Nov. 19, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
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3503 Why Globalism Threatens Western Civilization | G. Edward Griffin and Stefan Molyneux
The true heart of Globalism is an overall belief in Collectivism and controlling society for the greater good for the greatest number. Stefan Molyneux speaks with G. Edward Griffin about the nature of collectivism, the danger of world government and the how issues like "Global Warming" are an excuse to increase government power worldwide. G. Edward Griffin is the author of “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve” and Founder of Freedom Force International, which is hosting an event titled “Global-Warming: An Inconvenient Lie” in Phoenix, Arizona from December 2-4th, 2016, featuring speakers like Lord Monckton, William Happer and many more. An Inconvenient Lie: http://www.inconvenientlie.comReality Zone: http://www.realityzone.comFreedom Force International: http://www.freedomforceinternational.orgFreedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
I hope you're doing well here with G. Edward Griffin.
Now, he is the author of a book I highly recommend.
You, of course, want to get into your Zen position.
It can be a tad blood boiling called The Creature from Jekyll Island, a second look at the Federal Reserve.
and he's the founder of Freedom Force International, which is actually hosting an event entitled Global Warming, an Inconvenient Lie, in Phoenix, Arizona from December 2nd to 4th, 2016, featuring speakers such as Lord Monckton, William Happer, Patrick Moore, and many more.
How are you doing, Mr. Griffin?
How are things in your world these days?
Well, I'm doing well, and everything in my world is wonderful.
But my world, I suspect, is shrinking.
Good, good.
around you and you've pointed out recently that conversations you've had with people about global warming or climate change seems to have shifted and in terms of people's priorities in America in particular things like the economy, trade deals and immigration have vastly outstripped climate change or global warming as areas of concern.
What are your thoughts on how public opinion has shifted in this I guess contentious topic over the last few years?
Well I think you said it pretty well Stephan.
It has shifted to real issues.
Global warming, I think, is becoming increasingly obvious.
It's a manufactured crisis.
It's not really a crisis at all.
They started off, as everyone knows, calling it global warming.
And then they realized that the planet was not warming and it was becoming obvious.
So they had to change their name.
So they called it climate change.
And that's supposed to make it all right.
But I think by now everybody's figured out, well, the climate always changes, so what's the big deal?
And so the cry for wolf has been going on so long, the wolf hasn't shown up.
And so now the public is just getting either bored with it or catching on to it, which I think is even a more interesting phenomenon than getting bored with it.
I think our recent elections sort of touch on this indirectly.
I think that the elections we saw, regardless of what you think about the candidates, there's one clear message, and that is that the public is becoming immunized, I think is a good word, to the media, becoming immunized to all of the techniques of the establishment to manipulate thinking.
So there's finally this breakaway from political correctness and rigid organized thinking, Along with that, we find this global warming mantra.
It also is, I think, going down the drain.
Those are very positive signs to me.
My job, and yours too, I suspect, is to accelerate that process and bring Well, it has been a conversation I've had with the world for a long time, which is that if you are concerned about environmental degradation or resource predation and so on, then the first thing you'd want to do is stop governments from deficit financing.
Because when governments deficit finance, what they're doing is they're promoting the consumption of scarce resources in the here and now at the expense of the future.
So if environmentalists were really concerned with environmental use or if we were concerned about peak oil and so on, then the first thing you'd want to do is stop governments from deficit financing.
But that has never been on the agenda of the environmental movement, which seems to be, you know, they say the watermelon, right?
It's green on the outside, but it's red or Marxist on the inside.
It's using people's legitimate concerns about environmental predation to promote a kind of surrender of the rights to the masters who will protect you from your fellow man, when, of course, it is the masters who are your real danger.
Yeah, exactly.
You've got it 100%.
And of course, you and I are sort of in the cat seat.
We have time and energy and aptitude, I suppose, a little bit to study these things.
And so we feel it's so obvious that I can see my fellow passengers on this spaceship called Earth.
Most of us are so busy trying to make a living and trying to get the kids to school and make sure that they get a good education and they're not corrupted by all the negative influences in society.
We're trying to pay off our debt.
I put myself back when I was a young fellow doing the corporate game and all that.
We just don't have time to research these things.
I fluctuate sometimes between that semi-elitist attitude, well, what's wrong with people?
Can't they see the obvious?
And then I come to my senses and say, well, no, I'm no different, except for a few chance circumstances in my life.
I might be still going along with all of that, too.
So I really can't blame people for not being as well-informed as we think they should be, because After all, they still are trusting their major media as the source of good information.
Well, I think along with my statement earlier about the elections, I think that this election shows that the people were not only going against the political establishment, but against this media as well.
It's all good.
I say this is good and I don't know how long our window is going to be open, but right now I think we have a real opportunity to accomplish some of our long-range goals that we really keep at it and don't sit back and say, oh, well, we got rid of Hillary or whatever we think was the evil thing.
No, it's not gone, folks.
