Guest Commentary

This page is offered as a public service to guest writers who wish to submit an article on current events, blow off a little steam (tastefully vented, of course), or enlighten others on a subject of interest, religious or secular, with some relevance to the topics on this web site. Submissions for this page should be sent to me at: miles@webenet.net. Obviously, all articles are subject to discreet scrutiny and editing, and those chosen for publication will be posted here periodically.

Surviving Hyperinflation: An Update

In the early 1980s, Harry E. Figgie, Jr. (the founder of Figgie International, Inc.) became concerned that the United States’ government was following the same destructive path that lead countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil into hyperinflationary economic collapse. In the 1980s, each of these South American countries were running massive annual deficits, were accumulating unmanageable national debts, and each respectively had a central bank creating money, out of thin air, at a reckless pace. In looking at the frighteningly similar profligate behavior, on the part of the U.S. Government, Mr. Figgie became concerned that hyperinflation could emerge in the United States as well.

I wrote the opening paragraph, and the balance of this essay, in January of 2004. Since then, the national debt has grown from $6.9 trillion up to $11.4 trillion – an increase of about 65%. Uncle Sam’s unfunded liabilities now exceed $100 trillion. Per the Federal Reserve’s own data, the United States’ monetary base has skyrocketed from $735 billion, in January of 2004, to over $1.7 trillion today. To believe that the paper tickets in my wallet, Federal Reserve Notes, will somehow gain value over time has always struck me as absurd. In my opinion, the stage has been set for an explosion in the prices of everyday goods and services. Economists Robert Murphy and Thorsten Polleit have recently written essays (linked here and here) affirming my trepidation. To be sure, I firmly believe tough economic times, marred by harsh inflation, lie ahead of us.

As a businessman and an entrepreneur, Harry Figgie was concerned that his business enterprises may not survive if his management teams were not prepared to operate under the unstable conditions wrought by heavy inflation. Since little had been written about managing a business under hyperinflationary conditions, Mr. Figgie initiated a research project to find out what a business must do to survive the ravages of inflation. So, in his own words, here is what he decided to do:

As a result of this research, Dr. Swanson wrote The Hyperinflation Survival Guide: Strategies for American Businesses; which was first printed in 1989. The superb content of this book can be attributed to Mr. Figgie’s foresight and to the outstanding research and writing of Dr. Swanson. What follows are a brief "Austrian" perspective about this book and then specific details regarding the book’s content.

The Hyperinflation Survival Guide: Strategies for American Businesses is a book that provides sound business strategies for business managers and entrepreneurs to implement when operating a business under economic circumstances in which monetary calculation becomes increasingly difficult due to a rapid decline in money’s purchasing power. Although the term "monetary calculation" is not found anywhere in this book, it is crucial to understand monetary calculation is a method of thinking for a businessman. As the extraordinary economist Ludwig von Mises explains in his magnum opus Human Action:

A tool businessmen use to determine the success or failure of past actions is a financial statement – which includes a balance sheet and an income statement. It is important to understand that all entries in the balance sheet and income statement are expressed in terms of money. Under conditions in which money’s purchasing power is stable, a businessman can directly correlate whether his company’s capital base (i.e. the company’s net worth as reflected in the balance sheet) is expanding or contracting depending upon if the company turned a profit or made a loss. Such monetary calculation assists a businessman in deciding to maintain or change a business plan based upon satisfying the ever-sovereign consumer.

But what happens to monetary calculation under conditions of inflation? As Murray N. Rothbard explains in his fabulous book Man, Economy, and State, businessmen may be "tricked" into making poor decisions thus causing consumption of capital:

Indeed, inflation can lead to entrepreneurial error and, thus, to business failure.

The Hyperinflation Survival Guide provides excellent strategies for businessmen to adopt and act upon should hyperinflation emerge. Although this book is geared more toward owners/managers of manufacturing companies, operating under inflationary conditions, any businessman (and any individual) can garner sound advice from this insightful book. The four chapters in this book cover financial management, marketing strategies, manufacturing decisions, and industrial relations.

Chapter one of this book – titled "Financial Management" – can be summed up as follows: "Cash management is the difference between profits and bankruptcy. The single fact that influences every decision is: Time eats money." The following list highlights a few of the important financial-management issues covered in this chapter:

Chapter two is titled "Marketing Strategies." Pertaining to the "4Ps" of marketing (price, promotion, place, and product), this book concentrates on pricing and product.

