Open Letter/Essay: Turning Era for History
--Short version
By Tim Krenz
April 10, 2024
Copyright ©
2024 The CEPIA CLUB LLC
History holds numerous turning points. For people living in times
of great changes, a perceptive few saw these changes approaching.
When the hour struck, on the other hand, the majority of the people
only then realized the chimes had rung. How the turning points
changed everything in the contemporary circumstances left few
unaffected. Change came. Most individuals and all institutions
changed with them, as matters of necessity. The ones who resisted
change fell behind or perished. In some cases, the changes came for
the betterment of the people affected, or in certain instances, for
those who survived. When better things resulted, people and their
trusted, capable leaders had clear vision, high competence, sound
confidence, and the hard-earned recognition to do the right things
for the right reasons.
The United States of America, like the entire world, most likely now
approaches one of those decisive turning points. The moment, rich
with peril and possibly opportunity, presents people and leaders on
every side with choices. How these individuals respond to the times
and the courses of action they choose to follow will determine the
collective fates of all.
The same turning points have happened in America in the 248 years
since Independence. Some more sad, some more useless, some mixed and
unfortunate. Yet the turning points happened, and some brought the
United States to the brink of dissolution. Some brought carnage. Of
these changes, the many failed to act, while the one individual or a
small group consolidated their acts in ways detrimental to the
majority and their liberty.
For bad examples:
Years following the war of the Revolution, Alexander Hamilton used
the Constitution to implement his system of debt legitimacy and
credit to anchor the new Federal system as the primary authority in
the new world. All things financial and all the legalities of the
world, including American foreign war and domestic coercion to
enforce them, stem from Hamilton's vision.
Andrew Jackson, as general and President, created a system of
politics (and the Democratic Party) that played on the emotions of
spoils and popularity, and promoted the system of conquest, and
settlement across the continent. Even Thomas Jefferson probably never
dreamed such nightmares.
In the Antebellum America, a combination of homesteading, railroads,
industrialization, immigration, land ownership and urbanization, and
the ancient scourge of human chattel slavery gave rise to causes of
secession, centralization, and the Republican Party. The Civil War
decided who would control this whole system. Even though the war
settled the question of slavery, the war ultimately decided on how
the spoils would get divided, thus building on and consolidating
Jackson’s democracy system.
In 1932, the global great depression and mass poverty, the Bonus
Army and President Hoover’s and General MacArthur’s reaction to
that, populism and Huey Long, and socialism, etc.--all had brought
the United States to another turning point. Then came the New Deal
and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s campaign for President. His election
that year might have stopped a revolt form below and an impending
catastrophe. It did provoke a plan by many on Wall Street to conduct
a coup, through agency of BRIG GEN. Smedly Butler, USMC, who betrayed
their secret cabal. Like others at turning points, FDR changed the
nature of politics in America with his alignment of voters. He
promised them the New Deal to feed and employ them. :In turn it took
people away from a heritage of cultural localism and away from the
extended family as a social mainstay. FDR’s promise brought the
country closer, in turn, to more centralization and government as
paternal caretaker of the needs of its citizens. Appealing to the
poor, the illiterate, the minorities, all who suffered significantly
from the depression, and taking the votes of many of the educated
class and the unionized labor, FDR promised that the spoils would now
no longer go to the victor. Now they went from the private sector to
the government, through the intermediaries, and back to those who
gave it originally. In this great realignment of big government for
big power and big profit, this system has essentially endured until
now, regardless of party.
All of these turning points in the history of the United States have
happened in the history of the world as well. These events usually
begin with some revolutionary or new things or an invention or even a
better, simpler idea. Where did these events go wrong for the
freedom of the many? The results trended towards more injustice for
mostly everyone, regardless of differences, due to a lack of sound
mass leadership that promoted and protected the common interest of a
liberty for all.
The world has debt, as it always has, because it measures wealth in
gold and not in the golden rule. It has wars and threats of wars,
because leaders prey over and manipulate the fear and greed of
humans. While it always has since invention, the threat of nuclear
weapons and omnicide (or the death of everything) hangs a shroud
around the future. The end could come from a miscalculation of
interests or sheer stupidity or from an absolute evil. The world has
poor, starvation, and illiteracy. Worse, it has the angst and fear
of uncertainty. The death trap the world faces, however, may exist
in the philosophical, the inability of current ideas and imagination
to agree to disagree, and still live in non-violent and non-coercive
peace. All signs point to a fight, between those who would enslave
through authority and violence and opposed by those who want the
world to work in freedom and amity.
How can this get resolved? How does the tension of anxiety in people
translate into another form, like a vigilantly permanent peace?
First, the best hope for peace and tranquility anywhere comes in the
conviction that united peoples, united movements, and united states
can achieve great things, and the right things. The common goal will
always remain a country of liberty for all, safe within itself, and
truly free in this world.
Second, everyone and especially every voter must understand these
opportunities to change everything only come rarely. United,
everyone must seize this moment. The country, the world, have no
other choice. Taking action, in positive ways, saves the future by
freeing things in the present. The risk of failure to make better
choices now, of ignoring the dangers or missing the historic
significance of this next turning point, may become fatal, in all
ways.
History has examples of catastrophe coming from points like these,
but those disastrous circumstances concluded by centralized authority
and power profits getting stronger. They did so only because the
majority of people failed to unite and act when they should have.
On the contrary, when people united behind a creed, a philosophy, or
a faith in somethings, great transformations happened—take the
Buddha, Jesus, and Gandhi, for example. Even if individuals
initially started a turning point, they did not transform it alone,
nor did their idea, their belief or their hopes end with them.
For this era and our next great opportunity to change things,
liberty and freedom—for everyone and everywhere—hold the great
power the country needs. Libertarianism, as a philosophy contains
within itself the belief that truly free people best represent the
future for peace. And a growing faith among those who act in
Liberty’s name possesses for the world the last true hope for it.
Join together. Make history happen, the true way at last.
