2009_02_17_ConferenceCall_Transcript

(1:00:00:00)

Tom Hoefling:  I’m going to turn the floor over to you, sir.

Alan Keyes:  Well, thank you, Tom.  And it’s uncanny, sometimes, when we’re doing things, you and I, that – how it all fits, because what I’m about to read is an application of exactly the thinking that you’ve just talked about in the context of our political action, I think it is anyway, to this huge crisis that we’re supposedly in.  And that has all the usual suspects on the Republican side including, you probably saw Lindsey Graham today, singing the praises of nationalization and acting as if this is the way we’ve got to go, and so forth and so on.  You’ve noticed that, I hope.

And the one thing, of course, that’s missing from all of it, which unhappily, ya’ll, is the reason why I feel so sad that there are any people left of goodwill and intelligence and good heart and faith, who are still putting their hope in the Republican Party.  Because it is just typical of what these guys are like.  They have no ability to synthesize the positive alternative that reflect our principles and our understanding of what it is right to do and then apply it to the challenges that we face.  And that’s what we need right now.  Not to be going along to get along, playin’ me too with these socialists who are going to destroy us and try to take the world along with us.  But anyway …

If you don’t mind then, I would like to read you what will be, right after we get off our call, a little Thoughtlet that I’m going to put up at www.LoyaltoLiberty.com.  And so I imagine some of you have visited the site, so you know what a Thoughtlet is.  It falls under the rubric of a little thought that goes a long way.  It is intended to be something that provokes thought and that provokes thoughts that actually build, so they’re like seeds around which, if folks get it, they would then be able to carry on their thinking in a way that came up with new and different ideas that I wouldn’t have, but that they might conceive as a result of the provocation of the thought that they have read.  And so, I’m going to read this.  It’s three (3) short paragraphs and then I’m going to kind of ask that if you don’t mind focusing for a minute, for people to share with me for a brief time what are your reactions in terms of where the thought takes you, o.k.?  Here it is:

"But Alan," you protest, "We badly need a solution." Which, I reply, is not a good reason to accept a bad one. In fact, if things have gotten as bad as they say, maybe we should step back so as to let our thinking leap forward.

True, If it ain't broke, you don't fix it. But if it's really broke, you don't fix it either, you throw it away and replace it with something that works better. Instead of taking the bad logic of a failed centralized banking system to its logical conclusion (total centralization), replace the logic with something more suited to the twenty-first century. The twentieth century was all about bigger, more regulated and extensive organization. The hallmark of the twenty-first is the network, the model work-in-progress of which is the Internet. It depends on decentralized, individual units, that reach out and form communities based on direct interaction and mutual assessment, rather than a centrally determined distribution of information (like a central bank's fixing of the interest rate.)

If the present banking system is failing- let it fail. That's the first step in preparing the way for the emergence of the twenty-first century financial networks. Instead of pretending that bankrupt governments can magically save and improve a bankrupt system, accept the fact that the financial Titanic is sinking. Get people out of it, and use what resources we have to construct and launch the fleet of lifeboats in which they can distance themselves from the vortex it causes as it goes down. What I think we'll discover is that the new system we need will emerge from the resulting fleet, as we use twenty-first century tools to turn it into a floating net that won't be susceptible to the cascading disasters of the obsolete vessel we’re leaving behind.

Tom:  Well Alan, this is Tom. And I’m going to take the first crack at the thought that you provoked in me, o.k.?  Can you hear me? 

Alan:  Um-hmmm.

Tom:  I remember reading a couple, I don’t know, years ago.  There was a grammar school teacher in Canada who gave her class a project.  And the project was – they were studying the sinking of the Titanic and the project was to try and come up with their solution for how all of the people could have been saved.  And actually, the children came up with what I believe any reasonable, logical person would have to look at and say, “You know what?  That would have worked.” 

What happened was the people on the ship basically resigned themselves to go down.  And anyway, the kids came up with a plan.  They said, o.k. you have this number of boats and if they would have just stopped and thought about the resources that they had at hand, if they would hake taken those boats, got them launched down in the water, got their able seamen in the boats and begun to throw down everything on the boat that would float, o.k.?  Doors, whatever it would be that would float and to throw them down.  They had miles of rope on board.  And taken the rope out and latched everything together into one mass, then they could have easily kept everybody up out of the freezing water, until help came.  They could have easily done that.   If they would have stopped, taken the time and thought through it, they could have saved all of those folks. 

Alan:  Hmmm.  And if they had taken their limited resources and used those resources in such a way as to focus on maximizing the potential that each individual would survive, right?

Tom:  Right?

Now, think about what that implies, though. And this is in terms of banking, because what I have read is not actually going to lead to the need to do something new.  The suggestion I made there that we need to take a step back so that we can leap forward is also obviously what we need to do in terms of financial organizations.  We need to look back, for a minute, at what the centralized banking system:  the Federal Reserve, the globalist international banking system, … what did it destroy?  It destroyed a banking system that had individual banks that established their self-sufficiency in terms of their on-going healthy relationship with the community in which they existed and that did not grow beyond the possibilities, the potential that sustained that self-sufficiency.  Instead of receiving false infusions that actually allowed them to grow cancer-like, beyond what was their natural boundary, they were actually restricted to a kind of growth that took account of their environment and what they could draw from it and what they could then give back to it to produce more longevity. 

Now, what is provided in the context of the 21st-century is the ability to take such individual units that have established their self-sufficiency based on their kind-of local and regional connections and respecting the discipline required to maintain health in that context.  And those individuals can now reach out throughout the world to connect with sources of economic interaction that in the past would have been unavailable to them.  And that’s what’s ultimately going to unlock the potential, the enormous potential that I think is there in the global economy.  We’re not going to be able to do it with the old [20th] century junk that leads to massive organizations and socialism and centralized government.  

Tom:  Well, I … go ahead …

Jim Poesl, NJ (Candidate):  Hi Tom.  This is Jim Poesl, here.  I’ve been listening in.

Tom:  Hi Jim.

Jim Poesl, NJ:  [line breaking-up, static] I think … what you and Alan just said; I want to add … a couple of thoughts, here.  My background is environmental management and disaster management … there is always the talk of a survival mark where every situation, every emergency has a survival mark.  And number one, the first part of that is number one, shock – shock, awe, dismay – that sort of thing.  The second part is some type of deliberation.  The third part is some type of action that you take.  And the people who get through are the survivors, right?  When the leaders get through the first two steps really quickly and we get moved on to the third.  I think what has happened here with this banking disaster – I think it was a planned disaster … I’ll say that from step one, is that a lot of people still are in shock mode.  They’re not exactly sure what to do here, with this.  And people like Obama and that whole group, like Alan has just said; they’re latched onto these old ideas, things of that nature.  And I fear that we’re not going to survive into part three, as a nation, right?  Unless we actually come up with real solutions like we are doing here on this call that’s being part of it, and actually going into the action phase.  And I think if we’re on the cusp here of the action phase, and acting like you folks are doing here, that’s how this country is going to get through what is …. this whole situation, here.  And I’m pretty confident, as long as we can pull together here, stick together, pull together, organize, things of that nature, we’ll be able to get through this and actually be the leaders of the country, here.  That’s what my long-term goal is.  And, as I think, what our long-term goal is.  That’s all I wanted to say. 

Maureen, MA:  Thank you.

Tom:  That’s great, Jim.  Thank you. 

Tom:  By the way, one little quick insert:  Jacob, are you still on the line?  

[Jacob Roginsky, Ph.D. and President of A Matter of Justice]

Jacob Roginsky:  Yes, I am. 

Tom:  Hi Jacob.  Alan, Jacob is on.  I believe you …

Alan:  Oh, hi Jacob.  Welcome.

Jacob:  Thank you.

