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Friday, March 29, 2024

Bill Buckler On How The US Morphed From A “Global Beacon Of Freedom” To A Symbol Of Political And Economic Repression

Courtesy of Tyler Durden

In his latest edition of the Privateer newsletter, Bill Buckler confirms that he is one of the premier politco-economic commentators, with one of the most devastating expositions on how America, once the land of the brave and the home of the free, and truly a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world, has entered the death spiral of its cilivizational curve, which “beginning of the end” started in 1913 with the introduction of the income tax and the ascent of the Federal Reserve, and now, a century later, has morphed into what can poetically be called the “ending of the end.” Recent events in the Middle East and Africa only underscore how rapidly the sun is setting on the world’s once undisputed superpower. That China is merely biding its time before it disconnects its mutual life support system to the US (which contrary to conventional wisdom, is far more important to the US than vice versa, now that the Fed is by the far the biggest owner of US debt), and ends its symbiosis with US fiscal and monetary policy, should not be a reason for optimism to anyone. With each passing day, Chinese superiority is becoming ever more palpable (even despite the massive loan bubble currently in process in China), even as desperate US attempts to cling to the last trace of its former superpower status are getting increasingly ignored by virtually everyone. If Buckler is correct, the final nail in the US superpower status coffin could come as soon as the unwind of events in MENA, where the people have made it all too clear the US is no longer welcome. What happens next will indicate just how rapidly the complete fall from grace for the US will transpire: “The Middle East is again in strife. This time, the conflict is between the regimes which have been installed and supported by the US government in their march to empire and the people who those same regimes have ruled with an iron fist. To these people, the US is not looked upon as an “exemplar” of anything – except political AND economic repression.

There is much more in this week’s full Privateer newsletter, but the following segment should be read by all

“They Hate Us For Our Freedom”:

There are two supremely ironic aspects regarding that now famous statement made by President Bush as his justification for everything from the “war on terror” to the Patriot Act to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. In the first place, it was made almost 100 years too late. In the second place, it was aimed in precisely the wrong direction. In both cases, that statement and the actions of the US government which it “justified” have come back to haunt the present US government both internationally and at home.

In 1913, the final nails were driven into the political coffin of what was once the nation which approached the ideal of freedom more closely than has any nation before or since. The time was right for those who would wield power OVER the people as the world reeled unthinkingly towards the catastrophe which was to become WWI. In 1913, the US government introduced an income tax, thereby asserting a FIRST CLAIM upon the lives and freedom of their citizens. Later on that same year, the US government set up a central bank – the Federal Reserve – thereby asserting the right to full control over the medium by which a previously free people could exchange with one another. There was opposition to both these engines of government aggrandisement. The opposition was overcome. The rest is history, a history made inevitable by the simple fact that these two acts of government, above all others, made a mockery of any pretense by the US government that they presided over a free country.

Because they were not directly affected by these two events, the US remained a “paragon of freedom” to the rest of the world long after 1913. It was not “hated” by the downtrodden masses. It was hated by their rulers, all of whom feared above all else the example that the US set by simply existing. That hatred survived until the aftermath of WWII, but not for much longer. At the end of WWI, the US troops came home. At the end of WWII, they did NOT. That was the second turning point.

The Global Dissolution:

By the end of the 1960s, the global beacon of freedom which the US had held aloft to shame the tyranny engulfing most of the rest of the world was growing very dim. The US had not joined the League of Nations set up after WWI. It HAD joined the United Nations (UN) set up after WWII. By the late 1960s, the UN had comprehensively proven its hypocritical impotence. The US government was up to its neck in Vietnam. Tragic and ill-fated revolts both inside the Soviet Union and behind the “Iron Curtain” had come and gone with nothing more than pious platitudes emanating from Washington DC.

Twenty years later, at the beginning of the 1990s, the US had what proved to be its last chance to redeem the legacy of the great men who presided over its birth. The “enemy”, the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe, collapsed like the “dominoes” that US policy had warned against for decades.

So what did the US government do? They could have led the rejoicing for the (almost) bloodless liberation of hundreds of millions of people from the yoke of Soviet rule. They could have taken the opportunity, as they actually did after WWI, to systematically wind back their military spending and thereby their chronic deficits. They could have removed their physical presence from the rest of the world and with it the growing resentment of peoples living under regimes propped up by the US.

The US government did none of these things. Instead, they chose to consolidate an empire which the Soviet Union could no longer contest. Their means was a war in the Middle East to “liberate” Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. This was done six months after a US State Department official assured Saddam to his face that the US government: “…Had no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts”.

The US won the war. Again, they did NOT go home. Ten years later, the inevitable “blowback” occurred with the 9/11 tragedy. Ten years after that, the Middle East is again in strife. This time, the conflict is between the regimes which have been installed and supported by the US government in their march to empire and the people who those same regimes have ruled with an iron fist. To these people, the US is not looked upon as an “exemplar” of anything – except political AND economic repression.

 

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