A new report by Brown University’s Costs of War Project now estimates that by the end of fiscal year 2020, the US will have “spent” $6.4 trillion on a global “war on terror” in which more than three million people have died. And what do we have to show for it? And what will happen when payment is actually due (i.e. the Fed can no longer hide the costs by printing money)? Watch today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
A trillion here, a trillion there. Pretty soon you’re talking about a lot of money.
We are helping it by paying an overt tax, and allow the Fed to covertly tax away our purchasing power.
Maybe it is part of the human nature, laziness, greed, something like the 7 sin, that destined us to foster a plutocracy even if the forefathers had specificity experimented with the constitution to break the endless circle of dynastic downfall followed, yet by another monarch promising everything the lazy and greed wants, enlarging the state to prepare yet another cycle.
The Constitution did have some safeguards against “dynastic downfall” built into it by making the aristocracy non-hereditary. Once America’s merchant/planter aristocracy had talked the peasants into lifting the yoke of Britain’s hereditary monarchy off its neck, the next step was to re-empower itself absent that yoke and put the peasants back in their place. The Constitution was a declaration of counter-revolution, quickly followed by Washington leading an army into Pennsylvania to make sure the message was heard loud and clear.
“Washington leading an army into Pennsylvania”.
So, the very moment of invoking the power of state (the army) to enforce the constitution, is in contradiction with the voluntarism it meant to protect, it fell right back into the old cycle it meant to break, you mean?
Sometime I think people should be educated about the history to they would become more aware of the abuse of big government to legalized plunder the citizenry, instead of relying on it and continuously enlarge it, but the first thing to mind is yet again a school curriculum enforced by the state (i.e., department of education).
Maybe it is not the constitution itself being self-contradicting, it does recognize scenarios that the state power is necessary, for example, to fight illegal plundering and foreign enemy. It is the people’s tendency to rely on power (i.e., brilliant leaders) to solve their problem being the problem.
“So, the very moment of invoking the power of state (the army) to enforce the constitution”
The charges in the “Whiskey Rebellion” suppression included “erecting seditious poles” — liberty poles, the symbol of the revolution. How does that square with the Constitution’s supposed protection of free speech?
And it all started with Gorge Washington’s admin want some money to pay the debt accumulated during the war, so they resorted to legalized plunder (by taxation) they fought so hard to get rid of.
Even the forefathers can be such hypocrites in front the rules they themselves enacted.
Looks like there is no easy way to break the dynastic cycle we experienced throughout the history. Maybe it is deeply rooted in our born nature, that will always create empires with or without figure head monarchs, with or without the god.
However, I think the Constitution and the forefathers were aiming at the right direction, that they slowed down the deprivation of people’s economic/thought freedom long enough, so America can achieve the kind productivity and capital that made it the hegemony it is not supposed to be.
The power of the state should be its constitution which protect our rights and duties, but, if the government resort to military force to protect its constitution, then this constitution has becomes obsolete, and need to be change.
Just three millions people? just in Irak 500,000 people died because the USA imposed sanctions on that country, that later was invaded and its death toll about more than 600.000. How many have been killed in Afghanistan?