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THE MONEYCHANGER
INTERVIEWS – THE MONEYCHANGER
SEVENTEEN YEARS LATER, HOW DOES THE FUTURE LOOK?
This may be the
ultimate example of “talking to yourself,” but here goes. The
beginning of the year offers a fitting time to tote up accounts – to
look backward and forward to determine how we ought to arrange our
affairs for the future. So here goes – an interview with myself. –
F. Sanders
Since your novel
Heiland was published in 1986 nearly 17 years have passed. That
was both a utopian and a dystopian novel -- you showed
a vision of the future with a totalitarian state and a free state
living side by side. As your insight has grown over the intervening
years, how would you change that vision now? What would you add or
subtract?
When I was writing
Heiland God gave me better than I knew -- I built in a lot of
things that I only partly understood. Today, years later, the
implications of those things are becoming clearer and clearer.
A few years ago I went
back to Heiland thinking I would edit it for a reprinting. I
couldn’t. It was like a piece of crystal -- it was too much one
piece for me to wedge something extra in. That would only break it
into pieces. I don’t mean that it is “great art,” only that its
ideas are joined so that you can’t pull out or add anything without
ruining the whole.
I stand by everything I
wrote seventeen years ago. I understand much of it much more deeply
now, but I will have to say all that in another, different book.
What happened after
you wrote Heiland?
I found that I had
written the script for my own persecution. In May, 1984 I had
opened a gold and silver bank to provide the machinery for real,
grassroots monetary reform, a way to use gold and silver in daily
commerce. In June, 1985 IRS agents showed up to inform me I was
under criminal investigation – not for any wrongdoing in the bank,
but because it ran contrary to IRS’s schemes. The bank’s privacy
offered an escape from the secret police reporting network the IRS
had already decreed in its Secret Five Year Plan.
After a four and a
half year investigation, the government indicted 26 people in
December 1989, but they didn’t arrest us until January 9, 1990, when
they showed up with SWAT teams. Exactly a year and a half later, to
the day, on July 9, 1991 all 17 remaining defendants were acquitted
on all charges.
At some point it
occurred to me that the government agents’ understanding was so
gross that they thought the community I described in Heiland
was real. They began to live out the script as if that community in
fact really existed, and we were it. An assistant US attorney in
the Western district of Tennessee pronounced me “the most dangerous
man in the Mid-South.” The IRS district director drove down from
Nashville to watch on the day we were arraigned.
They fully intended to
destroy us. Americans just can’t grasp what their government can be
like. When they set out to get a political enemy, they try to
destroy not only the enemy but also all his family and friends, for
good terrorist measure. Although my wife, Susan, didn’t know
anything about my business and was in fact the busy home-schooling
mother of seven children, they indicted her as well as me. They
were willing to deprive my children of their mother for 19 years,
just to try to force me to plead guilty. In fact, with their silly
SWAT team they set up a situation where my wife and seven children
could have been killed.
I made one big mistake
throughout my fight with the government: I consistently
underestimated how evil they were.
After the federal trial
I still had to face state charges. To double-team me IRS had (I
believe) retired an agent and sent him to work for the Tennessee
Revenue Department with the assignment of cooking up some charge
against me. They finally decided that they could charge me under an
obscure, never-before-used statute with not charging sales tax on
gold and silver. Of course I hadn’t charged sales tax,
because all the law defines gold and silver as money,
and there’s no sales tax on money. Have you ever paid sales tax to
a bank teller when she gives you two tens for a twenty? Of course
not. That charge came to trial in 1992, and I was convicted. I
went to jail for two short stretches in 1996, but we still fought
that conviction all the way to the US Supreme Court, who refused to
hear the appeal in November, 2000. [Readers can find the whole
story on our website
www.the-moneychanger.com
under “The Most Dangerous Man in the Mid-South, or you can send us a
stamped, self-addressed envelope with 60 cents postage and we’ll
send you a hard copy.]
Is the Moneychanger
the here and now, and Heiland is abstract?
Just the opposite:
the Moneychanger is the abstract, and Heiland is the
reality. The Moneychanger is the ongoing editorial
explaining the world pictured in Heiland.
What were you trying
to show in Heiland?
