The common touch.. shades of LBJ. I guess I'm thinking of LBJ because I just saw a brand new three-hour documentary about the U.S. role in Vietnam. It made me think: That "episode" should have come to a more satisfactory end. The 1968 Tet Offensive left the heart of the insurgency (Viet Cong in South Vietnam) destroyed and the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) badly damaged. General Westmoreland wanted to insert more U.S. forces and try to consolidate the military gains. I think they should have set up a combined U.S. Air Force for Indochina (USAFI) plus a South Vietnamese Army in a way that they never did. Protect the South more effectively, get some tax revenues collected down there (South) and put the South's army on a financial basis where they could start to afford some of their own basic supplies, like small arms and ammunition.

Not a big fan of Ho Chi Minh, here. Too stubborn. Too determined to make a point at the entire world's expense. Once they got rid of that moron Ngo Dinh Diem in the South, "Vietnam" started to make a lot more sense from the U.S. point of view.


"Inside the Vietnam War" on National Geographic TV

Inside the Vietnam War takes you inside covert operations, gives you a seat at the military strategy table and lets you witness the emotional toll of war through the eyes of the soldiers and the pilots who undertook dozens of death-defying missions. Woven together with testimonials from more than 50 Vietnam veterans, archival audio and video footage, and never-before-seen photos, the special features the harrowing firsthand accounts of the brave men and women who lived through the war.

[For-Life]

Okay, I work on the adminstrative side of government. You quickly learn that there is an extremely important balance of administration and political. You learn that if it becomes more administrative then it is not democratic. You also learn that if it becomes more political, you have a system where nothing gets done. So from my position, I get annoyed when someone says something like the chair of the Federal Reserve is not elected.

[1968]

Looks to me to be an over-inflated ego.

The VAST majority of voters would agree with him?
Balderdash!
Isolationism just will not work.

For context, North stated: "This list of things to abolish is so far outside of mainstream politics that anyone proposing more than one of them is dismissed as a kook. The vast majority of voters would agree with this assessment." From the responses here, he is absolutely correct. If one is to propose abolishing more than one of the items in the aforementioned list, he or she is likely to be dismissed as a kook (or something similar).

Also, I did not see any reference to advocating isolationism in his statement.

[rinselberg]

I did not see any reference to advocating isolationism in his statement.

• Maintenance of military bases outside the United States
• Military defense treaties (NATO, CENTO, etc.)
• America's membership in the United Nations
• Central Intelligence Agency

Calling for the abolition of any one from this list is "isolationist" in my view. Calling for the abolition of the entire list is isolationism to the max. Or isolationism with extreme prejudice, to use a somewhat out-of-date euphemism.


"Inside the Vietnam War" on National Geographic TV

Inside the Vietnam War takes you inside covert operations, gives you a seat at the military strategy table and lets you witness the emotional toll of war through the eyes of the soldiers and the pilots who undertook dozens of death-defying missions. Woven together with testimonials from more than 50 Vietnam veterans, archival audio and video footage, and never-before-seen photos, the special features the harrowing firsthand accounts of the brave men and women who lived through the war.

[1968]

• Maintenance of military bases outside the United States
• Military defense treaties (NATO, CENTO, etc.)
• America's membership in the United Nations
• Central Intelligence Agency

Calling for the abolition of any one from this list is "isolationist" in my view. Calling for the abolition of the entire list is isolationism to the max. Or isolationism with extreme prejudice, to use a somewhat out-of-date euphemism.

Isolationism is a foreign policy which combines a non-interventionist military policy and a political policy of economic nationalism (protectionism).

Source

Given that an isolationist is one who wants nothing to do whatsoever with other countries, calling for the abolition of any of the above items does not make a person or a country "isolationist". North is certainly not advocating economic nationalism or protectionism; it appears he believes that the US shouldn't meddle in the affairs of other nations.

[GOS_Queen]

I whittled the piece down to the main points (as I see them ) ... We are going broke ... or we ARE already broke ...

How can we maintain this empire overseas? We really "NEED" military presence in 120-130 countries? There are ONLY about 192 recognized countries in the world!

Why must we be so woven into the United Nations? Should we remain a sovereign nation or be under a world government? Our country finances the bulk of the "donations" to the UN. For what? So that there can be misuse and corruption of how that money gets spent? and this helps the United States of America HOW?