Since government intervention and regulation inevitably become more oppressive during bouts of high inflation, it is important for businesses to sell products with the largest profit margins. As Dr. Swanson points out:

With respect to pricing, the book conveys that pricing "…policies undergo a dramatic transformation during hyperinflation. Fluid pricing becomes an absolute necessity, and prices must change frequently and sharply to accurately reflect the impact of inflation. True costs become increasingly difficult to track, even as the need to do so grows more important."

For Americans, it is hard to imagine products disappearing from the marketplace let alone having to cope with hyperinflation. Just imagine the nightmare Bolivian businessmen went through, in 1985, when inflation hit 50,000% annualized. Upward price adjustments would have to be made by the hour. These upward adjustments accumulate to the point of seeming absurd. For example, under 50,000% inflation, a $25 necktie would cost $12,525 one year later.

In chapter 3 (titled "Manufacturing Decisions"), Dr. Swanson emphasizes that management must be flexible and innovative. Corporate survival, furthermore, may require radical decisions. For example, during "…periods of high inflation, manufacturing operations are particularly hard hit. In fact, in some extreme cases in South America, corporate attempts to survive have led some companies to shut down their manufacturing operations in favor of speculation, which can be a more profitable use of capital." The cold reality here is that the rates of return on speculating in commodities and currencies, under conditions of severe inflation, may exceed the rates of return on capital projects. Correspondingly, this means laborers will lose their jobs.

Chapter 4 of this book is titled "Industrial Relations." It could just as easily be titled "Employee Relations." As Dr. Swanson and his team discovered in South America, the impact of hyperinflation on wages and benefits was stunning. For instance, "…Brazilian employees who were not given raises in the first three months of 1988 watched their buying power plummet 64 percent. Even worse was the spring of 1985, when Bolivians saw their real income drop 90 percent in only three months." Such bouts of inflation become especially difficult for businessmen to cope with as inflation is inflicted upon society by a government’s reckless monetary creation (out of thin air) while, in turn, government regulations – for the alleged purpose of controlling inflation – prevent employers from granting raises to employees. Employers, unfortunately, take the brunt of the blame for the declining living standards (that employees experience during bouts of severe inflation) when government is the real culprit.

As standards of living decline, Dr. Swanson found that "…individuals tend to seek the support of a group to represent them in order to survive constantly rising prices." He further articulated:

This book’s appendix provides a nice bonus as it covers the disastrous results of the wage and price controls President Nixon implemented to "combat" the United States’ 4.7% inflation rate and its 5.8% unemployment rate. Two of the most notable actions President Nixon undertook on August 15, 1971 included an immediate 90-day freeze on wages, prices, salaries and rents and of course, the reprehensible floating of the dollar; by severing the last vestige of the dollar’s linkage to gold. For a president to assert that severing the dollar’s link to gold will help reduce inflation completely defies logic. In reality, what President Nixon "accomplished" was to enable the federal government to create money without limit. How such an irresponsible action can be construed to be anti-inflationary is a sad testimony to the economic illiteracy of the American populace.

To buttress the point, about economic illiteracy, here is an excerpt from this book’s appendix:

In all, President Nixon implemented four phases of wage and price controls, with the final phase ending in April of 1974; and the results were predictably terrible. There were, for example, shortages of beef and textiles. Prices rose, moreover, at an average annual rate of 6 percent while the controls were in place, yet in the eight months following the end of Phase IV, prices climbed at an annualized rate of over 12 percent.

Of the books published regarding hyperinflation, this may be the only one that provides effective strategies for operating a business under conditions of a rapidly depreciating currency. To reiterate, The Hyperinflation Survival Guide: Strategies for American Businesses was written by Dr. Gerald Swanson – an associate professor of economics at the University of Arizona. Harry E. Figgie, Jr. sponsored the research and the original production of this book. As it was originally printed in 1989, it was way ahead of its time. This, however, does not change the fact that Dr. Swanson’s book will prove to be an excellent resource for businessmen and individuals once the Federal Reserve's destruction of the U.S. dollar enters its terminal stage.

Eric Englund [send him mail], who has an MBA from Boise State University, lives in the state of Oregon. He is the publisher of The Hyperinflation Survival Guide by Dr. Gerald Swanson. You are invited to visit his website.