I was trying to offer a
picture of what a Christian commonwealth would look like.
Unavoidably that means a free society, where men and women
rule themselves.
Also I was projecting
trends evident in 1986. Obviously “projecting’ does not mean
“predicting.” We can fairly easily predict where a trend generally
ought to lead if not interrupted, but it’s very hard to predict the
details. For instance, in 1986 it was plain that the United States
government was building a police state. What is surprising is that
under the cover of the War on Drugs and now the War on Terrorism,
the American people have voluntarily accepted the yoke of
that police state. Today hardly anyone protests the theft of
freedoms we have owned since before Magna Charta (1215). It is not
too much to say that we have lost nearly all our freedom under the
common law and Anglo-American jurisprudence. Ironically, the most
vigorous protests to this loss usually come from the “left,” not the
“right.”
What about the
Constitution? Don’t we still have constitutional rights? The
courts seem to pay more attention to constitutional rights than ever
before.
Only as a bogus mask to
hide genuine oppression. When the courts recognise “rights,” they
are most often “rights” that in no way endanger the Establishment’s
status quo, or they are state-created “rights” (really “privileges”)
like “civil rights” or entitlements.
On the other hand,
whenever you try to exercise inalienable rights that threaten that
stranglehold – like starting a gold and silver bank, as I did in
1985 – then the government brings down the whole weight of its power
to crush you. My pilgrimage through the court system, which lasted
15 years from investigation to exhaustion of final appeal, taught me
that the courts will always uphold the status quo, regardless how
the common law, the constitution, and the statute laws contradict
it. Somewhere in this country there must be honest judges, but I
never met one staring over the bench at me.
Like every other
institution, a constitution cannot protect rights. If the hearts of
the people don’t long to be free, a constitution can’t keep them
free.
Has your experience
in the courts left you bitter?
Not at all.
Just like Joseph I can say that although tyrants meant it for evil,
God used it for good. To all those who say there is no God, or that
he doesn’t act in history, I point to our deliverance in that
federal trial. We were hopelessly outmatched – the government had
unlimited personnel, time, and money (according to rumour they spent
at least $900,000 on the trial alone, and who knows how many
millions on a 4-1/2 year investigation.) They had an historic 97%
conviction rate. They had a hanging judgess doing her best to
convict us. But we had the Lord our God, and he delivered us. “The
eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show
himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward
him. He made our hearts perfect toward him, and then he showed
himself strong.
But you were
convicted in the state trial, so in the end you lost.
No.
Whenever you stand for what is true, you win. We stood, and God
delivered us in the teeth of overwhelming power. Even that
conviction turned out for good.
You only lose by not
resisting evil. We suffer because so few people are willing to
resist. They care more about what Francis Schaeffer called their
“personal peace and prosperity” than they do about the civilisation
that they inherited from their fathers – and that they ought to pass
on to their children. That especially holds true for the Church in
America.
Does the Church in
America bear responsibility for our political and moral breakdown?
Yes. Worse yet, some
denominations (especially the so-called “conservative” ones) are
rushing as fast as they can to ally themselves with government.
That happens not only directly through government bribes like
“faith-based initiatives,” but indirectly in their unconditional
support of government policies – like Mr. Bush’s war on the world.
Protestants who call themselves “conservative” have prostituted
themselves to the Republican Party; liberals to the Democrats.
Problem is, at day’s end both are still only -- prostitutes.
The Church’s duty is to
inform civil government by example and by preaching the Gospel, not
by forming political partnerships where the Church always remains
very much the junior partner. Whenever the Church enters an
sycophantic alliance with civil government, the result is always
catastrophic for church and nation. The German alliance
between Thron und Altar worked, after a fashion, from the
1840s until the Kaiser abdicated in 1918. When he left, he took
with him a large part of the Church’s reason for existence, and
terrible confusion resulted. Certainly it would be false to claim
that German totalitarianism should be blamed exclusively on the
Church, but the Church certainly contributed. Likewise, it is no
exaggeration to say that blame for the US government’s tyranny lies
squarely with the Church, and every bit as much with the so-called
“conservatives” as with any others.
But shouldn’t Christians
be active politically?
