The Self-Identified Elite

The Self-Identified Elite

Mark Twain said, “If you don’t read the papers you’re uninformed. If you do read them, you’re misinformed.”

That’s why I want to draw your attention to a recent article called “The Isolationist Temptation,” in The Wall Street Journal, written by Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The piece wasn’t worth reading—except that it offers some real insight into what the “elite” are thinking. The CFR is one of about a dozen groups, like Bilderberg, Bohemian Grove, and Davos, where the self-identified elite gather.

These groups don’t have political power, per se. But their members are members of governments, large corporations, universities, the military, and the media. They all went to the same schools, belong to the same clubs, socialize together and, most important, share the same worldview. What might that be? They believe in the State—not the market—as the best way to organize the world.

Believe it or not (I still don’t…) I was recently invited to one of these conclaves. Probably by mistake. I don’t expect to be a fox in the henhouse, but more like a skeleton at a feast. I’ll tell you all about it next month…

But back to the current topic. Like me, you’ve probably asked yourself, “Who are these people? Are they knaves, or fools, or both? What are they smoking? Are they actually crazy?”

Haass starts out by dividing the world of foreign policy observers into the “internationalists” and the “isolationists”—a false, misleading, and stupid distinction. They’re not “internationalists” (which are people who move between countries); they’re “globalists” (people who want to work for one world government, that they control). He uses the term “isolationists” as a pejorative term for the enemy camp, conflating them with non-interventionists—who are a totally different group. Isolationists bring to mind a backward cult, hiding from the rest of the world. Non-interventionists simply don’t want to stick their noses into other people’s business.

He lauds so-called internationalists (i.e., globalists) as “those who want the U.S. to retain the leading international role it’s held since WW2.” By that, he means minions of the U.S. government should roam the world to “spread democracy.” He assumes that democracy—which is actually just a more polite form of mob rule—is always a good thing. Apart from the fact that democracy is only rarely the result of U.S. intervention. Another division he makes (and here I admire his candor) is between the “elites”—like high government officials and people like those in the CFR—and the “non-elites.” He actually uses these words. He terms U.S. invasions and regime change efforts as “an ambitious foreign policy.”

He says, even after referencing disastrous U.S. failures like the Korean, Vietnamese, Afghan, and Iraq wars, and ongoing catastrophes in Libya and Syria, that we should continue on the same course.

He loves the idea of alliances, of course. Despite the fact that alliances only serve to draw one country into another one’s war. Alliances just take relatively small local disputes and move them up to catastrophic levels. This has always been the case. But the classic example is World War 1, which signaled the start of the long collapse of Western Civilization. Alliances can only serve to draw the U.S. into wars between nothing/nowhere countries that few Americans can find on a map.

Then he goes on to discuss what he calls “free trade,” another dishonest misuse of the term. Free trade exists when there are no duties or quotas when any business can buy and sell what it wants when and where it wants.

What these people actually want is a government-managed trade, which they prefer to call “fair trade.” He implies that wise and incorruptible government officials are necessary to ensure that foolish and dishonest buyers and sellers don’t hurt themselves.

But shouldn’t we worry if foreigners subsidize their manufacturers, and disregard U.S. environmental and labor regulations? My answer is: No. It’s wonderful if a foolish, mercantilist government subsidizes U.S. consumers; we’re enriched while they’re impoverished by selling dollar bills for 50 cents. And if the Chinese can make something cheaper than Americans, that’s wonderful. The Americans—who still have the world’s largest pool of capital, technology, and educated labor—are freed to do something more productive.

Anyway, the Haass article is horrible on every level. I’d reprint it here, but it’s too long and too boring. And it would violate the Journal’s reprint policy. But there’s another article, even more egregious, more stupid, and more destructive, that the Journal recently ran, by Kenneth Rogoff, called “The Sinister Side of Cash.” He is, of course, a Harvard “economist.” You’ll have to get hold of it yourself, because of the newspaper’s reprint policy. But I urge you to do so. It lays out—in clear and well-written English—the “elite” rationale for negative interest rates, and the abolition of cash.

It literally beggars belief and makes me think the author is criminally insane. I mean that literally, in the clinical sense. Criminal because he actively advocates aggression against other’s property, and in effect, their lives. And insane because his thoughts and beliefs are completely delusional and divorced from reality.

All in all, every day there are more indications on every front that the trailing edge of the gigantic financial hurricane we entered in 2007 is going to be very, very ugly.

The Greater Depression is going to be worse than even I thought it would be.



By Doug Casey