A timely analysis, contrasting Cincinnatus with Fabius.

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The Fabian movement spawned John Maynard Keynes, an advocate of central economic planning. The overriding focus of Keynes’ theory was Aggregate Demand. Loosely defined, aggregate demand reflects the total amount of goods and services consumed at a stable price. Borrowing and spending supplanted classical economic focus on production and savings as the building blocks of prosperity.

Keynesianism was described by Zygmund Dobbs in the illuminating expose, Keynes at Harvard, “The great virtue is consumption, extravagance, improvidence. The great vice is saving, thrift and ‘financial prudence’” because, “If there are no savings there is no private money for investment. Without private investors the government must provide investment capital. If the government provides for investment it has the power to dictate the conduct and processes of those who need investment capital.”

Americans wanting to mollify temporary hardship in the throes of recession resurrected Keynes. Rather than endure uncomfortable surgery guided by the market, government injects cortisone to offset the recession’s corrective reallocations. Subsidies replace efficiency. Bailouts replace business revitalization. Entitlements replace personal savings. Statism replaces self-reliance. All these government proffered “solutions” may ease our immediate discomfort, but perpetuate economic weakness and come at the price of liberty.

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Americans now fear this headlong rush into government expansion. Poor Obama misread the signs and awakened the masses. We weren’t yet so effete to be bought by bread and circuses.

The Fabians underestimated the resiliency of free markets and Obama over-estimated his demagoguery. Cincinnatus might be forever gone, but Fabius can still be stopped.

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Dr. Woods has really done it this time. He has contributed an essay explaining the boom/bust cycle, the role of the Federal Reserve in bringing it about, the folly of Keynesianism and the urgent imperative to heed the wisdom of the Austrian economists. But what’s really amazing is that he pulled of this feat using language that Joe Citizen (that’s us) can understand! This is without doubt the clearest, most lucid and enlightening analysis we have seen to date:

“We accept as a fact of economic life that plush times inevitably give way to lean times. Just as the moon waxes and wanes, the economy goes through booms and busts. …

“If politicians are honest in seeking a culprit, they will find that it’s not capitalism. It’s not greed. It’s not deregulation. It’s an institution created by government itself. …

“F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in economics for a theory of the business cycle that holds great explanatory power—especially in light of the current financial crisis, which so many economists have been at a loss to explain. Hayek’s work, which builds on a theory developed by Ludwig von Mises, finds the root of the boom-bust cycle in the central bank—in our case the Federal Reserve System, the very institution that postures as the protector of the economy and the source of relief from business cycles.”

But that’s just to whet the appetite—by all we hold dear, read this article!

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Since we’ve found our posts today from Lew Rockwell’s blog, let’s hear from the man himself:

“It’s raining, pouring economic fallacies by the hour, followed by a flood of horrible policy that is driving us ever further into economic depression. The regime in charge has really gone nuts, revealing itself as both deeply ignorant and horribly evil.

“We find ourselves facing the horror of what has always been the Achilles’ Heel of the left wing: its abysmal ignorance of economic science. The ideological tendency has gone from Keynesianism to outright socialism in a matter of a few weeks. …

“The encouraging thing – and perhaps this too was inevitable – is that the right wing is getting its act together. It has suddenly discovered that economics matters. You can cheer on the hot wars, fight the culture wars, and crack down on political dissidents all you want. But in the end, what makes for the good society is a sound economy. Without it, all the rest falls apart. …

“But just in case we are again observing yet another expedient shift, it might be a good idea to understand precisely why socialism is a bad idea. The Obama administration doesn’t seem to get it. And there is plenty to get. Socialism crushes human rights, builds the state, impinges on the liberty of conscience, and breeds social, cultural, and economic degeneration. …

Mr. Rockwell then calls attention to the unanswerable critique of socialist buffoonery by citing the great Ludwig von Mises, and concludes:

“And look: it’s not as if socialism is a new idea. It was tried in the 20th century. It produced economic stagnation and despair. In its purest form, it extinguished more than one hundred million people. That’s why The Black Book of Communism must be owned and read and understood by every thinking person. It is the most terrifying book you will ever read. It is a standing rebuke to any living soul who claims that economic understanding doesn’t matter.

“Take this seriously: it is where the Obama tendency is leading us.”

Read the full article.

Prof. William L. Anderson makes a plausible case that expedient political considerations (i.e. lust for power) preclude any real interest in getting the United States out of their economic hole:

“As the Obama administration continues on its legislative and political path, I think that we have to re-frame the terms of the argument. For most people, the dispute supposedly is over the way to an economic recovery. On one side, there is the Keynesian demand that we spend out way out of the crisis, and the recent Nobel Prize conferred on Krugman, who is the loudest and most prominent spokesman for this policy prescription, supposedly lends this path some legitimacy.

