Miracle on Main Street: Understanding Government for What it Really Is/Epilogue

 

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

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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

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