It is Time

Sam Mathid
Oct 15, 2008

What is beyond the collapse?
The construction of the collapse was loosely as thus:

Governments inflated their currencies.
Malinvestment resulted
To cope with the problems of malinvestment, governments inflated their currencies more.
Huge malinvestments resulted.
To cope with the problems of huge malinvestments governments inflated their currencies hugely.
Currencies utterly collapsed (still playing out).

The feeble construction known as the world economy has been held together with the glue of lies and pathetic conceits such as:

Pieces of paper printed by governments, and not backed by anything of value, could successfully be used instead of real money.
Wealth creation could be separated from production.
The more control government took of the economy, the stronger the economy would be.
The disintegration of the moral, spiritual and intellectual fabric of the western world had nothing to do with governments control of the economies.

I have had readers make the point that if the whole edifice was built only on an illusion of wealth creation, then how come there was so much prosperity for the last few decades? The answer to that is horribly simple. We expropriated and wasted not only such real wealth (production) as there has been in the present times, but we wasted the accumulated wealth of all the preceding generations, and finally (and most disgusting of all) we then went into vast debt and consumed the wealth of future generations.

The whole lot, every last nickel, has either been doled out in the gutter of political corruption, or flushed down Wall Street's slimy drain; all abetted by a malign, mumbo-jumbo nonsense called Keynesian economics. Nowhere is there reference to prior criminality and stupidity on such a grand scale. There is no historical precedent.

For three generations the public have been lied to and lulled into a false sense of security by the media, by the education system and by governments.

Now, more than ever, there is a desperate need for the truth. The restoration of hope for the future can only begin with the truth. A foundation of truth is the bedrock of any decent society, which is why the enemies of freedom seek so desperately to suppress it, and why sane people value the virtue of truth so highly.

The truth is that the current system has become corrupted beyond possibility of repair, and needs to be allowed to collapse. It will do so anyway, whether we 'allow' it or not. It must collapse, so that something more attuned to the genuine needs of people can be created. Destruction must often precede creation... slums have to be razed before fine living quarters can be constructed.

When a system is corrupt it will attract only corrupt people and only the corrupt will flourish. We have provided history with a wonderful example of that. Look at the legislators who sit in not only the American Congress, but in the UK and Australian parliaments, and in governments all across the western world. Only an utterly corrupt system could elevate and reward such second-rate people.

As of this morning I see that the DOW rose almost 1000 points overnight in the US. This on the promise of politicians taking firm action. Looking to politicians to effect a solution for this situation is as futile as poking around in a parrot's entrails in an attempt to divine Saturday's winner at Randwick. Bush claims that it is an effort to preserve the free market. The free market needs no help, it needs less hindrance. It is government 'help' that has killed the economy. As Reagan once said: "the nine most scary words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' It's actually eleven words, but what's a 20% error with any government figure.

Look at the criminals who infest Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. How foolish and shifty they look as they sit blinking in front of the television cameras struggling to provide coherent answers to simple questions; and yes, on one level it is laughable, but that is our money and wealth that has been destroyed. That is the material present and future of our families that has been stolen.

Our education system is run by people whose job is to ensure that children attain adulthood without gaining any dangerous ideas about personal integrity or individual responsibility. Our media no longer even pretends to publish the news, they are merely organs of propaganda for the government, and for those vast corporations allied to government. It is time to be done with all our institutions. No part of what we have is worth saving. The corruption has penetrated and permeated from the very top to the very bottom. Society has been rotted down to the last point of resistance... the core level of the family and individual. The institutions have become a part of the problem, not the solution. The solutions can now only be at the level of the family and the individual.

We need a new system which allows people (who, despite all inducements to be otherwise, are mostly honest, hard working and decent) to produce and prosper. A system that allows everyone the rewards of their efforts. A system that keeps government locked away, not only by Constitutionally binding laws (we tried that), but by harsh and prescribed penalties for the flouting of those laws.

We need a system that keeps government completely out of the economy. The first great breakthrough in the establishment of boundaries between government and people was the separation of the State from Religion, the second will be the separation of the State from Money and the Economy.

There is no place for government in monetary or financial dealings between free people. No matter the occasional foibles and failings of individuals, people will always be as saints compared to the systemized criminality that infests our corridors of power. When government pokes its dirty and self-serving legislation into the economic pie, there is an immediate corruption of that pie. The pie then gradually deteriorates until eventually and inevitably the economic pie becomes so rotten that it collapses. That is the point where we now find ourselves.

