Tom Walker wrote:
>
> >>From William F. Hixson's ~A Matter of Interest: Reexamining Money, Debt,
> and Real Economic Growth~, 1991, pages 133-34:
>
> "...What it took to sweep away the Great Depression--to create full
> employment--was money creation and money spending on a grand scale, not
> war. It was not the war per se that ended the depression. All that war
> did was to provide an occasion acceptable to the power structure for the
> requisite money creation and money spending. Only for the purpose of
> fighting a war in Europe and the Pacific were those in the seats of
> power in the United States willing to undertake the grand scale money
> creation and spending necessary to the end the depression--grand scale
> money creation and spending that they had long remained unwilling to
> undertake to wage a war on unemployment, unused industrial capacity, ill
> health, poor education, inadequate housing, and so on. It was contrary
> to the prevailing ideology of the 1930s and 1940s for the government to
> create and spend money to build houses for needy citizens in Peoria or
> Des Moines but not contrary to that ideology to create and spend money
> to blow away the houses of needy foreigners in Dresden or Hiroshima.
> Readers may well ponder why so weird an ideology prevailed, but
> prevailed it did--and to a very disquieting extent it still does.
[snip]
The problem is that if one engages in massive coordinated social
construction without the "cover" of a WAR, then people say
their freedom is being taken away from them. They label it
fascism, and it probably is.
So many war criminals; so few war crimes trials....
(It seems likely, for instance, the Franklin Roosevelt
"let Pearl Harbor happen", and possibly even "baited" the
Japanese to attack there, to arouse American public
opinion for war against Japan. Wouldn't that qualify him to
join those whose deaths due to his policies
aroused that public opinion? And then Harry Truman dropping
the A-bomb after the war was effectively over -- to try
to keep the Russians from getting a piece of the
Pacific settlement -- again, why shouldn't his body have
joined the others he used to further his policies? Then
there are the leaders of Britain's "Bomber Command" who
didn't correct the escape hatches on their bombers because
doing that would lower morale by suggesting to the bomber
crews that they might get shot down. There is a point where
"The Sorrow and the Pity" begins to look more like
"Night and Fog", and it's not all on the side which
God has abandoned [i.e., the *other* side, for God is
always with *us*])
So let's all hope for that big asteroid which will
provide a sufficient reason for another [free and democratic!]
mobilization!
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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