Do Heroes Go to Heaven?

By Ellen Finnigan

April 4, 2015

Over the past decade or so I have witnessed some disturbing trends at church. One would have thought that our Lord Jesus Christ had, himself, worn a government-issued uniform, given how much reverence, gratitude, and appreciation we are led to collectively express for these folks during Mass. At first, it was a weekly prayer “for the troops,” which is fine. There is no human being, alive or dead, who doesn’t need prayers.

However, we never prayed for the innocent civilians in the countries Americans had invaded, who were killed, maimed, and tortured in far greater numbers than Americans.

We never prayed for the loved ones they left behind, the widows, the orphans.

We never prayed for the refugees.

We never prayed for our enemies.

The secular state holidays have become occasion for military remembrance and honorary tribute. On Memorial Day and Veterans Day, the church bulletin includes a message of thanks to veterans for protecting Americans’ freedom, which sends the message to churchgoers that American “wars” abroad have something to do with the Bill of Rights here at home, and the wars are therefore necessary and just (a dubious notion at best). At some point, militarism began to invade Christmas with camouflaged Christmas ornaments and patriotic displays upstaging the Eucharist.

In the last year, the Catholic Church has expanded its prayers to allow more folks in uniforms to get in on the prayer action. In addition to (or in lieu of) praying for military servicemen and women, Catholic Churches are now offering weekly prayers on Sundays for all “first responders.” One wonders how this became a national “thing.” (I have heard it in several states). It seems to mesh nicely with the overall message in the mass media that we are all on the brink of ruin all the time, threatened by an inexhaustible number of enemies and looming crises, and should live in fear and trembling awaiting the next crash, attack, disaster, or pandemic; thus we owe an infinite debt of gratitude to those who offer us safety, order, and protection in such a precarious and nefarious world. (Hm. Who benefits when we have a nation of nervous Nellie’s?)

Things seem to have reached a new threshold with American Sniper. We now have American priests coming right out and saying things in the media like: “Chris Kyle was an American hero.”

The primary concern of the Church is the salvation of souls. 

Christians are concerned with holiness, not heroism. Whether Chris Kyle was an American hero is a secular idea and a moot point, and a strange pronouncement for a priest to make, unless that priest is willing to ask the questions that naturally follow: Does heroism lead to holiness? Do heroes go to heaven? Before you write me an email vilifying me as a “liberal” who “hates” soldiers for asking these questions, let me say: I do not know if “heroes” go to heaven. Nobody knows. Only God can judge the human heart. What I’m saying is: it is dangerous to pretend that they automatically do. It’s also dangerous to pretend that the question I am asking is, itself, a moot point.

When churches and religious leaders constantly adore, praise and worship those who wear uniforms, carry guns, and embody secular ideas of heroism, it leads to misunderstanding and moral confusion among the faithful. People begin to equate this image of heroism with holiness, especially children. If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is take a look at www.nogreaterloveart.com, where uniformed government agents are depicted with angels’ wings, angels of course being spiritual beings who are known for their ability to guard and protect. All you have to do is look at the “Soldier’s Stairway to Heaven,” very popular on Pinterest, or license plates and t-shirts that quote John 15:13 and hold up the service of the soldier as being second only to the “service” of Jesus. 

There is an idea that if you have fought in a war, you have “served your time in hell”; soldiers therefore go straight to heaven. But is such an idea spiritually and theologically acceptable? Does God offer bypasses?

Heroism and holiness have many things in common: They both require strength, courage, devotion, fortitude, self-sacrifice. But all of those qualities could be attributed to people fighting for ISIS just as well, even faith. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle.”  There is no holiness without renunciation; that does not mean that every act of renunciation leads to holiness. The way of perfection requires hardship; not all hardship helps us on our way to perfection. In short, not all suffering is redemptive. Finish reading article

Business Chiefs that Abhor Private Property

CEOs Against Private Property

March 31, 2015Ryan McMaken

The governor of Indiana last week signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, modeled on similar federal legislation. The Indiana statute states that a person’s religious beliefs may not be “substantially burden[ed]” by anti-discrimination statutes. In other words, if anti-discrimination laws could be construed as forcing a person to violate his own religious conscience, then the law allows for an exemption in that case to anti-discrimination mandates.

The response from the left has been fierce, and multiple CEOs of major firms, including Apple and Salesforce, have come out against the legislation with Salesforce announcing that it will impose a partial boycott on Indiana.

The actual points of the bill are murkier, and Gov. Pence of Indiana is now claiming that the bill does not actually allow business owners to discriminate.

Rather than get mired in a discussion of the minutiae of the Indiana law and similar laws, let it just be said that if the law allows for greater discrimination — and thus, enhances private property rights and lessens the load of government regulations — then it is good. If the new law does not do this, then it’s difficult to see what the point of it is except as a scheme to gain favor with some right-wing religious groups.

Exclusion Is a Foundation of Private Property

Even if the bill does allow for greater control over private property on the part of the owners, the new government-allowed discretion would still be far too restrictive since it would apply only to religious objections. After all, religion is merely one criteria that a property owner might employ to determine how he or she wishes to use his or her property. If an owner wishes to dispense with religious motivation in favor of the pure avaricious pursuit of profit, or wishes to use the business to forward the goal of restoring the Russian monarchy, why should those motivations be any less respected than religion?

By framing the debate as a religious matter, the advocates of regulated discrimination are able to portray many of the advocates as zealots. Meanwhile, the supporters of religious freedom in this case have reduced their argument to a discussion about the motivations behind how one uses private property, when they should really be advocating for the unhampered exercise of full private property rights.

Indeed, the debate has much in common with the Obamacare debate in which Obamacare advocates and opponents sparred over whether or not a business should be mandated by law to provide certain types of health care coverage. At the time, I noted that the while the media attempted to portray the controversy as a religious matter, it was really a debate over wages and contracts. 

Similarly, once we strip away all the culture-war grandstanding and claims of supporting enlightened free thought over Dark-Age superstition, what we find is that the debate over the Indiana law is a debate over the nature of private property, pure and simple. One group in this case advocates for a (regrettably limited) expansion of private property rights, while the other side argues for increased government regulation of private businesses and enterprises. 

Tom Cook and Marc Benioff, CEOs of Apple and Salesforce, respectively, have come out in favor of government regulation because they fear the possibility that someone somewhere might use his property in a way that Cook and Benioff find offensive. But at the core of their position is that it is good and legitimate for government to regulate the use of private property so it can be used only in ways that reflect the values of Cook’s and Benioff’s favored religious or socio-economic groups.

