Tomorrow (Saturday, April 16th 2011) will mark the beginning of the Lucas County Libertarian Party. Although the party was officially established in December 2010, the past several months have been a busy time for the group who have been putting the framework in place to bring libertarian principles to Lucas County.
Tomorrow's festivities will include a formal presentation at the Holland Branch Library from 3:30 to 5:00 PM, followed by a meet and greet at Delaney's Lounge on Alexis Rd. from 6:30 to 9:30 PM
For those of you who are unable to attend, you may join us at our next general membership meeting (open to the public) on Saturday 05/21/2011 from 1:30 to 3:30 PM at the Locke Branch Library. The Locke Branch Library is located at 703 Miami St. Toledo, OH.
I want to take this time to thank each and everyone of you who has taken the time to support me, by voting for me yesterday. I can truly say that I am so humbled to see that 1,154 of you (4.39%), were willing to put your faith in me.
While I was unsuccessful in my race, I assure you that you have made your voice heard loud and clear. There are so many of you, like myself, who are eager for something different. We are eager for a return to common sense solutions to our problems, to fiscal responsibility, and also to freedom!
Although this race has been lost, I encourage you all not to lose faith. From here we must be diligent and hold those who have been elected accountable for their actions. We have to continue to press onward toward a brighter future!
Thank you all again, and may God bless each and every one of you!
Sincerely,
Joseph Pfeiffer
Joseph Pfeiffer
April 4, 2010
Today, most Americans have a lack of understanding regarding our current monetary system. Most Americans cannot tell you exactly where our money comes from, or how it was created. If one is to understand our current monetary system, one must understand the several aspects of it: its history, its intended form, its current status and value, and the influence of its use and value on individuals.
The history of money in the United States is a story that is full of twists and turns. There have been in general three types of money in the early American experience, coin, paper backed by precious metals, and fiat paper. Throughout history coin money had been the standard medium of exchange, being utilized by every civilizations from ancient Egypt, to the Byzantine Empire, and still in some areas to this very day. As G. Edward Griffin states in his book The Creature from Jekyll Island, “[t]he primary reason metals became widely used as commodity money is that they meet all of the requirements for convenient trading. In addition to being of intrinsic value for uses other than money, they are not perishable… by melting and reforming they can be divided into smaller units and conveniently used for purchases of minor items” (139-140).
As for paper money backed by precious metals, also known as receipt money, it acted much the same as coin with one exception. The problem of receipt money is based on a concept known as fractional reserve banking. At some point in history, those who issued paper money backed by precious metals, were clever enough to realize that they could issue more “receipts” than they could cover in precious metals, so long as all depositors did not call in their receipt slips at once. For this reason precious metal backed paper has been wholly unreliable, and was intended to be used as a last resort (mainly in times of war). Lastly we come to fiat paper, which has two distinct characteristics,
(1) it does not represent anything of intrinsic value and (2) it is decreed legal tender… The two always go together because, since the money really is worthless, it soon would be rejected by the public in favor of a more reliable medium of exchange… The only way a government can exchange its worthless paper money for tangible goods and services is to give its citizens no choice. (Griffin 155)
To put it plain and simple, fiat money is a complete fraud.
