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A pivotal Independence Day |
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Written by Brian Williams
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Friday, 04 July 2008 |
Today, many of us will gather with friends and family and let the smell of charred meats, burnt sulfur and saltpeter cast our minds back to our childhoods. For many, these fond memories are cloudy with a sense of entropy.
Unemployment is up, new hires are down, and the costs of some raw materials have more than doubled in just a year (but all are up). Fewer and fewer dollars are to be found in our pockets despite billions upon billions being injected into the system; coincidently those dollars are buying less and less.
On the Ides of March this year, our Federal Reserve participated in a massive bailout of Bear Sterns, disregarding its responsibility to ensure price stability and maximum employment and demonstrating that it is beholden to the financial system rather than regular citizens.
Our rights, privacy and freedoms have been abrogated and collectively we either didn't notice or blithely relinquished them. We are contemplating a second preemptive war in a region where we are fighting two other lengthy, costly (in lives as well as money) wars with ambiguous progress. Ayn Rand once said, "A society that tolerates intimidation as a means of settling disputes -- the physical intimidation of some men or groups by others -- loses its moral right to exist as a social system, and its collapse does not take long to follow." Is that where we are?
We intimidated Iraq with war over its presumed WMD capabilities, and we are doing the same with Iran now. Israel is ready, willing and able to reduce Iran back to the Neolithic while some Iranians are simply willing. War should always be a last resort, not just for the sake of peace but common sense. Nothing is more expensive and destructive to commerce and prosperity than war.
Our energy use, our monumental and reckless expansion of credit (now ending), and our declaration of perpetual war demonstrate the unsustainable excessiveness of our culture. If the United States has any hope of regaining its greatness, it must be through renouncing its empire and belligerence.
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto."
-Thomas Jefferson<
[Motley Fool]
 
Brian Williams, a TheSequitur.com senior editor and systems director, studies sociology at Morehead State University.
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Comments
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I think you have taken Ayn Rand's comments out of context. She wrote these statements to criticize the anti-war movement's intimidation of American citizens through physical force against American property and citizens. It was not taken as a criticism of American foreign policy. And she did not consider our military to be a mob.
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