Miracle on Main Street: Understanding Government for What it Really Is/Epilogue
UNDERSTANDING GOVERNMENT
FOR WHAT IT REALLY IS
We
Ces to what TV, magazines, radio, and newspap-
ers Say, government is meant to occupy a very small part of
our experience. (We must always remember that the media
are usually beholden to government, or think they are.)
Man has existed for a million years, and he’s only had
government about 5,600 years. So government has oc-
~ cupied only a very small part of man’s natural history. But
in those 5,600 years government has done considerable
damage. It has done lots toward pruning our species.
- A Norwegian statistician computes that in these 56 cen-
turies man has fought 14,531 wars. This is 2.6 wars per
year. More than 600,000,000 men, women, and children
have been killed by government. (I dread to compute how
many people our own government has exterminated.)
In more than 880 generations, there have been no more
. than 10 meagre years of true peace. Think about that.
There is an old legal maxim ‘No man shall be without
~ law.” Government arises out of man’s need for law. If man
cannot govern himself, officials rush in to do it for him.
| There is always that constant pressure to have law, natural
_ or otherwise. One of the great life-serving purposes of
103
104 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
government, I believe, is to fest man’s need for law. If man
needs law, if he fails to show that he can take care of himself
and his own, government overcomes him. This is consis-
tent with the way things work in nature. If a rabbit shows
that he cares so little for life that he relaxes his vigilance,
the eagle moves upon him.
Since governments live by virtue of helpless people,
governments invest in keeping people helpless. The best
way to keep people helpless is to tell them constantly how
helpless they are.
Show them much crime, much menace, much mental
derangement, much accidental death, much violence.
Frighten them. Demonstrate to them how the only resolu-
tion to their dilemma is government. Send them to lawyers
and accountants sympathetic or beholden to government.
Circulate the proverb “You can’t beat city hall.” Oppress
them, expropriate them, and then...
And then, what? Where does it lead? Once government
has finally oppressed and expropriated every last soul on
this planet, a strange phenomenon will happen. Oppres-
sion is not natural. Animals in cages live only a fraction as
long as they live in the wild. Pretty soon, that world gov-
ernment will be faced with the ugly problem of death as a
way of life. The leaders of government will have made a
menagerie of dead animals. Everywhere they look, noth-
ing but death and near-death. The architects of tyranny
will grow miserable with their handiwork.
And that proposition reveals a solid gold secret. For, you
see, government, that bloody beast of 600,000,000 corpses,
loves strong people able to govern themselves. Although
spokesmen will never tell you so, government loves free
people able to resist government. This is why so many of our
laws have little loopholes in them that excuse free people,
people with so healthy and overpowering a determination
to be naturally independent of government that they au-
tomatically spot legal clauses that strike discord with the
higher, simpler law of God. Government admires, cele-
UNDERSTANDING GOVERNMENT 105
brates the fitness of people who are able to govern them-
selves, just like Hemingway admired, loved the Great Fish
for escaping in the final moment of that brutal struggle in
Islands in the Stream. But it is government's duty to chal-
lenge the individual, to test his mettle, to determine for
certain the depth of his convictions and abilities.
This is natural selection.
Government chains, cages, or consumes the ones who
surrender under its fearful threats and examples, but is
most fond of the few that legitimately get away. These are
the memorable ones.
Government propaganda likes to refer to any motion
contrary to the prevailing drift as “rebellion” or “revolu-
tion” or “strike.” Fearful words, words that make you
tremble. Who wants to get involved in a rebellion? Leave
that kind of monkey business to the rabble rousers.
__ This little book doesn’t advocate any kind of insurrection
whatsoever. As I told you earlier, you can make a life-
saving miracle happen simply by declining to break a law.
If that’s rebellion, then things really ARE topsy-turvy.
Here, in summary form, is what you have read:
1. Irredeemable paper money is the only cause of your
family’s growing financial distress.
2. There is absolutely no cure for irredeemable paper
money except to make it redeemable in gold and silver
coin.
3. You have an undebatable, specific, ironclad Constitu-
tional right to enjoy a money of gold and silver coined and
regulated in value by your representatives and senators in
Congress.
