–We already have lost the war. For what exactly are American soldiers giving their lives?

Memorial Day weekend:
We are in a war and we already have lost. Some people believe the war began on September 11, 2011, but that was just a prominent salvo. The war actually began in 1775, and for many years we were winning.

It was a dual war, one for geography and one for a great idea – the idea of freedom, democracy and the rule of law – the idea that made America unique. We won the war for geography and never have looked back. In fact we have added massive pieces of geography, and today America’s land exists, safe and secure from any invaders.

We have enemies, but none is a likely threat to peel off any of our geography. New York is safe; California is safe; Alaska is safe; Hawaii is safe; everything in between is safe. The Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Islamist extremists – we fight them with weapons of war, but they have no chance to defeat us on the battlefield. They are annoying gnats, nothing more.

Yet they have defeated us in that other war, the war for freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Lest you feel this is one of those philosophical overstatements, made for shock effect, but lacking reality, I direct you to two articles:

Here are excerpts from an article written by John Mauldin, published May 28, 2011 and titled” “Trigger Points and Evasive Action” He asks, “When would a wise Jew have begun making plans to leave Germany?” but he really means, when did Germany become a dictatorship?

“When would a wise Jew have begun making plans to leave Germany? 1933? 1934? 1938? 1939?

“In retrospect, most people would say 1933, the year Hitler was appointed (not elected) Chancellor by President von Hindenburg. On 30 January, Hitler became Chancellor. He asked Hindenburg to dissolve the government and schedule new elections for March 5, which Hindenburg did.
[. . . ]
“On 27 February, the Reichstag building burned down. One man did it, who admitted he had done it. Hitler immediately identified him as a Communist, although even today, it is not clear that he did anything but act alone.

“Hitler used this as a propaganda tool. On March 5, the Nazis got 44% of the popular vote, up from 33%. With an allied party, they had 52% of the vote in the Reichstag.
[. . . ]
“On March 23, the government passed the Enabling Act. It took a two-thirds vote to do this. Hitler now possessed dictatorial powers. He had attained these by means of support by rival political parties.
[. . .]
“On April 1, a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses was staged by the S.A., which were technically private storm troops.
[. . .]
“What about 1935’s Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race? They made it illegal for Jews to be citizens.
[. . .]
“And so on, right down to Crystal Night in November 1938, when rioters broke the plate glass windows of 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses and burned or damaged 200 synagogues, meaning most synagogues in Germany.
[. . .]
“After that, over 100,000 Jews packed their bags and departed. Between 1933 and 1939, about half the Jews in Germany emigrated: 250,000. But half did not. “There were a series of trigger points, 1933 to 1939. Most Jews sat tight until very late.
[. . .]
“Laws enacted by the Reich government shall be issued by the Chancellor and announced in the Reich Gazette. They shall take effect on the day following the announcement, unless they prescribe a different date. Articles 68 to 77 of the Constitution do not apply to laws enacted by the Reich government.

“Articles 68 to 77 stipulated the procedures for enacting legislation in the Reichstag. ‘So what?’ This seems to have been a mere technicality. The language was so procedural. But there was substance to it. As we read on Wiki, ‘The Enabling Act allowed the cabinet to enact legislation, including laws deviating from or altering the constitution, without the consent of the Reichstag.’

“It was time to move out and move on . . . and not just if you were Jewish.

“Some people see the signs. Others do not. Some decide to get out while the getting is good. Others do not. “Incident by incident, trigger point by trigger point, people see signs. Most people ignore them. ‘It can’t happen here.’ Most times it doesn’t. Sometimes it does.”

