THE INQUISITOR INTERVIEW
Inquisitor: Camden, you sometimes refer to yourself as a patriot. What does that mean?
Camden: Simply put, it means belief in, and defense of, "Truth, Justice, and the American Way."
Inquisitor: Very quaint, but hardly a definitive answer.
Camden: You asked a simple question and got a simple answer.
Inquisitor: You write on social, political, and economic subjects. What prompts you to do this?
Camden: I lament what I see happening to our republic. Though my commentary is but a very small and weak cry in the wilderness, it is at least one more voice. There are already many others, but it will ultimately take many more to grab the attention of a critical mass of the public and our representatives. Mine is just one of many—and, of course, one of the most obscure. I believe I also add something somewhat unique to the political debate—mainly recognition of the growing common ground between populists from the left and right, and the need to for a coalition on these common issues.
Inquisitor: What are the common issues?
Camden: Actually, there are many. After all, most people want essentially the same things. The right and the left, in most cases, have had differing views as to how to accomplish some similar ends. The left favored socialistic solutions to everything, and the right favored free-market solutions. Communism was state capitalism, and it failed miserably to produce the promised results—but it was the darling of the left-wing progressives, who early on had seen the threat of private big capital, but not that of total state control. The right saw the threat of international communism but, for some time, not the threat of international capitalism. The threat really didn't fully manifest itself in this country until global communism crashed, opening the way for big capital to break the chains that had kept it's more predatory nature in check. In short, capital was on it best behavior, at least domestically, as long as the Cold War raged. When the Soviet Union collapsed, capitalism was unleashed as never before. But unleashed, on a global basis, unrestrained capitalism is as dangerous as communism. Even more so, because it works much better, and has no ideology beyond an insatiable craving for profit. Failing to see this has divided the so-called conservative movement between those who push the interests of globalized capital and Wall Street, and those who are populists. On the left, there is also a large populist movement with many of the same concerns. There is still a great ideological chasm between the two groups, but it is shrinking. The great area of common ground is in the recognition of the clear and present danger of predatory capital remaking the world in it's most unbecoming image. The universal empowerment of predatory capital is the greatest threat to mankind, and the global environment, imaginable. Our common cause is to thwart this destructive onslaught, and the version of the so-called "New World Order" it gleefully promises to deliver. It is ironic how well-meaning people on both the left and right have been manipulated and thrown into confusion as to who our common enemy really is. Many, if not most, are still thoroughly confused. The confusion, of course, is intentional. Essentially the same global movers and shakers were behind both the communist and capitalist versions of what we call the New World Order. Only a few years ago the New World Order was seen by the right-wing as coming at us from the left. Now the leopard has changed its spots and is coming at us from the right, backed by so-called neo-conservatives, many of whom are in fact refugees, or "converts" from the left.
Inquisitor: What are the primary differences between a right and left-wing populists, as you see it?
Camden: The most striking difference is that the right-wing populist identifies more with American nationalism. Many in the patriotic and militia movements are populists, and most are considered conservatives. They tend to be waspish, and value the Anglo-Saxon national heritage above the latter-day pluralistic and multi-cultural approach. Populists of the left, of course, identify with the former intellectual champions of socialism who call themselves progressives and liberals. Most seem to disdain the concepts of nationalism and American patriotism, which they consider narrow provincialism.
Inquisitor: If you are a populist—and I take it you are—I assume you are of the right-wing variety. Right?
Camden: Yes, I do identify with the right. I'm an American nationalist, meaning that I think, for all its ills and imperfections, we've got something to be proud of in this nation, and to preserve. All constructive endeavors must emanate from "self"—that is through the individual, family, community, state, and nation, in that order. We must improve ourselves before taking on the task of forced global and universal reform. Only to the extent we can perfect ourselves and our own nation, we can contribute to betterment of mankind as a whole in a universal sense.
Inquisitor: And what do you see happening to our republic?
Camden: I see us, as a nation, abandoning our founding principles and repudiating our very national identity, in favor of "Global Village" building. We are embarked on a course that I see as national suicide. In fact, our national leaders have already committed us to national suicide to a point almost beyond reprieve, in direct violation of their oaths of office. This has occurred by small increments over almost a century, but is accelerating. About all we can do now is hope the crash will be a relatively gentle one, for I don't believe the vessel we call the "New World Order" is going to prove in the least seaworthy. Not only are the alleged goals exceedingly arrogant, and deceptive, but totally dependent on unsustainable systems and models which are undermining all of the natural systems upon which everything actually ultimately depends. It's Babel-like, but worse—and it's scary.
Inquisitor: When you say scary, do you mean that you are personally fearful? Is that a factor that drives you to write your political commentary—fear?
