Guest Post by Bill Bonner
All earthly empires die. Is this the end? Only God knows.
– St. Augustine, 413 AD
POITOU, FRANCE – Yesterday, in advance of the G7 pow-wow this weekend, Donald Trump tweeted his position on trade:
If we charge a country ZERO to sell their goods, and they charge us 25, 50 or even 100 percent to sell ours, it is UNFAIR and can no longer be tolerated. That is not Free or Fair Trade, it is Stupid Trade!
He’s got that nearly right. Trade barriers are certainly not free. And fairness has nothing to do with it. They are just stupid.
Empire Dies
We’re not going to tolerate this anymore, said the American president. If the foreigners do stupid things… well, by golly… we will, too! If they tax our stuff, we’ll tax theirs.
We are sneaking up on our prey, hiding in the tall grass until we get a good, clean shot.
Our target: the U.S. government and how it has changed. Since when, we wonder, did it care about how other nations abuse their citizens or mangle their economies?
Since when did the U.S. president – on his own say-so – get to decide how much we pay for our cars or our spaghetti?
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
We’ve been trying to understand how the federal government could be one thing – on paper – and an entirely different thing in reality.
Not that we have any particular fascination with government. But the feds now have immense powers that are nowhere granted in the Constitution… and they’re using them to wreck the economy… and put the U.S. into a nightmare of debt, inflation, depression, repression, war, and revolution.
Those are the kinds of things you get when an empire dies.
On paper, this Decline and Fall ought to be easily avoidable. A show of hands in Congress and you can balance the budget and bring the troops home.
But things ain’t necessarily what they seem. What is written on paper is not necessarily the same as what is.
And sometimes, people – individually and collectively – blow themselves up… and light the fuse with their own matches.
So… let’s have a look.
Borrowing and Bombing
We don’t recall when the Constitution was repealed. We don’t remember seeing any revolution or coup d’état on TV. Congress never voted on a new system of government. And as far as we know, no third party with a radical, new agenda has seized power.
And yet, the checks are gone. The balances, too. Elections are almost meaningless.
The news and the money are fake. The courts are powerless. The president and nearly every member of Congress has been captured by the Deep State. Borrowing and bombing continue to increase… with nothing to stop them.
Borrowing and bombing were not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. They designed a government of limited powers (powers not expressly given to the feds were reserved for the states and the people) that would pay its own way and mind its own business.
Their government was supposed to, as Washington put it, “avoid foreign entanglements.” Or, as John Quincy Adams described it in 1821: “She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”
She had no central bank; her money was limited, too. She insisted on “only gold or silver” money from the states and passed her own gold-backed currency act in 1792.
And debt? One hundred and fifty years after her founding, she had a national debt of only $19 billion. Jeff Bezos could have paid it off, and had $107 billion to spare.
Today, the U.S. has more than 1,000 times as much government debt as it did under Calvin Coolidge. By comparison, GDP is up only 190 times.
Coolidge came into office as an America Firster, with no intention of using U.S. troops abroad. But even he was soon drawn into the incipient empire program, and sent troops to Nicaragua to help put down a local rebellion.
Now, U.S. armed forces are looking for monsters in hundreds of different countries; where none can be found, they create them.
And, as near as we can tell, the feds can do pretty much any damned fool thing they want. The limits have long since been lifted.
One Word
How did this happen? The answer, we believe, is in the word: vernacular.
As we explained yesterday, there are formal structures – ordained by law, legislation, and official proclamation. And there are other things… that better describe how we really speak, do business, and get along with each other.
The classic win-win deal, promoted by Jesus of Nazareth two millennia ago, is not the law of the land anywhere; it is the vernacular.
It was never invented by anyone… no one got the Nobel Prize for coming up with it… and there are no legal penalties for not doing it.
Still, most people on the planet follow the rule, generally, on an everyday basis. If they want a burger, they give some money to the burger store. If they want money, they offer their time to an employer. If Ford wants to sell pickup trucks, it does its best to make people want them.
That is the commonly accepted way to get what you want and need in life. If you want a wife, you have to offer her something that makes it worth her while.
If you want a loaf of bread, you have to give something of equal value to the baker. No matter what you are after, whether it is love, respect, a fortune, or a bag of Frito-Lay corn chips, our advice is to earn it.
Only crooks, cads, and governments operate on a different model. And as the Republic evolved into an Empire, they proliferated.
They get, but they don’t want to give. They take, but they don’t want to make. They do unto others, but they make sure others can’t do unto them.
That model – win-lose, with trade wars, real wars, drones, fake currency, and debt – is carrying the U.S. empire to its inevitable destruction.
The only people who could stop it are Deep State insiders. And they will not, because they are on the win side of the deal.
It’s the rest of us who are on the losing side.
“Since when did the U.S. president – on his own say-so – get to decide how much we pay for our cars or our spaghetti?” Since we elected him to handle this stuff, dumbass.
More idiot “free trade” libertarianism…The results of free trade are quite well known–countries that embrace it, particularly with 3d world countries, get poorer fast….But guys like Bonner won’t notice that…
“More idiot “free trade” libertarianism..”
Actually, it’s classic liberalism (in the economic sense not political). The greatest period of growth and real prosperity (not substitution of credit for income) was during the period of classic liberalism, which lasted lasted up until the 1920’s. Of course, those were the days of the gold standard, when trade balances were settled in gold and no country could compensate for their poor productivity, by debasing the currency.
Today, there really isn’t any true free trade – it’s mercantilism made possible by phony money.
Thoroughly wrong.
Try looking at facts rather than propaganda. The United States, among others, was very heavily into import taxes until it completed industrialization. Alexander Hamilton himself wrote about “infant industries”.
This in turn was due to cotton. The United States export/import economy was largely revolving around cotton almost from the beginning: slaves in, cotton out to start with, then luxury goods and machinery in, cotton out. The New Englanders ironically were piggybacking on the vast cotton flow that England created – the sweat shops of the 1800s and early 1900s were making cloth and clothing much as England was doing.
It was only after the United States hit consumption limits that “free trade” became a thing – the internal manufacturers made too much for just Americans to use and so wanted in on the British Empire’s de facto monopolies in the Commonwealth nations as well as Europe.
Free trade libertarianism is exactly right. Hayek and von Mises were prominent in supporting free trade and “property rights” for the 1%.
The constitution was not repealed. It was replaced by administrative law and procedures. And where were the people when this rope a dope switch took place by our lawyer legislators at the federal and state levels of government? Asleep as usual but the lawyers who did it were not asleep. They knew what they were doing.
Most of the regulatory and trade-managing powers of the executive were given to him by Congress in duly-passed laws. Mitch McConnell and the Uniparty are trying to retrieve some of that authority over trade right now – but they’ll have to overcome a veto. Bwahahaha.
The US CONgress has a long history of giving away that which is not theirs to give. I believe Daniel Boon had to reprimand even the very first congress for trying to do just that.
The US Constitution is not what the patriots of the Revolution fought for, it is what they were forced to settle for by their Aristocratic overlords.
I agree with whoever said this article is has some retarded lolbertarian nonsense in it.
The popular vote.
The pendulum swung to far left and Trump is right.
Billy B. writes good. He pisses off the left on Monday and the right on Tuesday. Anyone that can piss off everyone gets my respect.
Not scared.
Wrist thick kudzu vines, zombie pockyclypse, and so forth.