21st Century Georgics: An Introduction
July 29, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · 4 Comments
A key factor in maintaining freedom is sustainable economic forms. Are you maintaining freedom through the financial principles and practices you are using? Have American families adopted the economic forms necessary for the preservation of a free people?
The average American household pays over 34.5% of every dollar earned to interest payments. Forget about the taxes — that is serious bondage! Our system has become top heavy, threatening our economic solvency as a nation and necessitating large government bailouts to offset their blunders. When a government is forced to tax its people heavily to keep economic centers of capital from collapsing, how can we expect it to reduce in size? To force such a thing is tantamount to economic collapse.
We have allowed our wealth to centralize and grow in the hands of OTHERS. We have given them our money and the control of it for the “magic of compound interest” and then turned around and borrowed from them with a price.
Families are the foundation of American stability and economic growth, and it is time for families to regain real control of the resources of the economy. What do I suggest? We obviously cannot steal all of the money and put it in our families’ accounts! No, I am suggesting that we have all of the resources we need, and they flow through our hands day after day, and we relinquish control of them day after day. This is because we do not understand money; or, more importantly, we do not understand economy.
The Roman Poet Virgil wrote The Georgics in 29 BC. The concept of “Georgics” that came out of this poem was widely debated and discussed in the founding era of our country. The word basically means “to work the land.”
In early spring-tide, when the icy drip
Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr’s breath
Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then ’tis time;
Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,
And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.
That land the craving farmer’s prayer fulfils,
Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;
Ay, that’s the land whose boundless harvest-crops
Burst, see! the barns.
It was felt by many of our Founders that this connection to the land, to hard work, and the dependence on God that is pre-supposed when seeds are planted, had a profound effect of building an independent and free people — especially when coupled with the other Foundations of Freedom.
Up until 100 years ago, 97% of Americans worked the land with plows — they were farmers. Short of a massive catastrophe, that isn’t going to happen in our time. What can be done in our day to bring the Family Farm — or at least its principles — back to life?
We must first understand Georgics. In the coming weeks I will be posting several articles outlining the basic tenets of Georgic Economics, with links to sites where you can learn how to establish a rebirth of freedom in your family through Georgic principles and forms.
American families must become independent centers of the U.S. economy if our liberties are to be preserved. I am calling for a regeneration of organic, financial systems centered in and controlled by America’s families.
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
The Enemy Within
January 18, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · Leave a Comment
While our nation is struggling to protect itself from terrorism, another enemy just as dangerous to our freedom is almost imperceptibly enslaving us from within. This sirenic enemy is not human but it manifests itself in the material things we use every day of our lives. It is our custom homes, our SUVs, our new furniture and clothes, our big-screen TV’s and our computers.
This insidious enemy of our freedom is all of these things — bought on credit.
According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, there was one bankruptcy filed for every 73 households in 2003, a new record and a 99% increase since 1993. The Federal Reserve indicates that household debt hit $8.9 billion nationally in 2003, also a record high relative to disposable income. Americans now spend $1.22 for every dollar they earn.
What is the difference between a family with two wage earners struggling to pay off the credit cards, mortgage, and car payments, and the slave toiling under chains? It’s true that the family simply enjoys a higher standard of living than the slave. So is that what America has been reduced to; prostituting our freedom for material consumption?
It’s also true that the slave doesn’t have a choice for freedom, which is precisely what makes our situation so pathetic; we are not being placed in bondage externally, we are choosing our own slavery.
Talk to any red-blooded, flag-waving American and he’ll tell you that America is the most free country in the world, even as he calls his wife to tell her to do another balance transfer on the credit cards. He’ll point to our economic prosperity as proof that we are the greatest country in the world, without realizing that our prosperity is mostly a credit-induced facade, a house of cards ready to fall at the first sign of weakening faith. He’ll abuse the political freedoms that he claims to cherish by voting himself yet another material benefit, happily provided by power-hungry politicians who are more than willing to spur on the artificial economy by inducing more easy credit in exchange for votes.
It matters not whether we are conquered from without by terrorists or communists, or from within by falling prey to the siren of debt-induced materialism. Either way we are in bondage. Our Constitution does not provide us our freedom; it simply provides an external structure that allows us to choose internally to be free or not. It simply gives us the opportunity of freedom.
So if you’re a freedom-loving patriot who is ready to fight and die for America, land of the free, home of the brave, don’t flaunt your red, white, and blue flag on your brand new truck purchased on credit. Prove your patriotism by living within your means. Let your financial statement validate your love of liberty.
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
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