Tom:  I just wanted you to know that one of our great volunteers has bumped your website up to the top of AIPNEWS.  And I’m looking at your website right now.  Looks great.  [http://amatterofjustice.org]

Jacob:  Are you talking to me?

Tom:  Yes, Jacob. 

Jacob:  Oh, o.k.  Thanks.  Could I have a word on what Alan just said?

Tom:  Sure …

Jacob:  When I met with Alan, and we spoke for probably almost two (2) hours, I was just amazed at how similarly we think.  I had a chance to listen to Alan many times before on TV, on the radio, and so on.  But it was always sort of intermittent.  I’d hear him and then I’ll be overtaken by the events of my life, of course.  But here we had a chance to speak for a while and I really like what I heard and it is very much in line, what Alan thinks, with my thinking.  And so was the Thoughtlet.   Is that what you call it, Thoughtlet? 

Alan:  Thoughtlet, yes.  [Laughter]

Jacob:  … I agree with it completely.  I think that what we need to do is we need to go back to the future.  I believe that large systems, including the human systems, have all kinds of local and global mechanisms to regulate themselves.  And I think that we have forgotten about the natural mechanisms that are built into the human system, into the large human system.  And that’s where many of the problems that we face today come from.  We’re trying to impose this centralized solution on a system that is not naturally suited for centralized systems …  

Alan:  Hmmm…

Jacob:  … and we get many of these problems.  My only … comment – I’m not [inaudible] to the country to what Alan said, but sort of I guess ….  in a way a thought that maybe also needs to be developed and incorporated in someway into what he said and that is if we’re talking about the united States and the ability of individuals and organizations to reach and interact worldwide, we have to take into consideration that there are also mechanisms and systems that are set-up outside of the United States or globally with which we need to interact and so I’m not sure that all of the mechanisms, these natural mechanisms, local mechanisms, that they are going to be sufficient.  We probably need to consider the centralized mechanisms that are needed to interact with the larger world.  And so I would hope that the, actually perhaps a little bit idealistic but, if we could ever get to a point where the whole world can interact in terms of these modalities about which Alan was speaking, then it will be great.   But we have all kinds of challenges …

Alan:  … but see Jacob, if I can address that a second, because the Thoughtlet obviously is just like a small beginning.  It includes in almost every line things that could then be elaborated upon, at some length, in fact.   But the reference to the Internet was in part intended to suggest the way in which, if you in a sense get out of the way, right?  Throw people back on their own resources and that basically means, in financial terms, things like empowering them once again, instead of all this government spending, you would have tax cuts.  You would put people back in control of resources and you would encourage them to start to build financial institutions that essentially allow them, for the time being, to put their resources in safe places near home.  The same impulse we usually have when danger threatens, which is to take our valuables and put them someplace where we can keep our eye on them, and to fortify that place in a sense, against vicissitudes.  

Well that is, in point of fact, what local and regional banks were about.  And they stayed alive in so far as they did their work well by staying closely in touch with the potential and possibilities, as well as the challenges and sometime difficulties of the region in which they live. 

But the thing that the Internet allows, and we’re actually doing it, right?  Though to a certain extent we haven’t quite become fully conscious of it yet, but I now find, for instance, that when I’m sitting down to write something for the blogsite, I have to occasionally keep in mind, as I know from the emails I’m getting and other things, that the people who are reading that blog are not necessarily Americans.  We’re attracting folks from all different places.  I have heard from Africa, and Brazil, and all kinds of places.  People who are seconding the motion who are finding that the things that we are dealing with are relevant to their own situation and so forth.  And as they reach out, without the intervention of any centralized mechanism, one begins to see the outline of associations based on common principle and common understanding that then transcend the boundaries of the local and the regional and the national, but in a way, because of the way they come about, that respects the existence of those things. 

So in that sense, I would say, that we don’t need to work through centralized mechanism.  What we’re going to find is that once we rediscover the true potential of decentralized individuals, they’re going to recreate the possibilities that reach out globally, in a way that we can’t anticipate, but that will not necessarily involve, I don’t – the degree of totalitarian centralization that’s in the minds of these people who are trying to destroy our freedom. 

Howard, KS:  Alan, this is Howard over in Kansas. 

Alan:  Hi Howard.

Howard, KS:  I’ve been thinking about something.  I don’t know if it would really work, but I’ve been thinking for some time about what I call the W.E.S.T.-program and W.E.S.T.-exchange system.  And the W.E.S.T. stands for World Economy …. [laughter] I even forgot what all the letters stand for.  I’d have to look in my paperwork to find out.  But it’s going back to the Constitution and using not a centralized, but a local type of thing where you would go to the Chamber of Commerce, you would work with the businesses in the area, you would set-up this system that would be backed up if gold, silver and precious stones.  And then they would work the system.  And then eventually you would have it set-up where these systems would be linked together, maybe in a state, but each one would be working individually as a group within that particular area.  And so I’ve been thinking about that for some time.  I don’t know if it would work or not. 

Alan:  I must say that’s exactly the kind of thing that I think people will develop and that will, in a sense, begin to recreate in the financial context the individuals who have been suppressed by the oppressive centralization that has come about because of the Federal Reserve and the international sort of monstrosity that it’s plugged into. 

Howard, KS:  I think if we just set-up that kind of a system, it would be so much helpful to the communities that it wouldn’t take long until the next community would say, “Hey, this is working great.  Let’s set it up in our’s, too.”  But that was my idea, as well.  It would just kind of mushroom …

They’re archaic.  I look at them pretending to be all progressive and I think to myself, “No, you guys aren’t progressive.  You actually trying to keep us in the darkest dungeons of 20th century delusions, instead of letting people breath the air of possibility that the 21st century offers.”  But interestingly enough, it only offers it if we recapture the sense of liberty and individual responsibility and discipline that our founders laid the groundwork for in the course of the 18th or late 18th century.  Isn’t that amazing?  So in one sense, they’re farseeing vision actually provides us with an understanding that will then help us to be the kind of people who can take the best advantage of what the 21st century has to offer.

Howard, KS:  I can also see that each little group would be working differently somewhat, but there would be some things that would be similar, but it would meet the needs of that particular community or area that we were in, in such a way that none of them would be controlling the other one, but they would be drawing from one another.

No centralized bureaucracy could ever do it.  And to the extent that we surrender to the false, delusionary vision of these socialists, we are actually throwing away the potential that I think a lot of the developments around us actually helps to unlock. 

Tom:  Alan, this is Tom again.  I have a couple of comments.  I think education is one area where what you’re talking about is particularly true.  Modern education, as conceived by the people who are consuming a large, large portion of our national treasure on education right now – I mean they really are dinosaurs.  Getting kids together in a big barn that you have to heat and maintain and fill with bureaucrats and administer with bureaucrats.  I mean, it’s so out of date.  It’s not even funny.  The power of the Internet – I mean we have more information available at our fingertips than any generation in history.  And the whole concept is just ridiculous when you …

Alan:  Tom, this is what I’m finding the home schoolers are now inventing, right?  They’re inventing a future world in which educational institutions will essentially consist of students who don’t have to be, sort of, pulled out of and isolated from that nurturing home environment as they learn.  But they will be able to come together using the instrumentalities of technology as part of that household, rather than as somehow taken away from it for hours everyday, and so forth and so on.   It will be a healthier, more consistent way of getting home, school, faith to function together through the empowering instruments that technology can provide, but of course, all dependent on what?  Having healthy families, having parents who are really bearing the responsibility for their children and therefore willing to devote themselves to creating the right environment in spiritual terms, in moral terms, as well as in terms of respect for learning that schooling requires.  But you’re right.  These are possibilities that can emerge, but they will not be allowed to emerge if we let these totalitarians destroy the vitally needed parts.  And the vitally needed parts are the ones created by God:  the organic family, the individual who in his relationship with God has a certain internal self-sufficiency that results from the fact that he is guided by the sure principles of God’s will.  These kinds of things are going to be the indispensable ingredients of making the right and effective use of the instruments technology can provide.   And yet what’s happening?  It’s not an accident that these totalitarian-socialists combine their approach with an approach to moral things that destroys the possibility of vital, healthy, God-ordained families, of individuals with that strong inner sense of a relationship with God that really gives them the fiber to be what they need to be in terms of becoming members of that kind of a family unit and organic social whole.  I think that there’s a connection between the agenda of moral destruction and the imposition of that kind of totalitarian-socialism that destroys the individual. 

