It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong - Andrew P. Napolitano [116]
What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? . . . And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
No, my readers, there is no security in such policies; only tyranny, oppression, and the death of liberty. As Justice Felix Frankfurter once said, “It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.” It is at precisely times like these that we must each decide for ourselves: Are we to secure our liberties, or cast them aside?
201
Chapter 12
A Dime Isn’t Worth a Penny Anymore:
The Right to Sound Money
The evils of the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) run so deep that its proponents understand its operations must take place in full secrecy. Murray N. Rothbard once said this about the Fed:
[T]here is a federal agency that tops the others in secrecy by a country mile. The Federal Reserve System is accountable to no one; it has no budget; it is subject to no audit; and no Congressional committee knows of, or can truly supervise, its operations. The Federal Reserve, virtually in total control of the nation’s vital monetary system, is accountable to nobody—and this strange situation, if acknowledged at all, is invariably trumpeted as a virtue.1
This fact, in tandem with the current financial crisis, has recently prompted calls for transparency of this system as a means to bring about a realization of all it does. Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), for example, has authored a bill to audit the Fed; a bill that enjoyed majorities in both houses of Congress, yet never became law. What is the purpose behind this push for transparency? The belief is that once the American people become aware of what these central bankers are clandestinely doing with our hard-earned money, the people will demand an end to the Fed.
Supporters of the Fed maintain that secrecy is the only way the system can achieve its twin goals of “maximizing full employment” and “stabilizing the currency.” If the system became politicized and open to public criticism, so the argument goes, it would not be able to achieve those two goals. Yet, since the institution of the secret Federal Reserve in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost about 93 percent of its value, and the U.S. economy has seen countless boom-and-bust cycles that have destroyed private wealth and caused massive unemployment. Moreover, as we are currently witnessing, the temptation to spend through crises, as is facilitated by the Federal Reserve System, is too great for most politicians to resist.
202
The Founders and drafters of the Constitution understood this danger, having witnessed it when the unsound Continental (the predecessor to the dollar, and basis of the phrase “not worth a Continental”) fell victim to hyperinflation in the early days of the nation. Accordingly, the Constitution made clear that only gold and silver could be used as legal tender. Nonetheless, what should have ended with a simple question of constitutional interpretation has grown into a massive system which has handicapped the ability of individuals to exercise their natural right to seek prosperity. As we shall see, the Fed, cloaked in its secrecy and esotericism, has offended the Natural Law as surely as any government agency we have yet witnessed.
Money Does Not Grow on Trees
This system of secrecy, conspiracy, and fraud naturally had its origins in secrecy, conspiracy, and fraud. To understand truly and appreciate fully why this system is so dangerous and unstable, we must understand where money comes from, how it led to the earliest banking systems, and how government management of it has caused economic chaos.
When human beings first started