God ordained three great
institutions of government: the family, the church, and the state,
in that order. A nation’s health demands that all three remain
strong and independent within their own jurisdictions. When any one
usurps the rights and duties of another, when any one shirks its
duties, that breach disorders the entire nation.
It sounds arrogant, but in
all humility I have to say that the Protestant church in America
today has sunk as low in its understanding of grace as the Church in
1510. Only another rediscovery of grace, another Reformation, will
help.
Much of mainstream or liberal
Protestantism has fallen away from belief altogether. It flops
around looking for something, anything, to substitute, and
presses from silly to ridiculous, from hugging trees to
transcendental meditation. Most of them get busy working out their
own salvation by being “nice” and “caring,” and to give them their
due, they accomplish more charitable works than conservatives.
On the other hand are the
so-called “conservatives” or “evangelicals,” who fail to apprehend
the gospel in two ways. Typically, they don’t know grace and
substitute works salvation – or salvation by guilt manipulation.
Ironically, this substitution reigns strongest among those who most
loudly proclaim “salvation by grace.”
Secondly, they substitute
subjective for objective assurance. That is, instead of relying on
the objective work of Christ to assure their salvation, they
rely on their subjective feelings. The result is a theology
as cruel and comfortless as anything the late medieval world had to
offer. The believer is forced to continuously rake his soul for
some subjective proof that he really is inside Christ’s covenant –
in fact, the raking is substituted for genuine assurance. They
become what Calvin called “agitators of perpetual doubt.” This
colours all their way of looking at the world, and utterly cripples
their ability to think critically, to apply the Gospel to the world,
and ultimately to trust in God. It is the triumph of the Quakers’
“inner light” and Finney’s revivalism. It is also the death of
western Christianity.
All these errors occur
against a background of profound gnosticism. Only the
“spiritual” counts for anything, not the “material.” But this
demolishes the Biblical view that since God created and conjoined
spirit with matter, both count. Unwittingly but at the
deepest level the Church has revived this ancient heresy.
But God never leaves himself
without a witness, as dark as things may seem. His grace is always
busy, even when evil and ignorance appear most triumphant. I am
encouraged by what I see, the beginning of reformation that cuts
right across denominational lines. Eventually that will work itself
out everywhere.
Because Protestants don’t
understand grace, they can’t understand works either, or how grace
produces works. They have no idea how to apply the law of God,
either to their lives or to the nation. It’s not surprising that so
many “evangelicals” think they can correct America by morally
reforming the state first. As usual, they are grabbing the hoe by
the wrong end. Until the Church’s authority and understanding are
reformed, the state can never be reformed, because the Church
informs the state, not the other way around. Until the gospel
reforms the people’s hearts, neither family nor church nor state can
function properly or harmoniously. Grace produces righteousness.
God’s law shows the way.
If the “moral” reformers
weren’t blind to history they would understand that a nation can’t
be bootstrapped into righteousness. In 1497, under the influence of
Savonarola’s preaching, all the people of Florence burned their
occult books, personal ornaments, lewd pictures, cards and gaming
tables in the “bonfire of the vanities.” A year later, they just as
cheerfully threw Savonarola into the flames. Lasting moral
reformation only begins by reforming the heart and following God’s
law.
You said that you
“understand much more deeply now” the things you wrote about in
Heiland. Which things?
For one, the
connectedness of the system we live under. It is a symbiosis of
Big Business and Big Government, and every arm of it supports some
other arm. As a perfect fascist system, it gives every layer of
society something free in return for submission. It works
well because every one of those clients – welfare recipients,
beneficiaries of corporate subsidies, licensees, pensioners, etc.,
etc. – will fight like raging devils to protect their share
of the pie. They may not like the whole system, but they
have a strong interest in perpetuating it.
I used to believe that
if somebody could prevail in court on just one point – abortion, the
income tax, the money issue – then we could begin to restore sound
government. Now I see each of those evils in the context of the
system they compose. There is simply no way any judge will give a
correct verdict on a money issue case, unless he were an insanely
honest man. He instinctively recognises that a judgement
against fiat money undermines the very system that makes
him. He understands, correctly, that fiat money and a
central bank are the jugular vein of the system, and he will
never bring in a decision against them. (One of the 20th
century’s great ironies is the motto on the great seal of the
Tennessee Supreme Court mounted on front of their Jackson (TN)
building. From ancient days it carries the motto, “Fiat justitia,
ruat coeli” – let justice be done, even though the heavens may
fall.)