Camden: I'm probably less fearful than most people who claim not to be particularly concerned—and I'm certainly not a paranoid type. I'm more or less a casual observer. It's like I'm watching a movie. Of course, I know the movie is real, and that my life is impacted to some extent by everything I see—mine, and my children's, and my grand children's. Even though I live a somewhat isolated life, out of the fast-lane, I know I'll suffer along with everybody else when things go bad, for whatever reason, and whatever might trigger potentially catastrophic events. Of course, there may not be any really catastrophic event—there may only be a continuing downward trend toward a more orderly form of chaos in this country. No, if you consider me "driven," it isn't by fear, but rather a sadness and melancholy frustration at witnessing the great American experiment unravel.
Inquisitor: I take it you are a conspiracy, ah... Shall I say, theorist?
Camden: "Buff," I believe, would be the most appropriate term. I don't do much theorizing about conspiracies. Most of the so-called conspiracies that have shaped our recent history, and are shaping our future, are pretty well documented. Of course, the conspirators themselves, never call them conspiracies. They merely laugh at conspiracy theorists as they formulate the grandiose schemes they cause to unfold upon an unwary public. Their main, and frequently stated, goals are international peace and prosperity for all of the peoples of the world, and that seems to sell pretty good just about everywhere. Their true purpose, I would assume, is the preservation of their ever-increasing bottom line—in terms of wealth, privilege, and power—without any real regard for the welfare of the masses of humanity. The current name of the game is perpetual, and ever-accelerating, expansion of capital and markets. Common people are merely pawns to be manipulated—sheep to be led to slaughter whenever it becomes convenient. Fortunately for them, we the people are more sheep-like than most of us like to believe.
Inquisitor: Do I detect a hint of resignation in that last statement?
Camden: It is a little difficult to be positive on the subject. Things do look pretty bleak, but we, as a nation, and as a people, still have something great and worth preserving, we cannot give up in our efforts to turn our mis-representatives back into true representatives before things get out of hand. When I say, out of hand, I refer to elements which will not give up without a fight of some sort. A real fight. It is hard for some people to fathom, but there are undoubtedly many such Americans left.
Inquisitor: Are you a Democrat, Republican, or an Independent?
Camden: About as independent as you can get and still be married, relatively poor, and within the law. But I don't belong to any political party.
Inquisitor: Do you find it difficult to stay within the law, Camden?
Camden: Not really, though I do sometimes forget to buckle my seatbelt. Of course, there are so many laws on the various stacks of books of the various levels and branches of government that I have no doubt both of us are in violation of a considerable number of them at times. Ignorance of the law, as they say, is no protection. For example, I haven't the slightest idea whether it is still legal to expectorate on national forest land, but I still do it from time to time.
Inquisitor: Do you characterize yourself as a conservative?
Camden: Yes, of course, I'm a conservative. (After all, the root of that term is "conserve") I believe in conserving all of that which has been found to be good, including, energy, money, and the environment, but don't equate me with the modern neo-conservative establishment. Of course, I'm a liberal too—in the classic sense of the term. (I believe in "liberty") But don't equate me with modern political liberalism, which means being liberal with other people's money and partial to socialistic programs conducive of Big Brother style government. So-called conservatives, (of the more typical Republican variety) are just about as bad as liberals when it comes to empowering Big Brother. By getting tough on crime they mean federalizing law-enforcement in direct violation of the concept of limited government. Liberals and Democrats empower the federal government by trying to make it into a universal nursemaid. They encourage dependence on government, rather than self-reliance and independence. Conservatives and Republicans empower the federal government by giving it bigger and bigger sticks to clobber people with, and by locking more and more of them up. Between the Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, what we are getting is a damned dangerous nursemaid.
Inquisitor: Then you are anti-government?
Camden: No, I'm not anti-government. I'm for good government—and I believe that "the government is best which governs least." (Of course this requires a self-governing people—an endangered asset, as we continue to evolve into a nation of litigious and hyper-sensitive crybabies, thanks to a public education system geared to producing good subjects, dependents, and corporate assets, rather than sovereign individuals.) I'm anti-Big Brother, anti-big government, anti-abusive government, anti-all-powerful government, and anti-police state, but I'm not anti-government. Government is comprised of people, and we do have many good people in our government, in spite of its many flaws. Trouble is, not enough of the good guys have enough guts to raise their voice. Those with both guts and a voice are usually weeded out rather quickly in today's political process.
Inquisitor: Do you think we have a police state now?