“On the other side, there are people like Peter Schiff and the Austrian Economists and mainstream economists like Robert Barro, who say that the government’s “solution” is upside down and is making the economic crisis worse. …

“As one who admires Schiff and others who have spoken out and told the truth—and I believe they are correct—I believe that it is time for us to understand a basic truth that is coming out of the new regime: There is not going to be a recovery, and that is just fine with Obama and the political classes that now have a death grip on our lives.

“This is a harsh and seemingly conspiratorial statement, and people who know me know that I am extremely skeptical of “conspiracy theories,” yet here I am peddling what some very well might call a “conspiracy theory.” Do I believe that what Washington is doing is a diabolical plot aimed at fundamentally changing the U.S. economy in a way that economic depression will be a permanent way of life?

“In a word, yes. The Obama and Democratic proposals are not simply economic documents. They are fundamentally political in nature and they reflect an understanding that few people have of the Great Depression. …

“However, I have to add something that most people leave out of the discussion: the New Deal was an unqualified political success, and it was successful precisely because it blocked the economic recovery. This is counter-intuitive, I realize. I have heard discussion in the halls of my university that the public will lose patience with Obama and the Democrats if they don’t deliver and “political guru” Dick Morris even predicts that further economic failure will result in the Republicans gaining political strength.

“Don’t count on it. During the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration never had to worry about losing political power, and it held and added to its political majorities. Roosevelt even won a third term of office although the first eight years of his presidency had barely moved the rate of unemployment below what it had been during the worst days of the Herbert Hoover administration.

“This spectacular run of political power did not come in spite of the economic crisis; it came because of it. The crisis never ended, and that provided vast opportunities for the political classes in Washington to add to their power over the lives of individuals.

We highly recommend pondering Prof. Anderson’s analysis of the historic parallels between the politics of the Great Depression and our looming Greater Depression.

Read the full article.

Following up on our post from Phyllis Schlafly three days ago, the YouTube entry she linked, entitled “Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered,” replays excerpts from an interview with Comrade—pardon me, with President Obama on Chicago Public Radio, WBEZ-FM:

“If you look at the victories and failures of the civil right movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it suceeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples …

“But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution—as least as it’s been interpreted. And Warren Court interpreted it in the same way—that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the States can’t do to you, says what the Federal government can’t do to you—but it doesn’t say what the Federal government or the State government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted.

“And one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.”

There’s more on the video—and undoubtedly even more to come now that he’s in power.

Lawrence Auster, writing at View From The Right, calls attention to a passing reference in the New York Times piece “Growing Economic Crisis Threatens the Idea of One Europe” from Mar. 1, 2009. In this article, the grand old lady informs us that the wealthier European countries aren’t enthusiastic about subsidizing the newer (and poorer) Eastern members of the EU. Then comes this matter-of-fact little gem:

Europe’s difficulties are in sharp contrast to the American response. President Obama has just announced a budget that will send the United States more deeply into debt but that also makes an effort to redistribute income and overhaul health care, improve education and combat environmental problems.

Mr. Auster takes this apart:

Notice how Erlanger and Castle casually drop this epochal news about the redistribution of wealth in the middle of other, familiar items about improving education and combating environmental problems. That shows the Times’ vicious, evil Communist mentality. By announcing so offhandedly that this radical new policy, which has nothing to do with getting the country out of the recession, and which Obama has never even proposed before, is already a fait accompli, by declaring in effect that the Democrats are using the economic emergency to sneak their socialist agenda onto the country, they are demonstrating and boasting of their power to do to us as they please. It is a totalitarian mentality, and is the reason the nickname “Pravda on the Hudson” is no joke.

Lawrence Auster is the author of The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism, written in 1990. This book sent a shockwave throughout the Conservative “underground.” Many noted Conservatives such as Pat Buchanan have cited this work in their awakening over the upheaval that unfettered mass immigration is bringing to the United States.

The whole book is online at the “unofficial” Lawrence Auster web page, along with a comprehensive list of his online articles, and his follow-up pamphlet Huddled Clichés: Exposing the Fraudulent Arguments That Have Opened America’s Borders to the World.

In 1956 Zygmund Dobbs, author of Keynes At Harvard was Research Director for an important pamphlet entitled Conquest Via Immigration, which warned that the Left was engineering a mass influx of contra-ideologized strangers to undermine our sense of social cohesion and weaken our societal and political institutions. No one has done a better job than Lawrence Auster in keeping that fire-bell ringing. The Path to National Suicide shows how the Left got their way in 1965, and the incalculable harm they have already wrought thereby.

Mr. Auster continues to document the ongoing Conquest every day. His is unquestionably the premiere Traditionalist Conservative blog on the Internet.

Dr. Jerome Corsi writing in WorldNetDaily:

Meeting with President Obama at the White House today, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown repeated his request for a “Global New Deal,” answering questions to a select group of reporters in the Oval Office. …

By calling for a “Global New Deal,” Brown suggested an expansion of globalism was the only possible solution to the current world crisis and that the two left-leaning leaders would share common ground on a New Deal-like expansion of government and social welfare programs, instead of tax cuts or favorable regulatory treatment for small businesses to stimulate job creation.