Given the history of its various methods of exchange, what can we say was our nation’s intended form of money? To gain perspective on this matter I will turn to the United States Constitution. The intended form of is “[t]o coin Money, regulate the Value thereof…” (Article 1, Section 8). Here we see the Constitution requiring the legislative branch to “coin Money.” Most people will assume this means the medium of exchange must be a metallic coin; however one must realize the term “coin,” at the time of our nation’s founding, merely meant “to create.” Have you ever heard the expression “to coin a phrase?” Based on the term alone we need more evidence to support the viability that metallic coins were meant to be the medium of exchange. In his book End The Fed, Congressman Ron Paul stated:
[Thomas] Paine, the same writer who inspired the American Revolution with his pamphlet Common Sense, also said this: “As to the assumed authority of any assembly in making paper money, or paper of any kind, a legal tender, or in other language, a compulsive payment, it is a most presumptuous attempt at arbitrary power. There can be no such power in a republican government: the people have no freedom – and property no security – where this practice can be acted. (5-6)
“John Langdon from New Hampshire warned (at the Constitutional Convention) that he would rather reject the whole plan of federation than to grant the new government the right to issue fiat money” (Griffin 315). We also see in the Constitution that “[n]o State shall… coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts…” (Article 1, Section 10). My interpretation is a State cannot create its own “Money,” and it cannot use “Bills of Credit” (paper money) to pay its debts; the State was only authorized to use “gold and silver Coin” to pay its debts. This explanation would certainly seem to fit with the commerce clause, which called for the federal legislature to regulate (make regular) the commerce between the States. This was done to ensure that there was a uniform currency, and that each State would not fix the standards and weights of its money to their own favor. One must understand that just because the States were required to used gold and silver coin, does not mean the same was required of the federal government. Most tend to argue it was the establishment of a central banking system, which would take power out of the treasury and force paper money off of the gold and silver standard, that was most disdained, not necessarily the issuance of paper currency itself. The Constitution does not grant the federal government the authority to establish a central bank, or the authority to transfer the power to “coin Money” to it!
As was feared at the time of the revolution, politicians at the turn of the twentieth century disregarded the Constitution, and were grossly unchallenged by the public at large. This led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System (a central bank), which was not federal in any way, had no reserves and had been deemed unconstitutional. All of its opponents described (and still do to this day) the Federal Reserve as a banking cartel. The Federal Reserve in present day is issuing Federal Reserve notes, which are fiat paper money, and are mandated by the federal government. As Mr. Griffin presents in his book, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago is in print as saying:
In the United States neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a dollar bill is just a piece of paper. Deposits are merely book entries. Coins do have some intrinsic value as metal, but generally far less than their face amount. What, then, makes these instruments—checks, paper money, and coins—acceptable at face value in payment of all debts and for other monetary uses? Mainly, it is the confidence people have that they will be able to exchange such money for other financial assets and real goods and services whenever they choose to do so. This partly is a matter of law; currency has been designated “legal tender” by the government—that is, it must be accepted. (qtd. 186)
To anyone who reads that, it should be crystal clear… the money in your wallet is worthless. Ron Paul goes on to describe why fiat paper money was so attractive, saying, “[f]ollowing the creation of the Fed, the government would discover other uses for an elastic money supply aside from keeping the banking system from defaulting on its obligations… When governments had to fund their own wars without a paper money machine to rely upon, they economized on resources. They found diplomatic solutions to prevent war, and after they started a war they ended it as soon as possible” (End The Fed 63). He further elaborated, “[p]aper may be “elastic” in the sense of inflating and bailing out bad debts, but it also acts like a boomerang as the “stretching” money supply snaps back with both inflationary and deflationary consequences… Some believe that an increase in paper money will provide wealth, yet all it does is dilute the value of the existing money in circulation” (End The Fed 147).
If we decide to use paper money backed by gold and silver that is one thing, but to use fiat paper money is entirely different. Congressman Ron Paul stated in his book The Revolution: A Manifesto, “[t]hroughout most of American history the dollar has been defined as a specific weight in gold” (140). This may still be the case, but as we know, fiat money has no intrinsic value. The dollar is still measured in terms of its value compared to gold, but is no longer backed by it. He further writes: “By increasing the supply of money (inflation), the Federal Reserve lowers the value of every dollar that already exists… prices rise-with each dollar now worth less than before, it can purchase fewer goods than it could in the past” (The Revolution 142). If we go back to a gold standard we would see many improvements in terms of personal liberty and monetary stability, but if we continue to use fiat money as currency we will have to accept the consequences of such action.