(1:31:42.2) 

Dwayne Gross, ID:  Dr. Keyes, this is Dwayne Gross from Coeur d’Alene, ID.  My daughter is going to high school on the Internet now, through the state of Idaho.  They have a program that allows her to do that.  So, she takes all of her classes online.

Alan:  Hmmm. 

Dwayne, ID:  But also I was wondering, would it be possible for this type of internet banking – what would keep that from happening, right now?  If someone wanted to start something like that up and prosper at it.

Alan:  Well, it’s interesting you call it Internet banking, because I wasn’t thinking that it would necessarily use the instrumentality of the Internet.  But the Internet becomes the model for how it’s done.  But of course, I don’t think there is anything that stands in the way of it, except for the fact that what is happening at the moment is that on the basis of this crisis, right?  A crisis, by the way, brought on I believe and others believe as well, by the failure of the centralized banking system.  It’s not accidental.  It’s an incident that’s connected with the very socialist approach that they’re now trying to push us more deeply into. 

But, think about what’s happening.  They are trying to put us in a situation where they’re going to suck all the oxygen out of our atmosphere.  Meaning to say, they’re going to try to take over control of existing resources so that they can be channeled into creating this monstrosity of socialism.  And if we allow that to happen, the end result is going to be what you would think, you know.  

If you let them suck out all the oxygen, then the rest of us will die – whatever good ideas we have.  And that’s why I think it is vitally important that one articulate these positive alternatives and use them as the basis for showing up the ugly defects of this socialist approach. 

This is what, by the way, and it pains my heart to see these Republicans out there, instead of doing this kind of thinking, instead of digesting what are supposed to be their principles and then allowing those principles to inform their thoughts so that that thought directs itself in a way that is caring about the things they ought to care about, if they believe in real liberty and so forth.  Instead of doing any of that, their minds are empty and all they’re thinking about is, “Oh, we’re in such trouble.  I guess we’ve got to do this socialist thing.  There’s nothing else. “ And so forth and so on.  And that’s basically because they are people who have been mouthing words that they don’t believe.  And they have been speaking of things that require concepts and principles that they can’t apply because they’ve never tried to understand them.  It’s the problem, basically, with following a bunch of people who have been trying to find out what folks want to hear and tell it to them, rather than trying to think through some truth in order to share it with them.  You see what I’m saying? 

Caller:  Being a politician instead of a leader.

Alan:  Right.  They’re failing.  But of course, this could be done.  This is being done, by the way, in various ways, right now.  And what we need is instead of letting some sort of empty, phony messiah persuade us to accept the hellish alternative of a socialist-totalitarianism, we need instead to turn away from that delusion and insist that such resources as there are, and obviously there are enormous resources, instead of letting them be centralized and controlled by these ambitious pols in a socialist structure, we need to turn back control of those resources to the people themselves so they can follow out these ideas and begin to build and rebuild the kind of structures that correspond to them. 

And obviously, the first practical steps would be what?  Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts.  I would say, not even tax cuts.  Get rid of the centralized income taxing system.  Go to a system like the Fair Tax that then allows people full control of their money so that they can use it in a way that corresponds to the sense they have of their own environment, but also to the new opportunities that they can construct for themselves with some of the tools that are now being put within their reach.

Caller:  Yes, sir.

Tom:  Alan, this is Tom.  I want to come back to my analogy of the passengers on the Titanic.  And I think I’ve been dwelling on it ever since you brought it up earlier, or I brought it up.  You know, we’re building networks out there, but we’re trying to latch them together into a solid object that can save all the passengers.  That’s kind of what the whole name, “America’s Independent Party” is all about, right?  And I mean, there are many ways that all of us can save ourselves, but if we can really get all of these structures out there on the water, and get them all latched together, there’s hope for the country, you know?

Alan:  Well, think about it though Tom, because – and I don’t know.  As I develop this further, maybe I’ll articulate it better, but what I’m seeing in my mind, and that’s why I put it the way I did in the end, that in a way the new structure will emerge from the fleet, right? 

Tom:  Right.

Alan:  You have the image.  There’s this huge vessel, the Titanic.  It’s going down.  And as it goes down it creates a dangerous vortex.  So you want to get people into the lifeboats.  And you want to latch them together, as you’re saying, into what essentially becomes a floating net, right?  And the lifeboat and the individual people will be nodes in that net, hooked together by the latchings.  Well, let’s think about it.  If you put that net together the right way, that net becomes the vessel.  It becomes the new kind of vessel.  A vessel that can in fact navigate the sea, but that isn’t in danger of sinking.  Why?  Because essentially when the huge wave comes along, what happens to that net?  It rises with the wave, falls with the wave.  In a sense, what you create is a structure that because of the way it’s put together it actually has the permanent capacity to blend with the motion of the sea.  And that’s something by the way, I don’t know how to explain this because I don’t fully understand it myself.  But as I describe it, it seems to me to correspond with some of the things they are now discovering about how, in the physics world, matter and energy relate to one another.  And that’s essentially what we’re talking about here, in terms of the water and the structures that we’re talking about.  

I saw an article today about ‘String Theory’ actually, for the first time, being relevant to some actual experimentation that was going on so that they were able to use some of the insights of String Theory for predictive value, in terms of what was going to happen in their experiment -- one of the rubrics of real empirical science, right?  And as I was reading through the article and they were describing what the consequences of what they call String Theory are, you’re essentially in this experiment dealing with taking matter to extreme states where essentially the matter operates, the solid (what we would think of as solid matter) operates as a liquid, right? 

And the minute I read that, I said to myself, “The Spirit of God hovered over the waters.”  Hmmm?  The water.  And of course at the beginning there of all things that reference to water is a reference to something that has the potential for all the matter that we experience in our universe.  And so finally the understanding in physics is catching up with the scripture.   [Laughter]  I thought that was quite interesting. 

But in a sense, what I’m talking about in the context of this financial network, what you’re doing in the context of the political network is beginning to reconstruct the vehicles of human action to correspond with this understanding of what we are dealing with.  That you can actually have something that produces solid results that does not require a rigid structure, such as we’re used to, in terms of these centralized totalitarian organizations. 

Tom:  Amen.  Who’s next?

Gregory, FL:  This is Gregory from Florida.  I think our dependence upon God – we form a network community bridging across the United States that becomes a solid basis where people will start running away from Obama and his ilk.  Look to the solidity, even though it has the flexibility, as we’re talking, of what we’re doing.  And so throughout the scriptures you see the small band of Israelites who grew to 600,000, but with no military training, took on kings and so forth, because they were dependent upon the Lord.  As long as they depended upon the Lord and worked together, then they saw victories.  Where, as the Lord said, five will chase a hundred and a hundred with chase a thousand – something like that.  And if we really are, not just trusting in the mechanics of what we’re talking about, but trusting in the Lord to pull us together, and then always putting him first, then we can, no matter how bad it looks or how bad they try to paint the picture, we can see the victory, in the Lord.

Tom:  That’s definitely what latches it all together into one unit. 

Chaps [Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt]:  Alan, this is Chaps.  Can I ask you a question about your banking philosophy? 

Alan:  Sure.

