Jerry Day has some interesting insights and questions about the upcoming census. Just exactly what information can the government request of us besides how many individuals reside in the dwelling being polled? Do we need to be concerned? What are your rights? Review the youtube video for yourself… you decide.

Ron Paul Gives Us His Take:

“The invasive nature of  the current census raises questions about how and why government will use the collected information. It also demonstrates how the federal bureaucracy consistently encourages citizens to think of themselves in terms of groups rather than as individual Americans.”

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

That’s a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

“When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario government to end one of the best scientifically managed big game hunts in North America (spring bear), the results of their agenda had severe economic impacts on small family businesses and the tourism economy of communities across northern and central Ontario,” said Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano.

“Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working American families and small businesses are being ignored.

“In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President’s concern for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority.”

Banning “recreational” fishing isn’t just an issue of economics, but is a threat to the personal liberty of each individual’s right to produce their own food. And banning fishing is just one of several policy changes the government is looking at.

In Federal Food Police Coming Soon To A Farm Near You, Tess Pennington points out the risks of letting the government oversee individual food production methods under HR Bill 875 and The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which specifically target agricultural goods, including crops and livestock on personal, non-commercial farms:

What is to stop the government from defining a small home garden as a food facility?  Because of the vagueness of this bill, it is not only the micro farmers that are affected by this.  Anyone who has a garden, or shares their produce with neighbors or even owns a local restaurant that supports local farmers and buys their produce could be affected.   We could all be affected and pay the price dearly for not speaking up.  . Many say that this bill is unconstitutional in that state rights will be stripped away.  If passed, the state cannot go in and take care of the problem.  It is a federal issue, thus will have federal repercussions.

Slowly but surely, the federal government is moving towards eliminating the ability of individual Americans to produce their own food - a direct attack on our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

For an administration with so much focus on “sustainability” it is ironic that they are attacking the very core of the sustainability movement - the individual. As more restrictions on the public are cemented through use of Congressional mandates and Presidential Executive Orders, the rights of individuals to take their well being into their own hands is further impeded.

Of course, under recent administrations, government is the answer for everything. The rugged individual or neo-survivalist  is now becoming the fringe extremist. Why would someone need to produce their own food when they could drive down to the local Walmart or Super Target and pickup up all the genetically modified food they need, manufactured under pristine conditions in one of several centralized processing plants?

All of these proposed changes aimed at our ability to produce our own food seem to fall, in part, under the United Nations’ Agenda 21  initiatives which are touted as “sustainability development” programs. It seems, however, that the UN’s ideas for sustainable living focus more on collectivists ideologies than they do on the individual. Rather than teaching individuals to become self sustaining, the goal of the UN’s Agenda 21 initiative is for the government to provide sustainability to the population. And according to Michael Shaw, president of Freedom Advocates, Agenda 21 can be summarized by three points and are supported by the documents prepared by the United Nations. The goals of the UN include the abolition of rural and suburban private property, global citizenship education, and population control. It sounds scary, perhaps even unbelievable. But don’t take our word for it, read the Agenda 21 Core Publications at the United Nations Division for Sustainable Development.

Based on this evidence, it is important to note that it is not only Barrack Obama that is pushing for restrictions on your ability to fish, or grow food, or manage your own livestock for personal use. This is a global effort with the dictates coming from the United Nations, and it has been happening for several decades.

Terrorism against our food supply and unsanitary conditions during food production are only minor issues to our food security when compared to what may be the greatest threat facing sustainable living -  our very own government.

Among other things, Mr. Celente spoke to Alex about his recent experience in Chile and the neo-survivalism trend he predicted would grow in 2010:

We had to use a lot of defensive measures to stay alive. I’m mentioning this because these are the kind of conditions that exist today…

It’s about that solar panel. It’s about having that excess of food in the eventuality of a terrorism 2012 which is on the horizon. It’s about those food shortages. It’s about preparing for the worst.

If the worst doesn’t happen, great, you were prepared.

But if the worst happens and you’re not prepared, guess what? Jack, you’re dead.

Watch the interview with Gerald Celente and Alex Jones below:

Click here to go directly to the playlist on Youtube…

Under our current managers, we could be considered free range serfs, meaning that we are given the illusion of freedom as we roam free throughout our farm, but in the end our purpose within the system is to produce goods and services for our masters.