Eventually people are going to find out how it is that they have been ripped off so grossly. At that point the expression of the voice of the people will move from the sedateness of the ballot box to the get down and dirty level of the streets. What is important is that people's wrath is directed toward the right target. There are many easy yet wrong targets such as neighbours, other races, immigrants, religions etc.

The right target is governments. The criminality and breathtaking greed of Bankers and Wall Street, that has brought the whole western world to its knees, could never have happened without the legislative complicity of government. Our western system of governments, not just the American system, are rotten to the core. Definitely the American system is more corrupt than any other, but that is only a matter of degree, not of standard.

It is time for a revolution, but not just more of the same old mindless and horrendous violence of the 20th Century, with its pointless wars. Another century spent fighting wars to determine which is the best form of total government control of monetary and fiscal affairs would likely see the end of the human race. A pox on all of those governments. The original Constitution of the United States of America would be a good starting point, but with changes sufficient to ensure that the errors of the past could not again happen.

It is time for the second American revolution. America is the only place with the tradition of freedom and the intellectual underpinning (not to mention the arms) to make it happen. There would be many willing and happy to come and help. There must again be a beacon for freedom in the world. The fight is not just for the future of America, but for the future of the world.

Many in the American intelligence and military, from the top to the bottom, would renege on their allegiance to the government in an instant in the event of a revolution. They are deeply troubled by the nature of the system that they serve. Indeed, it is possible that there are very few who would fight to keep the current elitist system intact.

Bush has already deployed the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division within mainland America. More troops are to follow. Will these troops remain reliable and true for the elites against their own countrymen? Hard to say... especially for the elites. Bush's striking down of Posse Comitatus, which disallowed the use of the US military on home soil, is a double edged sword. It is a decision and a precedent that could come back to haunt him.

It would be easy to argue the merits of a military coup in America. The arrest of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Hank Paulson, Robert Rubin et al with the dissolution of Congress, followed by an announcement of immediate criminal investigations into the whole upper hierarchy of the political and financial establishment would, after the initial shock had subsided, have massive public support.

Colin Powell sitting in the White House and presiding over a new Constitutional Convention would do a lot to reassure Americans and the rest of the world that America was serious about addressing its problems. Maybe the military are the one institution that could redeem themselves.
The fortresses of our ruling elites around the world were almost impregnable during the complacency of the past few decades. That complacency, born of the illusion of prosperity, is about to be replaced by a public rage, born of the reality of an imposed poverty. The time for truth is now, and the truth is that it is time to bring down the fascist and socialist elites and their Keynesian economic cronies who have destroyed so much and so many.

Is my message 'doomy'? Absolutely not, it is a message of hope and salvation. Could poverty, violence, war, hatred, sickness, moral rot and spiritual oblivion become worse in this century than it was in the last? Only if we allow a continuation of the same corrupt monetary system. We are in a vast debtor's prison and the guards are the very people who created the monetary system that ensured the financial ruin. Not only is the message hopeful, but throwing these criminal and pompous bums into jail, or out into the street, would be a lot of fun.

Sam Mathid

http://www.financialsense.com/stormw...2007/0615.html

"Drawing the lesson, they made the great turn to the long strategy of indirect approach. Western Europe and North America would be slowly isolated, cut off from the life-giving countryside, reduced finally to withering islands in an alien, swelling sea. They would, when the moment came for the direct strike, collapse at a few sharp blows." - James Burnham, The War We Are In

"Our society isn't a society anymore," wrote Anna Politkovskaya in her Russian Diary. "It is a collection of windowless, isolated concrete cells.." Russia has returned to the overt despotism of a counterintelligence regime, and the West has returned to Munich, to the ignominy of 1938, to appeasement and cowardly retreat. "I really feel as a Cassandra who speaks to the wind," wrote Oriana Fallaci in her Post-Script to The Force of Reason. "Sounding off at protest meetings has become virtually useless," wrote Politkovskaya, "mere preaching to the converted; those who share your views already know the situation, so why keep telling them about it?"