It's still there.
It's everywhere.
That was just the little tip of the iceberg that seemed to melt off.
There's a lot of corruption and a lot of political power yet underneath that.
But at least it's exposed now.
We have a chance at it.
Well, we've turned the lights on and we've maybe started to turn the tide.
But as I think it was Churchill, I think in 1941 or 1942 was saying, it's not the beginning of the end.
It may, however, be the end of the beginning in terms of changing things.
And I think that's sort of where we are.
Those of us who are sort of in the revolution forget how far behind the rest of humanity is.
It's always earlier than you think.
And that's an important thing to remember.
But You know, like that old Rolling Stone song, Time is on my side.
Well, facts are on our side.
And I think that the immigration question I've been finding particularly fascinating and its effects on, say, Brexit, its effects on Donald Trump's candidacy and people's sympathy for what he had to say my whole life growing up.
I was told, well, you know, you don't really have any kids.
You know, overpopulation is a huge issue.
We need to really, really bring down population, particularly in the first world, because, you know, people in the first world use a lot of resources and we're going to be overpopulated and so on.
And then, now that I'm older, suddenly the story has changed.
It's now, well, you know what?
In the first world, there just aren't enough people.
So what we have to do is bring in a lot of people from the third world into the first world.
It's like, no, no, wait, hang on.
Hang on.
That's not the story that I was told when I was growing up.
I was told we needed to reduce our population, particularly in the first world, and now we're told we don't have enough people, and now we need to bring people from low-resource consumption countries to high-resource consumption countries and give them welfare to boot.
And it's like...
I think when you feel jerked around that fundamentally by a narrative, it's going to shake some complacency and apathy loose in your rafters.
Yes.
Well, nothing makes sense from the establishment narrative, as you say.
If you really look at it, the first impression is that these people are making mistakes.
They seem to be very intelligent.
How could they make these mistakes?
Look how stupid they are.
And maybe that is true to some extent, but in my view, I don't think they're making mistakes at all.
I just think we have to recognize that they have a different agenda than we do.
So if we understand what their agenda is, they're not making any mistakes at all.
They're executing their plan brilliantly.
And we just happen to be in the way.
So we have to be overridden.
We have to be brainwashed.
We have to be, in some cases, even eliminated in order to get the obstacles out of the way of their agenda.
So we come back to the agenda.
What is this agenda?
And it's clear to many of us that it's a...
Now they call it global governance...
It's funny how they like to change their key phrases and their slogans.
It used to be the New World Order.
Well, that's sort of become overused now.
So we don't call it the New World Order anymore.
Now we call it global governance.
Well, like all criminals, they need to go through a series of aliases to escape detection.
Yeah, but it's all the same thing.
And it boils down to the ideology of collectivism, all powerful government and people serving the need of the state, which means they serve the needs and directives of those at the head of the state, the leaders so-called.
I call them the rulers.
They like to call themselves leaders.
That's a better word.
And so that is what it's all about, is how to build this beehive society around the world.
And in order to do that, with the least amount of resistance from the victims, the populace, you have to convince the poor souls out there that this is all for their greater good, you know, the greater good of the greater number.
And so, once you get that in your mind, you say, well, yes, I guess we do have to give up our standard of living, and we do have to give up these rights and these liberties and our privacy, because after all, you know, the planet is warming, and if it warms, the tides will come up, and the cities will be inundated, and we'll all drown, or we'll all run out of food, or whatever it is.
We've got to give up everything in order to just survive.
And that's the same trick they try with all of the crises, whether it's the war, Against the climate or war against terrorism, war against pornography, war against crime in the streets, all of these wars, so-called, if you really look at them carefully, you'll find out that it's pretty much the same little cadre of people sort of egging it on and in many cases financing it.
The name George Soros, of course, comes to mind.
It's very much in the news of late.
We know that his money and his teams are behind a lot of these violent demonstrations in the United States now.
And it's a direct model of the same tactics that were used in Europe and in Egypt and so forth.
It's to destroy the existing order.
It's to create chaos.
is to put people into this fear, this panic state, so they will accept any outrage against their personal liberties or their standard of living, their privacy, any outrage they'll accept it, because look at all these terrible things that are happening, and that's the trick.
Once you understand that that is not a mistake, but that is a carefully calculated plan, then everything snaps into place.
And I'm happy to say that I think even Joe the Plumber, has figured this out now.
And this is what's encouraging to me.
Now, the last time we chatted, we sort of made a promise to the listenership, which I think would be good to dive into now, that we would talk more about the theoretical underpinnings of collectivism.
And it is a word, of course, that means a lot of things to a lot of different people.
And the fact that it's not taught is kind of important as well, because individualism versus collectivism are the two fundamental poles in at least the ethics or politics of philosophy.
So I wonder if you could help people understand the term as a whole to differentiate it from all the other goop that's generally pushed out there.
Well, sure.