Hat tip Disinter

Last week Robert Ferguson of California was sentenced to 8 years in prison for  steeling cheese:

A California man has been sentenced to up to eight years in prison for stealing a $3.99 bag of shredded cheese in a case critics say shows the need for reform of the state’s criminal justice system and the overcrowded state of its prisons.

Robert Ferguson, who prosecutors say has a nearly 30-year record of convictions for burglary and other offences, avoided a life sentence under the state’s controversial “three strikes” law after a psychological evaluation deemed him bipolar and unable to control his impulses to steal, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Mr. Ferguson is a career criminal that has spent nearly 20 years in prison on and off, but is an 8 year sentence for steeling cheese justified? He could have gotten life in prison but got off on a technicality.

We’re not suggesting that criminals should not be punished, especially those who have violated the property rights of others, but eight years?

The sentence in this case was based not necessarily on the crime he just committed, but a combination of this crime and past crimes he committed. Double jeopardy anyone?

Mr. Ferguson should certainly spend some time in jail for his crime against the property of another, that is not being argued. But in a country purported to be the beacon of freedom for the rest of the world, what does it say about our society when we have the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world?

Granted, Mr. Ferguson committed an act against another. But what do we say about the justice served to people like Walter Wooten of Texas, who this week was sentenced to 35 years in prison for possession of marijuana?

For being caught with just over a quarter pound of pot, 54-year-old Henry Walter Wooten will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars, thanks to a jury in Tyler, Texas.

His prosecutor, Smith County Assistant District Attorney Richard Vance, originally sought a sentence of 99 years over the 4.6 ounces of marijuana police found in Wooten’s vehicle, according to published reports.

Wooten was reportedly caught smoking pot within 1,000 feet of a day care center, within the radius of a so-called “drug free zone.” Tipped off by the smell, police would later search the man’s vehicle, only to discover his cannabis stash and a digital scale, according to The Tyler Morning Telegraph.

The difference between steeling cheese and smoking or possessing marijuana is quite clear. With the cheese thief, we have someone who violated the property rights of another. Who is the victim in Mr. Wooten’s case? It seems that it is Mr. Wooten himself.

While corporate financial leaders rob the American people blind and elected politicians sell their souls for campaign donations without so much as an investigative inquiry, a pot smoker like Mr. Wooten has his life literally taken away for engaging in an activity that harms no one, except, arguably, himself.

While it is easy to read news stories like these and suggest that they “got what’s coming to them,” we as individuals often fail to look in the mirror.

Everyone reading this post has broken the law, most of us will probably break a local, state or federal law today, and not even know it. Luckily, the prosecutors will not bring justice to you, as they did to Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Wooten, because if they did, you might be spending time in prison for misplacing a “0″ on your tax return, or going 20 miles per hour over the speed limit, or spanking your kid on the butt.

Perhaps you posted a comment on a web site with a racial undertone making you a hate criminal. Maybe you incited violence, even though you didn’t think you did, someone else construed it as such.

Maybe you tried to intimidate or coerce someone with the idea that certain government policies are tyrannical, and if you did, you may have committed a violation under Patriot Act. You probably won’t be prosecuted for it — yet.

And for those who haven’t ever broken a law here in America, and never plan on doing so, watch what you say. According to Article 29 of the United Nations Declaration Universal Declaration of Human Rights you would be in violation of UN policy if your thoughts, writings or actions are exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. Thus, you may very well be a criminal of the world and you may be sent to a world court, where justice for your crimes against humanity will be swift and severe.

The justice system in America (and the rest of the world) is not black and white. There is a lot of gray area, especially when we deal with “crimes” that have no direct victims to speak of.

Dictionary.com defines justice as:

the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness

Were the sentences imposed on Mr. Ferguson and/or Mr. Wooten righteous, equitable or morally right?

Perhaps instead of justice, we should call it what it really is: a system of punishment and tyranny.

We have, on occasion, suggested owning stocks in certain gold companies or Exchange Traded Funds like the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF, which holds shares in over 30 of the top gold producing companies in the world. In addition to holding the stocks of actual companies that produce gold, there are exchange traded funds that allow you to trade the actual gold commodity, such as the SPDR Gold Shares ETF, which just received a substantial investment from financier George Soros.