Chaps:  I was watching 60 Minutes this past week and they were interviewing a whistleblower who went within, I believe it was Wachovia Bank, and he went to all the executives and said, “Hey, you’re lending practices are getting out of hand.  You’re lending a lot of money to people who can’t even afford the minimum payments, you’re not verifying their income, that they even have jobs, and the numbers went from, you know, a few million dollars to $1.2 billion that was loaned out on very high risk mortgages just before the big collapse, when Wachovia went toes up – had to be bailed out by Wells Fargo, with help of the taxpayers.  

And all this kind of blew my mind, because this whistleblower was ignored by the executives, and the executives kept on doing risky loans, and they didn’t care, they just wanted, you know, the bottom dollar.  They wanted to give out more money because that’s how they get paid.  

So, here’s my question:  You know, I was raised as a patriot from the Air Force Academy and I was taught that socialist is evil, and totalitarianism is evil and capitalism is really the way to go and unbridled capitalism is even better, because then you don’t have government interfering with lending practices.  But you watch the corruption and the greed that’s in some of these executives’ hearts and you really wonder if they’re not eventually trying to stick it to the poor people and it’s no wonder that people voted for Obama and they want some kind of regulatory control of these crooks.  And so isn’t government’s role to increase regulation and to regulate these crooks to make sure they don’t rip off the poor people? 

Let’s compare, for example, the situation of these guys at Wachovia Bank.  How come they got to throw around all this money that’s become such a big cancerous problem for all the rest of us?  Well, they got to throw it around, because the money they have available for whatever it is they’re going to do doesn’t really depend on deposits that come in from the community in which they live.  

Let’s take away all the superstructure that we’ve gotten so used to thinking is indispensable and go back to the simple concept of what a bank is all about, o.k.?  

A bank is a place where people in a given community, who are at various points in their economic existence in possession of resources that they’re not going to immediately turn into something else (immediately spend, in other words, in order to buy food or seed or something else) and they need a place to put it, right?  And they want a safe place to put it.  

And the banker is somebody who thinks to himself, “Well you know, if I offered them a safe place to store that money, I could then take the money that they’re storing with me and I could loan it out to so and so who, right now, doesn’t have the surplus that they have, but so and so is doing a good job of working.  I know that down the road here, just a little bit, they’ll be coming into a surplus situation because the crop that they’re working on or the good that they’re producing is going to be sold and then they’ll have a lump of cash.  See?  And they can bring it and they’ll deposit that lump of cash.  I will still be able, of course, when the folks who gave me the first lump need it, I’ll be able to give it to them.  And meanwhile, we’ll all have made a little something, because so and so will be out there and he’ll give me back a little bit more than I gave him.  And I’ll be able to give so and so a little bit more than they deposited.  And everybody’s whole.  

Now, what keeps a person like that from going hog wild and making bad loans and stuff?  That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?  He’s going to be quickly exposed if he outruns, because of his bad judgment, the resources he needs to give the folks who gave him that deposit, what they gave him when they show up to ask for it.  He’s got to stay in touch with them.  He’s got to be attuned to what they’re doing and what they’re up to.  And he’s got to make his judgments based on a sense of having to respond to them reasonably immediately when they ask him for that money back, right?  

So that sense of connection is going to be more immediate, and the sanction that would follow upon abuse is going to be such that he’ll feel it himself, almost right away.  Irresponsibility won’t give him enough room to amass some profits at other people’s expense before he is exposed.  This is one of the things about keeping things on a basis that doesn’t allow individuals to outrun the real connections they have with other people in their community.   So, the problem you talk about, about the outrageous corruption of these bankers and all, it was born of the cancers created by the centralized banking system.  Those cancers would not be possible if that centralized banking system didn’t allow them.  

And then people want to turn around and say, “Well, in order to deal with this cancer that we’ve created, we now have to have more power and more government control and we have to disregard to even a greater degree the moral component that is indispensable to real and effective human government.”  Because human government, at the end of the day, I don’t think is about the power of governments.  It is about the possibility and capacity of self-government ultimately relying upon the true human connections at the family and community level that then are policed not by government, but by our sense of responsibility to God and the sanctions that then come back against us pretty immediately, in the relationships that we have with other human beings close to home.  Part of the problem with everything we’re doing right now is we devalue and denature and disconnect those relationships in such a way that we don’t have to experience, with any immediacy, the consequences of our irresponsibility.  And these people have seen that this, in fact, is a good method for keeping our allegiance.  They promise us that we won’t have to bear with the consequences of our irresponsibility, because even as you speak about the bankers and what they were doing, I think we also have to speak about the people getting into homes they couldn’t afford and what they were doing.  And the politicians encouraging them to believe that somehow government control and government regulation could make up for bad decisions to give loans to people who couldn’t service those loans.  But we can’t just look at it from the point of view of those greedy bankers who gave the loans.  

Keeping that in mind, we don’t free anybody from their responsibilities:  not the poor, not the rich, and so forth.  They may have different kinds, they may have different degrees, it may be expressed in a different level of material thises and that.  But the deep truth of the responsibility is the same.  And that is, I think, the lie that lies at the heart of Obama and the totalitarians and the socialists.  Government cannot substitute for that.  And the notion that government control, government policing, government regulation can somehow make up for the utter and despicable corruption of the human will and moral heart – that’s the lie that’s killing us, right now.  And so all their proposed solutions are simply meant to prove that lie and to impose it further and further and deeper and deeper upon us.  And I thing that’s diabolical, I think that that’s a devilish thing. 

Chaps:  Alan, I’ve heard you talk in the past about decentralizing the banking industry back to local communities and sending it back – like you’re talking about, local relationships.  I think I’m starting to understand your vision on this.  But if you were in Washington or if you could pass a law, what would happen in Washington or Wall Street?  Would you disband the FED?   Would you disband the Treasury?  How do you disperse all that power back to the local communities? 

Alan:  Well, in the first instance, I think you disperse the power.  That’s why I think the first step – you act as if there’s power and you then disperse it.  That’s not true.  That’s not what happens.  The power is naturally decentralized.  That’s why they have to collect income taxes every year. 

That money is not stored somewhere and then dispersed by the government.  It is made in little bits and pieces by millions upon millions of people who are then forced by a bad and centralized system to pour it all into a central pot so they can pretend it was there in the fist place.  

So, the simple step you take is not to collect, not to change, no.  You just leave it where it is.  That is to say, you get rid of the income tax.  And you establish a system that essentially leaves people in control of the money.  The people who make it have control of it where they are.  

Now, how do you then have banking?  The first thing that you would do – do we have to take away all these things?  No.  A matter of fact, to turn their idea of creative destruction against them, at the moment what we are watching is the disintegration of the centralized socialist banking system.  And what I’m saying is, being as how the production system is disintegrated – it’s decentralized, the disintegration of the centralized banking system simply would leave us with banking structures that corresponded to the way in which the goods are actually – and the money is actually produced.  (Money representing, in this case, the fruits of human labor.)  So what you do is revamp your system so as to focus on the solvency of institutions at the local and regional level.  Hmmm?  And what resources you are going to use you use in order to encourage people to put their resources in those kinds of institutions and re-establish equilibrium at that level, rather than at the level of formerly pumped up systems of banking that are tied in with this socialist system of centralized control.  

My sense would be that once you let that happen, in the context of a world in which you no longer had a centralized income tax, you could put the proper sort of situation in place and the choices that people make would decide which banking system was going to grow and get stronger, and which one would gradually wither on the vine.  

And my money would be that unless they adapted to the network-like functioning of the new financial system, the centralized banking structures would wither.  They wouldn’t have to wither, though.  What they’d have to do is:  Instead of seeking to be controllers, they would become servants.  Instead of asking, “How do we control the outcome?”  They would ask, “How can we provide services that will help the institutions that are operating at the level where people live to do their job in a more effective and responsible way?”  So there would be a roll for them.  It just wouldn’t be the controlling role that we sadly, and I think wrongly gave to them. 

Maureen, MA:  Didn’t the most largest, corrupt banks just start to whither, but the government bailed them out?