Camden: Damned close! Too, damned close—and getting nearer all the time. (It was already here, big-time, for Randy Weaver and his family, and the Branch Dividians—and many other lesser-known cases.) We have more people behind bars, in both absolute numbers and percentages, than any other so-called civilized nation in the world, and prison-building has become one of our major national growth industries. Every year or so there is a new so-called "crime bill" pushed through Congress, each of which expands federal police power. If these aren't symptoms of a forming police state, I don't know what is. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution have been effectively gutted, while the Second is in imminent and continuously increasing danger. The Eighth is usually ignored. (The definition of cruel and unusual needs to be clarified. Draconian prison sentences for minor or victimless crimes is cruel and unusual in my book. Caning, whipping, or placing petty criminals in stocks in the court-yard, [and/or community service and recompense to victims, if any] would be far less cruel than lengthy, total, loss of freedom at great public expense.) The Ninth and Tenth Amendments have been in abeyance since the Civil War and Reconstruction. Most people had even forgotten they existed, though some are now rediscovering them. Civil Rights further sent the notion of States' Rights into paralysis.
Inquisitor: Is states' rights all that important, as you see it, even when it spells civil rights abuses?
Camden: Our founders' reasoning, in setting up the various separations of political power, was very sound. Of course, the former colonies were independent "nations" in their own right prior to adoption of our federal Constitution. But for those independent states, (ex-British colonies) the Constitution could never have been adopted, and the Union would never have come into being. One of the primary, and most important, separations of power is that which exists between the various states and their voluntarily appointed agent, the federal government. The separation, and powers assumed by the federal government, on behalf of the states, are made clear in the Constitution. When the Southern States were denied the right to secede from the Union, by being soundly "whipped," all states essentially lost by it.
Of course, state governments have it within their political genes to become tyrannies just as is the case of all governments. And, unfortunately, many did adopt various forms of tyranny. (Slavery was a tyranny that the nation had inherited from the European plantation system that had developed in the New World.) But, thanks to the recognition that the Bill of Rights protects individual human rights as well as states' rights, the corrective mechanism was in place. Many abuses were corrected, but in the process, the federal government often took on the characteristics of a tyrant over both state and individual rights—usually in the guise of righting wrongs. The democratic principles the nation stands for were short-circuited. Tyranny is still wrong whether it emanates from state or federal legal machinery—and whether it tends to subjugate states, or their citizens, to a federal juggernaut or local abuses of power. Civil Rights was an excuse for the federal government to further subjugate the states and consolidate the federal power that resulted from the Civil War and Reconstruction. It had a lasting and chilling affect on liberty at the state and local level, no matter the abundant good intentions that may have propelled it.
Inquisitor: You are against Civil Rights then? Would you consider yourself a bigot? Are you a racist?
Camden: Bigot? Certainly not! I am a racist only in the sense that all who would be a credit to their race should be racist. Everybody should rightfully take pride in their own racial identity. In fact we actually preach this proposition to minorities now, but at the same time we condemn whites when they articulate any special pride in their race. (Those who are of mixed race may pick and choose, or be prideful of each race their makeup represents.) Racial pride is naturally inherent in the make-up of any racial group, as in any other group, be it cultural, national, or fraternal. That's an immutable truth many would like to deny or somehow abolish—but races, like individuals and all species, have a natural survival instinct. Those who would say otherwise would assert that God somehow committed a horrible blunder in creating the world's great, colorful, and truly wonderful, ethnic diversity. Racial hatred or bigotry, or that based on culture, is strictly the stuff of small minds. Unfortunately, we have far too many of those in every racial group. That I am proud to be an Anglo-Saxon, and would wish to preserve those races which constitute my racial and cultural heritage and identity, ought not to be considered evidence of bigotry. I suspect I would be no less proud of my race if I were of any other ethnic group.
What true freedom-lover could be against civil rights? Martin Luther King, Jr. isn't one of my personal heroes, but I certainly subscribe to his assertion that men (and, of course, women) should be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. But much damage has been done to the country in the name of Civil Rights, in my opinion, in spite of abundant "good intentions." The federal government used its big stick to force racial integration, and affirmative action programs, to give minorities a better shot at realizing the American dream. It did this contrary to the will of the majority of the people who happened to be white and racist to a more or lesser degree. Of course, it has helped many minority people, and I certainly don't begrudge that. But the damage to the overall body-politic has been devastating and is on-going. The result of forced integration in cities and schools was white flight that led to an implosion of most of our major cities (as whites voted on integration in the only manner left to them—with their feet—and, of course, capital followed). The final result has been that the nation is perhaps more segregated now than ever before, and a greater than ever number of minority people permanently disenfranchised—an ever-increasing number totally, by being locked up in our burgeoning prison system. Additionally, we seem to have a continuing nation-wide educational crises, particularly in the inner cities, in which most minorities find themselves trapped. Furthermore, race relations in the general population, (the vast majority being members of the "working poor" classes of all races) are at an all-time low and not likely to get any better.
Inquisitor: Then you would return to the pre-1960's status quo vis-a-vis race and integration—back to segregation?