In spite of the perception of Cook and Benioff as capitalists of some sort, their grasp of the nature of private property appears shaky at best. If the concept of private property is to have any meaning at all, then ownership must include the ability to exclude others from using that property. In other words, if an owner of a plot of land or a device cannot exclude others from using that land or that device, then the owner does not actually own it. 

Furthermore, without the right to exclude, the “owner” is reduced to little more than a regulated caretaker.

Every Economic Act Involves Discrimination

In practice, the decision to exclude is always based on some type of discrimination. The type of discrimination can run the gamut from “you’re banned from my store because you groped customers” to “I don’t serve your (racial) kind.” In everyday life, the merchant, salesman, clerk, or owner of any kind must — because time is scarce — make constant discriminatory decisions as to whether or not he will do business with client A or client B. Indeed, every single economic act requires this sort of discrimination. A person may prefer to do business with more attractive people, or people who are friendlier. Or he may wish to work only with his co-religionists or citizens of his own nation-state. On a fundamental level, everyone knows this is the case, but many accept that it is the legitimate role of the state to decide which types of discrimination are acceptable and which are not. Hence, discrimination against unattractive people remains acceptable. Discrimination against certain racial groups is not.

Regardless of what groups end up being favored, the effect of any anti-discrimination law is to curtail the freedom of the owner and to increase the size and scope of government’s coercive power over the lives and livelihoods of property owners. Moreover, since anti-discrimination law is heavily dependent on proving intent and motivation, such regulation also puts the government in the position of investigating the thoughts and opinions of owners. Sometimes, owners make this easy for regulators by stating their motivations outright, but in other cases, private owners are investigated and inferences are made as to the feelings and views of owners. This is necessary because, since every business transaction requires some sort of discrimination, the mere act of not entering into a business transaction is not sufficient to prove not-government-approved discrimination.

The Effects of Discrimination Depend on Monopoly Power

 Finish reading

The Costs of Compulsory Education

by Aaron Smith

Education elites and their political cronies have implemented countless initiatives aimed at reforming education. From the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, every plan put forth has resulted in nothing but inefficient expenditures, new layers of bureaucracy, and continuing declines in student achievement.

Education will only be reformed once parents and entrepreneurs are free to create real alternatives to the broken systems that exist today. Repealing compulsory-education laws and allowing parents to spend their education dollars freely should be the first steps in this direction.

Curiously, compulsory-education laws, which conscript children into state-regulated programs of study, are rarely discussed in the context of education reform; these laws' ostensibly benevolent nature allows demagogues to marginalize detractors and quell any attempt at serious discourse. This results in far-reaching regulations that control how private actors educate, and thus prohibits students from getting the individualized education they need.

The origin of compulsory education was characterized by oppression and forced assimilation. The modern movement was initially led by Martin Luther and the early Protestants, who sought to inculcate the masses with their religious views. Despotic Prussia was the first to enact laws at the national level, and compulsory education quickly became a weapon of choice for states seeking to destroy troublesome cultures and languages. In the United States, Massachusetts began enforcing mandatory attendance in 1852, and by 1918 every state had enacted similar legislation. The primary impetus for policymakers was to assimilate poor immigrant children; labor unions were also ardent supporters, as they sought to decrease the supply of labor in the workforce.

Current laws vary by state in details, but they are quite homogeneous in spirit. All require a minimum amount of instructional time (ranging from 160 to 186 days annually) at approved institutions. The majority of Americans between the ages of 5 and 18 are compelled to meet this requirement, with several states enforcing slightly more lenient laws. Although parents are free to pursue private education for their children, such options are almost always regulated by state governments.

There is likely a minority of children who benefit from compulsory education. While these outliers are by no means insignificant, the benefits accrued to them do not justify the aggregate effects imposed. To objectively evaluate the merits of such laws, we must fully account for all of their costs. Evaluating the effects on private forms of education is a good starting point.

Private schools and homeschools are rarely truly free-market alternatives to government-regulated education. By mandating attendance, states have a virtual stranglehold on the nature of private education. After all, in order to become a state-approved program of study at which "official" attendance is recognized, private actors are forced to satisfy some combination of curricular, reporting, and testing requirements.

In New York, for instance, homeschools must submit a notice of intent, maintain attendance records, file quarterly reports, and submit Individualized Home Instruction Plans for state approval. 
Additionally, students must successfully complete an annual assessment, including mandatory yearly standardized testing for grades nine and above. Perhaps most problematic, however, is its mandate that instruction given to a child must be "at least substantially equivalent to minors of like age or attainments at public schools," an edict clearly susceptible to abuse by state officials. This forces parents to comply with the belief systems of distant regulators who are free to define "substantially equivalent" as they see fit.

In the event that a parent's personal values oppose those of the state, the state's interests will ultimately prevail. This conflict prompted Murray Rothbard to note that at the heart of the compulsory-education debate is "the idea that children belong to the State rather than to their parents." If you attempt to challenge this notion, your child may be labeled "truant," and you may be subjected to fines, imprisonment, and the forcible return of their child to his or her zoned public school. Compulsory education thus imposes the state's definition of "education" on all parties falling under its auspices — even those pursuing a "private" course of study.

The state's monopoly on what defines "education" inevitably suppresses alternative views, thereby eliminating the complexity and diversity that should be prevalent in the market. Instead, a homogeneous system is used to serve heterogeneous students — yet another cost of compulsory education. READ MORE

Brazil: at Cusp of Monetary Apocalypse

Brazil: Victim of Vulgar Keynesianism

• 

March 27, 2015 Antony P. Mueller

All Keynesian roads lead to stagflation. That was the case in Europe and in the United States in the 1970s when both stagnation and inflation hit the economies at the same time. Currently, this is the case in Brazil.

Since coming into power in 2003, the Brazilian labor government has religiously implemented the economic policy doctrine of growth by spending. Now, the country has fallen into stagnation with a recession looming while inflation is on the rise. All economic indicators flash red lights: from economic growth to inflation and the exchange rate, from productivity to investment and industrial production.