Alan:  That’s exactly what I’m saying shouldn’t be done.  You’re exactly right.

Maureen, MA:  If they had just let the bank go bankrupt, it naturally would have reverted to a system like you’re talking about. 

Alan:  Well, except for the fact – I never denied the possibility that like patients who might need a blood transfusion, there were elements of the system that might need a little help.  But what they should not have done was provide that help in a way that presumed the continuance of this centralized monstrosity.  That was the mistake.  And I actually think that some of the Republicans who wanted to oppose this bailout thing saw that.  And they put their proposals in a context that was more in line with what I am describing and that was accompanied by a sense that you were going to have to relax taxation and let people have more control of their resources.  That’s the right way to stimulate a recovery in terms of confidence and productive capacity. 

Gregory, FL:  Didn’t the central government have something to do with their regulations of almost forcing bad loans?

Alan:  Um-hmmm.  They did.  Yes.  I don’t think anybody denies that anymore.  They kind of don’t emphasize it the way they should, because then it would be clear that the very people who pretend to solve this problem now (and, of course they’re not) are the cause of it.  And that’s the politicians, in particular. 

Gregory, FL:  Are you saying that the government should have no role in punishing evil?

Alan:  Well, in this particular case I think at least at first, we’re not talking about punishing evil.  We’re talking about whether we are going to have a government that’s in control of the flow of resources through our economic system and our economic life.  But if you’re asking me, do I think that the government should have the main responsibility for, how shall we put it, implementing moral discipline (which is what we’re talking about)?  My answer to that is emphatically, “No.”  The central government should not have the major role in that.  The idea that it should is absolutely contrary to the assumption of liberty that is supposed to the basis of our whole way of life.  

(1:59:46.2) 

Moral discipline, the chief and prime requisite of moral discipline, the chief unit for, in a way, building and implementing moral discipline is the family.  And everything about it should be centered on making sure that that family unit understands, is equipped for and accepts its responsibility as essentially the factory of morality in the society, right?  That’s the enterprise that produces the moral discipline that’s indispensable to getting the respect we need for, you know, responsible judgment, for obligations in a business sense, for fiduciary responsibilities and all of that.  You can put together a thousand of these regulatory agencies, you could staff them with millions of people, you could get us to the point where every person had another person looking over their shoulder and if that inner reality is not built up, it wouldn’t do a bit of good.  

So I think that my answer is, “Yes.”  In terms of our sense of the centralized government, “No.”  But part of the problem, and I want to be careful about this as I answer, is that we have gotten this very sort of (what’s the word I’m looking for?) incomplete, inadequate, partial understanding of government, because at the end of the day, what takes place in every family in the relationship between parents and children is government.  And we need to respect the fact that the family is an institution of government.  And that when it comes to dealing with morality, with that which involves preparing people for good and discouraging them from evil, the family is the first line, the first instrument in terms of that government -- not Washington, not the states, not even the local government, but the family government which at the end of the day, is the one that still operates, though people hate this. The family, properly understood, is a theocracy in which the parents are directly accepting the governance of Almighty God.  And on the basis of that direct responsibility to God, acquitting their responsibilities towards their children.  And that is why at various points in the scripture I think there’s an indication that with respect to the children, the parents are as God.   And respect to the world, God is as a parent.   You see?  That is telling us that when we want to implement God’s authority and God’s law in the world, the first implementers, as it were, do so in the context of the family as the government through which that is done.  

So, if you use the words – if you say, “Do I think the government has to have a role in dealing with good and evil and you understand government in that sense?”  Then I would say, “Yes.  Of course the government has a role.”  But the government I’m speaking of is the government that you see as encompassing and involving and including that element of government, that form of government, if you like, that God directly ordained in the form of the family.  Does that make sense?

Gregory, FL:  Oh, I agree.  I agree entirely.  But He did ordain other governments.  And I think, for instance that someone such as Senator Dodd, having taken money from Fanny Mae and then regulating it, I think probably in a – if we had a more just central government and Congress acting as it should, that he should come under discipline for his connections and the way he has mishandled things.  Or Barney Frank, and so forth …

Alan:  Well, let me think about that for a minute, though, because it’s true.  But it, how can I put this?  It’s a quandary I have.  And it sometimes comes to the fore when I’m talking with Jocelyn, my wife, because Jocelyn has a strong sense that we shouldn’t let these crooks get away with stuff, right?  And that also, we shouldn’t be coddling irresponsible people, in terms of the trouble that they then get into and that therefore, as we’re going down the road we’re going down, we then get into these discussions:  On the one hand, how dare these people who are heading up companies that are getting government money do x, y and z.  And they ought to be controlled and they ought to be regulated and so forth and so on.  And then, how dare this woman have eight (8) children when she can’t afford them, and so forth.  It’s going to become a burden on our welfare system and so forth.  

And I listen to that and part of me is going, with complete understanding, “Yes, you’re right about the discipline, right about the substance of how ill-advised it is and how we really need to be discouraging that kind of behavior.  But then carry it where it goes.  See?  You keep going down that road, and what are you doing?  You’re becoming a constituent of socialism.  You’re becoming somebody who demands the kind of enforcement that can only be done through a totalitarian government.  

What is the alternative?  This is one of those cases, I think, where we have to remember that sometimes the Lord looked at the weeds and He said, don’t go in and tear them up, because if you tear them up, you’ll tear up the good stuff, too.  And so you say to yourself, our real goal needs to be kept in mind, rather than delivering ourselves over to and surrendering to the false logic that will take us down the road to hell.  So, in order to avoid going down the road of that false logic, we stay our hand from cutting down some of the weeds, because our real goal is to bring in the good crop.  And we need to keep that in mind.  See?  And I see that going on in this present discussion a lot.  And it’s one of the tricks I think that will in the end deliver us into the arms of the socialist-totalitarians if we’re not careful, because we get into a situation where we end up talking ourselves into socialist by saying, “Well, you know we really have to deal with that.  And so we better let them regulate those CEO’s.”  Never thinking that the problem actually arises from the fact that the CEO’s are relying on government largess that shouldn’t be there in the first place, and that our real goal is to get away from the system that puts the government in that position.  We’ll never do it … once we start down the road of that logic.  So my thought would be instead of joining them, as we concentrate in the debate over who we regulate and how we discipline them and so forth and so on, happily assuming that we must accept the structure that puts the government in the position of the resource that calls for that regulation, I say, “No.”  Let’s have a new vision.  Let’s have a real sense of what the alternative is, and then let’s structure our actions in such a way that we dole out the discipline and so forth in such a way as to take us down the road that leads in the right direction, rather than the wrong one.

Gregory, FL:  I’m not calling for more regulation, but I guess when a crime has been committed, and theft has occurred, then I think it’s appropriate for the appropriate sphere of government to deal with that. 

Alan:  Well, let me ask you a question.  If you can only continue the process of dealing with all of that by strengthening, giving more resources and control to the very thing you want to get away from, at some point you have to say, “No, we will tolerate a little frictional thises and that.”  And it’s not even frictional abuse anymore, because you’re doing what you need to do to bring the abuse to an end.  What you’re going to tolerate is a moment in which you don’t pursue what, I agree, would be more complete justice, but you will be achieving that more complete justice, in particular, at the expense of a more complete and just vision for the whole.  Is that what we want to do? 

Jacob Roginsky:  I’d like to jump in for just a second.  I think that … it’s a folly to even talk about the corporations here, the banks and the lenders being bad and then the government having a role in regulating them and disciplining them, when in fact it’s the marriage of the government and these corporations that produce this problem.  So government is not an innocent party, here.  And large government, when it marries corporations -- what we have today, is the only thing that can result.  So, I agree with Alan.  I think one of the most important ways in dealing with this problem is to get away from it and let the corporations be punished by the market forces, rather than by the government.  The market forces, if applied properly – if allowed to operate on their own, will discipline the wrongdoers.