And unfortunately, there is no one single definition, I don't think, that really adequately describes it.
But if you want to start from the general and then move toward the specific, depending on how much time you have to explore, I think you would have to start with the core approach.
Definition of the word itself, collectivism versus individualism.
There's a clue in there, it's what it's all about.
The word collective versus individual.
Okay, that's what it's all about.
It's a war of two ideologies, and they are based on opposite concepts as the most important central source...of authority in society.
Does it come from the individual or does the source of authority and sovereignty in society come from the collective, a group of people?
It's the issue of which is more important, the rights of one individual or the rights of a group of people?
Well, it's a tricky question, really, because you think automatically that there's a mathematical element here.
That certainly, if you have the rights of two people, that is equal to two times the rights of one person...
If you look at rights as a mathematical concept, a mechanical concept, then you're going to be tipped, I think, into the direction of collectivism and all the issues that follow.
So let's start with that.
What is the source of rights?
Does it come from the individual or is it a group mathematical concept?
Well...
Many a debate and many a book has been written on this, as you know.
You've probably been in all of the debates and probably have written some of the books.
But it was a hard one for me to overcome, Stephan, because when I went to school, I was squeezed out like toothpaste at the University of Michigan.
I thought I had an education.
Now, looking back on it, I had an indoctrination.
I realized that.
And one of the things that I had indoctrinated myself It's this concept of the greater good of the greater number.
That the individual had to be sacrificed, if necessary, for the greater good of the greater number.
Now, doesn't that just make sense?
Well, it did to me at that time.
And then I finally realized somewhere in the last half of my life, I suppose, I realized that, wait a minute, what is this thing, group?
What is a group?
Can you touch a group?
Can you see a group?
And it occurred to me that no, you can't.
You can see individuals, you can touch individuals, but group is an abstraction.
It's in the mind.
It's a mathematical concept in a sense.
It doesn't really exist.
Without the human brain to grasp the concept of more than one, which is a mathematical concept, an abstraction, without the human brain to conceive of that, group doesn't exist in any form, not even abstractly.
It's like a forest.
Forests do not exist.
Only trees exist.
You cannot cut down a forest, but you can cut down trees and so forth.
So once I got my brain around the fact that this word group is an abstraction and not even a reality, it occurred to me that to say that the group, which doesn't exist, has more rights or superior level of rights to human beings, which do exist, I thought, There's something wrong here.
And that is what really started me to explore this whole thing, Stephan, to realize that the group really doesn't exist.
Well, once you understand all of this, you come out the other side and you realize that there is a philosophy that does produce the greater good for the greater number.
And that is individualism.
Because by guarding the rights of the individual, Now, multiply that over all the individuals, you have the greater good for the greater number.
But once you deny that individual, the tree of the forest, deny the right to exist because it's subordinate to the mathematical concept of many trees, well, then you've opened up a condition whereby some tyrant or demagogue can come along and say, I speak for the group.
I represent the party.
I have been elected through a majority process.
I speak for the group.
Either because I have the votes behind me or because I've been to school and I've read some books and I'm smarter than everybody else.
And I know what's best for them.
And if I don't take care of them for the greater good of the greater number, they won't do it for themselves.
They're going to make big mistakes.
And so I have an obligation for society.
There's the other word for group.
And so all of these things get muddled up and you come out the other end with a tyrant attitude.
Or a demagogue, being an absolute dictator, and where are your rights there, you know?
So, it's back to the question, what are the origin of those rights?
And the individualist believes that the individual is born with those rights.
At the time you're born, now some people would say they're God-given rights, other people have trouble with that word, but they'll say they're inherent rights, you know?
It's like the difference between hardware and software.
If rights are hardware, they're part of you.
They come with you.
They belong to you.
But if they're software, then they can be added to you.
And so the collectivist says that rights are software.
Rights are granted to you by whom?
By a state, the group, the collective.
And that means the rulers of the group, who speak for the group.
So there, in a nutshell, is the foundation of this whole debate of what the difference is between collectivism and individualism.
Once that platform is in place, then you can talk about other features of it, you know, which is, you know, so many other aspects to it, like how do you bring about positive reform?
Do you allow people freedom of choice or do you force them to do what they're supposed to do because you say they should do so?
And from there, you can go on for hours and talk about it.
The delicate differences of how you apply this philosophy of whether the group or the individual is supreme.
It's very tempting for us, I think.
And I've sort of spent many years like why is this philosophy so attractive to people, this philosophy of collectivism?
Because I don't like to be diminished in the face of society.
I mean, I don't like to shrink down to a nothingness in the face of a universal obligation called society.
Why do people find – and I think it's something biological about it to some degree.
Like none of my carbon atoms, none of the carbon atoms that make up my body are alive.
Yet together we are alive.
We get this emergent property called life.
None of my individual neurons can think or create or reason.
However, the aggregation of all of that where in my brain produces consciousness.
So for us as individuals, the component parts are much less than the combination, right?
