By Jeff Thomas,
Feature Writer for Doug Casey’s International Man and Strategic Wealth Preservation
The following is a random assortment of headlines that we may see in the future. However, they’re not fanciful; they’re based upon historical political actions taken by past empires when they were in decline. The wording, however, has been modernised to reflect current media presentation.
An article by Jeff Thomas.
“President Announces Executive Order to Keep US Dollars at Home”
The accompanying article then goes on to describe that a financial crisis could be on the horizon, as US dollars are exiting the country. This is due to those people who are retired and who receive Social Security courtesy of the government, but live overseas, where they spend America’s money. In order to ensure that a crisis doesn’t occur, the president declares that those who “threaten the country’s solvency” in this way will have their cheques ceased until they return to US soil, so that they can reinvest in the Greater Good of all their countrymen.
“FBI Warnings Come to Pass – Domestic Terrorist Attacks in Five States. President Announces Emergency Measures”
Shootings occur in several states, all within a brief time period. The president orders martial law, citing the already established authorization under the Patriot Act and National Defence Authorization Act, which allows the suspension of habeas corpus. Although it’s initially announced as a temporary emergency measure, the country becomes a permanent police state.
“Recent Domestic Terrorism Incidents Linked to Inadequate Control of International Travel”
The accompanying article describes what FBI and CIA intel has “revealed” – that domestic terrorists travel in and out of the country at will and that, therefore, terrorist incidents could have been prevented if international travel were curtailed.
Most people today would agree that governments are becoming more restrictive and many of them are fearful that, in the future, there’s a danger that their liberties will be increasingly removed – a development they say they wouldn’t accept, were it to happen.
Yet, each time another liberty is impaired or removed, these same people shrug their shoulders and accept that the latest loss of liberty is “necessary” for the safety of all.
Why does this occur?
Well, each time a government seeks to curtail a freedom, the spin doctors devise a plausible explanation that suggests that the new restriction is being imposed for the good of the public.
This technique has worked well throughout history. Whenever a government chooses to oppress its people beyond the level that they’d normally accept, one of the most popular solutions is to capitalise on an existing event that instils fear in the people. If no such event occurs, it’s created, often as a false-flag incident – one where the government itself stages a threat to the security of the people, blames it on others, then offers to remove the threat by removing freedoms.
As John Adams said on many occasions, “Those who trade liberty for security have neither”. Quite so.
Whenever a country implements capital controls, migration controls or any other significant loss of freedom, it’s a sure bet that that government is slipping in its ability to hold onto the customary cooperation of its people. Any government that’s steadily robbed its people of their ambition and/or prosperity finds that, at some point, those people begin to vote with their feet. They tend to first move their money to a jurisdiction that’s less restrictive. At some point, they tend to move themselves to a jurisdiction that allows them greater freedom and opportunity.
The US was built upon this principle. Originally, colonists who were prepared to be hard-working and self-reliant, left England, Holland, Germany, etc., willing to accept the hardships of frontier life for the hope of greater self-determination. Later, in the 19th century, millions of similarly-minded people from all over Europe migrated west for the same reason. These people became the backbone of the industrial revolution, turning the US into the world’s most productive nation.
But, today, the shoe is clearly on the other foot. America has become grossly over-regulated and both money and people are quietly migrating elsewhere. As this trend becomes more prominent, we shall surely see greater restrictions on such people, who have inherited the pioneering spirit and are now seeking other countries where there’s greater opportunity for self-determination.
Again, none of the above is anything new. This scenario has played itself out time and again, throughout history. And, always, there have been warning signs, if the people were able to read them.
Invariably, the justification of greater restrictions, such as in the above hypothetical headlines, means the removal of freedoms. In every case, the spin used is that the removal is for “the greater good”.
Morris and Linda Tannehill, in The Market for Liberty, phrased it this way:
“Enslaving men ‘for the good of society’ is one of the most subtle and widespread forms of slavery”.
And, again historically, such restrictions are typically a last-ditch effort on the part of a declining country to trap their citizens like sheep in a pen, to be available for a final shearing before the collapse. Ayn Rand described it as follows:
“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force”.
Should we at some point in the near future see headlines like those above, we would be wise to take it as a warning (if we have any vision) that dramatically increased controls are, in fact, the death-knell of freedom.
The choice then will be whether to accept subjugation or vote with our feet.
This by no means suggests a change in our ideals. On the contrary, it means making a move in order to continue to live by our ideals, as exemplified in this final quote, from Thomas Paine:
“My country is wherever liberty lives”.
(Mister Paine was born in England, but moved to America in 1774 and never regretted his flight to freedom.)
Throughout history, there have always been countries that were in decline at the same time as there were countries that were opening up. The present time is no different. The principle remains the same; only the names of the countries change.
Jeff Thomas
International Man and Strategic Wealth Preservation
jeff.thomas1066@gmail.com
This article was originally posted in the Strategic Wealth Preservation Blog and copied here with permission of the autor.