Tom:  This is Tom.  I want to make a comment on this.  See what … you so aptly pointed out a little while ago, Alan, that the power’s already decentralized.  Otherwise, why would the government need to gather it up at the point of a gun?  [Laughter]  So, the power’s already decentralized … it’s the breakdown of individual self-control, it’s the breakdown of individual families, it’s the breakdown of communities that opens the door for the power mongers, at a larger level, to take power.  I mean, what’s the old saying?  I’m going to botch this I know when I say it.  “We wouldn’t need any laws if all men were angels.”  What’s that quote? 

Alan:  If men were angels, government would not be necessary.

Tom:  Yes.  So, we’re kind of discussing what on its face appears to be a “chicken and egg” kind of thing here.  I mean in my opinion, building back up individual self-control – and of course, that can only be found in the moral base.  After all, self-control is the last listed fruit of the Spirit, right?  And the Bible says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”  O.K.?  So these things are all connected, o.k.?  So building back up the individual onto the right basis, building up our families on the right basis, building up our communities – this is the way to drive back the status.  This is the way to drive back the power mongers that want to centralized power, really.  That’s my opinion.

Gregory, FL:  Interesting.  The fruit of the Spirit against such – when it ends with self-control, there is no law. 

Alan:  Well see, that’s what I was thinking Tom, because sometimes when I use that phrase or remember that phrase – I think it was Madison in ’51, but “If men were angels, government would not be necessary.”  I think to myself, but it would still exist.  In other words, to say that something is not necessary …

Tom:  Right.

Alan:  … is to say imposed by necessity, right?  Doesn’t mean that it won’t be chosen. 

Tom:  Right.  I don’t need any law to keep me from going out and killing people.

Alan:  Right.

Tom:  … does that mean I want that law gone?  No. [Laughter]

Alan:  No, it means that you so want that law that you become the embodiment of that law in your will.  You’ve conformed your will to that law.  And in one sense it is therefore not a law for you, but in another sense it is still a law because you are acting in conformity with it.  And that’s the beauty of real self-government.  And that’s a beauty that we can’t get back to if we continue with the delusion that the imposition of law requires government.  That’s a delusion, a lie that we live in the context of because we are not willing to accept the true relationship with God. 

And here, I think it’s particularly important for Christian people – I’m actually in the throws of trying to finish up a part of the “Strategy of Right” that talks about this a little bit, but I think that ultimately that is the law of love, because if you properly understand love, love is not constraint, right?  Love, the very word implies liberty, perfect liberty, o.k.?  But at the same time the phrase, “Law of love” implies that there is in consequence of perfect liberty a true discipline.  But that discipline is not the discipline of external imposition.  It is the discipline of an internal conformation that results from one’s total and complete acceptance of the loved one, who is God, in all the aspects of His being which include, therefore, those boundaries that He has established for your good.

Tom:  Alan, I have to say one of the affiliates that we’re laying out, as I described earlier, is the AIP Institute for Self-Government.  And I’ve got to say, I think probably the transcript of this phone call is going to make the first good lesson plan.  So, thank you.

Howard, KS:  This is Howard again over in Kansas.  The thing that Is going through my mind is we ran a government that is all the time trying to keep control, one way or another, so how would we implement what we’re talking about tonight in such a way that we could put the centralized government in its place and we would be able to transform our society into what we’re talking about.

Tom:  I’ve got to grab that one, Howard.  On the website I’m setting up for the AIP Institute for Self-Government, the tagline under it is:  raising up a New Generation of Leaders in America.  I believe that’s the answer to your question.  How to we get the claws of statist, centralized, large government out?  We do it by raising up a generation of people who will throw off those shackles. 

Howard, KS:  So the next question is, how are we going to throw them off when they’re so intent on keeping us in that way to the point that they might eventually put us aside of the wall and shoot us? 

Tom:  Well, there are two (2) things, you know the presidency of the United States that Barack Obama is occupying at the moment, is very powerful.  The congress is very powerful.  The federal government is very powerful.  But there are two (2) things that are more powerful.  The first one is the American people are more powerful. 

Howard, KS:  Amen.

Tom:  The second one is, God is more powerful. 

Howard, KS:  Yes.  Is there a place for us to resist?  Say we’re following the constitution, we’re following the directives that our founding fathers set-up for us and we refuse to be led into this road and this is the way we’re going to do.  Is there a place for that?

Alan:  This is Alan.  I remember we chatted a little about this last week, I think, in the context of, among other things, the 10th Amendment Movement.  And I think the answer to that question, in my mind, now takes two (2) concrete forms in terms of immediate activism:  1) One is support for the 10th Amendment Movement and to try and find ways to encourage these legislators around the country, to help kind of form and inform and build up the content and substance of what it is that they are doing and back it up with good help from people and support from people at the grassroots.  2)  The second thing that is sort of like it is what is emerging in terms of the 2nd Amendment March and the people who are trying to organize a line of defense against efforts to disarm the people of the United States.  

These two (2) things, I think are things that represent, in their different ways that capacity that you’re speaking of to say, “No” to the surrender of our liberty.  And so they become, in an immediate sense, a focus for us so that we can try to help build up and make sure of – because the 10thAmendment Movement is a way of making sure that in the formal institutional structure of our government, the people will still have platforms from which they can, in a reasonably orderly way, say “No,” and that is their state government.  That’s part of what they’re supposed to do:  provide that rallying point on the basis of which people can, in a way that respects the constitutional structures, say “No” to a government that is trying to destroy their rights.  And ultimately, of course, there’s also the fact that people have to maintain a certain firmness of personal and individual will and a sense of their own responsibility for the defense of the rights that God has given to each of us, and that therefore, we defend in our individual and family capacities, as well as everything else.  And I think the 2nd Amendment Movement represents that sense of responsibility.  So I think those are two (2) things that right now represent what we can do to help educate, inform and build up this sense of responsible resistance to manifestations of tyranny. 

Tom:  “Say NO to SOCIALISM” 

Alan:  Exactly.

Caller:  Amen.

Tom:  I have to answer Howard’s question from my standpoint.  You ask at what point do we resist?  My answer is at EVERY point.  Every point.  We need to challenge this at every point.  Every single one, we need to …

Alan:  I hope that when you say that though – see when you say that to me, it not only challenges me in the political realm, it also reminds me that we are challenged also in other realms you know, because – how can I put this?  We live in a society that encourages the surrender of our rights by seducing us toward the surrender of right, by encouraging us into indulgences and sinful habits that then represent the quiet surrender of right within us.  So I think that as always, there’s a continuum here between our own relationship with God and spiritual substance and observance of His will that builds us up with a capacity to kind of resist the blandishments, because part of what these folks are doing quite shrewdly now, they’re not just coming and saying, “We want to oppress and harm and so forth.”  No, “We want to help.  And we want everybody to be happy.  And we want everybody to find fulfillment and pleasure in their lives and that’s why we believe that we should be tolerant of everybody’s sexual behavior and activities and that’s why we think we should have government providing resources that can help everybody to have their home and do this and that, even if it means relaxing the banking standards, and etc.” 

Part of what they do is – raises the prospect of repression, but the immediate danger is seduction.  And the answer to seduction is not a rallying that just takes place on the streets or in front of the state capitol, it’s a rallying that must begin around the standard of God in your heart.

Howard, KS:  Exactly.  I think that one thing that we need to re-establish is the idea that we have responsibility and to get people to realize that it isn’t the government’s responsibility to maintain the home and to maintain the peace, but our responsibility is to respond to God and to His laws in such a way that we won’t have to have external will.  We’ll be internally following exactly what God wants us.  Then we won’t feel oppressed and depressed.  We’ll feel at liberty, because the Spirit of the Lord gives us liberty.  And as we walk in the Spirit of Christ, then we’re going to have the liberty and we won’t need all these oppressive things to keep us from getting out of line and being unfair to people and going out and shoot people and things like this.  Or go out and get someone else’s companion.  We won’t need that, but it’s fine to have it, just in case we’ve got some wicked people out there that need the control.  They don’t have the discipline, so we need someone that’s going to have the control to keep those people in line.