Camden: No. Of course not. The damage has been done, and can't be repaired by going backwards. I'm not sure it can be repaired at all, for we have undergone a metamorphosis as a nation in recent decades. We are no longer the nation we were prior to the 1960's and we never will be. In some ways, of course, we've seen some real progress, but in others we have merely been pretending progress as our society has begun to divide, disintegrate, and fragment. The damage was not equality for all people under the law—that, so far as it has resulted, is a positive out-come—the damage was loss of our founding ideology and governing standards. These negative results accompanied undemocratic, heavy-handed, federal use of power to right wrongs that should have been addressed in a more measured and democratic manner over time. The damage caused has impacted all races negatively.
As for segregation, people naturally tend to segregate themselves and discriminate—by family, race, culture, economic circumstance, like-interests, etc.—to a more or lesser degree, no matter what a government may decree, (as can readily be seen everywhere one cares to look). There will always be segregated communities and mixed communities. The right of freedom of association dictates this should be so in a free society. (Ironically, but significantly, segregation of the races seems to have proven to be a stronger social force than the preservation of the traditional family structure has.) Arbitrary, exclusionary, laws that discriminate unfairly on the basis of race or any other superficial consideration, are flatly wrong, of course. Their demise, as a result of the Civil Rights movement, was simple justice. Laws should, and must, be colorblind. However, people can never be made to be colorblind by law, so race will always tend to be a divisive factor, and problem, to one degree or another in any racially mixed society. This is unavoidable as long as man continues to be a flawed creature. Fortunately, the majorities of every race are receptive and conductive to the ideals of true and simple justice, and respect for the rights of others, regardless of superficial differences. But government coercion, on behalf of any group, tends to polarize society, increase resentment, and lay a fertile bed for future conflict.
If there is a solution to continuing race relations problems in this country, I believe it would be found down two avenues. (1) Through economic empowerment of the masses and, (2) in establishing educational standards more conductive to quality learning and original thinking than the cultivation of heightened racial and cultural sensitivities, feelings of victimhood and/or guilt, herd mentality, and feel-goodery. Unfortunately, neither are likely to happen. Our mad rush into the new international economic order will continue to downgrade the prospects for the poor to attain the American middle-class dream, precluding requisite number one. The nation's educational establishment is firmly locked into multiculturalism, social engineering, historical victim awareness enhancement, and global village building, precluding requisite number two.
Inquisitor: You mean you have no feelings of superiority, being an Anglo-Saxon?
Camden: I don't see how that question follows from anything we've been speaking of thus far. I don't believe I said anything indicative of feelings of racial superiority. But, since you've brought it up, I'm honest enough to admit I haven't totally renounced the traditional Anglo-Saxon superiority complex. I'm proud of the social capital and intellectual property we have inherited from our forefathers. (And this is not to discount what we have also inherited from other races and cultures.) I intend to be honest about this, unlike most (and perhaps you are one of them) "touchy-feelly, do-gooders." Many modern Anglo-Saxons, usually of the liberal variety, still secretly harbor the complex while denying it, and professing self-righteous "guilt" at the historical conquests of their forbearers—the ones who made their present lives of conspicuous consumption, and the Civil Rights movement itself, possible.
It is naturally inherent in any racial group to value their own race and culture above others, and feel themselves superior. This is an inherent aspect of the law of survival which governs all living things including racial sub-groups. If I have a racial superiority complex, it would be no different were I Massai, Jap, or Lap. I'd want to see my particular group both survive and succeed. The important thing is to recognize other groups as equals in the overall scheme of things, and to respect their own right, not only to exist, but to such feelings of superiority. Hypocrisy, doesn't make right—honesty and tolerance do. I'm not quite what you would call a white supremacist, but since I'm white and live separately, I guess you could call me a white separatist—at least with regard to my private residence. I'd wager that you're one too... No, don't interrupt. Let me finish.
History, during the last few centuries, has been rather kind to the Anglo-Saxon and other western European races as evidenced in the civilization that we have today. Other races and cultures have alternately suffered and benefited from this success. We are at a point in human history now, however, where there is no longer any reason others should suffer as the result of the "advance of western civilization." (Though, of course, many do, and many more will.) Indeed, the evolving enlightenment, and tendency towards social justice for all, that we see today, is the direct result of that advance. Our forefathers may have killed, conquered, and enslaved, but their descendants are now engaged in constructing, in partnership with the formerly abused, a society in which there can be justice for all. Of course, we are still a flawed species, and perfection an ever unattainable ideal, but we are, at least to some degree, moving in the right direction. In other significant ways, we are moving exactly in the wrong direction in my opinion. And it is this which will lead to future conflict.
Inquisitor: Don't you feel that we, as whites, have a collective guilt and a debt to pay for our history of enslavement, and persecution of other races, particularly to African Americans?