There are these emergent – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
And it's very tempting, I think, to take that biological reality that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
And transpose that to society as a whole and say, well, with regards to society, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Now, the whole, as you say, can't speak for itself.
But there are lots of people who like to appoint themselves as the interpreter and the voice of the collective and that you're supposed to obey.
And there is, of course, great value in understanding that for an individual human being, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
There's no reason whatsoever to take that and put that to an aggregation of human beings and sort of use the analogy of the body for society as a whole.
I think that's where people find it compelling, but where logically it can't be extended.
Yes, totally on target there, Stephan.
And there's another feature, too, is that even within the individual, we have instincts, the tribal instincts.
An instinct for survival.
We know instinctively that in the face of danger, we clump together like any herd of animals, especially in the mammal kingdom.
The young would be devoured by the predators if they weren't sticking with the herd as they moved through the forest and so forth.
And so we have that instinct too.
We always cluster, most of us cluster, into herds or communities or tribes.
And it's an element of self-survival.
So, we think, well, since we have this instinct, and it's part of the survival mechanism, it must be part of our human nature, and therefore, we can apply it to the state, and that's a huge leap, you know?
It's tempting, as you say, and I think that is the very word.
It's tempting.
It's not good intellectualism, I'd say.
It's the easy answer.
It's the It's the writing of the essay without doing your homework, you know?
You might get a B on it, but you're not going to get an A because you didn't really delve into it.
So, it's sloppy thinking, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
I guess I'd grade it as a C for communism slash collectivism, but...
And I think there's something – you talk a lot about the elites, and I sort of want to point that out.
I think the nature of the elites is becoming more clear now, whereas before it was just like conspiracy theory.
Now, the understanding that rich and powerful people tend to act in concert with each other to preserve their status is not something that's considered particularly radical.
But I think one of the things that has happened and one of the greatest tragedies, I think, of the West was the government takeover of education in the sort of mid to late 19th century because elites like to promote idiocy because idiots are easier to rule.
However, idiots, particularly when you have a democracy, idiots become threatening to the elite because you've taken away their capacity to think and reason and therefore going to charge off a cliff in immediate self-gratification, forget the future and so on.
So elites promote idiocy, but then idiocy also promotes the elites because now you have this dangerous, uneducated mob that you need to control because they're going to do very silly things with their vote.
And I think this cycle is something that the internet is beginning to break, but I think is a particularly chilling pattern in society.
Yes, a very astute observation, I think.
I think the elite really doesn't want idiots to We might call them ideas, but I think what they want are quasi-educated robots.
Probably have some pretty high-level thinking capacity.
They can learn complex routines.
They can learn to mimic phrases and mantras that sound as though they have great value to them, but which are merely slogans.
They're very good at memorizing slogans.
And they can even rise to have great emotion for these slogans, you know.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
It's a slogan of Marxism, and it sounds so good.
And I remember the first time I came across it, I was in that category of being programmed by slogans, because it sounded good, it had to be good.
Then I found out there was a question left out of that.
Of course, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
But how?
The implied answer to that question was through force.
We will decide who is in need and who has the ability to give.
And we will divvy it up because from each according to his ability to each according to his need is good.
Therefore, we will force you to comply with our view of how that's to be applied.
And so the question of how these things are administered is never discussed.
It's just the end goal.
The end goal sounds so good, but when you get down to the means to the end, that's where it falls apart, you see.
And there, by the way, is one of the differences between individualism and collectivism is that the individualist believes in voluntary action to do all these good things and the collectivist says, no, no, we can't leave it up to you because you will probably make the wrong choice.
So you either put that damn seatbelt on you or we're going to put you in prison.
We're not going to give you the freedom of choice because you might not put it on otherwise.
So there you go.
Well, and another reason why I think this stuff is so compelling is that's our first 15 to 20 years in society.
This is how the family runs.
The family does not expect the baby to go out and get a job while the parents lay around in the crib soiling themselves, right?
I mean, you have to have a sort of socialist setup from each according to their ability.
Well, the parents are the ones who have the money and the resources and the children to each according to their need.
The children need those resources.
So we grow up in this amniotic sack of voluntary socialism, so to speak, in the family.
And then if we never grow up and we never mature, and one of the ways of preventing people from maturing is to convince them not to have children because it's one of these things that you better grow up pretty fast if you have kids.
And so I think this early taste of a benevolent authority who provides for us and protects us and gives us all the resources we need to flourish and survive, that is very tempting to translate from the family to the state if you don't grow up.
But of course the family is voluntary and the state is not.
The family is related and knows each other.
The agents of the state and the citizens generally don't.
And, of course, the ethics are completely different.
That which is voluntary to the family is totalitarian in the state.
But it's easy for people, especially if we now live these crazy extended adolescences where people are still in school in their mid-twenties and so on and then burdened by debt and have a tough time achieving the kind of independence and, frankly...
Tax status that makes them want to shrink the size and power of the state.
