Plunder and Deceit Read Free

self-destructive causes. But the right cause now is nothing short of self-preservation. And there can be no doubt that the New Civil Rights movement and new generation of activists, which must challenge the tyranny of the status quo, will be met with entrenched resistance, resulting in unease, discomfiture, risk, and ridicule. This is a small price to pay for freedom and justice.
    And there is no reason patriotic and enlightened members of the governing generation, including parents and grandparents equally frustrated and alarmed with the future’s outlook and equally committed to preserving liberty and prosperity, should not enlist in, if not help drive, this movement—for the benefit of the nation and their offspring. They have much experience, wisdom, and knowledge to contribute to the cause.
    The New Civil Rights movement is quintessentially American. Its roots go back to the American Revolution and the country’s founding. And Americans have faced and overcome seemingly insuperable challenges in the past, including the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. Of course, the New Civil Rights movement is a bloodless struggle; however, in some ways it is more complex. For one, many fellow citizens perceive living and prospering at the expense of others as both a financial entitlement and a right. Furthermore, they see the role of government and the application of law as accomplishing those ends by force if necessary, and the statist is happy to oblige.
    Whether knowingly or not, whether by choice or surrender, these citizens have been absorbed into the soft tyranny of an increasingly autocratic government. Although there are fanatics and malcontents among them, the vast majority of these citizens are family members, friends, neighbors, and coworkers.
    It is impossible to propose a detailed list of tactical directions or plans pertinent to all settings and valid for all times. Nonetheless, several important suggestions are offered in Liberty and Tyranny and The Liberty Amendments , the latter of which is an entire dissertation on the subject of the Constitution’s Article V Convention of the States process, which empowers the American people, through their state legislatures, to civilly and lawfully reform an oppressive federal government. 6 Armed with the nation’s founding principles and committed to invigorating the civil society, and keenly conscious of the copious evidence of a declining republic and the disastrous consequences for younger people and future generations, in the spirit and with the vitality of past civil rights movements, activists and advocates for the New Civil Rights movement must and, one hopes, will find untold opportunities and approaches for peaceful and effective recourse. I believe the greater challenge is, in the first place, awakening younger people to the cause of their own salvation and the salvation of future generations so that they may live as free and flourishing human beings.
    Frédéric Bastiat, a brilliant French political and economic philosopher and deputy to the French Legislative Assembly who lived from 1801 to 1850, ended his extraordinary book, The Law , with these words:
    God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clear air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and [government] organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization of taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many