Booms and Bubbles, Brazilian Style

Once again, Keynesian policies have led to stagflation. Reality has finally set in. The illusion of easy wealth is shattered. The Keynesian wonder weapon has become impotent. The economic policy teams at the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank have no notion what to do now. After all, they know of no other economic policy doctrine than to stimulate the economy by spending ever more. Yet with the government’s coffers empty and inflation high and rising, the policy tools of deficit spending and monetary expansion have run out of fuel. Favorable external conditions such as the China boom and high demand for commodities had benefited the Brazilian economy during the presidency of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. These external factors together with massive internal stimuli accelerated economic growth. With the end of the commodities boom and the slowing of economic growth in China, the external environment factors no longer helped when at the same time internal consumption hit the wall, as consumers had to scale back along with the government as the debt burden approaches its limit.

In early 2015, it became obvious that the country has lived in an illusionary world under the Labor Party over the past twelve years. Now it seems like a joke that President Lula once announced that Brazil’s economy was about to overtake that of the United Kingdom and from then on move upward on the ladder of the large economies. Yet when it was announced in 2007 that Brazil was to host the Soccer World Championship in 2014 and when in 2009 the Olympic Committee selected Rio de Janeiro for the Olympic Games in 2016, it seemed that the much-wanted international recognition of the president’s achievements had arrived. The jubilation at home was fully matched by the exuberance abroad about how Lula would lead Brazil into the twenty-first century.

Just as much as many Brazilians did not want to recognize, foreign observers, too, shut their eyes to the fact that the Brazilian Labor Party has been practicing one of the crudest forms of Keynesianism. The Brazilian kind of Keynesianism is deeply mixed with the Marxism of Michal Kalecki. In Europe and the United States remnants of sound economics survived at the onset of the “new economics,” and later on partially recovered classical and neoclassical principles. In Brazil there has been an almost complete victory of “Kaleckian Keynesianism” with most other types of macroeconomics cast aside.

Can the Government Turn Stones into Bread?

Even today, the Polish economist Kalecki is still held in high esteem at some of the most prominent Brazilian universities. The version of “Keynesianism” that he developed in the 1930s has become the leading paradigm for economic policymaking albeit this type of macroeconomics lacks any micro-foundation and is largely void of realistic content. The Kaleckian version of Keynesianism takes the macroeconomic symbols for real and by moving them around according to the basic rules of algebra, the model finally is brought to the conclusion that “workers spend what they earn,” while “capitalists earn what they spend” (as this theory was once summarized by Kaldor).

Kalecki and his Marxist followers consequently decided that when the state assumes the capitalist function, government could spend the country to wealth while workers would get their fair share as consumers. Even more so than Keynes, Kalecki’s gospel preached that its believers could turn stones into bread. Government spending for whatever purpose combined with mass consumption promised a most pleasurable way to prosperity. This promise has been the economic policy principle of the Brazilian Labor Party government over the past twelve years.

During much of the two presidential periods of da Silva from the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2010, the Kaleckian-Keynesian recipe seemed to work. The Brazilian government under the former trade union leader spent, the consumers consumed, and the economy grew. All the while, price inflation remained subdued and the unemployment rate fell. No wonder that President Lula enjoyed immense popularity during his two terms and that Lula’s Labor Party would remain in power when his handpicked successor won the elections for presidency in 2010 and in 2014.

Dilma Rousseff, however, a politician by trade and former urban guerilla fighter, had a hard time winning the elections. When running for her second mandate, dark clouds began to overshadow the still blatant optimism of the ruling party. In 2011, the economic growth rate began to fall. The government first brushed it away as a temporary dip, yet when the rate continued to decline even more in 2012, the government began to panic. With the election coming up in 2014, the government did what the Kaleckian-Keynesian recipe prescribes and accelerated even more its expansive policies. This may have won the election for her, but the price to pay came in high later on.

Disillusion Sets In

Now, in early 2015, disillusion has fully set in. People feel cheated by the false optimism of the government. The corruption scandal of the Brazilian oil company Petrobras together with the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions drove over a million of Brazilians to the streets on March 15 in protest against the government.

What many of the protesters fail to see, however, is that Brazil needs more than just a change of government. The country needs a change of mind. In order to get on to the path of prosperity, Brazil has to discard its prevalent economic ideology. Brazil has to get rid of its tradition of profligate government spending and easy money, Marxist-inspired state involvement in the economy, and the protectionism that had come with the adoption of Cepalism (the economic policy concept of the Economic Commission of Latin America). Not special circumstances lie at the heart of the current malaise, but wrong ideas about economic policy.

Brazil needs a huge dosage of economic liberalization to find its way out of the current crisis. Less state intervention and much more freedom of doing business must be the first steps. For this to happen a change of mind is needed. Brazilians must open up to an alternative beyond state capitalism. Brazil must embrace laissez-faire in order to prosper.

This task is tremendous and not much different from earlier elections, almost all parties currently represented in the Brazilian Congress belong to the left and the extreme left. There is neither a truly conservative nor an authentic pro-market political party. This situation is more than peculiar because, as surveys consistently show, most of the Brazilians locate their political orientation at the center-right and in favor of free markets.

Marxism Still Dominates the Universities

The reason for this discrepancy lies in the fact that the left dominates higher education, particularly in the social sciences, economics, and law. It is from this group that most political activists come. When the military dictatorship ended in 1984, the university system fell under almost complete control by leftists of all kinds. This way, academic life is ideologically very different from the rest of the Brazilian society where common sense still has prevailed.

Fortunately, intellectual evolution is no longer largely dependent on academia. While the Kaleckian brand of Keynesianism and Marxism still dominates the universities, a strong libertarian movement is on the rise spearheaded by the Brazilian Mises Institute. Young people in particular flock to this site like the proverbial wanderer in the desert in the search for water. In the past, changes of mentality took decades and even centuries in order to unfold.

Nowadays, with the internet, ideas have a market place of their own with free access for all. It should be easy for the Brazilians to learn that it is not enough to be fed up with the present government, but it is high time to transform the country’s state capitalism into a free market system in order to prosper.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The Myth of the Voluntary Military

July 29, 2011 Jeffrey A. Tucker

Ludwig von Mises summed up the essence of government in words that are particularly vivid in wartime:

Government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action.… Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

What about those who are called upon to enforce state edicts, whether just or unjust? Every society includes people who are willing to act as the coercive arm of the state, those who are willing to use violence and freely risk their lives as they administer the law. The state has no great trouble recruiting policemen and prison guards. Are there enough such people to amass a huge army of hundreds of thousands of people who are willing to risk their lives carrying out destructive foreign wars of dubious merit?

When you see the pictures of American troops fighting their way through sand storms, in a strange land with strange people, seeking to overturn a government and transform a society that posed no credible threat to the United States, being shot at by average Iraqis who are clearly motivated only by the desire to expel the invader, it is not hard to imagine that US troops are wondering how it all came to this.