Camden: Perhaps, but culpability for centuries-old deeds doesn't lie with those now living. In a Christian society even those who may have sinned in the past ought to be forgiven upon repentance. In no way am I responsible for anything my forefathers may have done. On the other hand, they are, (collectively) responsible for what we are today as a people and a civilization. What we can and should do is provide justice in the here and now, and in the future, based on equality of the individual. Beyond that, when one delves into the the injustices that have occurred throughout history, there is no end to recrimination and culpability on the part of every race or group. No reparation could possibly atone for historical wrongs. What they would do is perpetuate and widen current societal divisions. Rodney King's simple "Can't we all just get along." is by far a superior appeal than that in favor of unending recriminations and reparations.
If we white Americans should have any collective guilt complex, it should most rightfully be reserved for the the genocide our forefathers pulled off against the original occupants of the lands we now call our own. However, human history has been an unending story of such conquests and genocides. Slavery, in its many forms, has also been a long enduring human institution, only repudiated in the west relatively recently, (an institution which European races certainly have not monopolized). Only recently, in historic terms, since the most recent rounds of conquests, and the attainment of our current global power structure, have we seen fit to admit the error of our former ways and move toward "reform."
Had we become thus enlightened five centuries ago, there would have been no European colonization in Africa, Asia, and the New World. There would have been no United States of America, and no United Nations. (It might even have been a much better, and more interesting, world.) Now the goal is merely to preserve the status quo attained by global plutocrats, and prevent anybody else from doing what our forefathers did, (such as proclaiming independence from their rule). As for African slaves brought to America in chains, the ones that made it alive were often better off than had they remained in Africa. They thrived. That isn't an endorsement of chattel slavery, of course, but merely an unfortunate statement of fact. Africa wasn't, (and still isn't) exactly the cradle of freedom and enlightenment, Afrocentrism notwithstanding. Of course, many will dispute that, I suppose, but there is the glaring fact that not many African Americans wish to return to the land of their roots. Of course, I don't blame African Americans for wanting some reparations. That is normal in this mixed up day and age, in which "sue thy neighbor" has replaced the Golden Rule, and "eye for an eye" religion is gaining on the Christian ethic even in the West.
Inquisitor: You keep mentioning the word Christian. Are you a Christian, and do you subscribe to the idea that this is, or ought to be a Christian nation?
Camden: I consider myself a Christian in that I believe in the basic Christian tenants handed down to us in the New Testament. I identify with Christianity through both personal belief and respect for my family's forbearers, but I'm not a fundamentalist nor dogmatist. I admittedly wouldn't qualify as a member of any established orthodox Christian church. Yes, I believe the Christian concepts of right and wrong were fundamental to the founding principles of our nation and to the success our republic has enjoyed. But, if you don't mind, let's not get into a religious discussion here.
Inquisitor: I'll gladly honor that request. You mentioned the new international economic order, or new world order, a few minutes ago. Is this part of the movement in the right direction?
Camden: Yes, and no. Mostly no. The idealistic justifications for the global village idea are commendable, of course, but the movement of civilization has been commandeered by the forces of corporate greed. I believe we are essentially off-track except perhaps in the realm of the rhetoric of social justice. The forces of Mammon and avarice are working harder and more efficiently than the forces of good. Many with good intentions lend them support, thinking they are supporting a truly high-minded international undertaking which will result in peace and prosperity for everybody on the surface of the earth. In the end, however, I fear we will pay a ghastly price for what I see as our quickly compounding errors. Our own elected representatives respond to, and indeed represent, big capital and Wall Street, rather than the People. They undermine our Constitutional Republic and the Constitution they have each sworn to uphold and defend, in favor of new world order building, (which is far from being a democratic process). The utopia they envision is a corporate utopia for the owners of big capital, not the "common people," and is anathema to the democratic principles, and egalitarianism, our nation, and the alleged agenda of the internationalists, is supposed to stand for. In short, to put it in brutally blunt terms, I believe the peoples of the world are being scammed.
Inquisitor: Then do I correctly deduce that you are anti-capitalist.
Camden: No, not at all. Just as I am anti-bad government, I am also anti bad capitalism. (Communism, i.e., state capitalism, was bad capitalism. So is predatory corporate capitalism, i.e, the kind that has given western capitalism a bad name throughout most of the third world and once made communist anti-capitalist propaganda so appealing.) I am not an anti-capitalist. Yet big capital has much in common with big government. Both government, and capital must be kept on short leashes. The former is a function of the people themselves, and the latter is one of the few legitimate functions of good and limited government. The government has a duty to see that capital does not exploit the people, but rather works to their mutual benefit, as was the case only a very few years ago. There was a time, you know, when what was good for big business, (short of the false benefits of war) was also good for the people. This was before capital was unleashed and encouraged to maximize profits by playing the global wage differential game, pitting American labor against Third World labor in production jobs. There was a good and healthy domestic rivalry between capital and labor as long as capital wasn't free to move the plant to Mexico or Indonesia. The Republican Party was an asset to the nation when it championed the cause of big business when big business was the prime provider of an ever-increasing number of better and better paying jobs. The tide has now turned, and supporting big business has come to mean supporting the run-away flag, to the detriment of the majority of the people. The Democrats were an asset to the nation, in competition with, and complimentary to the GOP, when it represented the productive laboring classes rather than strictly the welfare and non-productive classes.