4. Absolutely no one has the power to require Congress
to provide us this solid money system immediately except
your state and local government officials. Only they—not
Congressmen —are prohibited from making paper a tender
106 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
in the payment of debts.
5. Your state and local government officials will not act
until you tell them to. Most of them are completely una-
ware of their power over the United States Congress and
the Federal Reserve Board. Remember, they suffer from
propaganda fallout, too.
6. The Declaration of Rights of most state Constitutions
guarantees you the indefeasible and unalienable right to
see that your local and state officers obey their Constitu-
tional Oath. Certainly the U.S. Constitution does. Would
this right not include withholding payment of any state,
local or corporate debts in a tender prohibited by the U.S.
Constitution? Or demanding that state and local govern-
ment and corporate paychecks be denominated in redeem-
able currency?
7. The law requires all public offices and courts to
keep and have their accounts and proceedings in dollars
of the money of account of the United States. Federal
Reserve paper money has never been declared to be the
money of account of the United States; it functions as
such only because we allow the law to be ignored by our
officials. No court or administrative official has any lawful
authority whatsoever to require you to pay in something
other than the money of account of the United States.
8. Once redeemability is restored, you and your family
will immediately enjoy a “sense of prosperity and tranquil-
lity that could hardly have been hoped for.” You have
George Washington’s word on it.
9. Redeemability will cause no sudden panics or pain-
ful reversals of fortune for anybody, not even the Friends of
Paper Money. As I write this, Federal Reserve paper dol-
lars are already unofficially redeemable (at coin shops) at
about $13 to $16 per silver dollar, gold a little higher. With
official redeemability, paper dollars would merely remain
at this price, and would circulate alongside United States
Notes, which would be redeemable dollar for dollar in
silver and gold. Gradually, the Federal Reserve paper dol-
UNDERSTANDING GOVERNMENT 107
lars would be phased out of existence.
10. You need to ask yourself seriously: If you neglect to
take advantage of your lawful, God-insured economic
rights are you not neglecting God, and would you not
deserve economic catastrophe?
A new public opinion must be created privately and unob-
trusively. The existing one is maintained by the press, by propa-
ganda, by organization, and by financial influences which are at
its disposal. The unnatural way of spreading ideas must be op-
posed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies
solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer’s receptiveness
for new truth.”
— Albert Schweitzer
Ey America the gates of revolution are shut and barred and
bolted down, never again to be thrown open; for it has found a
legal and a peaceful way to introduce every amelioration. The
Constitution is to the American people a possession for all ages.”
—George Bancroft, History of the
United States of America, 1886
108
EPILOGUE:
THE ILLUSION OF STATUS QUO
we
Wren you finish reading a book recommending action,
you ponder alternatives and say to yourself, “I can either
do what the book says or maintain the status quo.” Now, I
personally like the status quo. I believe that pure status quo
“situation as is” is the regime that produces the longest,
happiest lives. Long live status quo. EXCEPT.
Except that under paper money status quo is just an
illusion. For under paper, radical social change is going on
with each crank of the printing press, social change over
which you have no control. Social change that costs you en-
ergy, having to work harder to make ends meet. Social
change that makes you tense, wondering if you'll be next
to lose your job. Social change that costs you happiness,
complaining about how angry the latest moral dip or dumb
project has made you. Social change that costs you health
and tranquillity, as a loved one slips out of control into
booze or drugs or psychosis or crime or the draft or early
death.
Embracing the status quo ina society with a fluctuating,
crisis-plagued paper economy is like dancing on
quicksand.
109
110 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
Less than two years before the day of his funeral, Presi-
dent John Kennedy signed into law under the pressure of
the “Cuban Missile Crisis’ a series of emergency meas-
ures. These measures stand today as Executive Orders,
waiting to be invoked by whichever President decides (or
whose advisors decide) we are in perilous times. The
surest cause of perilous times through the past 56 centuries
has been inflation. If you choose to maintain the status quo
in an ever-rising tide of Federal Reserve paper, you are
helping to create the right moment for these Executive Or-
ders to be called into being. Signed on February 16 and
February 27, 1962, these documents give the President
complete dictatorial control over your life. He will exercise
this control through a bureaucracy of unelected dignitaries
and officials in the Office of Emergency Planning. If they
hurt you, you cannot vote them out of power. You have no
recourse. You have no choice but to submit to their wis-
dom and judgment.