The British defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, claims that the coalition armed forces are made up of "men and women who made a free choice to serve their country," whereas Iraqi forces "are motivated either by fear or by hatred." It's hard to say what motivates Iraqi forces (perhaps the desire to repel invasion?), but what he says about coalition troops is simply not true.

The men and women now fighting initially agreed to be in the employ of the military. The United States is not yet conscripting people. And yet how many of these would leave Iraq if they could? What if Donald Rumsfeld announced that anyone now fighting in Iraq is free to leave without penalty? What would become of the US armed forces now attempting to bring about unconditional surrender in Iraq?

It's an interesting question, as a pure mental experiment, because it highlights the essentially forced nature of all modern military service. To leave once the war begins would amount to what the government calls desertion. This word sounds ominous, but in fact it merely describes what everyone in a civilized society takes for granted: the right to quit.

Deuteronomy's exhortation to encourage the Israelites into battle includes an invitation to freely leave: "What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house." (20:8) But there is no such right in the modern US military. If you try to leave, you face coercion, particularly if you try to leave in wartime. In this way, the military differs from the police and the ranks of prison guards, jobs from which people are free to walk away without penalty.

Punishing people for attempting to leave the military — to avoid killing and/or being killed — is not a new practice. Mises speaks of the "barbarous" practices used in the 18th century to keep soldiers from deserting their units. The more undesirable wartime conditions become, the more necessary it is for the state to force people to continue to endure them.

The scene that shocked me most in the movie Gods and Generals — and it was clearly not intended to be shocking — occurs when an assistant to Stonewall Jackson informs the general that some soldiers have been discovered in an attempt to desert the army under his command. The general orders them to be tried in a military court, and, if found guilty of attempted desertion, to be shot. They were indeed tried and shot. Thus did these men die for exercising their God-given right to walk away.

One of those shot in the film was a young man recruited by Jackson himself, the son of a friend who decided to return to the North. The scene was included to demonstrate Jackson's impartiality. This general is no respecter of persons — or (more plausibly) personhood. To me, the scene demonstrated the immorality of all modern notions of military discipline.

As the movie shows, the South believed it was fighting for the right of self-government, which required that the states be able to exercise their right to leave an increasingly despotic Union. But the military command would not allow their soldiers to secede. The Confederate generals believed that the Union must be voluntary, but the army itself must be kept together through coercion.

"The legalization of desertion might provide the very key to bringing about a more humane world."

Of course, Northern armies employed the same practice. Many Union troops believed they were fighting against slavery, which amounts to nothing more than forbidding people from exercising their right to flee their alleged owners. But the imposition of the death penalty for soldiers choosing not to fight, that is, to flee their military owners, was assumed to be a normal part of military discipline.

Both North and South claimed they were fighting in order to abolish a form of captivity — the right to self-government in one case, and the right to not be employed against one's will in the other — but the ability of the military to imprison and kill fleeing soldiers was never questioned. It is not often questioned tod

The scene parallels the opening sequence in the movie Enemy at the Gates, when Russian troops in boats are being bombed from the air by German planes. Russian troops begin to jump in the water to get away. Their Russian commander starts to unload his pistol as they leap. The viewer is rightly shocked by this incredible display of totalitarian brutality. Yet, in essence, what we are seeing is nothing more than a fast-forwarded version of the court-martial, death-penalty scene in Gods and Generals.

Both scenes underscore a reality hardly ever discussed: all modern armies are essentially totalitarian enterprises. Once you sign up for them, or are drafted, you are a slave. The penalty for becoming a fugitive is death. Even now, the enforcements against mutiny, desertion, going AWOL, or what have you, are never questioned.

This is remarkable, if you think about it. Imagine that you work for Walmart but find the job too dangerous, and try to quit. You are told that you may not, so you run away. The management catches up to you, and jails you. You refuse to go and resist. Finally, you are shot. We would all recognize that this is exploitation, an atrocity, a crime, a clear example of the disregard that this company has for human life. The public outrage would be palpable. The management, not the fleeing employees, would be jailed or possibly executed.

Murray Rothbard frames the question nicely: "In what other occupation in the country are there severe penalties, including prison and in some cases execution, for 'desertion,' i.e., for quitting the particular employment? If someone quits General Motors, is he shot at sunrise?"

The military has done a study1  of what causes people to go AWOL, concluding that the practice "tends to increase in magnitude during wartime" and when "the Army is attempting to restrict the ways that soldiers can exit service through administrative channels."

The same study profiles the deserters, as compared with nondeserters, as less educated, having a lower aptitude, more likely to be from broken homes, etc. — all the usual reasons why a person is so dishonorably disinclined to want to be killed. Finally, this study examined the effects of desertion on the individual, concluding that choosing to be disemployed from the ranks of the armed and dangerous causes "loss of self-esteem and confidence" as well as "embarrassment and even shame." Well, what else would you expect from someone who has "chosen a certain path and failed to meet the necessary requirements and/or sustain the fortitude to meet those requirements"?

Now comes the report from Diwaniya, Iraq, heavily cited by a US military spokesman, that many Iraqi soldiers were fighting at gunpoint, threatened with death by tough loyalists of President Saddam Hussein.… "The officers threatened to shoot us unless we fought," said a wounded Iraqi from his bed in the American field hospital here. "They took out their guns and pointed them and told us to fight."

It could be that the captured soldiers are only trying to win sympathy. But it would hardly be surprising if it were true. To force people to fight when they would rather not is the very essence of modern military organization. In modern practice, there is no such thing as a voluntary military. Whether you are forced into the machine or not (via conscription or via payments in tax dollars), once you are a cog, you must stay in no matter how much grinding you do or how much you are ground.

The slave-like nature of the military commitment has no expiration date. Yes, there are contracts, but the military can void them whenever it so desires. Predictably, it desires to void these contracts (through so-called stop-loss regulations) when the enlisted most want to leave: when they must kill and risk being killed. All branches of the military have implemented these stop-loss regulations because of the war on terror. This amounts to the nationalization of human beings.

 

Still, one wonders how much the ranks of the militarily employed would shrink in absence of antidesertion enforcement. If modern presidents had to recruit the way barons and lords recruited, and if they constantly faced the prospect of mass desertions, they might be more careful about getting involved in unnecessary, unjust, unwinnable wars, or going to war at all. Peace would take on new value out of necessity. When going to war, they might be more careful to curb their war aims, and match war strategies with those more limited aims.

