Bureau Of Privacy

Mendax News Service

Mendax News Service has learned that the Department of Homeland Security has set up a department within itself to be known as The Bureau of Privacy. The new subsidiary department will be in charge of monitoring the actions and associations of the populace to root out terrorism before it happens.

The impetus for the new Bureau is believed to be the plot – thwarted, thankfully – by a German terrorist, Friedrich Wöhler to dump calcium carbide in the toilets of public restrooms and provide some kind of delayed ignition source.

Mendax contacted the spokesman for the new bureau, P. Tom Coventry about plans to install cameras and listening devices in all public restrooms.

Mendax: Mr. Coventry, It seems that putting cameras in the stalls of public restrooms is a violation of privacy by any standard. How do you justify this?

Coventry: We don't see the right to privacy as absolute. After the underwear bomber tried to blow up a plane with a bomb concealed in his underwear, pornoscanners were installed in many airports with very little complaint from the flying public. This is a reasonable extension of our mission to protect the public while respecting people's privacy.

Mendax: This doesn't seem like you are respecting people's privacy, it seems like you are violating it.

Coventry: We would never violate anyone's privacy. This isn't a violation, it is a monitored privacy, which enhances both privacy and security. After all, privacy is no use without security. In order to mean anything, privacy must be regulated. We don't have a right to unbridled privacy.

Mendax: Can you cite any precedents for your opinion?

Coventry: Certainly, the scanners at the airports I already mentioned and random road blocks, searches of buses, luggage, domestic drones that are being contemplated and so on.

Mendax: These things take place in public places, not restrooms.

Coventry: We are not going to monitor bathrooms in detatched single-family, privately owned residences, only public buildings and buildings that the public has access to, such as hotels, office buildings, stadiums, schools, public housing or housing that receives funding from the public such as Section Eight housing. We're not talking about Big Brother here.

Mendax: What if people object to this new form of surveillance?

Coventry: There will always be a fringe element that sees a privacy violation behind every government initiative, but our mission is to ensure the safety of the public. We can't do that without real time observation of any potential threat. If we want to preserve our freedom, we've got to have enhanced privacy.

Mendax: What you are talking about doing doesn't sound like it will enhance privacy.

Coventry: Of course it will. What good is privacy if you're dead? The Bureau of Privacy is going to do its utmost to protect the public's privacy while still providing security.

Mendax: Where is any of this new surveillance authorized? Doesn't it at the very least violate the Fourth Amendment?

Coventry: No, it doesn't. The Fourth Amendment forbids unreasonable searches and seizures, etc. We are not searching or seizing anything, but merely observing.

Mendax: It seems to violate the intent, if not the letter of the amendment, and even common sense.

Coventry: We can't let common sense prejudice our interpretation of the law. There are various penumbras and emanations that allow for surveillance. Besides that, the Constitution is a living document, so we can never tell what it really meant or what it will mean in the future.

Mendax: Thank you for your time Mr. Coventry. I'm sure there will be some lawsuits over this.

Coventry: Since nobody is required to use any of these facilities, we don't anticipate any legal roadblocks to our plans. Everyone uses these facilities voluntarily.

Disarming Peasants

Every time there is a shooting at a school, shopping center, city council meeting or other location where innocent people are shot or killed by a private citizen and not a government employee, the Left immediately calls for civilian disarmament, maybe not all at once, but certainly by degrees.

What is odd about this is that not a day goes by that MoveOn.Org doesn't send out some kind of alert about banksters or corporate bogeymen who are up to no good. They probably are, but these people never see any danger from omnipotent government, only private cabals that operate for gain, but have no arrest or taxing power and no history of setting up gulags and murdering people en masse.

It's as though they have upended Jefferson's admonition, " in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution."  Instead of mistrust of government officials they have mistrust of the citizen and instead of binding down the government they want to free the government and bind the citizen. They don't trust John Q. Public, but they do trust Obama, Bloomberg, Stalin, Hitler, Castro or Robespierre. Even if we had virtuous men currently in office, which we don't, it would be pure folly to expect that always to be the case. Carroll Quigley, who has the distinction of being mentioned approvingly by Bill Clinton, says in his magnum opus Tragedy & Hope that when the citizen can have the same weapons or nearly the same as the government, it favors popular government, but when the government has superior weaponry it favors authoritarian government.