Alan:  But see it is, though, I think important that we realize that it’s not just someone.  I was thinking about – I think I may have mentioned it on a call previously but -- and Chaplain Gordon, it was in the context – I first was thinking about this in the context of some research I was doing with respect to the issue of the chaplains and praying in Virginia, right?  And looking at the Virginia Constitution, which has that wonderful phrase in it at the beginning that refers to the, “Good people of Virginia,” right? 

Chaps:  Right.

Alan:  And I think that that is a reminder of what government, in the sense we often talk about it – what we look at as the instruments of government, the state governments, the local government, the federal government.  What is that government?  That government is the instrument of the good people.   And I think we need to keep that in mind.  It’s not the instrument of the bad people.  That’s not what it’s supposed to be.  It’s the instrument of the good people to keep the bad people in line. 

Howard, KS:  Exactly, I believe that 100%.  And you can’t have good control by bad people.  It’s like the Lord talks about good fruit bring forth – you know, a good tree bringing forth good fruit and an evil fruit – an evil tree bringing forth evil fruit.  And so unless we have the people that are controlling the bad people, then we have the same old thing we’ve got now.

Alan:  Yeh.  And I think, too, and I know that sometimes when folks are on the call, here you must – I sometimes wonder – we’re sometimes having discussion, and sometimes we’re having politics and sometimes it seems like we’re having church.  But I would say that there’s a reason for that.  And that reason is that in truth, our true citizenship involves all those things.  For I don’t see how we can truly fulfill our vocation of citizenship according to God’s will except we are doing so as citizens of the kingdom of God.

This is a great group of patriots, and the calls cover everything you can imagine, from deeply spiritual and philosophical matters to the latest antics of our alleged President and his demolition crew.

 

Guy, IA:  Hey Alan.  This is Guy in Iowa. 

Alan:  Hi Guy.

Guy, IA:  It’s been a couple months since I’ve spoke up, but I do faithfully listen.  One of the first impressions that I’ve got is it seems to me that we need more justice-based leaders.  Another question with regards to the comment on, “Say NO to SOCIALISM:”  I’m hopefully optimistic that we’re not saying, “Yes to CAPITALISM.”  If capitalism is defined with a core belief of greed, socialism is the core belief of envy, what say you for the new reality that – and the new way that you’re proposing?  Is there an alternative or a Third Way?

Alan:  Well, of course there is.  But I think, in a way it can be understood if you take that word:  capitalism.  What is the root of capitalism? 

Guy, IA:  Capital. 

Alan:  Well, we say capital, but what’s the source of capital?

Guy, IA:  It actually means the head or …

Alan:  The head.  Yes.  Capita:  the head.  Yes?

Guy, IA:  Yes.

Alan:  So the word capitalism actually referred to something that arises from or out of the activity of the head, right?

Guy, IA:  Um-hmmm.

Alan:  Who is the head?  Who is the head?  That’s why I think we sometimes have church, because ultimately, God is the head.  And what capitalism really means – it even meant it in Adam Smith, though a lot of people try to misunderstand this, o.k.?  Is an understanding of how one deals with the perpetuation of life in a material sense, the form of life in which we find ourselves here, as a result of God’s will.  How we do that in such a way as to respect God’s will and acquit our responsibility toward Him, that’s capitalism. 

And I remember thinking about that many years ago and it’s part of what has cemented my sense that a right understanding of economics has a moral ground or foundation.  And that that moral ground or foundation is especially centered around what I was talking about previously, the oikos.  The root of the word:  economics.  It’s ecos nomos or oikos nomos.  It means the management of the household.  So the key unit of economics is the household and the government of the household is a theocratic government.  This word that some of these people love to hate:  theocracy.  That word is appropriate when applied to family government for at the end of the day, parents must act in direct response to that which God requires of them.  That is why the family is ultimately not rooted in human will.  It is a natural institution that is rooted in God’s will and that ultimately is governed in light of God’s relationship with the parents.  And so it’s another – it’s also the reason why it pre-exists government and has priority in one sense over government in the way we talk of it – with these state and federal institutions. 

So, if you look at capitalism in that way, right?  You’re then going to be talking in the first instance about the right management of the household so as to achieve the goal of survival and self-sufficiency in a material sense, right?  All in the context of acquitting God’s will, that is to say, respecting the gift of life that He has shared with us. 

(2:30:26.5)

And in that way as well, if you think of it – and this is something that I think then
becomes a principle in a larger sense.  If you look at how the family operates, the family is actually about a kind of, what’s the word I’m looking for?  Communal ownership – a communal belonging.  It is the one unit of human life in which, rightly understood, the word communism actually applies, because you’re talking about a community in which nothing is done except for the mutual good of those who are part of the family.  That’s the proper way for family life to proceed.  So that in a sense, there is no taking and no giving – there is only sharing.  Because whatever it is I seem to give to another member of my family, I also am taking, in the form of satisfaction, at their good.  So there is that sense of common ownership.  And as a result of that common ownership, a sense that we all derive the benefit and therefore, when we make a contribution, we are in effect contributing to ourselves – working for ourselves, even as we work for every other member of the family. 

And I think that if you then apply that to capitalism, you get some of the ideas that I’ve been a champion of for many years in which instead of seeing this big opposition between management and workers and so forth, you get people to try to understand that at the end of the day, the enterprise is the goose that lays golden eggs for everybody and therefore, everybody has to see the health of that enterprise as THEIR good.  But they can only do that if they are sharing in the fruits, to a satisfactory degree.  And that’s why I advocate expanded capital ownership and other things that, in some ways, help to efface what we understand is the difference between the worker bees and the management. 

But I also think, by the way, and this gets us back to where the conversation began, that some of the things that are emerging in terms of our use of 21st century technologies and what it’s doing to change the way we work together, is actually helping us to implement this kind of a vision.  Because even in the corporate world now, they’re realizing that at some level, each person is the manager of their own task.  And that unless you are willing to act and interact with them in that way – if you treat people only as subordinate workers, you can’t get the best out of them.  But if you treat them with the respect that is owed to their management of the particular task or function that they are contributing, then they are going to bring more to the table, you are going to be more open to what the resources they really have to offer you, and the whole enterprise is going to thrive as a result. 

So, these kinds of ideas I think, their time has come.

Guy, IA:  Value Based Management Systems, and the other one that’s been incorporated is Justice Based Management.  They are spreading and hopefully they’ll go further.  You’ve obviously read John Paul’s and some of the other encyclicals by Pious the XI where they bring up the subsidiarity and personalism?  Is there a correlation with this new reality, this new way that you’re expounding on in your thinkbit?

Alan:  Well see, I have to be careful though.  I know we like the word “new”, right?  I don’t really think of what I’m saying as new, though.  I think of it as, in a way, a restoration of something that has kind of been the idea that we’re supposed to conform to that God’s been trying to share with us, you know, since He began sharing.

Guy, IA:  He is sharing. 

Alan:  And so I think that in that sense, if there’s something new at the moment, it is only a new sense of the relevance of what God is sharing and has shared and perhaps an effort to get people to make a new commitment to putting it into action in the world around us.  Because part of what has happened, and Christians I think along with others have fallen into this trap, is we’ve fallen into the trap of believing we’re inventing the future.  But there is One Being Who has seen the future.  And Who, even as we live here, He lives in that future.  And so we ought to be listening to Him.  And so in that sense I think, let’s acknowledge that God is the Creator and then follow His guidance so that we can, in some sense, realize the future that in His loving good will, He has planned for us.  And that is the only sense in which I ultimately believe in I guess a planned economy.  But it’s a planned economy of the whole universe and the planner is God.  He’s the only One I trust.