There are also gold exchanges like the Comex and organizations like the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) made up of large member banks that include well known institutions like JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, Barclays and Deutsche Bank.  These organizations allow traders and investors to buy gold 1-for-1 or leverage their purchases by putting up just a portion of the money needed to buy the precious metal.

The use of leverage allows so much gold to be traded on the markets that, according to Oikonomika, over “25 percent of global annual gold production changes hands each day on the LBMA.”

The question of how this is possible is addressed on Oikonomika:

I estimate that as much as 50,000 tonnes of gold have been sold that do not exist. That is equivalent of all the gold reserves in the world that are yet to be mined — or, put another way, 25 years of gold production.

That is the granddaddy of all short positions.

The fractional reserve operation of the LBMA is likely to be the next Madoff scandal, except multiplied by 100 — a $5 trillion fraud as opposed to a $50 billion fraud.

Like all financial scandals before it, this one will be exposed just as surely as night follows day. Gold is unique among all commodities. It is the only commodity that is not bought to be consumed. Rather, it is purchased as a store of wealth. Because it is not consumed, the buyer does not need to take possession of his gold but can be persuaded to trust the seller to store his gold on his behalf.

This unique wrinkle allows bullion bankers to sell gold that does not exist. This allows them to make huge profits, since they have very little cost, as they don’t have the inconvenience of actually having to purchase the gold before they sell it.

The consequence of this illegal activity is that it suppresses the price of gold because the “paper gold” supply has the same effect on prices that would happen if real gold had actually been supplied to the market.

Such racketeering is extremely beneficial to the central banks, which are hostile to gold because a free-market gold price would blow the whistle on their perpetual inflationary actions. A suppressed gold price makes fiat currencies appear to have higher purchasing power.

The obvious problem with paper-gold is that there are more pieces of paper indicating gold ownership than there is actual physical gold available. In the event of a serious global down-turn or a period of instability, holders of those pieces of paper will start trying to redeem their coupons for real metal. But there will not be enough to go around to cover the promises made by paper gold dealers on the ComEx and LBMA.

Those holding real bullion will see the price multiply many times as the price adjusts to the supply and demand fundamentals of real metal.

There is only one way to protect yourself and to profit. You should own physical bullion. Simply don’t trust intermediaries like the LBMA that purportedly sell you gold but label you an “unsecured creditor.” Anyone who thinks he holds gold at the LBMA should demand delivery.

The major desirable and unique characteristic of gold is that it is no one else’s liability, unlike almost every other financial asset. If you own a credit risk, like IOU gold, you have not achieved the principle objective of owning gold.

Are you a gold owner or an “unsecured creditor”?

You cannot be both.

Read the full article at Oikonomika…

I am afraid. I’m afraid because of what I see in the real economy. I’m afraid because I don’t see books that are clean - balance sheets that have been cleaned up. I’m afraid because in October of 2008 Secretary Paulson came to the American people and said the problem is toxic assets on the books of the banks, and they’re still there. I’m afraid because Secretary Paulson said there’s too much concentration in the banking industry and there’s even more concentration today than there was fifteen months ago…

We haven’t yet put our feet on solid ground and begun to rebuild an economy we can believe in.

This is not some random web site author or blogger with a confirmation bias talking about the possibility of doom and gloom.

This is the chairman of the panel that oversees the near trillion dollar TARP bailout program.

Believe the spin from mainstream pundits and analysts talking their books if you wish.

But this women is not lying to you.

In addition to the coming second wave of the residential real estate meltdown , one in five Americans out of work, and a contraction in across-the-board credit lending, we have commercial real estate exposure that involves some $1.4 trillion dollars. Elizabeth Warren’s warnings are clear:

A big enough wave of commercial mortgage defaults would trigger economic damage that would touch the lives of every American. Empty offices, empty hotels, and empty stores could lead directly to job losses. Banks that suffer losses or fear they might could grow even more reluctant to lend, which could make it even harder for you to get a loan.

The largest loan losses are projected for 2011 and beyond, but the stress tests conducted on big Wall Street banks last year examined their stability only through 2010.

Even more significantly, community banks tend to hold much greater concentrations of commercial real estate than big Wall Street banks, but comunity banks never underwent any stress tests at all.

In total, nearly 3000 community banks, that’s nearly 40% of all the banks in America, have what the regulators call concentrated commercial real estate holdings, which means they have a very high proportion of commercial mortgages on their books and are at particular risk of being overwhelmed.