“There is the possibility in the next few months of a Global New Deal that will involve all the countries of the world in sorting out and cleaning up the banking system,” Brown said. “And there is the possibility of all the different countries of the world coming together to agree the expansion in the economy that is necessary to both restore confidence and to give people jobs and growth through prosperity for the future.”

Brown suggested his view of a Global New Deal could be implemented through international institutions rather than through nation-states. …

Last Sunday, before leaving for the U.S., Brown wrote an editorial published in the London Times in which he proclaimed, “Globalism is not an option, it is a fact, so the question is whether we manage it well or badly. …”

Read the whole article.

We traded e-mails today with legendary author John Stormer, president of Liberty Bell Press who related that,

“In the early 1960s I bought and distributed hundreds of copies of Keynes At Harvard—a vitally important and valuable book. Last fall I taught a course on Economics and Government to 23 homeschool students. I resurrected my old copy and used it as the basis for one or two lectures.”

Almost everyone has heard of his book None Dare Call It Treason at one time or another. Released in 1964, it became one of the most successful self-published books in history—to say nothing of influential—selling millions of copies. The title phrase has become part of our political lexicon. Mr. Stormer wrote a “sequel” nearly as long, which included the verbatim text of the original and continued the narrative to the fall of the Soviet Union.

None Dare Call It Treason – 25 Years Later sounded a cautionary note over the optimism that ensued with the Soviet collapse, noting that the old leadership in the Soviet satellite countries was still firmly entrenched. (See also Joel Skousen’s “Historical Deceptions: Fall of Communism.”) The disturbing information Mr. Stormer provides overlaps with a larger theme found in Keynes At Harvard and The Great Deceit. Communism and Fabian Socialism have used each other as a “foil” for decades. While Communism appears to have receded, the Fabian takeover of the West continues apace. The end result will hardly be any different.

As Whittaker Chambers wrote in Witness (after he had testified against Soviet spy Alger Hiss):

The simple fact is that when I took up my little sling and aimed at Communism, I also hit something else. What I hit was the forces of that great socialist revolution, which, in the name of liberalism, spasmodically, incompletely, somewhat formlessly, but always in the same direction, has been inching its ice cap over the nation for two decades. . . . No one could have been more dismayed than I at what I had hit, for though I knew it existed, I still had no adequate idea of its extent, the depth of its penetration or the fierce vindictiveness of its revolutionary temper, which is a reflex of its struggle to keep and advance its political power.

(Note: That was over a half-century ago—we’ve come a long way since then.)

Mr. Stormer continues his one-man crusade to preserve liberty under law in our once great Constitutional Republic. His most recent book is Betrayed By The Bench, a ruthless and sobering exposé of Leftist judicial tyranny. And as his readers have come to expect, he marshals extensive documentation to support his assertions.

John Stormer’s books are never out of date, and are still indispensable reading for anyone who desires a fuller understanding of how the U.S. and the West have been shaken to their moral, spiritual, cultural, social and political foundations. Copies can be ordered directly from Liberty Bell Press via this order form.

From Patrick J. Buchanan’s latest column, Mar. 2, 2009:

In his campaign and inaugural address, Barack Obama cast himself as a moderate man seeking common ground with conservatives.

Yet, his budget calls for the radical restructuring of the U.S. economy, a sweeping redistribution of power and wealth to government and Democratic constituencies. It is a declaration of war on the right.

The real Obama has stood up, and lived up to his ranking as the most leftwing member of the United States Senate.

Barack has no mandate for this. He was even behind McCain when the decisive event that gave him the presidency occurred – the September collapse of Lehman Brothers and the market crash.

Republicans are under no obligation to render bipartisan support to this statist coup d’état. For what is going down is a leftist power grab that is anathema to their principles and philosophy. …

We are not “headed down the road to socialism.” We are there.

Read the rest of the article.

Comment in forum at Mr. Buchanan’s web site.

Conservative matriarch Phyllis Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum, dissects the new venture into Keynesianism on steroids:

Under the subterfuge of helping the economy, Barack Obama’s Stimulus legislates vast new spending programs to finance liberal policy goals that are unnecessary and undesirable. The flow of taxpayers’ money will be so gargantuan as to make Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society expansion of the welfare state look puny.

Barack Obama revealed his long-term goals in a radio interview on Chicago’s WBEZ-FM in 2001. Asked about the Earl Warren court decisions that started long lines of activist decisions in many areas, Obama argued that the Warren court didn’t go far enough: the Warren court changed the laws, but failed to address the economic issues to bring about “redistributive change.”

Obama complained that “the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth” or “economic justice” and failed to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.” The Stimulus is designed to break through those constitutional restraints on government action.

Read the rest of the article.