All the arguments I have seen on both sides of the question are utilitarian arguments. I have not seen anybody take up an intransigent position of principle and contend that even if it could be shown that private ownership of weapons causes higher rates of violence it would not be justification for controlling weapons for the simple reason that owning weapons is an inalienable right and isn't susceptible to statistical arguments.

We don't have free speech because it can be shown that it's a good thing, but because it is a right, not a privilege. It doesn't make any difference that many people tell lies or make inflammatory comments; when a right is abused it does not negate it for others. For years the NRA has prattled on about "firearms freedoms" as though a freedom is the same thing as a right - it isn't. Your neighbor may have the freedom to come into your house at will, but not the right to. The latest bit of claptrap is that we're having a "conversation" about gun violence or protecting children or some other focus group-think. Formerly the correct term was "dialogue," but that has fallen into desuetude.

It seems that most of the "conversation" is directed at people's feelings, not thoughts. This is very much on display with the Charlatan-in-Chief surrounding himself with children and acting as though he cares what they think. As long as he has their attention, maybe he should ask their opinion of drone strikes against innocent people or saddling future generations with oppressive debt. They're probably too young to form an opinion about such things.

Under our system of government - theoretically - the citizen is the sovereign and the government is the agent or instrument. How can the agent have rights that the sovereign doesn't have? No one can give what he does not have. If the sovereign has no right to possess arms, certainly his agent cannot have such a right.

It isn't violence that the government objects to so much as it is private ownership of guns. When Julio Gonzalez burned 87 people to death at the Happy Land disco in New York, nobody called for stopping the sale of gasoline in cans. That would have been absurd and would not have furthered the cause of civilian disarmament.

Back in the '70s, the angle of attack on gun ownership was the "Saturday Night Special," a term that no gun enthusiast used, but was thought to be useful by the forces of control. For the past 15 years or so, it's been "assault weapons," another made up term with no definition. It sounds really menacing so it's likely to be around for quite a while. It seems to be derived from the term "assault rifle" which was supposedly coined by Hitler (it probably wasn't) to describe a selective fire (i.e. capable of both semi-automatic and automatic or "fully automatic" fire) rifle that fired a low-powered rifle cartridge.
These rifles had more power than the submachine guns, which fired pistol cartridges, but less than a regular infantry arm of the day, such as an M1, Lee Enfield, Mauser, Springfield, etc.

Some advocates of disarmament have resurrected the claim that the Second Amendment refers to ownership of muskets. The founders were aware that technology is not static and had they thought nobody should ever have anything more advanced than a musket they could have said so, but had they done so the Constitution would probably not have been ratified. A musket was comparable to anything the army of the day had, so by that reasoning the citizen should now have sophisticated military equipment.

The founders wanted to guard against "combinations of ambitious men," but the disarmament lobby puts unlimited faith in such men and views the common man warily. It's as though the Bolsheviks can be trusted, but the peasants can't be.

Jannes And Jambres

Jannes and Jambres aren't household names, but if they were they might be recognized as the patrons - sort of anti-saints - of politicians. According to Jewish tradition they were the magicians of Pharaoh who opposed Moses and Aaron. Their names are not mentioned in the Old Testament, but St. Paul mentions them in his Second Epistle to Timothy.

As arch deceivers they are a nice fit when searching antiquity for a political patron. Many of my acquaintances were upset that Barack Obama proved himself a better deceiver than Mitt Romney. It's as though they thought that Jannes would have been a great improvement over Jambres. Every Presidential election boils down to this. Decent people cannot get elected president because the whole machinery is run by blackguards.

Everybody is familiar with Lord Acton's statement to Mandell Creighton that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," but the subsequent sentences, "Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it." aren't usually quoted. I think Acton is right about the tendency of power to corrupt, but the more obvious correlation is that power attracts corrupt people to begin with.

F. A. Hayek devoted a chapter of The Road To Serfdom to Why The Worst Get On Top. They get on top because the whole political organization is composed of the worst people.

Just as auto mechanics get grease on their hands, butchers get blood on their aprons, coal miners get black stains on their clothes, people in the political realm lie, steal, blackmail, bribe, threaten, kill and any other thing that is required to acquire and retain power. It's just as surely how the system works as hitting and getting hit is part of boxing.

Many good people think they're going to reform the system by voting in good people. This is impossible because good people almost never run for office and when they do they have almost no chance of winning. They have as much chance of winning as Achilles had of overtaking the Tortoise in Zeno's Paradox. None of the people in power want good people in office. It makes them look bad.

Ron Paul is a constant rebuke to the stump jumpers in D. C. and they will probably hold a celebration when his term is up and he's gone.