We have reached a point in history that cannot be otherwise. The centuries have run their course, and we are at the end of one civilization, not yet knowing whether another civilization, or a span of barbarism, is to follow. The dying civilization's ears and eyes are shut to courageous voices, like those of Fallaci and Politkovskaya. We pat ourselves on the back, pointing to our happiness and freedom. But if we are happy and free, then why are so many anti-depressants prescribed? And why are so many Westerners adopting totalitarian "ideals" (like those of extreme environmentalism, socialism and anti-Americanism)? One might ask why the Russians, supposedly freed from Communism, have willingly accepted a KGB dictatorship? Many reasons might be given, of course, and many excuses. The mass scale of modern society dwarfs the individual as it dehumanizes through automation and rationalization. It is easy to feel helpless. It is easy to give up. The machinery of modern life homogenizes the human mind, shrivels our independence as it carries our dignity into the swamp of indiscriminate equality. In the end we turn coward, buckle under, and blame America or Israel for the world's woes. We join the global totalitarian chorus - the wave of the future.

Pericles said: "The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage." In that case, the rise of cowardice (and its cult of appeasement) signifies the decline of freedom. Ironically, it is a decline in the midst of plenty. The visionary of our day, who speaks truth to power, speaks to a particular kind of power; that is, to the corrupting power of the shopping mall regime and its comforting illusions. "People often tell me I am a pessimist," wrote Politkovskaya shortly before an assassin's bullet ended her life last year. "I see everything," she added, "and that is the whole problem." To see everything is to recognize that we live under the Big Lie. "I do not believe in the fraudulence of Moderate Islam," wrote Oriana Fallaci. "Islam is the Koran," she added. "Nothing but the Koran. And the Koran is the Mein Kampf of a religion which has always aimed to eliminate the others." Reading these words I cannot help admiring these courageous women and their readiness to tell the truth. It is against the martyred Politkovskaya, and against the persecuted Fallaci that we hear the affirmation and repetition of nonsense, enthroned and empowered, administrating and legislating on the basis of one falsehood after another. "Russia is not an enemy," said President George W. Bush last week. "There needs to be no military response because we're not at war with Russia. Russia is not a threat." This is spoken by the same U. S. leader who has characterized Islam as "a religion of peace." Failing to recognize and account for his real enemies, Bush tried to build democracy in Iraq, and now he has been discredited. His discreditable critics are tumbling over one another to take the helm. As Fallaci's explained: "the deaf remained deaf, the blind remained blind, and both of them ended up with bearing on their foreheads what in The Apocalypse I call The Brand of Shame and Infamy."

The whole world stands to be engulfed. The destruction, when it is unleashed, will be unprecedented. The totalitarians in Russia, China, Iran and the Arab world are preparing for war. Now that Bush's position is collapsing and the Party of Outright Appeasement has begun its reign, the enemies of freedom see their chance. Cowardice and stupidity have conspired, and the result is "opportunity." Western progress has finally given the totalitarian regimes a generation of "last men," about whom Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: "The earth hath become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small." The "last man" comes at the end, when civilization begins to die. And indeed, the Western democracies are dying. I am reminded of Titus Livius's description of Rome's descent into despotism as "the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them." We congratulate ourselves on the interest-group demagogy that produces policy in the West, throwing up words like "democracy" and "freedom" when the reality of the situation is better described by words like "anarchy" and "licentiousness."

Oriana Fallaci referred scathingly to the West's "inanimate democracies" and "inertly democratic regimes." These, she said, were governed by the cowardice of the democratic mob. Under this system, nobody tells you to obey the party line. The men in leather jackets don't come for you in the middle of the night. They don't put you before a firing squad or employ torture to extract a confession. They don't violate your rights. You can even vote and run for office. But you will never be elected, followed or respected, because the instinct of a cowardly multitude finds comfort in calling you a "lunatic," an "outlaw," thereby condemning you to what Fallaci called a "Civic Death." She described this death as a condition in which nobody will listen to you, and even "those who think like you will desert you."

Everything can be stated, said Fallaci, "but the truth." We no longer have the courage to recognize and accept hard facts. Even those of us who know better are deserters. "Everything can be spread except the thinking which reveals the truth. Because the truth inspires fear. Because in reading or hearing the truth most people surrender to fear.." Oriana Fallaci sounded an alarm to all of Europe. The Muslims have crashed the gate and the citadel of the West is being overrun. But instead of Europe's intellectuals rallying to her passionate call, a famous Italian journalist said to her: "I can support you no longer." Fallaci asked him why, and he answered: "Because people don't talk to me anymore, don't invite me to dinner anymore."

