"A Nation Needs Powerful, Wealthy, Ambitious Men"

[M]

Reprinted with permission of author;

"A Nation Needs Powerful, Wealthy, Ambitious Men"

from "In Defense of Rural America"

By Ron Ewart, President

National Association of Rural Landowners (www.narlo.org)

and nationally recognized author and speaker on freedom and property rights issues for over 10 years

© Copyright Sunday, April 24, 2016 - All Rights Reserved

 

Our last two articles, "An Establishment Always Evolves Into An All-powerful Oligarchy" and "Men In Dark Suits, Blue Smoke and Backroom Deals", ripped the hide off of powerful, wealthy, ambitious men and for good reason. Still, having done so, it must be abundantly obvious to anyone with half an intellect that the huddled masses and the poor don’t build anything. So if it wasn’t for those same powerful, wealthy, ambitious men, steel wouldn’t have been made, skyscrapers, bridges, locomotives and ships would have not been built, oil would not have been refined into gasoline, fuel oil, paints, resins and nylon stockings, and a largely untamed land would have not been tamed. And if it weren’t for the bold financiers who took the huge risks to fund those ventures, none of it would have been possible.

 

The days of the railroad and land barons of the latter half of the 1800’s and into the early 1900’s was a picture of good and evil working together to build a nation. America grew at an unprecedented rate during this time under the flag of freedom. It seems that no matter what a man could dream up, he could bring it to fruition in this great land, if he was bold, brave, ambitious, a little greedy and sometimes ruthless.

 

Railroads crisscrossed the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific and to all points on the compass, built out of the steel Andrew Carnegie created in his smelters, smelters fired by the almost un-limited coal that lay under the ground for anyone with the courage to dig it up. The railroad and the "Iron Horse" became the conduit to passenger people and freight all over America, on a ribbon of steel rails and crossties. Nevertheless, it was no easy task. The railroad builders battled Indians, the weather, landowners and the land itself. Routes for the railroad right-of-way became political battles between states, towns and townships. If these powerful men didn’t border on ruthless, the railroad would have never been built.

 

John D. Rockefeller turned crude oil into the fuel to power our early cars, ships and light our lamps. Westinghouse gave us alternating current generators, created by the genius inventor, Nikola Tesla. Westinghouse and Tesla gave us light at night from light bulbs created by the prolific inventor, Thomas Edison. Charles Goodyear, a self-taught indigent chemist, gave us vulcanized rubber. Samuel Morse gave us the telegraph and his assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse Code. Ford gave us the assembly line and the car and expanded our freedom to reach out across the land at faster and faster speeds. The horse and horse-drawn buggy, wagon and stagecoach became the victim of the railroad and the car. J. P. Morgan, as ruthless as he was, provided the funds for many of these risky ventures. At one point Morgan even bailed out the federal government.

 

America needed these powerful men to take it from a wilderness, agrarian society to a civilized nation, all the while increasing the standard of living of every American. Our wealth allowed us to become the most powerful nation on earth. Our wealth and our growing standard of living were the envy of every other nation on earth and still are today.

 

But with the good, came the evil. Workers were viciously exploited, leading to unions. Landowners were run over as if they weren’t there. Suppliers were ripped off. The land was raped. To stop the railroad and land barons, violence broke out in the form of land wars, riots, robbery and sabotage.

 

Miners and loggers took the resources from the land and left it scarred and ruined. Hydraulic mining tore the land to pieces and sluiced it down into streams, rivers and lakes, poisoning them. Loggers took the giant trees and left the forest floor littered with branches and smaller trees that were in the way when the big ones came crashing down. After a dry summer, the forest floor turned into tinder dry fuel for out-of-control, explosive forest fires.

 

To stem the tide of these no-rules, free-for-all industrial and land barons, mining companies and loggers, government was forced to pass laws. Now we are not a fan of laws and regulations but when a group of people harm other people and the land on a grand scale, laws become necessary. To slow the industrial barons down, anti-trust laws were passed and monopoly corporations were broken up. Even so, powerful, wealthy and ambitious men find ways around laws and nothing has changed. It has just gotten more subtle and secretive.

 

In one of our articles a while back we wrote: "When your vision is clouded by an irrational obsession, the first things to　leave your soul are honor, morality and virtue." If powerful, wealthy, ambitious men are obsessed with being powerful, wealthy and ambitious, in most cases their honor, morality and virtue are crowded out of their soul, if they had any in the first place.

 

And so it was with the railroad and land barons of yesteryear and so it is today with the men and women of the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, every politician and every powerful, wealthy and ambitious man or woman who seek only wealth and power for wealth and power’s sake. If nothing stands in their way, as was the case during the industrial revolution and just as much as it does today, then the powerful get their way. Our representatives can blunt the power of these three groups but only if the people put pressure on those representatives to do so. The problem arises from the fact that so many of our representatives are card-carrying members of these three groups.

 

The only thing with enough power to stop them is the people themselves. If the people fear the powerful and wealthy industrialist, banker, politician, or bureaucrat, or they don’t care what the powerful do, then the people can get kings, dictators, oligarchies, corruption and slavery in return. In that event, the people get what they deserve.

 

The hard truth is, without honor in the people, in businessmen and women, or in politicians, a nation is doomed to burn to the ground from the fuel of its own corruption. We stand on the precipice of that failure today.

 

What has happened to America and our Constitutional Republic?　 What catalyst or disease transformed politicians into men and women who have become ruthless and devoid of honor?　 No, not all men are devoid of honor, but way too many of them are.　 Why have the principles of freedom and liberty become passé, out-of-date, or just plain irrelevant?　 How is it we have morphed into the false loyalty of　"my party, right or wrong, my party."　 That's Nazi stuff, not American.　 What on earth possessed us to "spit" on the foundation of our liberties, in favor of what ...... Security?　Comfort? Entertainment?　　Have we　lost our collective minds?

　

Why do so many Americans think it is perfectly OK to cheat on auto, fire, or medical claims to insurance companies?　 And we wonder why insurance premiums are so high!　 Why do we lie on employment or loan applications?　　 Why do we engage in the consumption of illegal drugs that get people killed on both　sides of our southern border?　 It is Americans consuming illegal drugs that drive the violent drug wars, corruption and the killings in Mexico and America.　

　

The reason for all these things is that many of us have lost　our honor.　 A large segment of our American population　has lost it by succumbing to the siren call of a "free" lunch from government, in exchange for their votes,　when we all know　the "lunch"　isn't free.　　The politicians have lost honor because, in a representative government, politicians are a reflection of the people who vote them into office.

　

If we do not value honor, integrity and honesty in ourselves, we will not value　those very same qualities　in our leaders.　 In today's world, those men and women without honor, integrity and honesty　continue to be elected to public office.　 Therefore, by our own choice, we allow dishonor and dishonesty to perpetuate itself. Along those same lines we allow powerful, wealthy and ambitious men to deceive us and run all over us and herd us into pens like cattle and sheep. We are cajoled and manipulated by the media, academia, the public schools and our institutions of government that collude with powerful, wealthy and ambitious men.

 

Have we become a nation of sheep that does not think for themselves and cannot recognize a wolf when they see it? Have we become so numb to reality by drowning in a glutinous diet of entertainment and self-gratification? Does liberty mean so little that we would sacrifice it out of fear and intimidation of those with power over us? Are we so afraid of the bully that we would let him rule us with deception, propaganda, distortions, lies and sometimes force?

 

Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot expect our politicians, businessmen, or union members to be free of corruption if the American people themselves are corrupt, or hopelessly apathetic.　 If the American people are without honor, it is quite likely that those they elect to office will also be without honor.　 It is folly, if not just plain stupid, to expect our representatives to be more perfect than those that put them in office.

 

Nevertheless, having said all that, a nation still needs powerful, wealthy and ambitious men and women to create, finance, invest, invent, market and build things. The trick is to keep their power, their wealth and their ambition in check. Laws can’t do that alone. Only honorable people who care about their freedom can do that. After over two centuries of trying, we are failing miserably. As a result, our identity as a free nation and a people and our very sovereignty are in grave peril.

 

Over the last 10 years we have written over 500 articles on freedom, liberty and property rights through our weekly column. Many of those articles touched on honor, morality and virtue and how they are irreplaceable elements to a free society and maintaining liberty, not in a religious context but from a purely pragmatic viewpoint. You can find those articles on our website by title and date HERE, that is of course, if you care about such things as freedom, liberty, property rights, honor, morality and virtue.

 

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NOTE:  The foregoing article represents the opinion of the author and is not necessarily shared by the owners, representatives, employees, or agents of the publisher.

 

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Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property rights issues and author of this weekly column, "In Defense of Rural America", is the president of the National Association of Rural Landowners (NARLO) (http://www.narlo.org) an advocate and consultant for urban and rural landowners and a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State.  He can be reached for comment at: [e-mail].

[M]

T.A.N.S.T.A.A.F.L.

If Americans would embrace that concept once again many if not most of our problems would go away.

What does it mean you ask? 

It means; 

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!

[Thomas Vincent Coffey]

A strong demurral as Ewart may mean well yet his message is a major muddle.

We have plenty of powerful, wealthy and ambitious men aka, the rich and famous.

Instead what we need are the prudent and wise, who are virtually non-existent in our time.

One absurd attitude of we moderns is our brainless conceit that we are better than all before us because of all we possess and have achieved; a notion so embarrassingly preposterous, it is beyond breathtaking. Home truth is real simple.

We are mere dwarfs standing on the shoulders of the massive giants of antiquity who created our civilization.

Two timelines from History:

* Greece and Rome spanned some 1500+ years while we are a tad past 200.

* Some 5000+ years ago, Mesopotamia and China ushered in organized culture and society, when the economic catalysts were Land and Labor. In contrast, the Industrial Revolution is effectively some 200 years of age; or a mere 4% of the time since the first nations. And yet they managed w/o all the stuff we have, the poor things.

When we produce an Aristotle, a Cicero, a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo or a Mozart; please let me know.

[charles royer]

Ah! "The Renaissance men"! Now we're stuck with Chomsky & May?

[Thomas Vincent Coffey]

Indeed Charles! Good one!!!

[M]

Thomas,

I believe that you are confusing things. It has been said by my Jesuit professors many years ago that if you had a time machine and traveled back to 1000 BC and moved forward to 1000 AD, you would find very little changes. However starting in the 18th Century and moving forward to today there has been an exponential movement forward in material things but the same little movement in our basic emotional attitudes. If anything we are more arrogant and let's say crotchety now than we ever have been as the cross section of the human race is concerned. there has been little to no movement away from the Oligarchy attitudes of the ruling classes and as a matter of fact it has even increased. Some call that human nature, I call it Hubris mixed with rampant greed and an overriding desire to control everything that happens. Rome and Greece had those characteristics too.

[Thomas Vincent Coffey]

M, my sincere condolences concerning your tutors.The Augustinians (notwithstanding Luther), the Benedictines, the Dominicans, the Franciscans; among many Orders; were thinkers and teachers; while the Jesuits were and remain, activists and radicals.

Case in point is Pope Frankie, raised in Buenos Aires pre-WW2 when Juan Peron was preaching the goodness of socialism to the Argentine masses.

As to what I'm confused about, I'm confused???

The Enlightenment was just another heresy created by the French Intelligentsia, who were viscerally hostile to tradition; whether it be derivative of the Natural Law w/ its this worldly focus or the Ten Commandments w/ its other worldly focus.

.

[M]

Thomas,

For K through 12 I had Dominicans up to the 8th grade then Benedictines up to the 12th.I also had two aunts that were Nuns as well.

I do agree that we would be better off if we had Statesmen representing us, but that ship sailed long ago, and the people themselves are responsible for it because they did not do their required diligence in keeping their representatives honest.

My point was that the longevity of Rome and Greece would not hold the same time frame given our modern society where the scholastic information is expanding exponentially or maybe a better word is geometrically. 