In fact, we might discover through the study of the history of antidesertion statutes the key to the transition from the limited war and decentralized military of the medieval world to the mass murder of the modern total war. The legalization of desertion might provide the very key to bringing about a more humane world.

In the meantime, US officials would do well to stop complaining that Iraqi soldiers are being forced to serve and forced to kill. A press release from the Air Force announcing its new stop-loss rule says, "We understand the individual sacrifices that our airmen and their families will be making.… We appreciate their unwavering support and dedication to our nation."

One might even have a greater appreciation for their sacrifice (even if not their mission) if one knew that it were undertaken willingly.

This article is excerpted from It's a Jetsons World, "The Myth of the Voluntary Military" (2011).

source: Mises.org  

Bitcoin: What It Is, Why It Matters - and What the Critics Say - Mises.org

February 14, 2015

Thomas E. Woods | Thomas E. Woods a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is the creator of Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom and author of eleven books, including the New York Times bestsellers Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and other titles.

via libertycrier

You Can't Create More Savings by Printing More Money

February 12, 2015 Frank Shostak

Savings has nothing to do with money. For instance, if a baker produces ten loaves of bread and consumes one loaf, his savings is nine loaves of bread. In other words, the “savings” in this case is the baker’s real income (his production of bread) minus the amount of bread that the baker consumed. The baker’s savings now permits him to secure other goods and services.

For instance, the baker can now exchange his saved bread for a pair of shoes with a shoemaker. Observe that the baker’s savings is his real means of payments — he pays for the shoes with the saved bread. Likewise, the shoemaker pays for the nine loaves of bread with the shoes that are his real savings.

What Is Savings?

The introduction of money doesn’t alter what we have so far said. When a baker sells his bread for money to a shoemaker, he has supplied the shoemaker with his saved, unconsumed bread. The supplied bread sustains the shoemaker and allows him to continue making shoes. Note that the money received by the baker is fully backed by his unconsumed production of bread.

Yet without the medium of exchange, i.e., money, no market economy, and hence, the division of labor, could take place. Money enables the goods of one specialist to be exchanged for the goods of another specialist. In short, by means of money, people can channel real savings, which in turn permits the widening of the process of real wealth generation.

Also, in a world without money it would be impossible to save various final goods like perishable goods for a long period of time. So the introduction of money solves this problem. Instead of storing his bread, the baker can now exchange his bread for money.

In other words, his unconsumed production of bread is now “stored,” so to speak, in money. There is, however, one proviso in all of this: that the flow of the production of goods and services continues unabated. This means that whenever a holder of money decides to exchange some money for goods, these goods are there for him.

Having Money Is Not the Same as Having Savings

Money can be seen as a receipt, as it were, given to producers of final goods and services that are ready for human consumption. Thus when a baker exchanges his money for apples, the baker has already paid for them with the bread produced and saved prior to this exchange. Money therefore is the baker’s claim on real savings. It is not, however, savings.

Now what about the case where money is used to buy unprocessed material — is the unprocessed material real savings? The answer is no. The raw material must be processed and then converted into a piece of equipment, which in turn can be employed in the production of final goods and services that are ready for human consumption. In this sense, the buyer of unprocessed material transfers his claims on real savings to the seller of material in return for the prospect that the transformed material, some time in the future, will generate benefits far in excess of the cost incurred.

Furthermore, the buyer of the material also buys time (i.e., by having the material readily available, he can proceed immediately with the stages of making the final tool). If the material weren’t available he would have to extract it himself, which of course would delay the making of the final tool.

Once real savings are exchanged for money, the recipient of the money can exercise his demand for money in a variety of ways. This, however, will not have any effect on the existent pool of real savings.

An individual can exercise his demand for money either by holding it in his pocket, or in his house, or by placing it in the custody of a bank in a demand deposit, or even in a safe deposit box.

Also, whether he uses it immediately in exchange for other goods, or lends it out, or puts it under the mattress, it does not alter the given pool of real savings. Thus by putting the money under the mattress, an individual doesn’t engage in the act of saving. He is just exercising a demand for money. What individuals do with money cannot alter the fact that real savings are already funding a particular activity. Whether individuals decide to hold onto the money, or lend it out alters their demand for money, but this has nothing to do with savings.

Whenever an individual lends some of his money he in fact transfers his claims on real goods to a borrower. By lending money, the individual has in fact lowered the demand for it. Note that the act of lending money (i.e., the transferring of the claim) doesn’t alter the existent pool of real savings. Likewise, if the owner of money decides to buy a financial asset like a bond or a stock he simply transfers his claims on real savings to the seller of financial assets. No present real savings are affected as a result of these transactions.

How Does Money-Supply Expansion Affect Savings?


Now let us examine the effect of monetary expansion on the pool of real savings. Since the expanded money supply was never earned, goods and services therefore do not back it up, so to speak. When such money is exchanged for goods it, in fact, amounts to consumption that is not supported by production. Consequently a holder of honest money (i.e., an individual who has produced real wealth), that wants to exercise his claim over goods discovers that he cannot get back all the goods he previously produced and exchanged for money.

In short, he discovers that the purchasing power of his money has fallen — he has in fact been robbed by means of loose monetary policy. The printing of money therefore cannot result in more savings as suggested by mainstream economists, but rather to its redistribution. 

This, in the process, undermines wealth generators, thereby weakening over time the pool of real savings. So any so-called economic growth, in the framework of a loose monetary policy, can only be on account of a private sector that manages to grow the pool of real savings despite the negative effects of the loose money policy.

We can thus conclude that savings is not about money as such, but about final goods and services that support various individuals that are engaged in various stages of production. It is not money that funds economic activity but the flow of final consumer goods and services. The existence of money only facilitates the flow of the real stuff.


via mises.org

Know Your Enemy: How Federal Programs are Carried Out

There are two main ways that most major federal programs are put into effect. Understanding this will help determine the best way to stop them.

PROCESS 1

Some new way to violate your rights comes on the scene. The feds start giving the tools to effectuate this idea – either through grant money to buy specific things, or giveaways of specific equipment – to the states. The states start using them – widely. Eventually, the feds tap into the program, essentially making it a national program.  
This is done via “information sharing” that was expanded after 9-11, or Memoranda of understanding (MOUs), which are essentially partnerships with state funds attached to them. These agreements are not necessarily legally binding, but usually offer some privacy between state, private enterprises (contractors), and federal partnerships. Much of this kind of information usually remains hidden from the general public.

