…but, if there is some “disruption” that “severely” affects the economy, the President is hereby given all power for the purpose of “protecting and stabilizing the Nation’s economy and ensuring public confidence in its financial systems.”
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/6656/no-one-believes-in-central-planning-any-more/
No one believes in central planning any more
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It was, after all, a WAR POWERS act that enabled FDR to confiscate all the gold in 1934, fully 16 years after the end of the last (declared) war to which the United States was party.
Of course, the US waged war(s) here, there, and virtually everywhere all the time since then, not just to 1934, but to 2007 and on and on and on.
War powers are like any other power: their gain is our loss.
The bureaucrats write like this on purpose. All such directives have three main ingredients:
1. Obfuscate whenever possible. This is accomplished by employing legalese and tortured English no normal human can understand.
2. Make it lengthy and boring. This will effectively eliminate most people from discovering what is really going on, because they’re too busy leading their live to parse the language.
3. Be ambiguous. From their twisted point of view, the president must have maximum flexibility to do pretty much do whatever he pleases, the Constitution be damned. When someone questions the consitutionality, they mumble something about it being a “living document.” The mainstream press buy this every time.
Protecting and stabilizing the Nation’s economy and ensuring public confidence in its financial systems;
What if the only accurate, rational conclusion is that one should NOT have confidence in the Nation’s financial systems?
Wouldn’t creating a false basis for misplaced confidence mean that people end up participating in a system that they would be better off avoiding altogether?
In any event, our country is now crawling with hundreds of thousands of government officials who will benefit directly whenever there is a “threat to the homeland.”
Thus ensuring we will see more “threats to the homeland.”
“Homeland.” I never thought I’d live to see the day we used such a term.
I was under the impression that the stealing of private gold and the (also unconstitutional) voiding of gold clauses in private contracts occured in 1933 – however if it was 1934 it was 1934.
I think I am right in saying that the two disgusting Supreme Court judgments that claimed that these blatently unconstitutional actions were constitutional happened in 1935.
As for today – quite so.
As soon as there is a fire or a flood (or whatever) the demand goes up for price controls (or other such planning) to prevent people “taking advantage of the situation”.
And then people wonder why goods and services are not provided, and demand that government provide them (at taxpayers expense).
Politicians with the knowledge and courage of (for example) David Crockett (see his speech pointing out that Federal government help was unconsitutional and calling on politicians to help out of their own pockets) are, perhaps, more rare than ever now.
Thanks for bringing this up, Jeffrey.
I suppose this is an appropriate occasion to consider how Hitler became a dictator: http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger100.html.
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