The bureau’s control over your life becomes effective,
according to the language of the Executive Orders, “in any
time of increased international tension or economic or finan-
cial crisis.”
Try to imagine yourself and your family living under
these Executive Orders:
1. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 takes over all communications
media.
2. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 takes over all electric power,
petroleum, gas, fuel, and minerals.
3. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 takes over all food resources and
farms.
4. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10999 takes over all means of transpor-
tation, controls highways and seaports.
5. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 drafts all citizens into work
forces under governmental supervision.
6. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 takes over all health, welfare,
and educational functions.
7. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 empowers the Postmaster Gen-
EPILOGUE 111
eral to register all citizens nationwide.
8. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 takes over all airports and air-
craft.
9. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 takes over housing and finance
authorities, designates areas to be abandoned as “unsafe,”
establishes new locations for populations, relocates com-
munities, builds new housing with public funds.
10. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 takes over all railroads, inland
waterways, and public storage facilities.
11. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 designates responsibilities of
the Office of Emergency Planning, gives authorization to
put the above orders into effect in times of increased inter-
national tension or economic or financial crises.
Under Richard Nixon, these Orders were combined into
the single Executive Order 11490, which was polished up
with a few minor amendments signed by Jimmy Carter on
July 20, 1979. And all it takes to push the button on this
bonecrushing machinery is for the President to declare an
“economic or financial crisis.”
Is there a chance the Miracle on Main Street could be
the crisis that pushes the button? Of course not. The Mir-
acle is a lawful act, or in Judge Sherman’s words at the
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 “a
favourable crisis.” It is a self-correcting, liberating crisis. As
you turn paper into gold and silver, the rising line on the
crisis graph suddenly turns down to earth. You cause the
prompt and orderly restoration of enterprise, credit, tran-
quillity, and ‘prosperity that could hardly have been
hoped for.”” The Miracle is the disappearance of the grounds for
invoking the dictatorship of those Executive Orders. The Miracle
is a good crisis, like finding God. Feelings would be so
happy, any President shouting “Crisis! Crisis! Executive
Order!” would be laughed at as a clown.
The Executive Order crisis is a different kind, made by
government, not by the people. It’s the kind of crisis where
the rising line bursts out of the graph. It bursts out of the
graph because the people don’t object to paper money in
112 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
the way that counts. If you won’t bring the rising line
down to earth, it can only be assumed you are delegating
your authority to dignitaries. It doesn’t matter whether you
delegate your authority out of ignorance, or complacency,
or an act of will: your silence in a worsening situation is
evidence of surrender of your lawful power. It’s your way of
saying ‘‘I’m helpless.” You have handed the problem over
to the officials, and they would be foolish not to deal with
the problem in such manner as rewards officials first. Of
course, the best part of their reward is getting to control
your life. I have many friends who can already perceive
this happening. Do you?
Why shouldn’t a population blessed with the constitu-
tional power to stop economic disaster but which does not
use that power, why shouldn’t such a self-neglecting
population be tyrannized head to toe? Why shouldn’t the
rabbit dozing in the open suffer the eagle?
So you see, hanging on to the status quo in increasingly
lawless times is actually the most violent kind of revolu-
tionary behavior. Not objecting to paper money is the most
wild-eyed, trouble-making, rabble-rousing kind of social
terrorism. /
If your posture is “I just don’t want any trouble,” your
only choice is to help perform the Miracle. For trying to
ignore the gathering tragedy, not wanting to discuss it, is
an active contribution to lawlessness and your own destruc-
tion. You’d might as well be carrying a gun, shooting your
friends, looting their homes.
Article I Section 2 of the Tennessee Constitution ex-
presses it more adamantly than I have:
Non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression -is absurd,
slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.