And what if some state
judge looked at a money issue claimant, slapped himself on the
forehead, and said, “By golly, you are right! Bailiff,
release this man! Clerk, this court will never again accept Federal
Reserve notes. From now on, every fine and judgement must be paid
in gold or silver coin.” Can you imagine what chaos would follow?
The whole country would slam to a halt. Commerce would stop. And
after that happened, how many friends do you think a restoration of
honest money would find? Just abolishing the fiat money
system by itself wouldn’t cure anything. An orderly plan for
transition must accompany that abolition.
The same holds true for
the income tax. Seventeen of us fought through a four and a half
month trial in 1991, resulting in the most astounding “man bites
dog” verdict since the income tax was allegedly imposed in 1913.
Because I had started a gold and silver bank in 1985 – a legal and
constitutional alternative to the fiat money and banking
system – the IRS had hounded me and cooked up bogus conspiracy
charges against us. But our defense was that there is no statute
that makes anyone liable for the income tax. There’s a statute
that makes somebody liable to pay the automatic weapons tax, the
imported wine tax, the distilled spirits tax, and on and on, but no
statute that makes anyone (except “foreign withholding agents”)
liable for the tax. And on
July 9, 1991 we were
every one acquitted by a jury.
Yet that victory changed nothing for the country. It was only
mentioned in two small newspaper articles in Memphis and
Chattanooga. The press – which by and large belongs to The
Symbiosis – just swallowed up the story.
Everywhere you look, a
gigantic organism has been built up of government and business
working together as one animal. In Heiland I was trying to
point this out, along with the developing trend toward
consolidation of economic power into ever larger corporations.
That is exactly what we’ve, so that we can now easily imagine a
world where a handful of gigantic corporations control the entire
world economy. That’s what “globalisation” and the “New World
Order” are all about. If that day ever comes, the faithful twin and
slave of those corporations will be civil government. Indeed, it
already is.
You make it sound as
if there is no hope of restoring independent living, political
liberty, or the rule of law.
No, just the
opposite. I
have more hope than ever because, first of all, I no longer flatter
myself that unaided men can establish these things. They are the
gift of God, and God has shown us in Christ that his will for men is
that they grow up to maturity. Politically, liberty,
self-government, and the rule of law express that maturity. It’s
impossible to believe that God will fail to accomplish his will,
however long he takes to do it.
Today we can see two
trends that appear contradictory, but they actually belong to the
same trend. First there is the power-centralising current. That
appears, for instance, in the European Union’s formation and the
steady growth of supranational law through the United Nations and
other multilateral organisations, the so-called “New World Order.”
The inevitable end of this trend would be minute control of everyday
life – the opposite of liberty, but accepted voluntarily (by default
really) rather than imposed by violence.
On the other hand, a
decentralising tendency is sending power back to nations
and localities and ethnic groups. The Soviet empire’s breakup is
the most obvious example, but there are a host of others: the
establishment of the first Scottish parliament since 1707, autonomy
for Catalan in Spain, the independence movement in Quebec, the
breakup of Yugoslavia, and numerous independence movements around
the world.
So which is the real
trend, centralisation or decentralisation? Since corporate
(as opposed to personal) states were set up in the 1650s, the
tendency has been toward centralisation and homogenisation.
While events like the European Union or the World Trade Organisation
may seem to indicate centralisation is strengthening, in fact
they show the old trend peaking and reversing. Events that
consummate trends happen at the top of trends, not at
their start. Loyalty won’t be transferred from centers to
localities all it once, but it has already begun and will
mark the fundamental political trend of the next several centuries.
It wouldn’t surprise me if eventually even the United States broke
up. Plenty of signs already point in that direction. Unhappily,
this trend change will bring about terrible violence in many places,
perhaps even here.
How should we live
then? The modern world seems to encroach on us everywhere,
funnelling us into a current we can’t seem to resist.
