Half a century ago, in the inaugural issue of the journal,
Orbis: A Quarterly Journal of World Affairs, its founding editor, Robert
Strausz-Hupe, published a seminal article entitled "The Balance of
Tomorrow." This article in 1957 laid the foundation for what later became
known as Neo-Conservatism, based on a fearsome forecast of chaos in the world
toward the end of the twentieth century after the collapse of Communism.
Although Professor Strausz-Hupe posited moral superiority as the ultimate
strength of America, he developed the doctrine that the only way to counter the
population explosion, totalitarian extremism, and the threat of nuclear
proliferation in the Third World would be to impose a New World Order through an
American monopoly of military might.
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> He was right in his extremely far-sighted forecast for the
future of the world, including his assumption that Communism would implode in
his lifetime, but his prescription of unilateral military preemption as the only
means to preserve the peace in the interests of America has served only to
increase the threats that the NeoCon policies were intended to overcome.
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> Strausz-Hupe's choice of peace through power is a losing
paradigm in the cause of peace, prosperity, and freedom. The intellectual
H-bomb in the pursuit of global peace today is the paradigm of compassionate
justice. Unfortunately, in recent years this concept has been foreign to both
of America's major political parties.
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> Indeed, we are in the middle of a Fourth World War against
totalitarian extremists with potential access to weapons of mass destruction,
but countering fire with fire is not the best way to win. Furthermore, fighting
on the defensive is a sure path to defeat.
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> The real issue in the Election Year 2008 is which party is best
suited by origin and tradition to promote justice both at home and abroad in
order to overcome the injustices that cause alienation, hopelessness, extremism,
hatred, and destruction. We worry about the balance of power today, but we
should worry more about the balance of justice both today and tomorrow.
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> The issue is which paradigm will triumph, the paradigm of
post-modernist totalitarianism or the traditionalist paradigm of divine
revelation, natural law, and human reason. The traditionalist thought of
America's Founders combines these three interdependent sources of human
responsibilities and rights into a single paradigm of transcendent justice.
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> The more specific issue right now is which paradigm will triumph
within each of the major political parties in America. The issue is not whether
a successful civilization in the modern world should provide free health care,
free education, and good retirement benefits for every citizen. Clearly, it
should. But these three tasks are not the job of government. The best solution
is to get the government out of the way, because reliance on governmental
attempts to promote justice may end up by turning America into a socialist,
totalitarian state.
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> The macro-economic path to justice was pioneered by Abraham
Lincoln who was the real founder of the Republican Party. Building on James
Madison's and Thomas Jefferson's conviction that widespread property
ownership is the key to political freedom, Lincoln introduced the Homestead Act,
which provided free land to every citizen who was willing to build on this
capital asset. This sparked the great American economic boom that turned
America within a few decades into a world economic powerhouse.
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> In the modern world, the principal source of wealth is still
capital, but the key now is not who will own land but who will own the capital
embodied in America's modern economy. The critical issue in planning for
the future half a century from now is whether we can introduce a Capital
Homestead Act to broaden capital ownership as a universal human right in America
and as the key to marginalize terrorism by making America a model for the world?
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> The blueprint for real change has been developed in great detail
over the years by the Center for Economic and Social Justice, which was founded
in 1984 to advise President Ronald Reagan on how to implement it. He spelled it
out in his various writings, but failed to follow through. See the relevant
documents at www.cesj.org and in its book, Capital Homesteading for Every
Citizen.
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> The strategic key is the concept of pure credit, which was
legislated in Article 13 of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. This was intended
to provide money to jumpstart economic enterprises beyond what was possible
using only the pool of past savings available in the market. The most ambitious
enterprise, capital homesteading, would provide every U.S. citizen at birth with
$7,000 and the same amount every year to invest, subject to careful regulations,
in productive enterprises, so that dividends would provide a good income
throughout life, in addition to salaries and wages, and the capital asset at
retirement would be worth at least $600,000, enough to provide a good retirement
whenever one wants to retire.
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> Both parties in America in the Year 2000 call for change,
because experiments during the 20th century in both totalitarian socialism and
oligarchical capitalism have failed. The Democrats call for "change,"
but they go no farther than to call for tweeking the bankrupt system of today.
They might argue that governmental palliatives to reduce the pain of a bankrupt
economic system are safer, but maintaining the existing system is not change.
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> The best and safest way to support the universal human right to
justice in a capital intensive economy is to broaden individual capital
ownership in a system based on private property ownership and free markets as
the most powerful tools for both economic and political self-determination.
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> The bottom line of real change is simple. Whoever controls
money and credit controls economic power, and whoever controls the wealth in
society controls the government. Rather than instituting federal government
programs to take care of the people, which means bribing them so they will not
revolt and stealing money by transferring it from property owners to the
propertyless, the people should reduce the role of government to only three
areas, namely, money, domestic security, and national defense.
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> Fundamental institutional change is possible, but the only party
that might have the courage to implement it may be the Republican Party. First,
however, the new Republican leaders must recapture the Party from the NeoCon
fascists who have hijacked it. John McCain's track record shows that he may
have the courage and backbone to do this. His greatest moment of courage was
his decision to appoint Sarah Palen to help lead the team, because he knows that
he will need her commitment to principle and her proven guts to accomplish what
the Founders of America considered to be its divine destiny as a model of
justice for the world.
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