With these words, the law itself condemns you as ab-
surd, as a slave, and as a destroyer of good and happiness
if you fail to resist the oppression and arbitrary valuation of
lawless money.
What social action could be more fun than the Miracle on
EPILOGUE 113
Main Street? What social action could be more harmlessly
exciting than using the law to stimulate your state to force
the President to call our precious coin out of hiding?
(Don’t worry. It’s still there, plenty of it.) The Miracle on
Main Street is a hundred times safer than burning draft
cards, or marching for decency, or burning crosses, or de-
monstrating for Civil or Equal Rights, or demonstrating
against busing, or chasing Iranian students out of town.
It’s safer because there’s no demonstrating necessary. It’s a
personal thing. It’s between you and the folks down at City
Hall, you and the folks behind the counters of the shops
that open out on Main Street, you and your child’s teacher,
you and your supervisor, you and your friends, you and
me. It’s done not with courageous, bold proclamations but
with polite inquiries: ‘‘What has this state declared to be legal
tender in the payment of debts?” “Are you upholding your
oath to support Article I Section 10?”
The Miracle on Main Street will be the only truly power-
ful social movement where courage and daring are not
fundamental requirements. It will be performed not by
rabble but by nice, God-respecting people, from school
children to old timers. Especially old timers, who contrib-
uted silver coin to Social Security only to receive paper
dividends that buy less and less with each passing day. If
they put silver in, shouldn’t they get silver out?
One thing you'll not have to do as you achieve the Mir-
acle is fight. I believe the concept that personal liberty is
something that must be “fought for’ is an old, old figment
of the ideasphere concected by artful official propagan-
dists.
Do ygu remember the widely-circulated conservative
slogan of the 1960’s, “I’d rather be dead than Red’? The
actual effect of this patriotic-sounding sentiment was the
exact opposite of its apparent intent. “I’d rather be dead
than Red” prompted the more reasonable listener to begin
calculating how many of his freedoms he could surrender
to Communist invaders and still remain relatively comfort-
114 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
able. The phrase might as well have been coined by Khrus-
chev himself.
Official propagandists have always depicted freedom as
something that must be earned through bloody ordeal.
Look at such emblems of liberty as war movies, the
wounded fifer and drummers marching in Revolutionary
America, Jesus Christ nailed to the cross. What is the pur-
pose of these emblems? To encourage us to follow their
example? For all the reverence and thanksgiving and piety
they might inspire, they fail to encourage me to do any-
thing but seek an alternative to fighting or suffering or
dying at the hands of a liberty-robber. I’m not a martyr,
and I don’t believe you are, either.
No, I believe images of bloody ordeal are carefully de-
signed to challenge the public imagination with the de-
mand
THIS IS THE PRICE OF LIBERTY.
ARE YOU WILLING TO PAY IT?
And most people —the best people, those who really love
their families and enjoy every instant of being alive and
healthy — decide the price is just a bit too high. And so they
give up some liberty, some integrity, a few of their private
rights, in order to avoid a fight. What they overlook is that
in the United States of America, bloody ordeal is not the
price of liberty. The Constitution ruled out the Fight for
Rights when it was ratified in 1789. Our Constitution
guarantees no fighting. It guarantees “against violence and
revolution by providing a peaceful method for every
needed reform,” as George Bancroft wrote.
If our officials should act adversely to the Constitution,
upsetting our tranquillity, we simply remind them that
they are wandering from the law they are sworn to follow.
We remind in America, not fight. Reminding is easier, more
humane than fighting. Reminding is educational, bringing
adversaries together in understanding rather than in ordeal.
EPILOGUE 115
The outcome is clean, profitable for all concerned, and
there are no hard feelings.
No, there is no fight involved in the Miracle on Main
Street. It’s a social action for scaredy cats.
Now that you’ve read this little book, you’ve learned
about our money and the one essential law governing that
money. You know probably more than many, many eco-
nomics experts about the lawfulness of American money.
More even than many lawyers and judges and govern-
ment officials and professors.
You now have the power to make the Miracle happen.
Work it!
APPENDIX
I
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