What I tried to show in
Heiland was a strategy of new communities and alternative
institutions. We must withdraw loyalty from old corrupt
institutions and build alternative institutions to replace them.
Then we have to transfer loyalty and trust to those new
institutions.
Education is the
perfect example, although the same strategy applies to any
institutions of church or state. Home-schooling appeared about 30
years ago. At first homeschoolers risked state persecution,
imprisonment, and the state stealing their children. Most everyone
thought that anybody who tried to educate his children outside the
government system was a lunatic. Thirty years later, the tables
have completely turned. Homeschooling, for all its limitations, has
proven vastly superior to government education, especially
for Christian parents who want their children to escape
anti-Christian brainwashing by government schools.
However, loyalty has as
yet only been incompletely transferred from the government education
system. What’s the first thing Christian schools do? Apply for
accreditation. But the accreditation agencies are all part and
parcel of the government system, and they will require Christian
schools to conform to their requirements and teach what they want
the way they want it. Bingo, they transform the “Christian
school” into a government school sprinkled with Bible verses.
People have not yet seen that all of their loyalty must be
withdrawn from the government education system, and a new,
independent system built.
But that idea is
dawning, little by little. Home-schooled parents look at their
18-year olds with the equivalent knowledge of today’s college
graduate, and begin to ask, “What’s the use of spending four more
years under government indoctrination just to earn a degree?” As
they question, they are moving away from the old institutions and
establishing alternatives that meet their needs. Competence as a
goal replaces mere government approval. Eventually the entire
government system will be discredited and abandoned. Power is
flowing back to the family.
A similar process is
happening in medicine. The pharmacy – drugs and drug companies --
has come to dominate establishment medical practice. The enormous
strength of alternative medicine shows the public reaction against
the establishment’s failure. Everywhere people are rebelling
against it, and nowadays it’s much, much harder for the
state-established medical cartel to suppress alternatives by
legalised violence. About 12 years ago, for example, the FDA
mounted a brutal raid on Dr. Jonathan Wright’s clinic near Seattle.
What was his crime? Using Vitamin B imported from Germany,
according to the FDA. His real crime was successfully treating a
host of maladies with nutrition, supplements, and other alternatives
that the government medical cartel fears and doesn’t understand.
The wave of vigorous protest against the FDA finally forced them to
abandon their persecution.
Today the numbers of
consumers devoted to alternatives has multiplied many times, so the
potential reaction to persecuting alternative practitioners has also
multiplied. It is riskier today for the medical-pharmaceutical
cartel to suppress dissidents. Power – and freedom -- is flowing
back to the individual.
Another example in the
medical field is obstetrics. Thirty years ago it was medical heresy
to suggest that husbands ought to be present in the delivery room,
participating in delivery. Today husband-coached childbirth is
practically standard. The cutting edge today has moved out to the
edge of the curve, to home delivery and midwives. Once again, you
can see power and control flowing back to individuals. Freedom and
responsibility flow to those willing to assume it.
How does
“agrarianism” fit into Heiland?
The agrarianism in
Heiland was more intuition and hope than experience. Andrew
Lytle wrote an essay called “The Small Farm Secures the State” in
which he argues that small farmers contribute the character and
backbone that maintains a nation. Certainly you can prove that idea
from Greek history forward. But agrarianism aims at more than that
– it aims at a way of life that offers a genuine and profound
alternative to modernity. The practice of life in the modern
industrial capitalist world with all its rationalistic values–
“modernity” for short -- not only alienates us from the natural
world, but it also isolates us from each other. It atomises
mankind, detaching men from family and local community (and every
other traditional and organic structure of protection), and imposes
an unnatural uniformity. It is the abstraction triumphing over
reality, the ultimate rootlessness. Like fat-free diet food, it has
all the appearance of reality with none of the messy – reality..
The best description of
modernity, in fact, of life in America, comes from Psalm 106:13 &
14:
But lust came upon
them in the wilderness,
and they tempted God
in the desert.
And he gave them
their desire,
and sent leanness
withal into their soul.
With 4% of the world’s
people, the US contributes about 31% of world GDP. People in the
West have everything they want, plenty of food, fun, and
fornication, but “withal leanness in their soul.” None of it
satisfies, nor will it ever, since satisfaction begins with limiting
your own desires.