Do we understand how this works? Fallaci calls it the wicked infection of a new "autochthonous facism." Its first germ-carriers are the presumed educators of the Western world. "The sordid and vile plague also propagates through newspapers, TV, Radio." She is talking about an intellectual or mental contagion, described over 100 years ago by Gustave Le Bon. "Mental contagion constitutes a psychological phenomenon of which the result is involuntary acceptance of certain opinions and beliefs," wrote Le Bon. It seems that emotions propagate themselves in the same way that bacteria and viruses propagate. If mankind's spiritual hygiene is poor, if cowardice and envy have made a kind of breeding ground, then ideological poisons and disinformation are encouraged to multiply. Furthermore, today's mass media is the perfect tool for spreading this contagion far and wide to a vulnerable and weakened culture. "The more the means of communication are multiplied," wrote Le Bon, "the more people's will is reached and infected."

The modern mass media tends to foster a mass-produced consciousness subject to the vagaries of fashion and wishful thinking. In fact, this mass consciousness, stupid and infantile in itself, has become the ruling principle of the West's "inert democracies." This is the fashion of the Last Man. Take a poll. Find the parade and get in front. The public is always "right," even though the public is a monstrous nullity. And since that nullity has become weak and soft, it is impossible to raise questions touching on civil defense, war mobilization, closing the borders, restricting trade, expelling Muslim aliens, placing Communists under surveillance or arresting seditious citizens. None of these measures are acceptable because each promises some harm to the general comfort and to the shopping mall regime.

The United States, like Europe, won't defend itself properly. We will not stockpile the necessary foodstuffs or build the necessary underground bunkers. We refuse to stop enemy aliens from moving across our borders. We refuse to see the truth of our situation. We turn our backs on the Cassandras of our day. "Many seem not to care," wrote Politkovskaya. She warned that the Soviet Union had returned to Russia. The old wickedness had returned. Has this registered on the West? With regard to the Islamic threat, Fallaci wrote to America: "Dear friends: it is immigration, not terrorism, [that is] the Trojan Horse which has penetrated the West and transformed Europe into Eurabia."

The honest man knows what follows. The coward warms himself on a bodyguard of lies.

© 2007 Jeffrey R. Nyquist

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SHOOT RIOTERS ON SIGHT

http://www.newswithviews.com/Duke/selwyn23.htm

by Selwyn Duke

November 10, 2005

NewsWithViews.com

As riots spread throughout France like wildfires left unattended by those afraid to use water, a sane person has to be struck by the impotence of modern Western governments. Whether it's Moslem enclaves in France, New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, or South Central Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict, it seems that the new paradigm involves letting wicked flames burn themselves out, only doused at times by the innocent blood of victims who, in a most shameful abdication of governmental duty, are left to twist in the wind by the Neros who masquerade as statesmen.

As to the unrest in France, I have read headlines stating that the authorities "can't" stop the violence. "Can't" is an interesting choice of a word. A better one would be "won't." Because, I assure you, I could have stopped the riots on the first day.

The solution: shoot rioters on sight.

Uncompassionate, say you? Okay, let's talk about compassion.

Some contemptible rioters in France doused a woman, who was in her fifties and on crutches, with some kind of liquid and set her alight. She's now hospitalized with severe burns.

Sixty-one-year-old Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec died after being beaten into a coma by an attacker.

There have now been scores of casualties amidst the violence, and non-Moslem people cannot enter the areas of unrest (I wonder, will this targeting of non-Moslems be labeled hate-crime?).

More than five-thousand cars and dozens of buildings - including schools and churches - have been burned. By the way, could you imagine the hue and cry if a Christian mob had torched mosques?

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, some people were raped and/or murdered, and roving bands of thugs fired on emergency services vehicles and aircraft, hampering rescue efforts and decreasing the chances that those in dire straits would receive life-saving aid. In France, too, there were reports of an attack on a hospital and an ambulance whose transit was impeded.

During the Rodney King riots, Reginald Denny halted his tractor-trailer truck upon encountering a group of rioters so as to avoid running them over. The thanks he got was to be beaten to within an inch of his life, receiving blows that broke more than ninety bones in his face. Incidentally, the criminal, Rodney King, was awarded 3.8 million dollars of the taxpayers' money for his lumps and bumps. Denny came away with a broken body.

