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http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_paul_rye_071122_dissing_the_fed_and_.htmIn a recent article, Army Improperly Awarded $150 Billion KBR Contract, a writer concluded, “Travesties such as this are only compounded by the immense debt created by this war, and the fact that our children will be paying it off for decades.” The second link was to an article intensely critical of the Federal Reserve, “Who’s Responsible for the National Debt?” A few weeks later, the same writer went overboard trying to ridicule Ron Paul and his followers for, among other things, wanting to get rid of the Federal Reserve.
“Who’s Responsible for the National Debt” explains how the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 provided the means for government to sell generations of Americans into slavery to the national debt. And yet, the writer went bonkers anyway, calling Ron Paul an extremist and a kook, for wanting to abolish the Federal Reserve, and horrors, because an alternative currency coin dealer, Liberty Dollar, put the presidential candidate’s face on some of its coins. What are we to make of people who rail against the very things that Ron Paul does but call him a kook for proposing to do something about it?
The way I understand people who take these positions is to assume they believe the solution is to vote better people into office: not to reform the laws, not to reform or eliminate government agencies, not to allow private competition with the government, not to reduce the size of government, and not to adhere to the Constitution. There’s nothing wrong with the system; it’s all about choosing the “right” people.
What is difficult for me to understand is how otherwise well-informed people fail to see it is not just the people they elect that matters. Political institutions themselves cause much of people’s bad behavior. To some it’s fine to say the Founding Fathers understood that, and that is why they established checks and balances in the Constitution. Modern people, however, are pretty blasé about that old “piece of paper”. So, let me tell you about the Stanford University Prison Experiment of 1971. It is quite famous in the history of psychology. The results of the experiment are said to support situational attributions of behavior rather than dispositional attribution. That’s fancy talk meaning situations cause participants' behavior, rather than anything inherent in their individual personality. Put ordinary people in a situation where the rules mimic a traditional prison environment and with breathtaking speed you get people who would normally treat their neighbors quite nicely become sadistic guards and abuse prisoners.
Politically, the implications of the principle are obvious. Maybe that is why politicians, patriots, and pundits generally avoid mentioning it. Kind of puts a damper on election coverage to say, “None of these eight candidates are going to make a difference.”
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Authors Bio: Skin diver, spear fisher, trash collector, roughneck, scuba diver, football player, tennis player, mechanical engineer, aerospace engineer, husband, father, math teacher, fisherman.