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The Senate trial for now twice-impeached former president Donald Trump is set to begin this week, with little doubt over the outcome. A procedural vote in the Senate on the constitutionality of “removing from office” someone who is not in office revealed that nowhere near enough Republicans were willing to join their Democrat counterparts in voting to convict.
The seeds of sound-money destruction were sown at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which established that US dollars could be held as central bank reserves and were redeemable for gold by the US Treasury at thirty-five dollars an ounce. This was the so-called gold exchange standard, but only foreign central banks and some multinational organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), enjoyed this right of redemption. The system depended upon the solemn promise by the US that it would refrain from issuing unbacked dollars.
The word “technocrat” is seldom used by the liberty crowd. It invokes the idea of a bureaucracy using technical experts to somehow make the right decisions on behalf of the entire nation and stands as the antithesis of a free society. Sadly, it captures the essence of central banking as well. This week, news came out of both Italy and Australia showcasing how this works.
“Tyranny in form is the first step towards tyranny in substance,” warned Senator John Taylor two hundred years ago in his forgotten classic, Tyranny Unmasked. As the massive National Guard troop deployment in Washington enters its second month, much of the media and many members of Congress are thrilled that it will extend until at least mid-March. But Americans would be wise to recognize the growing perils of the militarization of American political disputes.
In the Age of Enlightenment, in the years in which the North Americans founded their independence, and a few years later, when the Spanish and Portuguese colonies were transformed into independent nations, the prevailing mood in Western civilization was optimistic. At that time all philosophers and statesmen were fully convinced that we were living at the beginning of a new age of prosperity, progress, and freedom.