Government is a bloated mess ... In billing post op glasses to medicare, I am faced with a list of HOW MANY codes to bill SV, BI, TRI? I "have" to put modifiers on the form so that they will know which is a lens? which is a "non-covered add on" ?? :hammer: For heaven's sake ... if you are only paying one fee for frame ... does it really matter how much the entire frame is? why the need to break it out into the base frame cost and the upcharge frame cost? and lenses, for heaven's sake, if you look at the difference in the fees they will pay, well, BIG WHOOP! Why not use ONE code for SV, one for Bifocal and one for trifocal? See? That's not so hard, is it? It doesn't have to be that complicated! :finger:

Thanks for listening :o

The government is going broke. All over the West, all national governments are going broke. This is the fundamental political fact of our age. This is the elephant in the living room.
Two historians of international repute announced this scenario within a few months of each other: Martin van Creveld, in The Rise and Decline of the State (1999), and Jacques Barzun, in From Dawn to Decadence (2000). In their concluding chapters, both authors predicted the disintegration of the modern nation-state, and for the same two reasons: (1) the inability of the nation-state to defend its citizens from crime and violence: (2) the impossibility of the nation-state to fulfill its promises of income security to retired people.

The nation-state is steadily losing legitimacy. This is the political fact that the pundits refuse to discuss. Without widespread legitimacy – respect that generates voluntary cooperation by citizens – a civil government is doomed. It must resort to power, and the enforcement of power is costly.

The nation-state is growing broke. Local civil governments will then step into the gap. The break-up of the nation-state is assured. This will not be secession in the sense of an armed rebellion at the local level. It will be something far more fundamental: the disintegration of the nation-state. It will not be able to enforce its laws and collect taxes. That is always the end of a unit of civil government.

Government only grows. Budgets only grow. This guarantees the eventual breakdown of government. When tax resources cannot be expanded because government policies have reduced economic growth and therefore the tax base, the government can no longer fulfill its economic promises. This usually occurs very rapidly – "without warning" for those who believe in salvation by legislation, which includes almost everyone. Those who have become dependent on welfare payments find that the government increasingly allocates scarce resources by (1) forcing people to line up or (2) making payoffs to officials. This was the two-fold solution in every Communist paradise.

When this happens, paralysis appears at the top. This creates opportunities further down the chain of command. This is the logic of secession by standing still. The local governments do not formally secede. They just cease cooperating with the national government. This was how the Roman Empire fell. Legitimacy shifted to local agencies of government. The central government maintained the illusion of sovereignty, but this was a sham, especially in the Western half of the empire after Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople.

When Byzantium replaced Rome, its rulers maintained their authority by stable money. For a thousand years, the government did not debase the gold coinage. The government survived.

February 25, 2008

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com.He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

Gary North Archives

Find this article at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north609.html

[rinselberg]

The U.S. doesn't have to maintain a military presence beyond the borders of the fifty states.. unless you happen to be interested in raw materials or products that are imported from or exported to other countries. The security of international travelers. International cooperation on climate change and other environmental, medical, health and science issues. Effectiveness of international arms limitation agreements, as we have with Russia. International cooperation among law enforcement agencies and extraditions of criminal suspects across international borders. And that's just for starters..

U.S. military presence in 120 to 130 countries.. presence ranges from a theater of conflict (Iraq; Afghanistan) to smaller, peacekeeping forces (Balkans) to overseas air bases (Diego Garcia) and all the way down to small-scale training missions, liaison offices (exchanging information) and security details at U.S. embassies.

There's a tradeoff between the expenses associated with supporting an overseas base (like Diego Garcia) and the capabilities of bases within the U.S. to support defense missions. When the era of "rocket planes" arrives (they're working on it), maybe we could house our entire Air Force on bases within the fifty states. At this time, we need to have air elements that are based closer to their expected areas of operation, like Iraq and Afghanistan. Overseas bases like Diego Garcia fill that requirement for us.

We don't have to like everything about the U.N.--we just need to work at making sure that we get as close to our money's worth as possible. Our U.N. contributions are not a large fraction of the federal budget. Not by any means. It's money. But it's not MONEY, like the Iraq war (for example).

There's an excellent report on United Nations funding and how the U.S. fits into that picture that you can browse on line.