Capitalism works. But it can only work well, (and by that I mean to the benefit of the whole nation) when controlled through the enlightened regulation of good government—a government that serves the interests of the people through proper representation. It works for the people only when labor is its partner in production. Labor must not only be its prime productive asset, but it's prime customer and the major consumer of its production. Break this bond, and capital becomes a pure predator without public accountability.
I'd also like to point out that encouraging domestic production for export is no substitute for producing for domestic consumption. It facilitates the capital-labor disconnect mentioned above, whereby labor becomes merely a cost of doing business to be cut to the bone. The corporate plantation economies of most Third World nations attest to the fact that export economies do not produce prosperity for the laboring classes. The plantation economies of those Third World nations are now going from the agricultural, (and mining) to industrial, but all the down-sides of the plantation economy remain in place. Now the industrialized plantation economy is coming to the heretofore advanced industrialized nations of the west, insofar as they become export-based economies. And this is what is behind the big push for the compounding increase in world trade sought by the proponents of the global village.
Inquisitor: Then you are against international trade too?
Camden: You would have it that I'm against everything! No, I'm not against international trade. I'm for mutually beneficial trade between consenting nations. What we see today isn't an increase in mutually beneficial trade, but trade for the sake of the bottom line of multi-national corporations able to exploit global wage differentials. It rewards middlemen but tends to short-change, even enslave, labor. It makes no sense to ship industrial products back and forth across the oceans of the world, between nations equally able to produce them. But if it is profitable to capital interests, it will be done. The result, of course, is selective imbalances in trade and selective profiteering and manipulation, as advanced nations, (most particularly the United States) hastening to "give away the store." We see essentially one way trade in cars between Japan and the U.S. as corporate Japan makes cars for the American consumer market. We get some nice Japanese cars while Japan gets rich in American dollars. We have a hugely costly balance of trade deficit, because Japan knows that it wouldn't make any sense to turn around and buy American cars. There would be no real profit in it for their nation—it would be ridiculous. Japan can satisfy its own consumer demand for automobiles and most other manufactured goods. What they need, and do purchase, are raw materials with which to feed their industrial production machine. If it's true that Japanese cars are better than American cars, (which I have never really believed) they'd be doubly crazy to import them. Domestic automobile manufacturers once satisfied our domestic car market very ably, and the nation was a lot better off then, the way I see it. The imported car was once a luxury or novelty item, as with many other imports, enjoyed by wealthy Americans, and it should still be that way. The choices were still there, if you could afford them. We have always been a robust trading nation, and this includes our so-called, isolationist and protectionist years, (during which our economic success astounded the world).
Inquisitor: Still, you would limit the free, or reasonable, choices consumers have today under our free trade policies, wouldn't you? And you would deny the benefits free trade is having in developing nations. It seems to me that you are somewhat selfish and provincial, like all so-called economic or political nationalists. You are an isolationist and a protectionist, I could tell that.
Camden: Selfish and provincial! In truth, I knew that charge was coming. What you seem to imply, it seems to me, is that anything short of willful national economic and strategic suicide is selfish and provincial. We're literally giving away the store the way we are going, and we aren't getting anything but trade deficits and national dependence in return! A nation, at least an economically viable one, is an owner-operated factory and market-place. Every nation should be as politically and economically self-reliant, (that is, independent) as it is possible and practical for it to be. Government is instituted by the consent of the governed, (at least theoretically, under our system) to act on behalf of the owner-operators, (the people) in the areas of foreign policy, international trade, and national defense. The sole purpose of government is protection of one sort or another—for its own people, its borders, and its national sovereignty. If we, as a nation, do not protect our interests—all of our interests—nobody else will. If our national store isn't managed for the benefit of the people, then it will be managed to their detriment! Protectionism is nothing short of protecting our national interests against those who would take advantage. Isolationism isn't even in the picture, as I see it. We have never had what would really be called a true isolationist national policy. What we once aspired to, however, was more or less to mind our own business, and that is good policy for just about anyone, including sovereign nations. Since we got away from that idea, (starting during our first forays into economic imperialism) the size and body-counts of world conflicts have increased dramatically. We have literally helped arm the world—both friend and foe alike. Even now we are engaged in making China our next super-power adversary. Something we insist on doing as we also become increasingly dependent on China's industrial production, with a whooping trade deficit which is an absolute national disgrace.