Examples: Parallel Construction, using NSA data without warrant in regular criminal investigations on a state and local level. Pentagon’s 1033 program of giving military equipment to local police, turning them into an army. This equipment is often used to help in Process 2 – direct enforcement.  Drones, where the DHS is giving mass amounts of grant money to the states to put surveillance systems in the sky. Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs),  where the Wall Street Journal broke the story that the DEA has been working with local law enforcement to track people through their license plates for over 7 years. The ACLU obtained numerous documents revealing how local and state agencies build license plate reader systems using federal grant money. In other words, they buy the local agencies the equipment, which in essence makes a national system for the feds to tap in to.

PROCESS 2

The feds pass a new law or program violating your rights.  The states handle either handle the front-line enforcement, or they provide significant resources to the operation of the program. This is pretty straightforward, the local agencies are, again, doing the bulk of the heavy lifting.

Examples: The EPA has just over 200 enforcement agents for the entire country. Most enforcement is done by state agencies. Federal drug prohibition is primarily effectuated by state prohibition, and the same goes for federal gun control.  In other areas, states operate critical infrastructure for the feds, such as exchanges or medicaid expansion for the Affordable Care Act – or water and power NSA spying facilities.

WHAT THIS TEACHES US

The fact of the matter is this – the feds simply don’t have the manpower or resources to do what they’ve been doing. It’s the states that have been doing most of it for them.

Understanding this – the #1 most effective way to stop federal programs is to simply withdraw participation or support for them on a state level.

This is exactly what Hans-Hermann Hoppe recommended in his speech What Must Be done.  In it, he said:

“Without local enforcement, by compliant local authorities, the will of the central government is not much more than hot air.”

This mirrors the advice of James Madison in Federalist #46, which prominently recommended, among other things, a “refusal to cooperate with officers of the Union.”

The short message is this: Refuse to comply, Nullify!

I discussed this in more detail, along with some current applications of it in the states, on the Tom Woods show today.

Back When New York State Citizens Enjoyed the Constitutional Rule of Law

How the 1846 New York State Con-Con took NY from Jeffersonian Democracy into Today's Whiggism

Imagine the horror today if our politicians were entrusted with a constitutional convention! Never mind they don't honor the one they've got, let alone even read it! You, too, can be a Locofoco, just do it.


DEMOCRACY AND LAISSEZ FAIRE: THE NEW YORK STATE CONSTITUTION OF 1846
 
ARTHUR A. EKIRCH, JR.
Department of History, Stale University of New York,Albany

New York's current financial woes have a precedent, and perhaps a solution, in the pages of the distant past. Well back in its history, in the late 1830s, New York State was spending and lending money lavishly. By the early 1840s, the rapidly mounting debt had occasioned a severe financial crisis.

To avert the imminent possibility of bankruptcy and default, the state legislature in 1842 passed what was known as "the stop and tax law", a levy of one mill on each dollar of taxable property. The new revenue helped the state meet its most pressing obligations. 

But, even more importantly in  terms of the future, New York decided to take steps to prevent another such fiscal disaster.

Ambitious projects for internal improvements -mostly canal construction and loans for railroad building -were cut back or abandoned unless there was a reasonable expectation that they could be funded from tolls or taxation. And the legislature also issued a call for a constitutional convention. The new Constitution adopted in 1846 placed strict limits on the state's ability to borrow money.

Thus the people of New York, facing problems similar to the state's later predicament, found the answer in an old-fashioned program of reduced spending and new taxes. What is surprising, however, is that such policies had the popular support of the most democratic and liberal elements in the state.

To understand the unusual sequence of events which culminated in the New York State Constitution of 1846, one must go back in history to the Jacksonian era and the political struggles between the Democrats and the Whigs. In New York the Jacksonian Democrats included a wide-ranging constituency of radical workingmen, Irish immigrants, farmers, intellectuals, and representatives of the new rising business or small capitalist class. 

The preponderance of the older landed aristocracy and wealthier classes, together with the most English or Anglo-Saxon elements in the population, gravitated toward the Whig Party. The Whigs, united nationally by their opposition to Andrew Jackson's Presidency, were the ideological heirs in New York State of DeWitt Clinton, five times governor and father of the Erie Canal. Like Clinton, the Whigs supported the generous use of of state funds for internal improvements as well as for various cultural, humanitarian, and educational endeavors. The Whigs' belief in positive government and social reform reflected their paternalistic conception of politics and economics.~'

Quite different were the ideas of the Democrats who, in contrast to their Whig opponents, stood for a strict construction of the United States Constitution, limiting the governing power to its least essentials. Both nationally and in New York State, the Jacksonian Democrats adhered to the Jeffersonian agrarian maxim that the least government it the best government. In New York the leader of the Democratic Party was Martin Van Buren, head of the famed Albany Regency which controlled the state governmental machinery through most of the 1830s and '40s. The most radical Democrats, known as Locofocos, were somewhat to the left of Van Buren and the Regency. They included an interesting collection of intellectuals and politicians who espoused a negative, anti-statist democracy. As against the paternalistic philosophy of the Whigs, the Locofoco Democrats stressed complete laissez faire in government-business relations. For example, the introduction in 1837 to the first issue of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, organ of the more radical Democrats, defined the party's belief in democratic republicanism and majority rule.  

But the editors added:

The best government is that which governs least. No human depositories can, with safety, be trusted with the power of legislation upon the general interests of society so as to operate directly or indirectly on the industry and property of the community. Such power must be perpetually liable to the most pernicious abuse, from the natural imperfection, both in wisdom of judgment and purity of purpose, of all human legislation, exposed constantly to the pressure of partial interests; interests which, at the same time that they are essentially selfish and tyrannical, are ever vigilant, persevering, and subtle in all the arts of deception and corruption.~~~

Most forthright of the radical Democrats was William Leggett, a Locofoco colleague in the 1830s of such New York Democratic writers as James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Theodore Sedgwick, and Parke Godwin. Leggett coupled adherence to the Jeffersonian natural rights philosophy with demands for the equal right to property, not its abolition. 

Governments had no warrant to interfere with individual pursuits by offering financial advantages to any particular class or industry. 

Specially chartered banks, including the Bank of the United States, were a favorite target of Leggett's scorn. "Let the banks perish," he wrote. "Now is the time for the complete emancipation of trade from legislative thralldom."~~~

As a part of their general laissez-faire philosophy and opposition to Whig paternalism, the Democrats were also dubious of those social and humanitarian reform movements which infringed upon individual liberty and private property. Thus they were hostile to the abolitionists even though this meant ignoring the question of freedom for the black slave.