Reforming the system for the better by voting in good people is as likely as the victims of a protection racket banding together and bringing in better extortionists, or, as Frank Chodorov said, "... you cannot clean up a brothel and yet leave the business intact. We have been voting for one 'good government' after another, and what have we got?"

Niccolo Machiavelli didn't discover any new principles of politics when he wrote The Prince, he just described how the system works in what might be the best known handbook on politics. Wikipedia says that he is the founder of modern political science, but he is probably better described as its expositor. Ambitious con artists have always known the principles of politics just as surely as squirrels know how to climb trees or fish know how to swim.

There seems to be no remedy for a corrupt system other than getting out of it entirely. This is what Moses and the Israelites were  attempting to do when Jannes and Jambres attempted to prevent them from seceding from leaving Egypt

Maybe Honest Abe took his cue from Pharaoh when he decided to prevent secession, but at any rate governments always seem to want to dictate and to forbid self-determination if that means allowing people to leave peaceably and form their own polity.

Four years hence we'll again be offered the choice of Jannes or Jambres and there will be plenty of people shouting at the top of their lungs that Jannes is so much better than Jambres or vice versa.

Frederick Douglass And Modern Slavery

Drapetomania was a supposed mental disorder that caused slaves to run away from their masters. Anyone paying attention to the emigration of many Americans to freer countries might think that drapetomania is striking the wealthier classes.

A man who knew something about drapetomania - in fact he had it, even if undiagnosed - was Frederick Douglass. After his escape he wrote a short autobiography titled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. His narrative is of interest not just because of its first hand account of slavery, but because of the insights he relates that are applicable to many people today.
Many people realize that the government they live under is a criminal organization, but will jump to its defense when some foreigner criticizes the actions or policies of their government.

Douglass relates how slaves would argue about whose master was greatest even though they might hate their master.  

"The same traits of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd's slaves, as are seen in the slaves of the political parties..... Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the superior goodness of his own over that of the others. At the very same time, they mutually execrate their masters when viewed separately. It was so on our plantation. When Colonel Lloyd's slaves met the slaves of Jacob Jepson, they seldom parted without a quarrel about their masters; Colonel Lloyd's slaves contending that he was the richest, and Mr. Jepson's slaves that he was the smartest, and most of a man. Colonel Lloyd's slaves would boast his ability to buy and sell Jacob Jepson. Mr. Jepson's slaves would boast his ability to whip Colonel Lloyd. These quarrels would almost always end in a fight between the parties, and those that whipped were supposed to have gained the point at issue. They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!"

The issue of transferability is evident in people bragging about their country, school or football team as though they are bathed in some kind of reflected glory from the entity in question. 

An incident that illustrates how slave owners and governments can brook no disobedience is related in the account of the murder of a slave named Demby. Mr Gore, the overseer, shot Demby in the head for disobedience.  

"He was asked by Colonel Lloyd and my old master, why he resorted to this extraordinary expedient. His reply was, (as well as I can remember,) that Demby had become unmanageable. He was setting a dangerous example to the other slaves,-one which, if suffered to pass without some such demonstration on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion of all rule and order upon the plantation."

This is probably why dissidents such as Sophie Scholl, Cardinal Mindszenty and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn are celebrated here, but indigenous protesters or dissidents are not.

Learning to read was viewed by Douglass as the road to freedom, but government schools have blunted the efficacy of this for many people by teaching them very early lots of erroneous or incomplete information.

"Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read....I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty-to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read."

Government schooling is probably the greatest mechanism of control yet discovered. It is the modern equivalent of enforced illiteracy. Reading is fine as long as you don't read the wrong things. This is why the internet is a lethal menace to government's organized ignorance.

Almost everyone has heard the phrase "bread and circuses" to describe the method used by Rome to keep the populace pacified, but it works in almost any setting and with any people.

"This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those [holi]days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result was just what might be supposed; many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field,-feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery."

When someone tries to keep the fruits of his labor or escape government control, he is denounced as a "tax cheat" or just an over all ungrateful traitor, the same as with a slave who tries unsuccessfully to escape. Douglass attempted an escape with some other slaves, but was thwarted because of someone reporting the plan. In typical fashion, he was the bad guy for not appreciating his station in life.

 "... Betsy Freeland, mother of William Freeland, came to the door with her hands full of biscuits, and divided them between Henry and John. She then delivered herself of a speech, to the following effect:-addressing herself to me, she said, "~You devil! You yellow devil!~ it was you that put it into the heads of Henry and John to run away. But for you, you long-legged mulatto devil! Henry nor John would never have thought of such a thing." I made no reply, and was immediately hurried off towards St. Michael's."

