Anxieties of a Gold Bull
By Bill Rummel
gold-eagle.com
A common reference to the American civil war by our 19th century ancestors was to mention it as the "Late Unpleasantness". It certainly wasn't any more "civil" than it was a War Between the States. From a southern view, I think one of the most sad expressions of grief were from Jefferson Davis: "We just want to be left alone." It was a conflict waged by the federal US Government upon a foreign central government, the newly consecrated Confederacy. Just as the American colonies seceded from Great Britain so did certain American sovereign states exercise their reserved powers, secede from the US central government. American scholars whom I appreciate recognize this period as the crisis point in America when her Constitution died. Maybe so.
In today's America we wallow in abundance of MBAs, PhDs, BAs, and of course, our BSs. As we know few attended college in the 19th century. Just being able to read and write was an accomplishment. But why, oh why, did earlier Americans, northern and southern, have a greater understanding of freedom, individual liberties, and limited government?
It is my belief that today's American has come to regard his federal government as the Great Provider rather than the Protector of his inalienable rights. It is of little concern to you if Social Security fails as long as you get yours. So what if our borders have become sieves as long as the "new" Americans don't take your job. Your Congress should crack down on the corporate crooks that are the real culprits for your vanishing stock market profits, abolishing fraud to the dustbin of history. As long as federal "aid" to education helps keep your property taxes down do you really care a whit that the bill as debt is being passed to your children, or some cattle rancher in Montana?
The point is we have disconnected from the real cost of lost freedoms because government has become distant from us. You don't even know who your local state representative is, do you? Why should you care if the decisions that affect you are made in Washington? After all, then, what could he do for you? But, then, you don't even know who your congressman is either. The few votes of those that understand the proper function of government is to protect - and not provide - are overwhelmed by those who continue to elect 21st century carpetbaggers as their agents, and sharing the spoils with an anointed few. So, then, what do you hope to achieve for yourself by buying gold? Bragging rights? An endowment for your children? Financial independence? Being able to buy a gallon of gas for one silver dime, or a car for five gold double eagles?
Think a little deeper my friends. What good shall come to you or your family if you have to defend your gold with an illegal gun, or conceal your gold ownership from a neighbor who gets a bounty for reporting you to the tax collector? You will be scorned and envied for your "wisdom." Your material well being may be improved relative to those around you, but spiritually and morally your life and the lives of those whom you love will still be dead on the inside.
The late congressman Larry McDonald of Georgia to illustrate the difference between a democracy and a republic to high school students would tell this story: A gathering of twenty people, all men but one woman. It was suggested that a vote should be taken to have the one woman's head shaved. All the men voted "Yea" with the lone "Nay" vote being cast, of course, by the one woman herself. When realizing that it was decided her head would be shaved she jumped up, exclaiming: "You can't do that! I have rights!" And, indeed, she does under our form of republican government. Under a democracy where majority rules, she wouldn't possess these rights, but under our Constitution her individual rights were to be protected. How do you look at our Constitution?
Alexis de Tocqueville when touring America's prison system in the 19th century remarked: "America is great because America is good. If she should ever cease being good, she will no longer be great." To which I might add, America is great in spite of government, not because of it! We have the roots of understanding our individual rights whereas Argentina, Brazil, and the other world deadbeats don't. They are disintegrating in a tangled mass of even more doses of totalitarian solutions. We still have a chance. Your children still have a chance that only you can give them.
Not counting the more than 2,400 fighting men abandoned to the enemy in Vietnam, America lost 56,000 in Vietnam fighting a non-win war because of S.E.A.T.O., a UN foreign entanglement treaty. At the battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam, Maryland) during the War for the Constitution ("civil war"), America lost 20,000 in one day with over 8,000 falling before 9 AM. Let no more American blood be shed on foreign soil without ultimate victory being the goal of our elected leaders. Let no more blood be shed on American soil in civil strife without giving our Constitution another chance. Only an informed citizenry sufficiently exercising their civic responsibilities can prevent either.
Let's hope the day does not come when you have to look the fanged government monster in the tooth and tell it that you, too, "...just want to be left alone."
We shall see if owning honest money shall make us a good and honest people once again.
Bill Rummel
Charleston Voice
Charleston, SC
August 15,2002
Brief Bio Sketch:
Having grown up in Maine, and lived in Massachusetts, and New York, but now a "refugee" living in the South, Bill considers himself a "copperhead" - one that has sympathies for the southern view of our country's plight. Over 70,000 copperheads living in the North during the "civil war" were unlawfully imprisoned by Lincoln to stifle their outrage as to the un-Constitutionality of his actions. |