So I think this extension of early family life into adulthood is one of the ways that we find it so tempting to promote the state to the position of parents for the rest of our lives.
It's so true.
And we've talked about all of these natural things that are either in our genome or in our society that tends us to accept collectivism as a natural state.
And it's a tough one because it's real and it requires some serious thinking and some exposure to contrary thinking, you know, and being willing to open your mind and consider alternatives before you can see through these things.
And you know how we are.
We all like, if everybody's running away, everybody's running down the street in a certain direction, we tend to say, I don't know what it is, but I think we better go too, you know?
And that's natural.
And in many cases, it's probably necessary for survival.
It comes from instinct, I suppose.
Yeah, it's like those old studies where somebody walks down the street with their head craned up and they start to gather a herd of little like-minded ducklings who are all looking to see what the wonderful thing is up there that they can't see.
And people think that that's a negative, but no.
I mean, if everyone's running away, you assume there's a tiger out there somewhere.
If you're wrong, well, all you've done is expend a few calories running away.
Yeah.
I mean, if you're right, and there is a tiger out there, you've expended a few calories running away.
If you're wrong, you get eaten.
So sort of the cost-benefit of not following the herd in general is pretty costly.
And I think there's a gender difference as well.
I mean, it's been, I think, fairly understood biologically for human beings and for other species that, you know, eggs are more valuable than sperm.
Eggs are more rare than sperm.
And the male disposability aspect, or men sort of circling the wagons to protect the females, to protect the eggs, makes good sense from a tribal standpoint.
Like you can lose all but one man and still come back as a tribe.
But if you lose your women, you're toast.
Or if you're down to just a few, you're toast.
So I think that this idea of sacrificing yourself for the tribe is more of a male phenomenon biologically given the commonality of sperm versus the rarity of eggs and the different investment in reproduction between males and females.
I think that combined with the state gives us this idea.
We never say, well, collectivism means that women should be slaves to men.
That never really occurs to us.
It generally is, well, let's harness male productivity, let's harness male taxes.
There was a study in New Zealand recently that pointed out that women as a whole Well, yeah.
How can you really argue with that as a fact?
Of course, all of those things trigger emotional backlog, you know, because we get into these gender discussions.
And I've done it a couple of times with some ladies in my circle, in my family.
I have great, great respect and I revere them actually.
But if I suggest that maybe there is a reason, an economic reason, that women do not get the same pay for the same work, I have a problem on my hands because they think I'm denigrating women.
And it hadn't occurred to them that women do get pregnant, and they do have children, and they do have an affinity toward their families that is higher than to their workplace.
And if there's a conflict at home, the women are going to say, I can't come into work today.
I've got to take care of Johnny or my aunt or something.
Whereas a man will come into work.
Some of them won't, of course.
But there's that tendency, and I think employers have learned, That if they hire a woman with children especially, they better just factor in the fact that they have to take care of their children and that's fine.
I mean, I've done that.
In fact, usually the ladies who work for me in my small organization all have children.
Sometimes they bring the kids in to work.
Is that okay?
Sure, bring the kid in.
I'd like to see him.
They bring their dogs in.
It's like a big family.
I know that cuts down productivity, but it's good and it's what you should do if you have ladies with families in the workforce.
Now, does that mean you don't pay them as much as you would a man?
Probably, in the long run, it figures into the factors into your economic model.
But just to discuss those matters, it gets to be touchy because some people, male and female, have been sort of conditioned by the narrative in the media that if you don't agree to the mantra that, you know, it's even a taboo topic, then you are biased or you're racist or sexist then you are biased or you're racist or sexist or something like that.
It's funny.
Well, this is the game of the leftists and the collectivists, right, is that they look, they survey the fields, the varied fields of human endeavor.
And they find areas where there are statistical disparities between groups.
And then rather than explore the possible causes of those statistical disparities, they ascribe it all to racism, sexism, phobias of various kinds and so on.
And then they start jimmying up the resentment and the frustration.
And then they say, you see, in a state of freedom, there's bigotry.
But don't worry, we're going to have a lot of government laws and a huge amount of government power.
We're going to take care of that bigotry for you and everything's going to end up equal on the downside.
And that game, of course, can never, ever end.
Yeah, the love will just flood in and overcome all.
Just one more law, one more regulation, one more waving guns in people's faces, and paradise will be achieved.
Don't worry.
It'll be perfect.
Well, you know, that's kind of what we're facing in this global warming issue.
That's very much on my mind because, you know, our big event is coming up, as you said, in the first week of December in Phoenix.
And everybody's in this debate...
It realizes, I think, almost everybody, that the pro-global warming theorists are losing the battle for popular opinion or public acceptance.
They're definitely losing.
The last figures I saw, which I don't trust anyway, because I think the polls are rigged to make it look like people favor or believe in global warming more than they really do, but I could be wrong on that, but even if that were the case, still, the The number of people who now say they don't believe at all in global warming, that it's a fraud, I think is about 48% is hitting that tipping point.