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holdings illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits as silver or copper or any other good and thereafter decline to accept checks as payments for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-credited bank credit would be worthless as claims on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret if the statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard. (End The Fed 81)
You may not have ever heard an explanation of money as it has been presented above, and you may not think there is a need for change in this matter. If individuals ever hope to stop the unlimited expansion of government and its degradation of constitutional rights, the Federal Reserve System must be abolished! No amount of repeal or oversight will work because The Fed grants the government so many privileges, mainly the power to create money out of nothing. This allows politicians to fund pet projects, wars, expand the welfare state, all without ever appearing to raise your taxes one cent. The result will be a devalued dollar, that when exchanged for goods, will give the appearance of ever rising prices. You will still bring home a six-hundred dollar paycheck, but you will notice it depleting faster and faster each time. The information is yours, now you must decide what you will do with it!
Works Cited
Paul, Ron. End the Fed. Grand Central Pub, 2009. Print.
---. The Revolution A Manifesto. Grand Central Pub, 2008. Print.
Jefferson, Thomas, Second Congress, and Constitutional Convention. The Constitution of the United States of America, with the Bill of Rights and All of the Amendments; The Declaration of Independence; And the Articles. Wilder Pubns Ltd, 2008. Print.
Griffin, G. The creature from Jekyll Island. Amer Media, 2002. Print.
Joseph Pfeiffer
February 13, 2010
As a freedom loving American, I can tell you how much I have enjoyed learning about our country’s founding. What has surprised me the most, is this nation is not what I have always been taught to believe it was. Today most Americans will tell you we are a democracy; they will tell you we stand for freedom and justice for all, but how did we come to believe this and accept it as fact? The truth of the matter is we are not a democracy, we are a republic, and our rights are being eroded because the average person is no longer involved in the political process of our country. If we continue down this path, we will lose the one thing we identify with the most… our freedom. It is my hope to persuade you, the reader, that we must learn who we are as a nation and fight for our ideals if we wish to remain free!
If Americans truly believe we are a democracy, can facts be presented to prove otherwise? While anyone can have an opinion of what democracy really is, what truly matters is its legal definition as recognized by the law. A democracy is a “government by the people; especially: rule of the majority (Merriam-Webster, Inc.). What this means to the average person is, by definition we can be deprived of our rights by consensus of the majority. Democracy allows for the majority to become an elitist class who can control, manipulate, and divert the constitutional (creator endowed) rights of others. A majority of Germans supported Hitler’s invasion and murder of millions of Jews, a majority favored the execution of several so called “witches” during the Salem Witch Trials, and a majority of Americans at one time favored slavery and segregation. To anyone who takes the time to look, the list of majority fallacies is well documented! “The United States is not a democracy and never was intended to be a democracy. The United States is a republic,” writes Brion McClanahan, who holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in American history, “and a great number in the Founding generation, if not the majority classified themselves as republicans (not to be confused with the modern Republican Party). Most of the Founding Fathers considered democracy a dangerous extreme to be avoided” (9).
Indeed the founders did generally believe in the notion that a pure democracy could not defend the unalienable rights of all men. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10:
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy… can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole… and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is such that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. (Manis 44)
So what did it really mean in the time of our founders to be a pure democracy? It meant the people as a whole would be directly involved in their political process. If the majority decided the minority’s rights were insignificant, they would be discarded for the greater good. This applied to all of the minority’s rights, be it property, speech, or any other; a majority could dispossess them whenever they saw fit. That is why the founders argued so strongly against democracy, it was like poison to the unalienable rights of the individual. According to McClanahan:
Alexander Hamilton also disputed the observation that “pure democracy, would be the most perfect government.” He said, “Experience has proved that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies… never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.” The Constitution created a system far more superior in his estimation, to a pure democracy. John Adams echoed this sentiment and once wrote that “there was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” (11)
Our country was never meant to be a democracy and still is not today. The battle at the time of our nation’s founding was between Federalists (those who wanted a national government controlled by elite politicians), and Anti-Federalists (those who supported a representative form of government known as a republic). It is because of the battle between those two opposing ideologies that our Bill of Rights was born. The Anti-Federalists saw that a Bill of Rights was absolutely necessary, to defending the unalienable rights of every individual from the nationalist threat of the Federalists. Needless to say, the outcome of this dispute left our nation as the world’s first constitutional republic.