As John Mauldin said, “It can’t happen here. Most times it doesn’t. Sometimes it does.” Could it happen in America? Has it already happened in America? Read excerpts from a May 28, 2011 article in Barry Ritholtz’s The Big Picture, titled “We’ve Gone from a Nation of Laws to a Nation of Powerful Men Making Laws in Secret.” (For the full article, go to: Secret Laws )

Some defendants are no longer allowed to see the “secret evidence” which the government is using against them. . . The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that judges can throw out cases because they don’t like or believe the plaintiff … even before anyone has had the chance to conduct discovery to prove their case. In other words, judges’ secret biases can be the basis for denying people their day in court, without even having to examine the facts.
[. . . ]
Congress just re-authorized the Patriot Act for another 4 years. However, Senator Wyden, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, notes that the government is using a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act different from what Congress and the public believe. . . “Known as Secret Law, the official interpretation of the Patriot Act could dramatically differ from what the public believes the law allows.”
[. . . ]
Most members of Congress have not even seen the secret legal interpretations that the executive branch is currently relying on and do not have any staff who are cleared to read them. Even if these members come down to the Intelligence Committee and read these interpretations themselves, they cannot openly debate them on the floor without violating classification rules.
[ . . . ]
So patently illegal is Obama’s war in Libya as of today that media reports are now coming quite close to saying so directly; see, for instance, this unusually clear CNN article today from Dana Bash. As a result, reporters today bombarded the White House with questions about the war’s legality, and here is what happened, as reported by ABC News‘ Jake Tapper:

Talk about “secret law.” You’re not even allowed to know the White House’s rationale (if it exists) for why this war is legal. It simply decrees that it is, and you’ll have to comfort yourself with that. That’s how confident they are in their power to operate behind their wall of secrecy: they don’t even bother any longer with a pretense of the most minimal transparency.

[. . . ]
Scott Horton – a professor at Columbia Law School and writer for Harper’s – says of the Bush administration memos authorizing torture, spying, indefinite detention without charge, the use of the military within the U.S. and the suspension of free speech and press rights:

We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it.

[ . . . ]
The United States has been in a declared state of emergency from September 2001, to the present. . . . “NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, I hereby declare that the national emergency has existed since September 11, 2001 . . . .”
That declared state of emergency has continued in full force and effect from 9/11 to the present. President Bush kept it in place, and President Obama has also.
[ . . .]
The Washington Times wrote on September 18, 2001: “Simply by proclaiming a national emergency on Friday, President Bush activated some 500 dormant legal provisions, including those allowing him to impose censorship and martial law.”
[ . . . ]
The New York Times wrote in an editorial:
Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the President may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack, or to any ‘other condition.’ (These) continuity of government laws were enacted without public or even Congressional knowledge, and neither the public or even Congress members on the Homeland Security Committee – let alone Congress as a whole – are being informed of whether they are still in effect and, if so, what laws govern.

So the war for freedom, democracy and the rule of law, now has been lost. The Germans didn’t see it coming, when Hitler stole their freedom, all in the name of national security, that all-purpose excuse every dictator uses, when he steals freedom from the people.

It is the same excuse President Bush used after 9/11, and it is the same excuse President Obama uses today. It’s so insidiously logical, so beguilingly rational: “The nation is threatened, so we must enact these ‘temporary’ measures. And yes, you may lose a bit of freedom, but the laws only threaten terrorists (Germany called them ‘Jews”) so you, being innocent, have nothing to worry about.”

Bush gave himself dictatorial powers, while Congress and the Supreme Court acquiesced. Obama now has inherited those dictatorial powers, while Congress and the Supreme Court, both more concerned with liberal vs conservative causes than with freedom, democracy and rule of law, continue to acquiesce. America now effectively is a dictatorship.

And that is how the war was lost. Please tell me again, on this Memorial Day weekend, for what exactly are the men and women in our armed forces giving their lives?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

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No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. It’s been 40 years since the U.S. became Monetary Sovereign, , and neither Congress, nor the President, nor the Fed, nor the vast majority of economists and economics bloggers, nor the preponderance of the media, nor the most famous educational institutions, nor the Nobel committee, nor the International Monetary Fund have yet acquired even the slightest notion of what that means.

Remember that the next time you’re tempted to ask a dopey teenager, “What were you thinking?” He’s liable to respond, “Pretty much what your generation was thinking when it screwed up my future.”

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY