"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]

Jack,

I agree with the exception of the Arabs keeping Mathematics alive during the Dark Ages when the Church rules supreme and basically killed anyone who disagreed with their Dogmatic Tenets of the Faith. In fact I personally don't believe there was ever a period where Church teachings and Scientific discovery worked together. Although I may be wrong, I also believe that Humanities basic traits have not and will not change from what they are.

[Thomas Vincent Coffey]

The Scholastics, who were Catholic Priests, were also mathematicians and  scientists; including Copernicus, Albert Magnus, Roger Bacon, Robert Groosteste, William of Ockham; among hundreds more. The wisdom of Greece and Rome was nurtured and re-invigorated in the great Universities at Cordoba, Louvain, Paris, Lisbon, Milan, Vienna; among others, which set the stage for the Renaissance.

The Arabs had about as much impact on the cultivation of knowledge as they have at present and the epithet Dark Ages is an ignorant slander.

[M]

Thomas,

You forget it was a Persian that first explained the rules for algebra during the dark ages. The word "algebra" is derived from the Arabic word Al-Jabr, and this comes from the treatise written in 830 AD/CE by the medieval Persian mathematician, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, entitled, in Arabic Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala, which can be translated as The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing. The treatise provided for the systematic solution of linear andquadratic equations.  

Granted forms of Algebra go back to Babylon as the oldest known form.

As to the rest of your statement, yes they were, but, they were only allowed to teach what Church Dogma allowed them to teach. Or, did you forget what they did to Galileo? Also look what the early church did to Hypatia thus setting back humanity Centuries.

[Thomas Vincent Coffey]

OK, give the Persian his due.

Despite the Galileo sob story, advanced by those w/an ax to grind about the Church of Rome, Sacred Doctrine/Dogma has no inherent conflict w/Mathematics and Science and never did. NEVER. Both seek revealed Truth from different perspectives. Galileo's argument w/the Catholic Church was self inflicted and attributable almost exclusively to his abrasive know it all persona and big mouth, a hereditary trait according to his biographers. Bacon, a Priest. was at least as controversial as Galileo and got along just fine w/the Curia.

While Galileo remained a genius, perhaps he learned something about himself; which is what all need to do from time to time!.

As for Hypathia's death setting humanity back centuries, what the hell are you talking about?????

[M]

Thomas,

I disagree with your remarks about Galileo, the church kept him on a short string because he was explaining that the Church's Earth Centric position was incorrect and that went directly to the heart of the dogmatic tenets the church held and taught at that time. I even remember the Church taught that bathing was a sin at one point and the result was the "Stench of Piety".

As for Hypathia,l Hypatia of Alexandria was the first woman to make a substantial contribution to the development of mathematics. She was the teacher that rediscovered the planets moved around the sun. Hypatia came to symbolize learning and science which the early Christians identified with paganism. In 412 Cyril (later St Cyril) became patriarch of Alexandria. However the Roman prefect of Alexandria was Orestes and Cyril and Orestes became bitter political rivals as church and state fought for control. Hypatia was a friend of Orestes and this, together with prejudice against her philosophical views which were seen by Christians to be pagan, led to Hypatia becoming the focal point of riots between Christians and non-Christians. Hypatia. A few years later, according to one report, Hypatia was brutally murdered by the Nitrian monks who were a fanatical sect of Christians who were supporters of Cyril. According to another account (by Socrates Scholasticus) she was killed by an Alexandrian mob under the leadership of the reader Peter. What certainly seems indisputable is that she was murdered by Christians who felt threatened by her scholarship, learning, and depth of scientific knowledge. This event seems to be a turning point. 

From Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica;Whatever the precise motivation for the murder, the departure soon afterward of many scholars marked the beginning of the decline of Alexandria as a major center of ancient learning. In addition to the joint work with her father, we are informed by Suidas that Hypatia wrote commentaries on;  Diophantus's Arithmetica, on Apolloinus's Conicsand on Ptolemy's astronomical works. The passage in Suidas is far from clear and most historians doubt that Hypatia wrote any commentaries on Ptolemy other than the works which she composed jointly with her father. therefore, she is one of the giants you have credited in your Classical world theme, in fact a major giant. So don't intimate the Church did not actively suppress Scientific knowledge for it's own purposes of control and in doing so held back the advancement of knowledge if it did not agree with Church Dogma, Bacon born circa 1210, ( actually a Franciscan Friar one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by Aristotle and by later scholars such as the  Arab scientist Alhazen ) generally agreed with Church Dogma and got permission or at least tacit approval of the Church to modernize the Dogma.

[Thomas Vincent Coffey]

M w/respect; I completely reject two of your assertions, namely;

* that the catalyst for the punch up between Galileo and Rome involved an issue of Doctrine/Dogma, since it most emphatically did not.

As a smart lad like you is certainly aware, Doctrinal matters requiring the Papal intervention of Infallibility arise but rarely, always being a response to heretical nostrums contravening Faith and Morals.The argument between Galileo and Rome involved Perception and Planetary Motion. Had cooler heads prevailed on both sides, it would never have become a fight. My assertion is that the larger share of the blame belongs to Galileo, notwithstanding his genius, because of his 'my way or the highway' persona. The Church of Rome, being the religious leader and representative of the 'other worldly aspirations' for some 100+ million souls in mid-16th century Europe, had to be eternally mindful of the impact of revolutionary ideas on the psyche of the faithful; a reality Galileo was oblivious to.

*that Hypathia's murder; those responsible being a matter of opinion; set humanity back centuries.

In 415, the Western Roman Empire, although in decline, still mattered while its Eastern Empire was ascendant. Over the next 300 years the European Tribes laid the foundations for the nations that evolved, converted to Roman Catholicism and repelled the Muslims in the Balkans, Spain and France; never losing a beat. Humanity was hardly set back by her sad end.

[M]

Thomas,

Considering that until the first Vatican council in 1869 Papal Infallibility was not dogmatically defined so I prefer to believe that both sides were equally pig headed for political and philosophical reasons, Church Dogmatic Tenets not withstanding.. As far as your assumption about Hypathia's murder, I believe you misread what exactly the stated decline was. It was the movement away from Alexandria as the center of science and philosophy, and learning. As some believe, it was because the Nitrian Monks were responsible for destroying the Alexandrian Library scrolls, and the resultant loss of it's written knowledge because they considered that knowledge pagan learnings deleterius to the church's teachings. That plus the Corruption of the Roman State and the division into two empires with two emperor's also had a deleterious effect on the science and recorded knowledge with the Church being the only comprehensive accumulation of knowledge and hindering advancements that would tend to lessen it's control both over the thrones and over the faithful.

[Thomas Vincent Coffey]

M.

Kudos to you for your soundly articulated counter-arguments; both intelligent and passionate.

Peace!

[M]

Thomas,

Thank you, it's truly a pleasure exchanging ideas with you as well. I look forward to debating many more intelligent, incisive and differing viewpoints with you in the future.

Respectfully,

M

[charles royer]

A new world?

"For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican's yearbook.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/vatican-islam-has-overtaken-catholicism/