And this is frightening the daylights out of the pro-global warming people because they're losing that battle and they know that they have to move quickly while they still have a couple of percentage points.
We'll see what happens now with the new presidency in the US. It might already be too late.
But anyway, they're moving quickly, and one of the things they're trying to do is to pass laws to force people to remain silent if they disagree on global warming.
I just got a communique from some lady, I think it was up in Washington state, there's a law that just went on in the books, that from now on, all textbooks must be thrown out of the school system if they discuss Any opposition to the global warming theory.
Now just think about that.
Illegal to express your opposing opinion on an issue.
This is the hallmark of collectivism.
In other words, you cannot allow freedom of choice or intellectual activity.
You decide what's good for society and then you, by decree, will slam it down their throats.
This is something that I think awareness is really growing quite a bit about, that if you have to suppress a dissenting opinion, it's not because your position is overly robust, to put it as nicely as possible.
And I think people are really beginning to understand that.
And we saw that with the Donald Trump play out where the mainstream media just threw everything, including the racist kitchen sink, at the man.
And I think people kind of got, well, okay, if you had really great arguments against his positions, wouldn't you use those?
You know, as the old saying goes, slander is the last tool of the loser.
And the desire to suppress an opposing opinion is because you don't have a good answer for it.
And that recommitment to the ideas of free speech, that let's have a marketplace, everyone's welcome, everyone come in, the bad ideas will be very quickly revealed as bad ideas by competent debaters and communicators.
But I think people are saying, okay, well, if you have to suppress this information, it's either because it's so rancidly evil that, you know, it would poison children's minds or whatever.
And I think it's really tough to make the case that skepticism about 100-year climate predictions is inherently evil and not that ideas ever could be, I think.
But I think now people are beginning to understand that the goal of suppression of opposing viewpoints is serving to undermine whoever is calling for it.
And people, I think, look even more skeptically upon people who want to suppress in their positions.
Yes.
Well, before we move on, I'd like to make a little plug for our meeting, if I may.
Anybody that is interested in this debate on global warming, we put together what we think is going to be the All-time answer to this issue.
We're bringing together about a dozen or more top experts from all around the world.
We're just going to blow this global warming ship right out of the water.
I mean, the facts are there.
The only trouble is that people have never heard all of these facts from all of these experts brought together.
So that's what we're going to do.
And I would urge you, if you have any interest in this issue at all, just look us up on the Internet.
It's easy to find.
It's called InconvenientLie.com That's the name of the meeting.
It's An Inconvenient Lie, Global Warming.
So InconvenientLie.com And you'll see all about it.
And I hope you'll be able to make it.
You'll be able to meet some of these people.
Of course, we have that stellar performer from London, Lord Moncton.
He will be there.
But professors from several universities will be there.
Tim Ball will be there.
Happer will be there.
Professor Happer will The law will be there, I'm just telling you, and it's going to be really quite an event, and you don't want to miss it.
Well said.
One of the things that, in getting ready for our conversation today, one of the things I found surprising was to sort of switch to the international treaty slash UN aspect of things, and all of these things are kind of tied together, I think.
I wasn't aware that international treaties completely overturn constitutional norms within the United States.
And if I was surprised, be it, I'm going to guess that a few of my listeners are also surprised.
But I wonder if you could help people understand what that means and what kind of threat it poses to their remaining freedoms.
Yeah, that issue really goes back quite a few years to, well, I've forgotten the name of the case right now, but a Supreme Court case had to do with Migratory birds, I think, up in Canada or something like that.
A very low level of seemingly importance.
But the issue was extraordinarily important.
And that was, as you just said, that a treaty which is ratified by the Senate of the United States is an obligation that is considered in the courts of law to be higher than the Constitution itself.
Now, you and I might disagree with that decision.
Very intensely, as I do.
But nevertheless, that is more or less what is on the books.
Now, there are some wishy-washy parts where there are certain conditions that may not be so, and so forth.
But in general, that is the principle that has been used when approaching treaty law.
And so, when we look at these treaties, Trans-Pacific Treaty, for example, and all of these trade treaties, And we think, oh, they're just treaties, they don't make any difference.
They make a huge amount of difference because as the courts will interpret those treaties, it won't make any difference whether they violate your right to freedom of speech or to private property or even to your physical location.
If it requires, for example, if a treaty as interpreted by an international court decides that you're living in the wrong town and allocation of economic resources are so important, That you are needed in Cincinnati instead of Los Angeles or in Detroit instead of San Diego or whatever.
And they'll put you on a bus and you will go because treaty law is above the Constitution.
That is what we're talking about.
And it is extremely serious and it's where we're headed with international treaties.
And when we think of how difficult it is, and purposefully so, to change the Constitution in the United States, I mean, the legal barriers are enormous.
