Andrew Young on Bretton Woods

Andrew Young was interviewed By Tavis Smiley on his show Sunday, and finished with Andrew Young.  It is a remarkable interview.   I've said if something is not true in all places at all times, then it is not true.  What I teach, what I learned, what I have found reliable in just about every field, Andrew Young finds true in freedom movements.

When you have 30 minutes, give a listen here...

At 31:12 on the timer into the show,  Cornell West asks Andrew Young about MLK’s critique of capitalism and imperialism.  Young said he never heard King talk in those terms of the problems they faced.  Young said King's analysis was Biblical, not economic.  Young quotes King as saying communism needed more freedom, capitalism needed more responsibility, or words to that effect.

To my mind problems are solved on levels other than they are experienced.  Economic (physical) problems are addressed on a religious level, mental problems addressed physically, etc.

I've argued you decide the field you want to enter, the customers decide what you will sell.  as to the freedom movement:  Young wanted jobs movement, the people wanted back of the bus to the front of the bus movement.  So that was the program they had to offer.

Appealing to government never got them anywhere.  It is when the civil rights leaders met personally with business leaders and business defied the (Jim Crow) law, that the South finally integrated.  Here again, government is never the solution, business always is.  In his book, The Walls Came Tumbling Down, Dr. Abernathy chronicles the same point.  I'll say it again, if you want to be a revolutionary, start a business.

Amb. Young also talked about political power, and the disappointments regarding movement politicians of African heritage who were either co-opted or sold out.  Two points: the progressives targeted preachers of African heritage to advance their causes contrary to the flocks interests, and to some extent successfully, and who does not sell out of those who go into politics?  Does anyone expect  people of African heritage to be less corrupt than anyone else.  It's why they call it politics, because it is corrupt.

At 33: 08, Young talks about one of his first votes as a new congressman.  The 1971 vote was on ending the Bretton Woods compact in which the dollar was tied to gold.      Young admitted his ignorance of economics as a new congressman, but had the wit to ask the salient question, if "the dollar is not tied to gold, won’t people play politics with money?"

The panel testifying as to the wisdom of ending Bretton Woods consisted of Paul Volcker, Arthur Burns and George Schultz.   Arthur Burns replied “young man you’ll soon learn the dollar doesn’t need you to protect it.”

Young experienced the rebuke as  “shut up colored boy.”

The committee voted to end Bretton Woods on a voice vote.  Andrew Young was right, they were wrong.

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Peace, Prosperity, Anarchy and Terror

My legs were not blown off in Boston the day of the marathon, nor was I killed.  But I certainly would deserve such a fate, and worse.  What goes around comes around, and as an American taxpayer, I am certainly responsible for what happened to Razia, especially when there is not the slightest effort to prosecute the perpetrators of her injuries, nor act on the certain knowledge that our presence in her country is wrong.  I, like you, am personally responsibly for what happened to Razia.

I do not for a second believe two Chechen knuckleheads had anything to do with the bombing, because if they did, someone somewhere by now would have provided evidence somehow linking them to the crime.  Hasn't happened, won't happen.  At the same time, there is overwhelming evidence others did it. It doesn't really matter.  In these things, there are bad guys on both sides, and the bad guys on both sides benefit when bombs go off.

It is not enough to vote against war, which is pointless since election fraud is material in USA.  Even if I pray and fast against the war, I still enjoy the benefits of imperialism.  I am guilty as hell.

We all take comfort, and imagine, that the fact that we do not suffer for our crimes must mean that we are innocent.  If so, we mistake God's patience for approval.  I am told God's patience is ordered to our salvation.  Our love of money is the root of all evil, even if we only love seeing CEOs, starlets and ball players get fantastically wealthy, relatively speaking.  How strange it is we in poverty settle on the thrill of vicarious living.

There is a point where our banality will cross a point of no return, when Patience is ended and come what may comes.  Afterwards, there must be enough people who say no to letting others aggregate power through usury to the point they can call the shots, literally.  No law against it, just no state supporting it.

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Shariah Finance & Terrorism

Since acts of terror are forbidding in Islam, financing terror is not Islamic.  By definition, anyone engaging in terror or financing it is in defiance of Islam.  No doubt some Moslems engage in terrorism, but it is expressly against their religion.  Some Christians engage in terrorism when it is against their religion.  It has always been thus.  Nonetheless, people try to tie Shariah Finance to terrorism.

But allowing Shariah-compliant finance in the U.S. is green-lighting a seditious system that supports jihad, said Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.

"If you understand what Shariah is, you understand that it is a pretty awful system. Not something that you'd want insinuated in your society and becoming a major feature of your economic system," Gaffney said.

"Shariah (Islamic law as dictated by the Koran) governs all aspects of life, from the personal practice of the faith to how you relate to your family to how you relate to your business partners, to your community ... all the way up to how the world is run, and it is all one seamless program. You can't say 'I'll take the personal pietistic practice ... and skip the beheading and the flogging and the stoning and the global theocracy,'" he said.

Gaffney makes money saying such things.  His reference to pietistic practice is Catholic, and as a cafeteria Catholic himself, Gaffney fears there may be a religion where people actually act on their beliefs.  Isn't Christianity supposed to encompass the believer  "from the personal practice of the faith to how you relate to your family to how you relate to your business partners, to your community ... all the way up to how the world is run, and it is all one seamless program.?"

Nice attempt there tying in ethical investing with flogging, beheading and stoning.  Given that there are Sunni, Shi'ite, Wahabi and so on versions of Islam, the chance of a global Moslem theocracy are about as likely as a global Christian theocracy, a unity Gaffney is supposed to pray for.

I grew up around Irish Catholics, and there was always a kid like Gaffney, trying to stir things up, what the Church calls controversialists.  I had no idea there was money in it, that when such a kid grows up there would be big bucks available to open a "think tank" and make money saying crazy, damaging things.