Guy, IA:  Amen …

Howard, KS:  … I think the idea of stewardship enters into all of this well, which is stewardship to God, first and then to our fellow man by, “… loving God with all your heart, soul and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself,” would be a big part of this, as well. 

Alan:  But that has always been intended, I think – think even of the language that we use in business relationships, all of which language like fiduciary and confidence and confiding and so forth and so on.  It has “fidere” as its root, right?  Which is faith.  And so at the end of the day I think there’s always been this implicit acknowledgment of the role of faith in what we call economic life.  But we have allowed these people more and more to denature our understanding, to turn us away from that sort of Godly root of our understanding and I guess what I believe is that we should now, without shame and with consistency, just let us think it through.  And what we’ll come up with may seem to some people new, but what we’ll realize is that it’s not new at all.  It’s just us trying to you know sort of get back in line with some of the ancient wisdom that God has shared with us. 

Howard, KS:  These are the kind of things that I’ve been preaching for over 30 years, until I retired.  And I still, when I go to the different places (bible studies and what have you,) I still teach and preach those.  Those are the things that are going to last forever. 

Alan:  You know, I think the wonderful thing that Guy focuses on and focuses us on is the consequences that this has for our understanding of all that we should expect and do, in terms of our economic life.  And I think that that’s right.  And in that sense, capitalism understood as some kind of unbridled greed is just wrong.  It’s a wrong concept.  It’s a concept that actually reduces economic life to a competition among criminals. 

Howard, KS:  Well that’s what the ruling elite would like for us to think.

Alan:  Um-Hmmm.   

Howard, KS:  And if they can get us to think of a good thing as an evil thing, then they’ve got us whipped. 

Alan:  Um-Hmmm.   

Howard, KS:  And they’ve done that way too long.  We need to reinstate what it really means, like what you’re talking about, Alan.

Guy, IA:  I believe it was Karl Marx that first coined the political phrase of capitalism, Capitalist Manifesto, when he suggested that the capitalists will hang themselves – give them enough rope.   I definitely agree that the definition – and it’s seeped into our public psyche and conscience … totally wrong.  But I think to combat that, somebody has to bring up the element of justice in order to – like the constitution says, “establish justice.”  And if we don’t practice it, we will never get to the point where it’s lived. 

Alan:  And the thing that I think we can most effectively do is to remind people of what is so often forgotten now, and that is the connection between the family, understood as a moral unit and a locus of moral responsibility, and economic justice.  And beginning our thinking from there, I think helps us to come to concepts of enterprise and management and all of these things that respect the requirements of justice without the need to then become kind of idolatrous worshippers of government control. 

Guy, IA:  Alan, I’m going to leave you with an invitation – you’ll be getting it in the mail this week.  And I hope you pursue it.  Thank you for the call tonight.

Alan:  O.K., thank you for being with us.

Howard, KS:  You know, I think also, the people who define the terms are the ones who rule the day.  And we need to redefine the terms that they have defined improperly.  And need to get these out to the people. 

Tom:  Howard, you know we were talking earlier about where we challenge … at what point we fight back.  You know, one of the ways we fight back is taking the language back.

Alan:  Well, one of the things then, and I’m going to continue to do this, even though – I am beginning, by the way on the blogsite, to experience the reality that I guess sometimes lead people down certain broad highways of self interest when they’re communicating in our society these days, because when I look over the website and the response that it’s been getting from the visitors who are coming, the shorter things are obviously getting more attention.  And the things that I put up that are longer and more kind of extensive, they are getting less attention, because a combination, I guess:  people have less time and maybe somewhat less interest and so forth.  But I’m going to keep putting those things up anyway, because they are part of my process of taking back the conceptual world.  Because even fundamental things like:  right and justice and rights are terms that we must reacquire so that people who are understanding or trying to understand things from a Christian and biblical and Godly point of view will realize that those concepts are actually filled with substance on the basis of a biblical understanding.  And that when you take it away, people can still use them, but eventually they reach a dead end of contradiction, because you cannot make proper sense of them apart from the reign of God.  And that’s what I’ll be trying to do in various ways in the whole course of this writing that I’ll be putting up there in a series that I’m calling:  The Strategy of Right, which is actually, in my mind, intended ultimately to be a book that would have that title and that would essentially take back some of the most basic concepts that I think have been surrendered so that we now have Christian people using concepts like rights in a way that implies the non-existence of God.  And I just find that appalling. 

Tom:  Alan, this is Tom.  And I think for once, I think it’s going to be incumbent on me to bring this to a close tonight.  You’ve been on for about two (2) hours.  We’ve got a number of people who have now been on for three (3).

Alan:  Right.

Tom:  And one other added thing is, I don’t know when the recording will stop.  So, if you don’t mind.

Gregory, FL:  Tom, this is Gregory. 

Tom:  Yes.

Gregory, FL:  I just want to just point out that Alan mentioned love – you don’t normally think of it with constraint.  But it’s curious that, I believe it was last week, perhaps Chris read from Ii Corinthians 5 and into 6 and that has the phrase, “The love of Christ constraints us.”  It’s very interesting what follows that, “Because we thus judge that if One died for all, then were all dead.  And He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again.”  And it’s in the context of thinking through – beyond this life to the things that are eternal and to our appearing before the Lord, those of us who are Christians, and that we are made new in Christ, and that we need to carry this message:  Men aren’t naturally going to be good, and neither are we.  But when we think of what Christ has done for us and we have put our trust in Him, that makes us new and gives us the impetus to turn around and love others, think of others first, as He did and share that message.  And that also brings us into the community of caring, which Alan Keyes was also talking about. 

Tom:  Well, that’s the perfect capper on this, Gregory.

Alan:  Yes.  I was just thinking, Tom, you were about to call for pray, and then he offers one. [Laughter]

Tom:  Let me remind you, this current era of growth and building in our midst started out with the idea that we need America’s Revival, so I think that pretty much ties everything up in a really nice package.  Chaps, are you still with us, sir?

Chaps:  Yes, sir.  Hanging on to the end.

Tom:  Can you please thank the Lord for us and bless these folks.

Chaps:  O.K., let us pray.  Father in heaven, we ask you to intervene.  Not to give us anything we don’t deserve, but Father, at least remove from us the impediments, get the monkey off our back, get the government off our back.  Father, relieve us of whatever tax burdens we may face, especially in the impending future when they just, you know, it seems like almost by stealth they’re taxing us by printing more money and deflating the value of our dollars.  Father, even the money that’s in our own hands is not even, it seems, within our  own control.  But God, You own all the cattle on a thousand hills, and you own all the gold and silver that exists in the mountains, and Father we look even beyond money or finances and we look to Your spiritual gold, Your spiritual silver, Your principles of higher justice and love and patience and joy and kindness and all the fruits of Your Holy Spirit.  And Father, if we are somehow able to be filled even by giving away our wealth, by serving others as more important that ourselves, Father, if we are able to be filled with true riches, we ask that we would sell everything that we have and follow You.  And then we will have treasure in heaven.  And so Father, we devote ourselves to pursuing Your kingdom and Your principles as worth more than everything else this world has to offer.  And we ask You to save our nation, in that way, and bring us back to Yourself.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

Tom:  Amen.

Caller:  Amen.  Wow.

Tom:  Thank you, Alan. 

Alan:  Thank you everyone.  Oh, thank you.

Tom:  Thanks to everyone who participated, tonight.  And remember, we’ll be here on Thursday night, God willing and the crick don’t rise. 

Alan:  Goodnight.

Tom:  Goodnight.

Caller:  Goodnight, you all.

Keywords: Federal Reserve, Capitalism,.. meaning of Capital, Justice Based leadership. 'Say NO to Socialism'

Review; June 18, 2009 AIPeTH