We began our history as a nation of farmers and shopkeepers—and traders. Our merchant fleet became second to none. We became the world's largest salesman and market during our years of "isolation" and "protection." Industrial progress added Sears and the five & dime chains to our mom & pop economy, and I don't believe there was ever a period when the American people have suffered from a lack of choices in the domestic marketplace—and the middle class prospered as in no other society in the history of mankind. Trade boomed too. Today, of course, trade booms even more. But we are developing a serious lack of choices in our marketplace. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find domestically produced consumer goods in our corporately owned chain-stores. Mom and pop are almost gone, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find good-paying production jobs. The farmer has been largely replaced by an unsustainable export-based agribusiness machine dependent on both imported oil and export markets. Our food self-sufficiency is becoming a myth though we claim to be feeding the world, as our corporate chain groceries fill with foodstuffs imported from "elsewhere." We have willfully gone from national economic independence to near total dependence in a generation, and are fooled into believing that it is a good development.
As for helping to develop the poorer nations of the world, that isn't really a function of the representatives and agents of the American people. In any case, that development is really nothing but an extension of the plantation economy into an even more exploitative industrial mode. Poor workers are weaned away from their traditional livelihoods into sweatshops and factories, in addition to traditional plantations, (which are now often locally controlled) to produce cheaply for the consumers of the Coke-crazed, Wal-Mart and McDonaldized cultures. The only difference between the old imperialistic system and the new one is that many of the up-and-coming predatory capital enterprises are owned by "local" capitalists. But they are just as adept at exploitation as western capital has always been when given the opportunity. The capital, most often, still comes from the same place through international banking conglomerates, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, after being taxed from the workers of the developed nations, (who are being economically disenfranchised, complements of their own governments). Big capital is the only big winner as evidenced in the global bull stock markets, now "correcting" in some areas, to the profit of other capital interests positioned to gain whenever somebody looses or something crashes. (Wall Street may even come in for a surprising wake-up call one of these days).
What Mexico, China, and other developing nations really need are a few Henry Fords to raise the industrial wages in their respective countries as our Ford did here—so that they might earn enough money to purchase their own production rather than be perpetual slaves to export markets. But this won't happen, because their production is almost exclusively ear-marked for export rather than local consumption. And that is where the corporations intend to make their profits for the foreseeable future. There will be pitifully little "rising tide to lift all boats" because their systems aren't geared to that end, and never were. Corruption and flawed government will see that there will be no marked change in the economic condition of most of the people. In any case, international capital is in charge, and the various national governments strictly subservient to it. If they don't go along, they won't even get a development loan, much less a handout or bail-out. Except, maybe, in China, where the government appears determined to continue to run the show, and where plenty of money is literally rolling in from the west. Arming, and upgrading its military technology will undoubtedly continue to be China's main priority—with the probable long-term goal of ending, once and for all, western global hegemony in the region, if not the world.
Inquisitor: Now you are getting a little long-winded. I suppose you have some solutions to our problems as you see them?
Camden: Oh, yes, there are solutions, but none likely to invoked—at least in the short-term. For what it's worth, our Congress, as the representatives of the people, (aside from the people themselves, the vast majority of whom are woefully mis-informed) is in sole possession of the keys to solving our problems. But they have been bought off a long time ago and are unlikely to act on our behalf, even if they had a clue as to what needs to be done. They have got us to where we are today, and will probably continue to be in the pocket of Wall Street and extra-national interests. This is why I like to call them our "mis-representatives." The executive branch of government, particularly the Clinton administration, is also an agent of foreign and capital interests rather than a servant of the people, so there is no hope for relief from that quarter. So it makes little sense to speak of solutions when all the engines of government power are barreling down the wrong track. What I advocate is a re-declaration of Independence, and a re-adoption of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but I know full well that this will not happen very soon.
Inquisitor: Then, the way you see it, there is really no hope?
Camden: There is always hope. But the cards are not stacked in our favor. Meaningful reform is not likely until there is some sort of drastic occurrence which forces Congress to scramble for dear life, such as in the case of a crashing global economy, which we will be unable to escape given the global economic interdependence our mis-representatives and their handlers have so successfully nurtured. The hope is that sanity will somehow be reborn of the ensuing chaos, which could be pretty terrifying. Other than that, the only hope is in the continued application of voodoo economics and doodoo politics, aided by computer technology. Perhaps the reckoning can be postponed, and at least this generation spared the consequences of a century of errors. We have been on the wrong track for far too long for meaningful corrections to be anything less than traumatic. At the core of the problem is our monetary and banking system—a problem source that is never even mentioned these days by anybody not considered a real trouble-maker. But our fiscal problems will never be resolved without it, and true economic stability cannot be hoped for without it.