While still a slave, Douglass had a lesson in income taxation. He had learned the trade of caulking ships and was working in a shipyard making six to nine dollars a week. His master imposed a 99 percent tax on his wages.

"I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it,-not because he had any hand in earning it,-not because I owed it to him,-nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same."

Later on he says that he was sometimes given six cents out of the six dollars, so he wasn't taxed at 100 percent. He might also have been reminded of all the services and conveniences and freedom that were being provided by his master. After his escape, he got a job and describes the satisfaction of how it felt to keep all his earnings, something modern slaves aren't allowed to do.

"It was the first work, the reward of which was to be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the moment I earned the money, to rob me of it. I worked that day with a pleasure I had never before experienced."

There are lots of books and articles about how to flee the country, get your assets out and where to settle in relative peace and freedom, but one thing hard to overcome even if you have the means to leave, is family and friends.

"It is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery, who now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to their friends. The thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most painful thought with which I had to contend. The love of them was my tender point, and shook my decision more than all things else" 

A man writing in 1845 was obviously not writing for readers of today, but many of the same dilemmas are confronted by modern people who are trying to get from under the oppressor's boot.

A man like Douglass could not have imagined the degree of control imposed by modern governments. It's not too far-fetched to see the day when paychecks will be direct-deposited to the IRS, and producers sent the balance by the IRS. Or maybe all debits would be handled by the IRS and anything they didn't approve of would be disallowed. This would make it difficult for modern slaves to flee if they should contract drapetomania.

Civics Lesson

Back in 1973 there was a popular Paul Simon song called Kodachrome, the first few lines of which are:

"When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall"

It really is a wonder that anyone subjected to public schooling can think at all since the purpose of public indoctrination seems to be to fill the students' heads with error and carefully filtered information. It isn't so much a lack of education that hurts anyone, it's the errors that are taught as fact that do almost irremediable harm.

I don't recall learning anything useful in high school about how our system of government works. Even politically active people seem to believe the malarkey that was taught them in civics class. Some examples would be that we are a nation of laws, popular rule, a "democracy", inalienable rights, etcetera, etc.

If anyone were to publish a textbook explaining how government really works, no school system would adopt it. If it did adopt it, it would probably lose its accreditation. In the interest of assisting some would-be writer/publisher I offer the following observations on how the system works.

The first rule is that the government is not bound by the moral law. It can lie, steal, murder, blackmail, torture (as long as you don't call it torture), imprison, extort or do anything else that seems expedient for achieving its ends. It's as Rod Serling said, "... it has one iron rule: Logic is an enemy, and truth is a menace."

The importance of these principles is emphasized by the assertion of their opposites. Truth, honor, prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, respect for the individual are all fine until they get in the way of some State objective. Initially, the student is taught by means of ritual. Parades, patriotic music, military displays, the pledge of allegiance, wreath layings and so on form a sort of liturgy of the State. Later the student will be taught about how the State has made all good things possible by means of the sacrifices of our forefathers.

Lying is the first tool in the State's tool kit, but it is important to convey the idea that everything the government says is true. If the agents of the state were forced to tell the truth, the whole system would break down. Some countries, such as the Soviet Union had official news agencies to propagate their lies. Everybody everywhere knew that nothing reported by TASS or Pravda could be believed, but in the U.S. the private news organizations usually report uncritically what the government tells them in its press releases.

One of the things the government does over and over is to get some kind of measure - many times a tax - passed by claiming that it is going to be temporary. These things are temporary in the same way that the pyramids in Egypt are temporary. The income tax withholding during WW II was a temporary measure.

Emotional engineering is another important technique used by the State to direct the populace to identify with its goals. Osama bin Laden was a good guy when he was on our side in fighting the Russians, but then he became a bad guy. Saddam Hussein was also both a good guy and a bad guy, but Muammar Gaddafi was a bad guy who became a good guy and then a bad guy again.

If it were decided that the U.S. needed Canadian oil fields and the Canadians wouldn't agree to our terms, we would suddenly find that they were killing babies and old people, and exporting drugs to our youth. Pretty soon there would be an  incident where they attacked one of our border checkpoints or illegally seized a U.S. fishing boat. By this means a friendly people would be transformed into "the enemy."