Imprisonment for debt attracted little attention from either Democrats or workingmen until public interest in the matter became too strong to be ignored. The workingmen's parties were, however, in a peculiar position because wage earners wanted preferential creditor status through a mechanics' lien law. Even public schools had difficulty winning Democratic support because their expense involved heavier taxation. Charity schools and use of the Lancastrian system of pupil tutors instead won Democratic favor. A system of statewide public education would also interfere with parents' control over their children and might undermine religious freedom.141

In Washington, Andrew Jackson, the Democrats' hero, enjoyed an uneasy and , controvercial Presidency. His years in office from 1829 to 1837 formed an era in which easy credit, cheap land, and internal improvements all contributed to an inflationary prosperity.

At the same time, Jackson's own inclinations tended toward the limitations on federal spending favored by his friend and political adviser Van Buren. 

As governor of New York in 1828, Van Buren had secured passage of the Safety Fund System to safeguard the banks and assure the state of a source of credit and wealth to go along with the Erie Canal. The state-chartered New York banks cast doubt on the need for the federal United States Bank, while the state-constructed Erie Canal rebuked the western states' clamor for federal aid for their own internal improvements. Moreover, the Jeffersonian principle of states' rights and opposition to federal centralized power, espoused by Van Buren and the New York Locofoco Democrats, was also able to gain national success by Jackson's Bank of the United States and Maysville Road vetoe~.'~l

In 1836 the United States for the only time in its history was without a national debt; a year later the federal government was briefly in a position to distribute its surplus revenues to the states.

But the Jacksonians, despite the President's efforts to moderate or level out the economic boom, were unable to ward off its financial aftermath in the Panic of 1837. Van Buren, Jackson's successor in the White House, fell a political victim to the Panic, and in New York in 1838 the Democrats were overturned by the Whigs who elected William H. Seward as governor.

Governor Seward, it should be noted, was an admirer of DeWitt Clinton who had earlier helped inaugurate the transportation revolution in New York. Upon completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, he had urged further state expenditures for new canals, turnpikes, and eventually railroads, as well as a generous policy of chartering banks and insurance companies.

Now, in 1840, the Whigs under Governor Seward called for the appropriation of four million dollars for ten years to build additional canals and railroads. Henceforth dubbed "the forty million dollar party", the Whigs to their misfortune had ignored the adverse effects of the Panic of 1837 on the state's declining credit.

Alarmed critics warned that the cost of public works would soon increase the state debt to as much as 75 million dollars with annual interest charges of 4.5 million. Already by 1842, when the Democrats regained control of the legislature and passed the stop and tax law, the state debt which five years earlier amounted to 7 million dollars had grown to 27 million dollars, and state bonds were unmarketable even at a discount of 20%. Instead of continuing to spend money for internal improvements, the Democrats, at a cost of 40 million dollars in principal and interest, proposed to extinguish the state debt in twenty years.

As a result of such conservative fiscal policies, within two months of the stop and tax law the state's 7% bonds sold at par, while 5% bonds reached that level in I5 months.~~I

By the 1840s national opinion in regard to state aid for internal improvements was under-going a change. The former public enthusiasm for heavy state expenditures had run its course.

Some of the new states in the West were in default on their bonds. 
State initiative and responsibility had been necessary earlier for such ambitious undertakings as the Erie Canal, but after the return of prosperity in the 1840s private capital, just beginning to be accumulated by American manufacturing and industry, was available for investment. Railroads were now becoming the most important means of transportation, but railroads with their special rolling stock could not be considered public in the same sense as a canal, a river, or a turnpike. Although railroad builders frequently turned to the states to help raise the large amounts of capital they required, most of their funds in New York came from individual savings and from credit extended by American banks. Accordingly, while there was little foreign investment in, or municipal aid for, New York State railroads until after the Civil War, the New York Central by 1853 had 2331 stockholders.~"

The decline of public aid and intervention in economic enterprise was most marked in some of the eastern states where the old colonial concept of the commonwealth fell victim to a surge of anti-government feeling. Although various economic and social groups continued to desire political intervention in behalf of their own self-interests, the fear of more state taxes and increasing state indebtedness blocked heavy public expenditures throughout the 1840s. Instead of continuing to take a positive, direct role in the economy, the state granted its economic powers to private banks and stock companies. For example, the Free Banking Act passed by New York in 1838 abolished the old system requiring special legislation for each bank charter and in effect introduced competition into banking. Under general incorporation laws, state charters were now granted to all manner of enterprises which, in pursuing their own private ends, were largely freed of the public responsibility associated with governmental agencies and the earlier semiprivate corporation. Democratic reluctance to continue the specially chartered corporation for a favored few had dispersed the privilege of incorporation among many stockholders and had separated it from responsibility to the state.IB1

Legislation for free banking and general incorporation laws accordingly had the support not only of the business community but also of those opposed to all governmental aid and protection for selected enterprises. Locofoco Democrats and workingmen united in the crusade against economic monopoly and special privilege, although labor sometimes identified its own true interest with that of the whole community. In any case, the state was usually too weak in an administrative sense to enforce either its own definition of the public interest, or to give its full support to various private or special interest groups.

Thus laissez faire and the cry of equal rights for all and special privileges for none was a more appealing political philosophy in the 1830s and '40s than any Whiggish notions of a paternalistic and expensive government.lgl

It was in response to these views that the Democrats pushed ahead with their plans for drafting a new state constitution. William C. Bouck, the conservative or Hunker Democratic successor to Seward as governor in 1843 and 1844, favored a moderate course on internal improvements despite the Democrats' stop and tax law of 1842. But when Silas Wright, a close friend of Van Buren and the staunchest disciple of Jeffersonian agrarian democracy in New York State, was put forward for the nomination of governor, Bouck and the conservative Hunker faction had to retreat. Wright in his first annual governor's message in January 1845 praised the stop and tax law for restoring the state's credit. Three fifths of the state's debt charged to the General Fund, he pointed out, had been incurred by unwise loans to railroads that had proved unable to pay their obligations.

Wright also announced that he favored calling a constitutional convention.flOl

In a series of articles analyzing the progress of constitutional reform, which appeared at this time in the Democratic Review, John Bigelow, one of the party's intellectuals, listed some of the changes which he believed New York and other states should adopt.