Mrs. Warren sums up our economic situation very well. And if you’re paying attention, then you probably have a good idea where this is headed.

We hate to be negative, but our mission is to provide our readers with the truth. And the truth is, No Bailout Can Stop It.

Watch Elizabeth Warren discuss Commercial Real Estate in her COP’s February Report and an Interview with MPTV World:

The subject of unemployment is the centerpiece of our modern economy. Let us imagine an economic discussion between a “liberal” and a conservative:

“Liberal:” I am a sensitive, caring person. I feel the pain of the lower members of society, and I am on their side. I am in favor of all measures intended to reduce unemployment.

Conservative: That is very commendable. So you go down to your local soup kitchen and devote hours each day to helping the poor?

“Liberal:” No, of course not. But I favor social measures to raise these people up to a higher level.

Conservative: Ah, I see. You favor giving my money to the poor.

“Liberal:” You selfish monster, rugged individualist. How can you look yourself in the mirror in the morning?

Conservative: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so ashamed.

The reason that unemployment is so important is that, while it seems to be a political or moral issue, it is also an economic issue. And in fact it is the crucial economic issue of our age. As I have noted in the past, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Wall Streeter. In the 1920s, he was the manager of a vulture fund (so called because it swoops down on troubled companies and gobbles them up). On his first day in office, he rammed through legislation to give the power to create money to the commercial banks (working hand in glove with the Federal Reserve). It was passed without hearings in one day (illegally), and members of the House of Representatives did not even have copies of the bill to read when they voted on it.

FDR’s objective was to help his Wall Street buddies. He knew (from the experience of WWI) that the issuing of new money by the banks also helps their corporate loan customers, and this is done at the expense of the working people, who suffer a decline in their real wages. In short, FDR wanted to rob from the poor and give to the rich.

If this is what you are trying to do, then you naturally can’t tell anybody. And the well-known positions of the New Deal – that it was robbing from the rich to give to the poor and that it was the party of the working man – were blatant lies. The conservative opponents of FDR were unable to counter his policies in the public mind because they were afraid to penetrate the mask of altruism which he employed.

During WWI, prices in the U.S. had doubled. This had caused a significant decline in the real wages of the average working man. At that time, almost every American was saving for retirement, and the depreciation of the currency sharply reduced the retirement savings of the average American. The Republicans of the day arose as the champions of the working man. They adopted the policy of the “good 5 cent cigar,” which meant a reduction in the money supply and prices back to the levels of 1914. This policy was successful, and prices (Wholesale Price Index, or what we today call the Producer Price Index) by 1933 were back down to their level of 1914 (and 1793). America had experienced 140 years of stable prices, and the savings of the average Americans were restored to their pre-World War I value.

The Republicans were aware that their policy would cause high unemployment. The exact same thing had happened in the 1870s. At that time, the real wages of the working class were also being restored (after being forced down by the paper money of the Civil War). Higher real wages, of course, lead to unemployment. Employers cannot afford to pay the high wages. Also, wages were not being increased in nominal terms. They were only increased in real terms, in terms of what they could buy. But many working people do not understand real wages. They only think of the nominal figure they are receiving (not what it can buy). In the 1870s, these nominal wages were declining, and many wage earners felt insulted that they were being asked to accept a wage beneath their social status. Rather than accept what they felt was an insult, they lived off their increasing real savings while they sought for a job with pay that was much too high for the prices of the time. An incident from the 1930s illustrates the psychology. A businessman was trying to start up an operation and could afford to pay $40/wk. (about $680 per week in today’s money). No takers. So he offered $50/wk. But to get the job in these “bad” times, you had to kick back $10. The workers felt, “I’m a $50 man. I just have to kick back because my employer is unethical, but my status in society is recognized. In the 1870s, America had a free market, and so the unemployment was speedily reduced. The Republicans of the 1920s assumed that the same thing would happen again.

