Lawrence B. Lindsey

Born-Again Libertarian discovers The Ruling Class

It’s a little uncomfortable to read Lawrence Lindsey on the Ruling Class, as if he were a rugged, freedom-loving libertarian. He admits up front he is a total Washington insider and part of the problem. With that out of the way, Conspiracies is a fascinating trip into restoring greatness. It often makes terrific sense, though his cherry-picking of facts is frequently out of context and often wrong. His main discovery is that the USA has been taken over by a Ruling Class with its own agenda, far from the prescriptions of the constitution.

He gets many things right: America is “a nation where laws and law enforcement are used against the public instead of for them.” Today, police seize more cash and assets (and keep it for themselves) than is lost through robberies. Nobody admires that America. Another is that Congress needs to regain control of rulemaking. The situation where it passes a law and lets agencies and corporates take years to come up with regulations for themselves is unconstitutional. Congress actually does not have the right to give up that power, he says. And term limits would put an end to careerists and a lot of the corruption. He is very much in favor ending the gaming of the system, such as “extenders” that pretend programs only run for one year, avoiding the necessity of finding offsetting savings. Interestingly for a libertarian, he favors the structure of the expert-filled and totally independent Federal Reserve.

Oddly, the only constitutional amendment Lindsey proposes is to permit anyone to hold any currency in the world, as long as we’re not at war with its country. While we can do that now anyway, he says the government could stop it at will as it did in the Great Depression. With all the things he says are wrong with the government, it is puzzling this is the only constitutional amendment we need to fix it. And unfortunately, it misses the reality of money. Money issued by the Fed amounts to less than 6% of the dollars in the world. Banks create money at will, inventing and selling new products like derivatives that barely exist on paper, and are most certainly not backed by anyone. It is out of control, just like the Ruling Class.

For Lindsey, the ideal presidential candidate is “philosophically populist and operationally libertarian.” Sadly, there are no such candidates available, and no party would nominate one. Harry Truman, our last president with just a high school education, couldn’t even get an interview today. Dwight Eisenhower would be booed off the stage as not sufficiently rightwing.

Where Conspiracies goes wrong is in assuming the Ruling Class is “Progressive” (Democrat). All the bad presidents seem to be Democrats. He portrays Richard Nixon as a victim, enfeebled by Watergate. But Thomas Frank points out in his own excellent attack on Democrats, “Listen, Liberal”, both parties have restructured as Ruling Classes. The Democrats are all “Professional Creatives”, highly educated techie job creators from Harvard, Yale or Stanford. Their single theme is get more education and you will succeed - but we can’t help you. The Republicans covet bootstrap, less educated millionaire job creators from large corporations. Their theme is you alone are responsible for your success, so get to it - because we can’t help you. When running for office they all sound populist; it’s all jobs, values and leveling inequality. In office, they revert to type, limiting personal rights, invading privacy, expanding government and giving corporations new subsidies and influence. The reason Americans hardly vote any more is that they know, no matter how many voters agree on an issue, their elected officials will without fail ignore them.

That is the real problem of having a Ruling Class.

David Wineberg… (more)