Do you see a pattern here? What do you think accounts for this ubiquitous governmental failure to act swiftly and proportionately in the face of mayhem? What is to blame for this tolerance of evil? I can encapsulate it in one word: liberalism. Yes, liberalism. There was a time when riots would have been quelled with a firm hand, nipping the problem in the bud. But that was in bygone days, before decades of liberalism elevated the villainous to victim status and cast true victims as unavoidable collateral damage.

Now there's an excuse for every riot, often attended by a term adopted to describe the justification. In Los Angeles it was "black rage," and now in France it's "disaffected youth." Yes, people may not be held accountable because they're victims of their "socialization" or of discrimination or the system or ethnocentrism, or, whatever other rationalization du jour is conjured up by those who live in a liberal fantasy-world built on self-delusion. And never do they ask, perhaps during a rare, lucid moment, the obvious question. If everyone is a victim, who is the victimizer?

It should surprise no one that I segued right from compassion into liberalism, since the latter is the direct cause of our current paralysis by misanalysis. It is why we embrace the bad chess player, never-seeing-more-than-one-move-ahead strategy that precludes us from extinguishing a fire before it grows into a raging inferno. The fact of the matter is that when those bent on doing evil find no opposition, they become emboldened and others of their ilk join the fray. This is why riots that started in suburbs of Paris have now, like a metastasizing cancer, spread to other parts of the country.

Of course, they could have been ended at the get-go with a few well-placed salvos and a credible threat that continued violence would be met with of more of the same. Not that I'm proposing a bloodbath, mind you. Yes, a few miscreants would have been shot, but the rest of the vermin would have gone scurrying back into their holes and lived to complain another day.

Instead, because of gross governmental negligence during all the tragedies I mentioned, those few criminals emerged unscathed and innocent people were hurt and killed. And don't forget the women violated, the property destroyed, and the intensifying of the atmosphere that tolerates this barbarity, which increases the chances we'll see more of it. Oh, but I forgot, we have to be compassionate.

Or, to be precise, liberal, counterfeit compassion is what's expected of us. Liberals observe social breakdown from a distance, safely ensconced in their ivory towers, and would have us believe that they feel sorry for the poor, tormented souls who rage against "oppressors." But as these pseudo-sophisticates pontificate about the plight of criminals, blind to the fact that their mistakes of comission created the powder keg as much as their mistakes of omission lit the fuse, where is their compassion for the ravagers' innocent victims? Compassion, my foot. Liberals are simply detached, cold-hearted menaces to society.

Of course, liberals will tell us that we just have to understand the hand that life has dealt to these downtrodden wretches, who, in the case of the Moslems in France, are sometimes coordinating their attacks via cellphone or email. It really gives new meaning to Thoreau's line, "Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth."

Understand them? No, liberals, you have to understand them and they have to understand us. You have to understand that in every society there are people who are bent on doing evil. Such ne'er do wells will seize upon any opportunity to enrich or benefit themselves or wreak havoc, and you can no more mollify them than Chamberlain could appease Hitler. Perhaps you should study Erikson's stages of psychosocial development or just read Lord of the Flies, and then, maybe, just possibly, a little light bulb will go off in your cranium.

As for the rioting swine, they have to understand that if they dare raise a menacing fist to their fellow man, they'll promptly be struck by a Draconian hand. That's the language they understand.

Of course, this is all just part of a systemic problem. It's just the same as when liberal school administrators tell a bullied child that they can't bring his tormentors to heel, so he should stay home and be relegated to homebound tutelage. Yes, place the onus on the innocent and let the wicked hold sway.

And so it was during Hurricane Katrina. What was the response of our feckless government to the pillaging miscreants who preyed on the vulnerable? New Orleans seized the guns of law-abiding citizens!

So, let's get this straight: first the government abdicated its responsibility to protect its people, being too cowed by political-correctness to take necessary action. Then, outrageously, unconscionably, it declawed the good people, leaving them defenseless and at the mercy of predators who roamed about with relative impunity. Ah, the fruits of liberalism: authoritarianism for the good and anarchy for the bad. It's a deadly combination.

It's much the same in France, with her NATO (No action - talk only) government. But talk is cheap, as proven by President Jacques Chirac who warned,

"An escalation of disrespectful behavior would lead to a dangerous situation . . . there can be no area existing outside the law [in France]."