These included a provision that "The state should have no power to contract debts, or loan its credit, except in case of war, invasion, or insurrection." In the matter of a general incorporation law, Bigelow urged: "The members of such corporations, (not excepting those established for education or charity) should be individually liable for the debts, liabilities, and acts of such Corporation, and for the consequences resulting therefrom."

Furthermore: "All laws or regulations interfering with the liberty of trade or industry (such as license and inspection laws) should be abolished, and their enactment for the future prohibited." Bigelow added as miscellaneous proposals the abolishment of the death penalty and permission for women to control their own property after marriage.l1'1

The New York Constitutional Convention, which met in the summer of 1846, completed its labors in time for the voters to approve its handiwork that same year. Although the anti-statist views of such Jeffersonian Democrats as Bigelow and Wright were subject to some modification and compromise, the New York Constitution of 1846 embodied the laissez-faire position better than any document in the state's history. Only after all debts were paid through a sinking fund could the state appropriate any surplus for canal improvements and extensions not already mandated by law. Corporations including banks were to be chartered under general laws rather than by special act. Stockholders were made liable to the amount of their shares for all debts and liabilities contracted by their banks. As an epitaph to the anti-rent wars which had reached a climax in 1846, the Constitution abolished all feudal tenures and perpetual leases. Male suffrage was made universal except for Negroes who had to possess an estate of the value of $250, unless the people in a referendum on the question voted other-wise"2'.

This curious and illiberal provision, which was approved by the voters, retained the clause in the 1821 Constitution in which the property qualification was removed for whites but not for blacks.

The Negro vote, traditionally cast in favor of the old Federalist slaveowning class, had continued to be exercised in behalf of Clinton and then the Whigs. Though never a large vote, it was opposed by the Democrats chiefly because of labor's influence.l13'

In a retrospect the article on constitutional government in the Democratic Review, Bigelow reiterated his libertarian views with then warning that "A great source of inequality in the conditions of men in respect of wealth and comfort arises from the action of law.

Too much government has a direct tendency to aid one man or one set of men in the 'pursuit of happiness', and in the 'acquiring, possessing, and protecting property', if not at the expense of the rest, at least without rendering them the like assistance."~'"

Unfortunately the Jacksonians, despite their defeat of the Bank of the United States, had not been able to slow the growth of wealth and inequality in New York and some of the larger cities in the East in the era before the Civil War. But their more radical laissez-faire views, as embodied in the stop and tax law and 1846 Constitution, disenchanted the wealthier business class which moved more than ever into the Whig Party. Work on the Erie Canal, which the Democrats had stopped in 1842, was resumed in 1847. 

Moreover, until 1850 railroads had to pay canal tolls to protect the state's vested interested in "Clinton's ditch". 

After that, canal tolls were reduced to provide competition to the growing volume of traffic carried by the railroads~.I'~1during the Jacksonian Era," Journal of American Historians of a later generation have grown reinforces the view of the age of Jackson as essentially accustomed to interpreting democracy and one of laissez faire in terms of the modern welfare state. The negative democracy of the New York State Democrats of the 1840s accordingly wins little contemporary approval. Democracy in the eyes of its later adherents has become synonymous with power, preferably such power as may be exercised by a strong executive in the name of the people. Some historians even question whether the negative state can be democratic and reason that laissez faire must automatically favor an aristocracy of wealth. But what passes for the welfare state today rewards most of all its largest investors in the military-industrial complex. Beneficiaries of the welfare-warfare state's largesse would be horrified by a return to the spirit of the 1840s or to any consistent across-the-board application of laissez faire. 

Meanwhile New York's Constitution of 1846 remains an interesting, though passing, example of the enactment of Jeffersonian anti-statism into the fundamental law. 

[your on your own with the bibliography & footnotes. Sorry for the jumbling, but c'est la vie, n'est pas? See the PDF source at Mises.org for clarity. ]

NOTES York (New York: Oxford University Press, 1%7).
10. John A. Garraty, Silas Wright (New York: Columbia
I. Useful general interpretations include: Dixon Ryan Fox, University Press, 1949), pp. 292, 335.
The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York, I I. "The Progress of Constitutional Reform in the United
1801-1840, ed. Robert V. Remini (1st pub. 1919; New States," United Stares Magazine and Democratic
Yark: Harper Torchbooks, 1965): Edward Pessen, Review, Val. 18 (June, 1846). pp. 408-412, 420.
Jocksonion America: Society, Personolily, and Politics 12. New York State Constitution of 1846, Article I, Section
(Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1968); Glyndon G. 1% 11, 1; Vll, I, 2, 3,; VIII, I, 4, 7.
Van Deusen, "Aspects of Whig Thought in the 13. Fox, Decline of Aristocracy, p. 269.
Jacksonian Period," American Historical Review, Vol. 14. "Constitutional Governments," United States Maga-
63 (January, 1958). pp. 305-322. zine ond Democratic Review, Vol. 20 (March, 1847).
2.
"Introduction." United States Magmine and Dem- p. 202.
ocrotic Review, Vol. I (October, 1837). p. 6. 15. Edward Pessen, Riches, Closs, ond Power before the
3.
On Leggett, see his A Collection of rhe Political Civil War (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973);
Writings, ed. Theodore Sedgwick, Jr. (2 vols.; New Frank Otto Gatell, "Money and Party in Jacksonian
Yark: Taylor& Dodd, 1840); and the studies by Richard America: A Quantitative Look at New York City's Men
Hofstadter, "William Leggett: Spokesman of Jack-of Quality," Politico1 Science Quarterly, Vol. 82
sonian Democracy," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. (Januarv. 1967). OD. 235-252: Don. C. Sowers. The
~ork~tare
58 (December, 1943). pp. 581-594; Marvin Meyers, The knonci~l~isto~~h/~ew from 1789 1; 1912
  JacksonianPersuasion: Polirics and Belief (Stanford, (New York: Columbia University Studies, 1914). pp.
75 RC R7
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1957), chap. 9; . -, --, -. .
Edward K. Spann. Ideals & Politics.. New York 16. See, for example, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age
Intellectuals ond Liberal Democracy, 1820-1880 of Jackson (Boston: Little-Brown, 1945). pp. 512-514,
(Albany: State University of New Yark Press, 1972). 519-521; Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian
4. Herbert Ershkowilz and William G. Shade, "Consensus Democracy: New York asa Test Case(Princeton, M. 1.:
or Conflict? Political Behavior in the State Legislatures Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 220ff.