However, the New Deal had a good thing going. They were robbing from the poor to give to the rich. But they had to pretend to rob from the rich. The paper money and easy credit policies of FDR directly benefited Wall Street and the banks. Low real interest rates cause a rise in both stock prices and corporate profits. (Most corporations carry a significant amount of debt.) And of course, it is very much to the benefit of these large corporations to pay lower real wages. Stock prices about doubled from just prior to FDR’s inauguration to the end of his first year in office and almost quadrupled by the end of his first term. (These profits far outweighed FDR’s progressive income tax, which was done for show and was filled with loopholes)

The Republicans had pursued sound money policies from the end of the Civil War to 1933. These policies had been good for the country and good for the Republicans at the polls. American enterprise produced an explosion in wealth never before seen in any country in the history of the world. Real wages grew by an average of 60% per generation (taken as 30 years). Foreigners flooded into America (to get these higher wages) from all over the world. My ancestors immigrated to America at this time, and it is natural to assume that this large inflow (of immigrants willing to work for very low wages) would have caused unemployment among American workers. Natural but wrong. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1954 (published by the U.S. Commerce Dept.) lists the unemployment rate for the U.S. in 1906 as 0.8%. That is, it was less than 1%. Those foreigners were being snapped up as they walked off the boat.

This illustrates the unemployment problem of the time. (Today, of course, it is almost 10%.) Indeed, there was no word for unemployment in America prior to the 1870s because there was just no problem.

Further, America is a very good model for the study of unemployment because it went through all of the stages which theoretical economics predicts. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Colony, they were organized under communism. So the question of unemployment did not arise. They abolished communism in March 1623 (according to the diary of Gov. William Bradford). The conversion to private property “had very good success,” and the holiday of Thanksgiving was instituted to celebrate the new system of private property. This first Thanksgiving, by the way, was celebrated at the end of July 1623 (about Aug. 8-9 taking account of the calendar change of the 18 th century). Thus Plymouth Colony converted to a self sufficient economy.

Then people began to specialize (division of labor), and each person produced the goods at which he was best (leading to another large increase in wealth). They exchanged their goods using the medium of money. Then, some of the older members of the community realized that they could increase production even more by hiring younger workers and training them. Thus was the relationship of employment born, and the producers of society became divided into employer and employee. This benefited both the young employee and the older employer. Everyone was better off.

The type of phonies and frauds who pander to the paper money faction usually argue that a “capitalist” economy cannot provide full employment. (What the blazes is a capitalist economy? The term was coined by Karl Marx, and I have never heard a definition of capitalist. It changes its meaning from day to day and does nothing more than confuse people who think in terms of it. I advocate a free economy, not a capitalist one.)

Is this true? Is a free economy unable to provide full employment? I would suggest that these people look at the facts. As the employer-employee relationship proved profitable, employers developed a hunger for more and more employees. They kept hiring more and more people. First they hired fellow Americans off the farms, and the late 19 th century is a time when Americans flooded from the farms to the cities to get the higher wages of a job. When they ran out of Americans to hire, they started to hire foreigners. The desire of American employers for more workers is insatiable, and there is only one force which can trump it.

This is as follows. Once the New Deal had established (in people’s minds) that it was the party of the working man and that FDR was a traitor to his social class, it found that it needed to increase unemployment. If unemployment was temporarily high, ignorant working people would vote Democrat. High unemployment equaled a Democratic victory.

One of the ways this was accomplished was by backing the Union movement of the day. Union workers (competing with ordinary Americans for jobs) were given the right (by the National Labor Relations Act) to beat up non union workers competing for the same job. These non-union workers were intimidated and forced into unemployment.

Another of the ways was by enacting what are fraudulently called minimum wage laws. If you actually read these laws, they do not guarantee anyone a minimum wage. If the worker’s wage is to be raised, somebody has to pay the extra money, and these laws do not provide any extra money. The employer simply evades this intent by not hiring the worker, and workers whose labor value is not worth the legal minimum find themselves unemployed. The Friday WSJ article (“The Lost Wages of Youth”) demonstrated that the recent increase in the “minimum wage” (2007-09) from $5.15/hr-$7.25/hr caused massive unemployment, hitting the lowest level of workers hardest. Total teenage unemployment rose from 15% of the labor force to 27%. Black teenage unemployment rose from 38% to almost 50%. These unemployed teenagers, being idle, drift into crime, and the black-on-black murder rate in this country is horrific. (It should be noted that the first unemployment statistics to separate black from white unemployment showed that the two were almost the same. This was in 1940, when American society was openly racist and blacks were the victim of heavy discrimination. Since that time, due to the “minimum wage” laws, black unemployment has risen to double white despite numerous laws prohibiting discrimination by race.