So what is a republic? Again we can turn to the very people who founded this nation for that answer. In a letter to J.H. Tiffany, dated March 31, 1819, John Adams wrote “The strict definition of a republic is, that in which the sovereignty resides in more than one man” (Adams). In Federalist No. 39 James Madison also defined a republic, “we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices… for a limited period” (Manis 169). Again we see the founders referring to a republic as a representative form of government, where chosen representatives make decisions on our behalf. Now you may remember me earlier referring to the legal definition as the only one that truly matters. The legal definition of a republic is “a government in which supreme power resided in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law” (Merriam-Webster, Inc.). In our pledge of allegiance we pledge “to the Republic for which it stands;” and in Article IV Section IV, the United States Constitution reads “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”
So you may be asking yourself; what does this all mean? It means everything! If we do not understand who we are as a nation or where we’ve come from, how can we expect to hold on to the freedoms that countless individuals have died to protect? If I did not believe that this issue was so dire, so critical, then I would not go through the painful task of presenting it to you today! Think of everything that makes this country great and all of the freedoms we enjoy. Imagine a day at the beach with your family, enjoying the sun and the fresh breeze. Something as simple as that is worth dying to protect! We are being told republics are those of Russia and China; both countries who have no regard for the unalienable rights of their citizens. That is what separates our Republic from the democracies, dictatorships, and nationalist governments of the world; that each individual is endowed by his/her creator with unalienable rights, and that no majority/minority can disenfranchise the other. The founders knew there were “agents” who wished to distract us from our true origins and make us believe we were something else entirely. In Federalist No. 14, James Madison said “[u]nder the confusion of names, it has been an easy task to transfer to a republic observations applicable to a democracy only; and among others, the observation that It can never be established but among a small number of people” (Manis 59).
The founders were concerned that a class system would develop, that would try to undermine the fact that all men are created equal. They knew as we know today that some men are born more privileged than others, and because of that fact, would wish to become rulers of us all. “It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic” (Manis 169-170). Think about it; have people become less involved in government? Don’t politicians today seem to be in a class of their own? Has government started to become more intrusive in our lives; telling us we need to purchase this, do that, and act a certain way? How about all of the victimless crimes (rolling stops, drug possession, jaywalking); do they really do us more good than harm? I don’t believe so! In fact I know they do not! Thomas Jefferson once said “To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it” (Lipscomb and Bergh). Franklin also said “[a]ll, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression” (Oberg and Looney).
Today we are losing the battle for our rights as they are being continually violated by every administration. Republicans, Democrats, take your pick; either way you will be left feeling just as debased as when you started. That is why it is up to us, “we the people,” to become involved in our government once again. It is up to us to take back control from the political parties and just be Americans! The common denominator in all of our lives is freedom, and the ability to choose what is best for ourselves. If we allow government to make these decisions for us, we will become a minority. Then the democracy that will grow up around us will deprive us of everything we hold dear. The possibility that they will begin to make decisions for us, in our best interest of course, is all too real! Laws were meant to be understandable and to be asserted by regular individuals. I say we stand up, take our nation back into our own hands, unite under the common cause of freedom, and let our destiny as a beacon of hope for the rest of the world shine brighter than ever before!
Works Cited
Adams, Charles Francis. "The Works of John Adams." 2010. Liberty Fund Web Site. 11 February 2010 <http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2127>.
Lipscomb, Andrew A. and Albert E. Bergh. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Washington, D.C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1903-04.
Manis, Jim. "The Federalist Papers." 2001. The Pennsylvania State University Web Site. 09 February 2010 <http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/poldocs/fed-papers.pdf>.
McClanahan, Brion T. The Politically Incorrect Guide to The Founding Fathers. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2009.
Merriam-Webster, Inc. democracy. 1996. 09 February 2010 <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/democracy>.
Merriam-Webster, Inc. republic. 1996. 09 February 2010 <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/republic>.
Oberg, Barbara B. and J. Jefferson Looney. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.
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