Blackmail is also useful to keep members of the government in line. It is a good idea to never appoint someone to a high position - such as a Supreme Court Justice - who can't be blackmailed into doing the "right thing" when the need arises. It's also useful when the government wants a private entity to do something it isn't required by law to do, such as turn over phone records. The officials of the intransigent company might find that they are being audited by the IRS or that they are being investigated for SEC violations or that their bank account is being seized for wire fraud or money laundering or any number of things.

Stealing of course is the bedrock of the State. Without the ability to steal, the state could not exist. According to our system of income taxation, the State has a prior claim on all income and it will decide how much the rightful owner is allowed to keep. If the State decides it wants your property it can seize it under its power of eminent domain and pay you the supposed fair market value of it, which obviously is less than you would have sold it for or you would have already sold it. Maybe you wouldn't have sold it for 10 times fair market value, if at all.

The State likes to invoke the name of God in support of whatever it is it's doing, but God should know his place. God cannot be allowed to countermand the dictates of the State, whether it be forcing Jews to eat pork under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, compelling Christians to sacrifice to the Emperor under Domitian, Diocletian, et al., suppressing the Church under Calles, executing dissenters like Jagerstatter under Hitler, or requiring the violation of conscience under Obama. The State is God - the only true God - and will have no strange gods before it. 

The government has made itself the interpreter and arbiter of its own powers, so it should surprise no one that it usually finds for itself. It has answered the question of  "who will guard the guards themselves?" that it will guard them. You might as well appeal to the protection racket to adjudicate a complaint you have against it.

Murder isn't mentioned much in the context of civics lessons, but it is a time-honored way of dealing with troublesome or meddlesome people. It's amazing how many annoying - to politicians - people end up killing themselves or dying in plane crashes. During the Clinton administration the term "Arkancide" briefly came into the lexicon. Most Americans think that our public officials are different from the way they have been throughout recorded history. I previously wrote about this public delusion here. As a wise man once said, "There is nothing new under the sun." and we certainly have not developed a new kind of government official. They are all concerned with the acquisition and retention of power and will do anything to realize that end.

Anyone who believed that our "representatives" actually represent the people should have been enlightened by the bailout of the banks against overwhelming popular opposition to it, or the passage of Obama's socialized medicine bill against popular opposition. Sometimes writing your Congressman or Senator just doesn't seem to do any good.

Mechanics Lobby

Mendax News Service

The governing board of The American Mechanics Association proposed at its annual meeting to push for legislation to require prescriptions for certain automotive supplies. The AMA has long recognized that the average consumer lacks the competence to decide what services and remedies should be applied to his motorized vehicle.

In the present situation, anybody can buy oil, filters, anti-freeze, transmission fluid, drive belts, windshield washer cleaner and myriad other items with no authorization required. Most items such as tires, wiper blades, water, compressed air, car wax, fuses, trim items and, of course,  gasoline would remain over-the-counter items under the proposal.

It has long been a concern of many mechanics that consumers use the wrong oil or improperly dispose of anti-freeze or dump used filters in the garbage, causing untold environmental damage. The AMA stressed that this is a very real and immediate crisis and that its proposal has nothing to do with money, as some of its detractors are already alleging.

The advocates of the status quo are already dreaming up nightmare scenarios where consumers would be charged exorbitant prices for office visits to obtain a prescription for something that they knew from reading a dipstick was needed without a mechanic having to prescribe it.

The AMA counters that it can sympathize with that argument and that some people are competent to determine their own needs, but not all and that the prescription system will make the roads a safer and happier place for everybody. The AMA also argues that since every car needs oil, all cars will be periodically seen by a competent mechanic and can be removed from service if found to be unsafe.

A coalition of auto parts suppliers has agreed to support the proposal as long as the mechanic writing the prescription cannot sell the product prescribed. The coalition sees the potential for unnecessary prescriptions if the mechanic is able to circumvent the auto parts supplier.

Mendax News has been unable to discover a consensus among the oil companies, but it is thought by some that they will have no objection as long as the law does not decrease sales revenue. Others say that the whole scheme is a "conspiracy" by the AMA to force motorists to patronize mechanics, thus ensuring steady repeat business.

The AMA has countered that any intimation of a conspiracy borders on calumny, that its interest is strictly safety and proper maintenance coupled with concern for the environment. An AMA spokesman complained that some people see a pecuniary motive for everything, even when the true motivation is concern for others.

If the proposal becomes law it will ensure a battle over prohibiting online purchases from foreign suppliers and local black markets in auto supplies.