But a great way, of course, of chipping away at the Constitution is to set up a series of treaties overseas that abrogates those rights.
Then you don't have to go through the troublesome process, the barriers set up by the Founding Fathers for constitutional changes.
You can just use that external lever of overseas treaties to begin to chip away at the foundations.
Yeah, Kissinger said that.
I saw the video on him a little while ago.
He was talking at some international meeting, and he said, well, you know, the illegal we can do immediately.
The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
He was an honest, if despicable, man.
Totally honest, yes.
Now, the World Bank is something I wanted to touch on as well.
I had it in my notes for our last conversation, but we didn't get round to it.
It seems that what's going on with the Deutsche Bank, what is going on with the European banks, and of course the Central European Bank, what's going on with the Federal Reserve these days, is this sort of last desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable pop of the bubble that is going to occur as a result of all of this fiat currency money printing all around the world. is this sort of last desperate attempt to stave off The extra $8 trillion that was injected into the Obama presidency by not having any kind of budget.
I think people are going to really, really need to get up to speed on World Bank, IMF, central banking, and so on.
I know it's a big topic, and I want to really recommend your book again, The Creature from Jekyll Island.
We'll put a link to that below.
But if you could give people the sort of few minutes overview, because this is going to start shouldering its way into people's consciousness, I think, sooner rather than later, and more urgently rather than less.
It's a very simple concept, isn't it?
You cannot just continue to increase debt forever.
At some point, depending on your own personal credit worthiness, there's some point at which your debt exceeds your capacity to carry it, and you're crushed by it.
The United States has had the greatest capacity to carry debt of any nation in the world, primarily because, up until recently, it's been the most prosperous, most productive The strongest nation in the world.
And its credit was very worthy.
It was going to produce things.
It was going to deliver things.
And then that gradually shifted to the power behind sustaining debt was no longer its economic ability to produce, but its ability to send marines to some nation and topple the government or send operatives to cause civil disorder to topple the government.
It was its military and its covert operations to topple governments and, as they call it, bring about regime change that frightened practically every nation in the world, the leaders of those nations, into accepting the economic burden of American debt.
And so that has been an easy ride for the United States and we have benefited from that as citizens of the United States.
But as I said a moment ago, everything has a limit.
Even that has its limit.
And we've seen that in history.
Even the Roman Empire fell.
And even the British Empire fell without having the United States coming along to pick it up and put it back on its feet.
The United States, I believe, and everyone seems to be in agreement with that, is teetering on the edge of stumbling and falling.
And I think it's inevitable.
I don't think it's possible anymore just to stop.
If we just stopped what we have been doing, which is impossible, by the way, because we have these continuing commitments, but even if we were just to put a complete stop on it, the momentum, I don't think we can avoid paying some consequences and some very serious consequences.
Now, what are those consequences?
Well, if the nations of the world do not want American dollars anymore, Because either they don't trust them or they're already so many of them that they don't buy anything, that the inflation has destroyed their purchasing power, then all of those billions and trillions of euro dollars,
as they call them, they're just US dollars that are overseas that the rest of the world has been using as the currency of the world, they become not very interesting anymore, so they'll all be sent back to the United States to buy up whatever they can with them before they become totally worthless.
Now, that'll be a tremendous boom for our output.
All of a sudden, everybody wants our goods and services, right?
But they're buying them up with our old depreciating or depreciated dollars.
And we'll have a great rush on our products, if we're producing any.
But people will be buying up everything.
They'll be buying up land, businesses, stocks, bonds, politicians, anything that's for sale.
And that's how the money will come back.
And That will dilute the purchasing power of our already diluted dollar to the point where suddenly we will experience, in a very short period of time I believe, we will experience the inflation that we should have experienced over the past two or three decades.
We've been exporting our inflation because other nations had the need for our dollars.
When they no longer have the need, all that exported inflation will come back with the dollars and It'll cost us $1,000 for a loaf of bread.
We come down to that.
The dollar will be destroyed.
Now, I really don't think that'll happen because before it happens, the other mechanism will kick in, which is where they're going to try and convert the US dollar.
The Federal Reserve notes will all be converted over to some regional or international currency.
And it will be offered to us as the solution.
That will be the savior.
We're not going to experience that trauma if we just calmly and passively accept this new currency, which will probably be called the Amaral or the Bancor or something like that.
It'll be an international currency.
It'll be exactly the same as ours, except we won't know it.
They might even say, look, we're going to put a little bit of gold or silver behind this In a basket of currencies and assets to make us feel good.
Maybe 5% or 3%.
Oh, well, it's got gold in it.
Everybody will be happy, and they'll get the new money, and they'll find out that, oh, after a couple of months, the prices are still going up.
It'll be right back to where they started from.
Except one important thing will have happened.
America will have lost its currency.
Now, a nation runs on its currency and its military.
You could argue that we've almost, maybe we already have lost our military now to international influence, but you could argue that point.
But once you create a Bancor or an AMRO, there's no argument.