Look at what has happened in the cradle of Roman civilization since WWII. Look at what has happened to Greece in the same time period. I doubt if the old civilizations would have lasted as long as we have given the same rate of change in information and scientific advancements.

The real problem is the human condition of Rapacious greed and lust for ever more power.

[kevin kiernan]

There is that magic word again...GREED. ..There is a reason why I always harp on that...And that is that it is the root of almost all evil. Along with it`s cousin selfish, which has the same generics.These impulses are tools of the devil. To understand that all of us are attacked by these two impulses can help in weaponizing  against them. I try to call it out when I see it. And use faith to not allow it to become part of me. Or at least know when I have used these impulses.Also, giving tithe`s helps one understand how to control these two demonic impulses. 

[Thomas Vincent Coffey]

Emphatically disagree. Greed and lust, while certainly negative traits, are totally beside the point and hardly causative of our obvious decline.

Assuming we have more 'information' than the Ancients, so what??? The vast bulk of this 'information' is gossip. hearsay, rumor and innuendo. Case in point is the horse manure supporting climate change/global warming. Quantity is irrelevant; quality is. But in order to obtain quality one must have discernment in order to to grasp the difference between sense and nonsense. It all comes back to wisdom which the Ancients had in spades and is the reason they survived and thrived for some 15 centuries.

The Ancients were anchored by the Natural Law which rejected cant and sentimentality; seeing the world as it has always been and man as its eternally imperfect creature. But since the French Enlightenment, we have been in thrall to pious blather and sanctimonious malarkey.

Case in point is the politically correct and feel good cliche' that."All men are equal"; beloved by our political assholery. Until we have leaders that publicly reject such brainless untruths; we will continue on the path to oblivion.

And more powerful, wealthy and ambitious men won't make an iota of difference!

[M]

Thomas,

Do you mean general information, or Scientific advancement?  As to the Ancient's information then as now superstition played a part in what was accepted. Example Solon who tried to legislate against decline in archaic Athens, and who's methods failed, cited the same things in general that are still being cited today with the same results. It's my postulation that Greed and Lust for power money etc. are the same basic human factors that makes those logical attempts doomed to failure. The Pious blather and sanctimonious malarkey are the factors of the ancients that had Aesop killed over his morality plays because he made the blasphemous postulation of intelligent speaking animals.

To bring up the modern Global Warming statement, there is actually some global warming going on. however the reasoning that human activities are being used to determine it's cause is fallacious. The true cause is the sun cycles and they have been well documented over time but have been thrown into disrepute by the Greed and Lust of the few who will benefit from adhering the incorrect causative factor as a way to control nations and people.

As far as the "All men are created equal" that statement was meant to signify EQUAL under the law, not equal in abilities. 

[Thomas Vincent Coffey]

* As for scientific advancement, our  predecessors, the Greeks postulated and proved the Laws of Mathematics and Physics that govern the world to this day; among them Archimedes, Thales, Euclid, Pythagoras, Anaxamander; among dozens. In contrast, the most ballyhooed accomplishments of our modern era; Evolution and Relativity; remain unproven Theories. So much for our vaunted superiority. As for superstition masquerading as truth, just turn on the nightly news.

*The wise Greeks understood the reality that Nature is cyclical and that the Universe is between 4.5 and 14.0 billion years old, depending upon what yardstick is applied. As such, change is inherent be it climate or otherwise. Our modern hysteria is politically driven horse manure, the currency of political assholes.

*All men are not equal, never were and never will be; even under the law; another pious platitude. Each of us has a soul which defines us as unique; the astonishing miracle of Creation. When we produce thousands of Aristotles, equality will have arrived.

[jack ludwig]

It is true Thomas who you attribute scientific advancement to, but it wasn't until 1875 thru 1950 that most of our scientific advancements took place, before that very few even understood the Laws of Mathematics and Physics or how to apply them to improve mankind. Most of the technology we enjoy today was created during this 75 year period mostly by European and Asian cultures.