Rome Didn't Fall In A Day

Back in the '70s, I used to expect the government to suffer a financial collapse at which time it would have to quit doing most of the things it's doing because it would run out of money. That isn't what has happened. Instead of  cutting spending it has printed more money and tried to increase taxes on various things.

Like many things historical, there's a precedent for this. There's a proverbial saying that "Rome wasn't built in a day," but it didn't collapse in a day either. Probably most of the Romans who lived as the Empire was collapsing didn't realize that was what was happening, but plenty of them realized they weren't living in the good old days.

One such person was a man named Salvian, sometimes called Salvian the Presbyter. He wrote a treatise that is called in English The Governance Of God or De gubernatione Dei in Latin*. Its original title was On The Present Judgement and it is well worth reading to see how things played out then and probably always will. His purpose was to show that the then current problems were caused by moral collapse, excessive taxation and a greedy and conniving landed class, not an abandonment of the old pagan religion. Julian the Apostate who had made the opposite argument 70 or so years before, had tried to re-institute paganism and even tried to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, presumably because it wasn't Christian and he liked practices such as animal sacrifice, but his efforts ended when he was killed in a war with the Persians after a short reign.

In making his case, Salvian left us a first-hand account of how things went to rot. One of the things he mentions over and over is how the peasant class was obliterated by oppressive taxation and how the small land owners indentured themselves to the large land owners who paid their taxes for them, but in return got their land and their labor, eventually leading to feudalism. Even after the small land owners had lost their land and become coloni - those who worked the land but did not own it - they still were liable for the tax, thus permanently indenturing them to the wealthy land owner who paid it for them.

The Romans had a system of permanent tax collectors called curiales. If you were born a curiale, you could not change jobs and were liable to pay any taxes you could not collect. Needless to say, this assured great diligence on the part of the curiales.

One of the many things Salvian mentions that is starting to be more common in the U.S., but was unheard of just a few years ago is people fleeing the Empire and renouncing their citizenship.

"Thus, far and wide, they migrate either to the Goths or to the Bagaudae, or to other barbarians everywhere in power; yet they do not repent of having migrated. They prefer to live as freemen under an outward form of captivity, than as captives under the appearance of liberty. Therefore, the name of Roman citizens, at one time not only greatly valued, but dearly bought, is now repudiated and fled from, and it is almost considered not only base, but even deserving of abhorrence."(pg.136)

Just as Washington refuses to rein in its excesses, the same was true of Rome around A.D. 450.

"Then, indeed, the authors of base pleasures feasted at will in most places, but all things were filled and stuffed to overflowing. Nobody thought of the State's expenses, nobody thought of the State's losses, because the cost was not felt. The State itself sought how it might squander what it was already scarcely able to acquire. The heaping up of wealth which had already exceeded its limit was overflowing even into trifling matters.
But what can be said of the present-day situation? That old abundances have gone from us. The resources of former times have gone. We are already poverty-stricken, yet we do not cease to be spendthrift." (167, 168)

It wasn't just in fiscal matters that modern times resemble the fall of Rome. Salvian laments the obsession people had with attending American Idol the games. Rome had degenerated so far that there were 175 holidays per year, each with its state-sponsored amusements. The Roman Army had boy camp-followers instead of, or perhaps in addition to female prostitutes. The shouts of people being killed in defense of the city could not be distinguished from those at the games.

"As I have said, the noise of battle outside the walls and of the games within, the voices of the dying outside and the voices of the reveling within, were mingled. Perhaps there scarcely could be distinguished the cries of the people who fell in battle and the yelling of the people who shouted in the circus." (174)

Things had declined so far that the public officials whom he classifies as robbers continued to rob the people even after they no longer held office. This has been refined in modern times to the revolving door system of going from elected office to lobbyist or CEO of some big company that conducts business with the government.

Salvian portrays the barbarians as virtuous people - much more so than his fellow countrymen - nothing like the people they are typically represented as being. Even back then, government knew best and imposed price controls which then as always caused black marketeers to provide for people's wants and needs. One difference between then and now is that the Romans could not print money. They could debase it, but not print it as virtually all modern states do. They also had no efficient way of spying on the populace or freezing assets which is now routine. This enables us to postpone, but not avert the day of collapse. As everybody seems to be fond of saying, it allows us to "kick the can down the road," but at some point we will find that the road is a dead end.

*The Governance Of God, translated by Jeremiah F. O'Sullivan, 1947, Fathers Of The Church