You no longer, this nation no longer has control of its own currency.
Which means, let's crank that out, it means we will have finally lost our sovereignty as a nation.
We will now be part of this thing called the New World Order or Global Governance.
And the game will be essentially over.
Well, and of course, we've seen what the crippling lack of sovereignty and lack of options to do things like devalue currency, which is what Greece would have done, of course, when facing this much debt.
These are terrible solutions, but they're still better than a sort of universal currency across Europe, which allows Greece to borrow at subsidized German rates and then gives them no capacity to monetize their way out of their debt, which would warn investors off and so on.
So even these sort of fail-safe methods, which weren't great, but at least function to a small degree, have all been taken away in the EU, and I think we can see the results where there's migrants crashing across every border.
Borders are beginning to dissolve.
Populations are getting increasingly restless and frustrated and angry.
And this universalization of currency, the only thing worse than a local fiat currency is an international one.
Yeah, there's no escape, is there?
Right.
And that the signals which would warn investors and provide sort of quasi-market signals back to people about the stability of currencies and the stability of governments are generally removed from the equation.
And if there's one thing you want to do, if you keep stubbing your toe, is have it hurt you so that you stop doing it.
And when you get that kind of anesthetic, a lot of rot can spread undetected.
Yeah, so true.
I don't know.
You could go on and talk more about it, but I think we covered the main points.
It's not good.
Except there's one more point that maybe we should consider, and we're back to the elections again.
There's sort of a euphoria among some of our friends who think, oh my gosh, we've at least broken the establishment.
And it seems that way, and I'm sort of in that camp myself.
But I'm not blind to the fact that the powers that be...
Probably have anticipated this very move quite a while ago.
And if I were sitting around that little table making decisions on the part of the elite as to what to do now, I think my solution would be very clear.
I would say, well, we know the bubble's going to burst.
Let's pick the time and apply the pin.
And we'll apply the pin at such a moment, in such a place, in such a way, so all of the blame will fall on the Trump administration and all these idiotic conservatives or constitutionalists or conspiracy theorists or whatever you want to call us, all of these people, they'll say, I really brought this about.
And that could be a very effective counter move on their part.
I think we ought to be prepared for that.
I'm quite sure that the same has occurred to one Donald J. Trump, and I would not be surprised if he had a few aces up his sleeve with regards to that.
I also do have some hope, and it's a weird way to use hope, but I do have some hope that the elites do not want the livestock to expire.
And they know when the gig is up and the normal expediency when currency reaches the end of its cycle is to provoke a war.
And I think Hillary would have been that option, particularly in the Middle East with Syria and a no-fly zone with Russia, which could have led to a significant war.
So the normal solution when fiat currency reaches the end of the cycle is to provoke a war because then people will accept austerity in the case of war that they would not have accepted in peacetime and you also would get rid of a whole bunch of people who may be inconvenient to your plans.
But I think war under Trump is not going to happen.
Trump is aware, and I think he's already put the warning out, if I had to guess, to Wall Street saying, if you pop the bubble, there will be some significant negative consequences.
But I think that the elites who want to continue to rule and who want to continue to have productive tax livestock on their tax farms that are variously colored across the world map...
I think that they may have realized that they've put the screws on too tight.
They need to loosen things.
They may be in accord with Trump with regards to cutting corporate taxes, cutting taxes, renegotiating trade deals, because you don't ride your horse completely into exhaustion and death, right?
You have to give it a chance to rest and recuperate.
It may be that possibility, unless the elites are completely pathologically suicidal and self-destructive and just want to watch the world burn.
And I don't think that is the case.
I think they're very practical human farmers, and I think they may realize that they need a reset, a soft reset, rather than a hard reset in order to continue to reap the gains that they've historically achieved.
Well, that's certainly a plausible scenario.
I admit that.
But I'm not also, I'm aware that they may also think That they see this rising tide of opposition and awareness to their plans and they may decide that they could sacrifice a few farms in order to retain control.
I don't know how they're going to contain the rising awareness unless they bring about some kind of a catastrophe to short-circuit this learning and awareness process.
Only in times of great crisis do people Close down their brains, you know?
So, I'm just thinking that they probably are holding a great crisis as a serious option.
And I know they're not going to just sit by and do nothing.
They have a plan for it.
So, that's right.
We're not either.
So, that's the way it goes.
All right.
Well, I really want to take time to thank you, of course, for the work that you've done.
I really wanted to remind people the creature from Jekyll Island.
We'll put a link to that below.
You can find more of J. Edward Griffin's work at realityzone.com and freedomforceinternational.org.
We will, of course, put the links to those below.
Thanks so much for a really great and enlightening conversation.
I'm sure we get many warm comments just as we did in the last few conversations.
And just a reminder to go to inconvenientlie.com.
It's.com, yes.
Incommunity.com to check out the upcoming conference in Phoenix, Arizona, December 2nd to 4th, 2016.