Inquisitor: Are you a gold-bug too?
Camden: Not really, though gold and silver continue to serve as pretty dependable wealth-storing commodities. The problem with a precious metal monetary standard is that those commodities, their production and availability, can, would be, and always have been, susceptible to control and manipulation by the same plutocrats that largely profit from our current fiat, debt-money, system. The solution to the monetary problem is in finding an honest, scientific, mechanism for money issue—one which does not burden the public with perpetual debt as the bond-issue does. This is not beyond the realm of possibility, except for the depth of entrenchment of the global banking and financial powers. These interests will not give up their monopoly on money and credit issue easily. But our current system is doomed without considerable creative book-keeping corrections in the not-so-distant future. A major global economic shake-up, however, could conceivably be made into an avenue of opportunity for the national governments to assert control of their circulating currencies, and break the historic bonds bankers have held upon them. Only the United States, through its Congress, could accomplish the necessary transition to honest money in today's economically connected world. The solution would necessarily be global in scope, due to the current state of global economic interdependence. There would be national currencies and a system of international credit largely independent of them.
National, or "central" banks should be truly "nationalized," (i.e., divorced from private commercial interests) and currencies issued by respective governments through them. The volume of currency and credit availability would be determined scientifically on the basis of population, its basic needs, and its productive potential. Private banks, of course, would retain their function in the distribution and storage of currencies and credit, but without the powers conveyed by our current fractional reserve system. Rather than public debt-multiplying bond-issues, new money would be issued into circulation at or near the points of production. Farmers' loans would be in the form of almost direct currency issue, with interest rates that reflect no more than the cost of the paper involved in the transactions. The same for all businesses and industries. Government and military payrolls, (as well as Social Security payments) kept in line with civil industry and responsible limits imposed by a hopefully enlightened Congress, (answerable to the people) would literally amount to the direct issue of currency into circulation. The need for direct federal taxation, and the IRS, would evaporate. There would be no bond issues for the purpose of financing government at the federal level. All taxation, with the exception of tariffs and duties on imports, would become a prerogative of State and local governments under local representation. Outstanding Federal obligations, such as previous bond issues, would be honored with new newly issued currency, in the case of individuals and domestic corporations, and international currency credits in the case of foreign governments and corporations.
Inquisitor: You seem to be proposing a total upset of the national and global banking and financial establishment.
Camden: No, I 'm not proposing an upset, I think an upset is coming anyway, sooner or later. What I propose is a system of honest money, whereby the public is not perpetually burdened with having to pay rent on its own outstanding money supply and the extension of his national credit without his consent. A system whereby the various nations of the world can re-establish national independence and provide for the welfare of their populations according to their productive potential—a potential heretofore hindered by the global financial system. With the system we have now, everybody, including the poorest working people of the Third World, are saddled with debt which must be perpetually serviced before individual or national income is realized. Multi-national corporations, and tyrants, get the rake-off and assured profit, along with the financial interests that back them, and labor gets a few crumbs if its lucky. Often, this debt precludes even the possibility of a better than living wage or a nation's ability to remain or regain solvency and independence. Of course, I know that I haven't got all the solutions, but I don't expect to be tapped as a future economic advisor to Washington in any case.
Inquisitor: What arrogance you display in speaking, in such an apparently authoritative tone and manner, on such weighty subjects! I dare say, your credentials scarcely qualify you to express such far-reaching, or should I say, far-fetched, ideas. Why, if I didn't know better, and have a little savvy of my own, for I do have a degree in education, you might have even convinced me that you know something about such matters.
Camden: Frankly, I'm somewhat surprised you give me that much credit. As for opinions, fortunately, the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution is one of the least threatened of our rights at this point in time—and no special qualifications are indicated therein. Opinions, as they say, are at least as common as feet—almost everybody's got a couple. Sound opinions on political and economic subjects are a great deal rarer. If you feel my ideas are unsound, be my guest. Your right to express your own won't be abridged here. I'm all ears, if you'd care to.
Inquisitor: Okay. I will. Personally, Camden, I think your kind are a threat to human civilization. You represent everything that is wrong with mankind and are representative of the charlatans who have caused so much human suffering throughout history. I see no hope for you, and no point in continuing this interview. I look upon you and the publication you write for as a threat to society, and I hope you'll publish this opinion in it. Fortunately, I trust that none of your ideas are likely to be adopted by anybody in a position of national or global power. Thank God for small favors!
Camden: Yea, right. The pleasure, I suppose, has been all mine. At least we apparently share a faith in God.
Inquisitor: Don't try to tarnish me with that brush. Good-bye.
Camden
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