Here's a clue, Chirac, it is a dangerous situation, and these areas are existing outside the law at this time. But Chirac is the quintessential, effete, irresponsible liberal leader, as lacking in intestinal fortitude as he is in integrity. His tough talk rings hollow. He has done little of substance to protect his people as of this writing and, since he and his fellow statists have largely disarmed the French, they're easy prey.

Then there is the talk that isn't merely cheap, but stupid. In the face of violence of insurrection proportions, some are propounding politically-correct theories and engaging in self-flagellation, instead of demanding that the government lock and load. Chirac took the cowardly lead as he obsequiously opined,

"[France] has not done everything possible for these youths, supported them so they feel understood, heard and respected."

Not to be outdone, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin advocated a 35.5 billion-dollar handout and said,

"We must offer them hope and a future."

Yeah, the "disaffected youth" need a few more cellphones and computers so they all can become high-tech Jihadists.

Listen, the time for Akhmed to be transformed into a moral being was when he was a wee lad at his mother's knee. But when he's grown and gruesome and charging you with an axe, it's time to shoot. Liberals always prescribe an ounce of prevention when it's time for a pound of cure. It's all quite pathetic.

So, I have as message. Pusillanimity, thy name is liberal politician. Liberal politician, you are weak. You are entropy in action. Your ranks are filled with feminized capons and masculinized, clucking hens, leaving you only to ponder which sorry set makes for better men. And if you knew what masculinity was, what femininity was - if you even believed that such qualities were a reflection of the divine and not merely social constructs - you would have a prayer of reclaiming your manhood and resurrecting virtue in yourself at this, the eleventh hour. Alas, though, lost in a sea of confusion and androgyny you've become a pathetic creature, possessing neither Christian fortitude nor even pagan ferocity. Yet, you indulge the delusion that you're fit to perpetuate civilization? You fancy yourself capable to run a nation? The only thing you can run is your mouth.

I also know that when you lose a loved one to the fangs of a viper whose base instincts were loosed upon the world by the permissive environment you cultivated, even this pain won't inspire you to look inwards. Nay, you will blame some infernal bugaboo. It will be privation caused by trickle-down economics, a paucity of gun-control laws, the destruction of cultural identity, unequal education or disparities in caste and station, the pangs of teenage or black rage, oppressive summer heat or the persecuted Moslem street. All those "truths" that relativists learn in sociology class and embrace as self-evident will crystallize in your mind, causing you to cry out to the heavens for more of the disease and the smiting of those who, unbeknownst to you, hold the cure.

Sadly, the Western world is replete with governments that do a lot of what they shouldn't and precious little of what they should. Government isn't supposed to be dispensing condoms and teaching children about sex, offering free tattoo-removal programs, coercively extracting money from citizens for charitable endeavors, building 250 million dollar bridges to nowhere, or mandating that you must hire cross-dressers. A legitimate role of government, though, is to secure domestic tranquility. If the nanny state regimes in existence can't even do that, they should go the way of the Dodo. And I say goodbye and good riddance.

There was a woman on crutches who, because of liberal compassion, now has another great cross to bear. And the family of Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec will see him no more. Compassion means protecting the good, not tolerating the iniquitous. Liberals, you have been found wanting and are enablers of evil. The blood of innocents is on your hands.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Selwyn Duke lives in Westchester County, New York. He's a tennis professional, internet entrepreneur and writer whose works have appeared on various sites on the Internet, including Intellectual Conservative, nenewamerica.us (Alan Keyes) and Mensnet. Selwyn has traveled extensively in his life, visiting exotic locales such as India, Morocco and Algeria and quite a number of other countries while playing the international tennis circuit.

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
--Friedrich Nietzsche

DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP WORRYING -- JUST PREPARE!
"All you can do is all you can do, and all you can do is enough;
the rest is God's grace." - Christos

"Once a government resorts to terror against its own population to get what it wants, it must keep using terror against its own population to get what it wants. A government that terrorizes its own people can never stop. If such a government ever lets the fear subside and rational thought return to the populace, that government is finished." - Michael Rivero

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind" - John F. Kennedy

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

"If man will only realize that it is unmanly to obey laws that are unjust, no man's tyranny will enslave him." - Mahatma Gandhi

"Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God." - Thomas Jefferson