Further to my point: Are the "disinterested officers of the Government" so "disinterested"? No. Their jobs require an interest in exercising power. They have an "interest" in playing dictator of the dollar. It makes them feel good. And they're unelected. The Fed, together with the 16th Amendment, are the two worst things that passed under Wilson's tenure and which he encouraged and approved. He should be blasted in American history texts as just as bad a president as FDR and Obama. They all agreed that Americans should live for reasons other than their own, that they're servants of the state.

Sowell quotes Woodrow Wilson, that the Fed could provide "a currency which expands as it is needed and contracts when it is not needed" and that "the power to direct this system of credits is put into the hands of a public board of disinterested officers of the Government itself" to avoid control by private bankers or other special interests. My mind stopped at that quotation and asked, "Needed or not needed by whom?" Obviously, by the regulators, so they can play witch doctors with their crystal balls and forecast formulae and other paraphernalia of omniscience. Or, one could call them card sharks who "need" a marked deck and magician's sleeves. Statists "need" power to steer things in their preferred direction.

Bill110 and Nullify Now: You apparently haven't read my whole post, because a word limit required that I post in three parts. You're forgiven for that, and I'm not God, either. You can call it "grace," or "salvation," or being royally dubbed with an invisible broadsword, it's still "faith" in the unprovable and metaphysically impossible. Nullify, the Old Testament has as much credibility as the Koran, it was a work knocked together over centuries by tongue-in-cheek monks in the Dark Ages trembling in fear of the barbarians and looters rampaging over Europe and the Mideast. Faith? One also has "faith" in the existence of the tooth fairy, jins, and poltergeists, until one accepts that they're metaphysically impossible.

No wonder they can't find "peace on earth." Earth is just a way station. Why bother with freedom? We can win God's approval and a place at his feet by living under tyranny, too.

Hawkins's column is one of the many reasons why I don’t trust especially religious conservatives to fight for freedom with any kind of sincerity. They really don’t "believe" in it. All actions, all events, can be ascribed to "God's will." Existing as a living human being is not important, we're all just "passing through" on our way to existence in some ethereal realm. Existence in a provable world is to be followed by existence in an unprovable world (heaven, hell, or purgatory). A "failed life" is one that eschews the need for faith in an all-knowing, all-powerful ghost (a creature imbued with contradictory attributes).

Most of the middle class can't afford the pricy tax lawyers and accounting firms that save the liberal 1% all that money. That's one reason the luxurious liberals can get away with being venal hypocrites; they can afford them. When you watch Brian Williams, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, or Michael Moore yakking away about how the really productive people in this country should pay their "fair share" of extortion, remember that they're not talking about their own squirrellled away fortunes and income.

Some interesting points about the Civil War: The federal government instituted the draft to enlarge the Union forces. The federal government instituted the first income tax to pay for the war, which lapsed a few years after the war. The secessionist states at this point were rogue governments that wished to perpetuate slavery. The overwhelming number of men in the Southern forces had no vested interest in slavery; most were too poor to own a slave. So, the question is: Why was the war fought? Was it to end slavery in the Southern states? Or to "preserve" the Union, or the federal government's power over those states, regardless of the issue? Or, was the slavery issue a mere pretext to perpetuate federal power over those states?

Obama hasn't figured out yet why Hitler didn't need to run for a second term. He suspended the Weimar constitution. But, don't worry, doubtless he'll try to suspend ours, or do a moon walk around it. He isn't finished with this country yet. Hitler, you see, was a one-term dictator.

"The chief obstacle for this mission is the family. " No, Mr. Goldberg, the chief obstacle to the collectivization of America is the individual. A government violates the rights of an individual, not of a "family." It is an individual who can be enslaved, looted, beaten, imprisoned. And what is a family? It is a collection of individuals. Get a clue. This is why conservatives lose.

To continue....The Palestinians and Saudis and Iranians and Egyptians, however, don’t really want to live; they want to see Israel die. Its economic success in the midst of tribal and statist stagnation is a reproach to their existence. That is their policy in a nutshell. And that is their policy towards the U.S., as well. And towards Europe, which they are on the eve of conquering. Arab and Islamic policy is a policy of death. If we won’t do it ourselves, we should allow Israel to take out Iran's bomb factory, and challenge any one of those pestholes to do something about it.

Our foreign policy concerning the Mideast has been a viral alliance of altruism and pragmatism, which is why it as always backfired on us. We have always intervened militarily and diplomatically to "save" some backward pesthole from the consequences of it choosing to be a pesthole, as though it were our moral duty to save any nation from the consequences of its choices. That has been the altruist part. The pragmatic part has been to seek "stability" by asking Israel to immolate and sacrifice itself for the sake of Islamic barbarians who wish to rape and plunder it and establish a bogus "Palestinian" state over the corpses of slain Israelis. The Palestinians and Saudis and Iranians and Egyptians, however, don’t really want to live; they want