We are living through a time that I believe will be looked back on as the first great societal pivot point of the 2000’s….Just as the two world wars, and the depression defined massive culture shifts of the last century.
This goes far beyond the politics of Republicans or Democrats, both parties are guilty of many ills, and to list or argue their control grabs is to distract from the main point…
I love history, and have read and studied the rise and fall of empires, tyrannies and free societies across human history. Unfortunately, this history is dominated by stories of brutal subjugation, pain and injustice. The triumphs of freedom and the explosive growth that brings are firmly in the minority.
We seem to be on a path to tyranny in many of the free countries of the world. It scares the hell out of me, because the seductive path to increased control we are experiencing today looks just the same as so many others from the historical record.
It starts with a crisis and discomfort or fear in the the population…(created or real)
Government steps in as the solution, and the populous is asked to give up rights or comforts “in the short term” for the greater good or to slap a band aid on a problem that could “get out of control”.
(Think about the gun control push after Columbine, the patriot act after 9/11, or the TARP bill after the banking crisis.)
Why are you reading this post on a blog about currency trading? Speculation delivers the ultimate free man or woman’s life. There is near total freedom and little control. In a big government world, the markets are not free, and will likely be stripped of many opportunities.
Say the word “Nazi”, and peoples minds go directly to the institutionalized murder of millions… But I want you to shut that out for a minute and think about how a government that would do such terrible things came to be. If you read your history, you will know that they did it incrementally.
(And many in the US were strong supporters of the National Socialist’s ideas and structure of governance during the years that led up to the invasion of Poland and the start of WWII!)
“The Germany economy fell between two stools. It was not enough of a command economy to do what the Soviet system could do; yet it was not capitalist enough to rely, as America did, on the recruitment of private enterprise.“
-Richard Overy
I live two hours from Boston, and there is an incredibly impactful Holocaust memorial in that city.
Glass walls rise up out of the ground, towering above you. Each is etched with millions of tiny numbers… A stark reminder of the dehumanizing tattoos that were used to track the “undesirables” as they were processed for extermination.
Wisps of steam rise from the ground all around you, and at the end of the path is this quote…..
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.
We are experiencing that incremental slide of loss here in the US as we see more and more freedoms eroded in the name of crisis management.
Let me be clear about one point…We the people are only to blame…
We still have the power to end this slide, and up till now few vote or seem to be interested in the political process. We need that to change if we are to teeter back towards freedom in the United States.
Why this rant?
This News Story….
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/world/europe/25surveillance.html
(Moral of this story? If you give government power, eventually it will wield it.)
I have traveled many times to London to speak and teach seminars, and am always shocked when I visit to see the Orwellian aspects of the UK system.
(They tried to eliminate PINT GLASSES in the pubs because they could be used as a weapon!)
The UK is well ahead of the US in the expansion of government, and I believe acts as a time machine which we may peer into to see where we are heading.
Traders in the UK have been taxed out of the stock market, and are forced to literally gamble on the market moves by proxy through bookies in a process called “spread betting”. As of now, this income is tax free, but one bill could change that and end their ability to trade the markets for a living.
The Constitution was a document created to specifically limit the power of government. It was created by men who had lived in and around tyrants and giant bureaucracies and wanted no part of it.
They knew that governments grow naturally and parasitically if left unchecked and this incredible document was their failsafe to keep that from happening in the United States.
We the people are the only ones who will keep that power in check, but it will take some effort on our part. So please! Read, think, and engage. I think the next few years will be incredibly important!
-Bo Yoder