A third technique was to put burdens on employers, such as making them pay health care costs. Today this makes it almost impossible for older workers to get jobs because health insurance for these people is prohibitively expensive. In sum, the cause of unemployment in America is the (New Deal version of the) Democratic Party. If a magic wand could be waved which transported all Democrats to the planet Klingon, then unemployment would pretty much disappear in America, and our economy would dramatically revive. Meanwhile the Klingon economy would collapse, and their unemployment rate would go through the roof.

But the most common way of increasing unemployment is via the Federal Reserve. The Fed has had a repeated policy since it was created of first easing and then tightening credit. The easing brings profits to credit sensitive industries (such as housing) and draws workers into jobs created in those fields. But then the money created by the Fed causes higher prices and a public demand for the Fed to tighten. Then we have a period of higher interest rates (e.g., 1979-81) and the jobs created originally are now abolished. (Today’s unemployment rate is mostly caused by the Fed tightening of 2004-06). I have charts on the economy going back to WWII, and one can clearly see the Fed easings, followed by a drop in unemployment, and the Fed tightenings, followed by a rise in unemployment. This is the part of the unemployment cycle which gets all the attention from our (short-term oriented) media.

In these articles, I try to present an economic overview so that you can get an appreciation for the massive irrationality and ignorance of facts which pervades our society on the subject of economics. For people who already understand this and are looking for specific advice on how to protect yourself (and profit) from the dishonest policies of our government, I publish a fortnightly (every two weeks) newsletter which gives specific buy and sell signals and discusses tactics (such as whether you should be in gold or gold stocks, and what kinds of stocks). This newsletter is The One-handed Economist, and the cost is $300 per year. (It has proven a very good investment for subscribers over the past 10 years). You may subscribe either by going to my web site, www.thegoldspeculator.com and hitting the Paypal button or via the old fashion way by using the U.S. mail. Simply send a check to: The One-handed Economist, 614 Nashua St. #122, Milford, N.H. 03055. I am increasing the cash discount for using the mail to $10. So include a check for $290. (However, OHE has been at the same price for a decade, and a cost of living adjustment is due to keep the real price the same. This is a few months away.) We do not accept credit cards. OHE is sent primarily via e-mail, so be sure to include your e-mail address. But any subscriber is free to request regular mail delivery as well as e-mail.

Thank you for your interest.

# # #

With a left, right, center political paradigm, it is easy to see how one group of individuals can be manipulated into arguing against the policies of, or outright hating, the other opposing group.

As we approach the far left or far right of the traditional political spectrum model, it quickly becomes apparent that the forms of government, while they have many differences, are essentially the same - government run dictatorships. Politics of fear are used to threaten the citizenry with the extremes of each side of the spectrum, and thus most people, who believe they have no other options remaining, end up somewhere in the center.

The above political spectrum, however, does not adequately address the different forms of government and governance. It is merely a depiction of the so-called two-party system, or two-headed snake.

As you may have noticed, the libertarian and anarchist systems of governance are not depicted in the above graphic, because there is simply no room for this mode of thought in our current two-party paradigm. These concepts are outliers that actually have no place within the traditional spectrum.

While it may not provide the perfect interpretation of a true political spectrum, the following graphic may provide a much better view of the different forms of government, which, in our opinion are more important to understand than the different ideologies with a specific form of governance. The right/left political ideologies may be quite different on the surface, but their places within the spectrum of governance fall within the same grouping of government intervention:

It is clear in the above depiction that if this spectrum where used to demonstrate the different levels of government, as opposed to the traditional spectrum which demonstrate only the different ideologies within one type of system of governance, that the two-headed snake system would likely not be as popular as it is today.

Our problem in America is one of education. Our public education system, and to some extent our private education systems, are heavily influenced by the two-party system, and thus it makes sense that the only option provided to the people from a very young age is one of democrat , republican, or centrist. The traditional political spectrum model has been taught for generations and has subsequently become the accepted paradigm of governance in our country.

In order for us to move out of the current paradigm, a shift is required in the public’s awareness. Expecting government subsidized educators to be on the forefront of this shift is not a reasonable approach, thus it must start on the individual level. We as individuals, it seems, must take responsibility into our own hands and educate ourselves, and then pass this information on to our children, family and friends.

It will take a revolution……of the mind.

Watch The Political Spectrum Explained:

Hat Tip The Nothing Store