Has life in the
country satisfied you?
Life in the country has
surpassed my wildest expectations while it also has revealed my
ignorance and weaknesses. Rural life demands a much more attentive
responsibility and more vigorous initiative than urban life, yet at
the same time teaches a much greater humility. When you face nature
every day, whether in weather or beast, you learn your limitations,
it’s true, but you also learn that your duty is push for those
limitations as hard as you can. If you don’t bring that sort of
diligence to rural life, you won’t live very well.
On the other hand, I
don’t want to make it sound like drudgery. The pace of life is much
easier, and the rewards well repay the exertions. It is a way of
life measured out and fit for human beings. Country living also
puts demands on the whole family. Our biggest job has been learning
how to live and work together in Christian harmony.
At a deeper level,
agrarianism attempts to restore modern life to a human measure.
Part of that might be moving to the country and farming with horses,
but that’s not essential. As much as anything agrarianism turns
away from rationalistic materialism – “the only thing that counts is
the bottom line,” “if it works it must be true” – and returns to
human proportion and values. Modernity says, “Imported lettuce from
California is cheapest.” Agrarianism answers, “But it can never
match the lettuce grown in my own back yard.”
Is agrarianism
really practical?
No other way of living
is. That question ought to be turned around -- “Is modern
industrial capitalism really practical?’ Can any social system be
practical that teeters on the edge of bankruptcy every day and
regularly breaks down into seasons of economic terror?
The collapse of the
stock market bubble is already undressing the impracticalities. If
history is any guide, the stock market won’t recover before 2025 –
2030 [sic], and we haven’t even gotten near the bottom yet.
Because the dollar will fall sharply, bonds will offer no haven of
safety.
Success begets
excess. A
fiat money system and a fractional reserve banking system
must increase debt or die. Central banks, especially the Greenspan
Fed, spent the 1990s creating a huge credit bubble that pumped up
debt around the world. All that bad debt must now be written off.
That will choke the economy and slow growth for at least ten years.
Stock markets won’t recover for 25 years. I expect the worst
business and economic conditions in US history.
Since central banks can
only fight deflation and depression with inflation, the Fed
will increase the US money supply by various means, gutting the
dollar in the process. If they don’t inflate the dollar out of
existence in the next ten years, it will still lose at least half
its value.
How do investors
protect their assets in the coming decade? Shun dollar denominated
assets and seek assets that benefit from dollar depreciation. Sell
stocks, bonds, and real estate and buy gold, silver, and productive
assets (especially for your own business). Avoid debt at all costs.
Don’t misunderstand
me: this is not the end of the world. On the other
side of hard times will be good times, and we want to have enough
purchasing power left to participate and rebuild.
Will the present
economic difficulties end in inflation or deflation?
The debate over whether
the present troubles will result in nominal inflation or
deflation is irrelevant. Investors must keep their eye on
the real issue: what is happening to the real value
of my assets, not the nominal value. How do we apply
that?
To economic
conditions –
Will the real economy
grow or shrink? Never mind the nominal performance.
To monetary
conditions –
Will the dollar gain or
lose value? Never mind the numbers.
To everything –
What is its
value, i.e., purchasing power? What will become more and not
less valuable relative to everything else?
The classical
application comes from the stock market during the German
hyperinflation 1920 – 1923. Lots of people became billionaires on
paper, but in real terms German stock investors lost purchasing
power over that period. Although stock prices rose many
thousandfold from 1920 to 1923, at the end of the hyperinflation
they were still worth less. The investing environment we
face now and in the next decade may not be that severe, but it will
approach it.
Given all that, does
agrarianism – living on a farm with the support of a surrounding
family and growing at least some of your own food – sound
“impractical”? Not to me.
Can any good thing
come out of hard times?
Absolutely.
No disease can be
healed without a crisis. Healing begins with judgement. This may
be the crisis that destroys fiat money and fractional reserve
banking. No doubt economic and financial hardship will make people
ask the most fundamental questions. It will make them willing to
make fundamental changes. Individually and nationally, we are about
to see opportunities not seen for centuries. Why should we be
afraid to reach for them? “What shall we then say to these things?
If God be for us, who can be against us?” [End]
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