Doug Casey on Presidents: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly By Doug Casey | October
22, 2010 - Interviewed by Louis James, Editor, International
Speculator
L:
Doug, we spoke about holidays in general last time, but
I've heard you say, specifically, that you find Presidents'
Day particularly objectionable. I know that's not just you
being a gadfly, but a comment driven by your study of history
and your thinking on psychology, sociology, and economics.
It seems worth following up on.
Doug: Yes, that's true.
For one thing, as we discussed in our conversation on anarchy,
political power tends to attract the worst of people, the
four percent of any society that's sociopathic. So declaring
holidays to honor these people is a tragic mistake in and
of itself. It, like so many things are in our world, is
completely perverse, as people celebrate and reward mass
murderers, industrial-scale thugs, and con-men who fleece
entire societies.
Who is studied and idolized in the history
books? Is it people like Edison, the Wright Brothers, Leonardo,
Newton, Ford, or Pasteur? Not really; they just get a passing
nod. The ones who get statues built to them and are engraved
on the collective memory are conquerors and mass murderers
– Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and a
whole bunch of U.S. presidents.
L: Do you ever get to thinking
that perhaps people get the government they deserve?
Doug: I do indeed. People
who vote for free lunches – knowing full well that
someone needs to pay for them, and they are fine with that
as long as the someone is someone besides themselves –
deserve to become tax slaves for those who view them as
milk cows. If economically ignorant, greedy, and shortsighted
people vote for bad government, they should start by looking
in the mirror when they wonder what went wrong. But few
people are that introspective. Further, most people apparently
lack a real center, an ego in the good sense. That's why
they create these false gods to worship; by becoming part
of a group, they think they gain worth. Pity the poor fools…
There's no doubt in my mind that the U.S.
has devolved to that level. Something like 43 million people
get their food from the government, about half of workers
pay no income taxes (although I wish no one did, of course),
about half are significant net recipients of government
funds… and many millions more are employed directly
by the state. It's why I no longer refer to "America"
when discussing the U.S. – America was a wonderful
idea, which unfortunately no longer exists.
A bad leader can bring out the worst in
people, making them think the government is a cornucopia;
and then the people demand more of the same from future
leaders. It's a downward spiral – never, for some
reason, an upward spiral. It's why, after Augustus, Rome
never returned to being a republic, even though they pretended
– just like the U.S. does today. My conclusion is
that people basically get the kind of government they deserve.
Which is a sad testimony to the degraded state of the average
person today.
L: Okay, but as far as
presidents go, and as much as I wish everyone valued freedom
more than (imagined) guaranteed comfort, the fact seems
to be that most people need leaders to prod them along into
at least somewhat effective action. I don't know why –
perhaps it stems from childhood needs for heroes who show
us that the world can be tamed and life secured. Whether
it be a company CEO or a club president, people often seem
to work more effectively in groups with hierarchical structures
and strong leadership at the top.
Doug: Well, first, it may
seem that way simply because that's the way it is now. But
I don't have a problem with hierarchies per se; it depends
on the kind of hierarchy.
I'm not opposed to leaders or leadership.
Leaders are an organic part of society; all mammals that
live in groups appear to have them. They're essential for
group effort. Natural leaders arise because of their competence,
intelligence, wisdom and virtues. I am only opposed to coercive
leadership – the kind where you must follow orders
or be punished. I prefer a society where peer pressure,
moral opprobrium, and social approbation get people to do
things – not laws and penalties. A formalized political
structure doesn't draw natural or benign leaders so much
as thugs who are interested in controlling other people.
L: And once an establishment
gets in place, they try to cement themselves there with
laws…
Doug: Exactly; they don't
want their rice bowls broken. But more than that, the way
most people raise kids in an authoritarian family structure
with the father at the top, educate their children, with
teachers who must be obeyed and powerful figures like school
principals at the top, and send them off to work for hierarchically
organized companies with, as you say, presidents and CEOs
at the top, it's no surprise that most people think the
world must be organized into hierarchies with some ultimate
authority at the top.
But as you know first hand, there are ways
of parenting that don't revolve around a family structure
that's a mini-dictatorship. As we discussed in our conversation
on education, there are ways to teach young people that
don't involve submerging their impressionable egos in rigid,
bureaucratic, authoritarian "school systems."
And there are ways of organizing companies and other very
effective organizations that have very little hierarchy.
L: Casey Research, for
one. You never tell me what to do, just ask me for results.
And I taught my kids reading, writing, and arithmetic without
relying on punishment. These things are not just theories
to me, but ways I live my life.
Doug: And of course, I
believe there are ways of organizing effective societies
that don't revolve around a central authority structure
or leader. Personal responsibility is what it's really all
about. Such freer societies centered on cooperation –
through markets, rather than coercively through the state
– would be much healthier, richer, more just and moral
societies to live in.
So, of course, I object to anything that
tends to prop up authoritarian ways of organizing society.
Celebrating presidents – even the less stupid, evil,
and destructive ones – is counterproductive to the
direction I'd like to see society evolve, and incidentally,
the direction I think it is evolving. President's Day is
one holiday that deserves to be abolished absolutely.
L: Understood. But we don't
have to rehash the conversation on anarchy. Hm. I'm sure
you've got a long list of evil, stupid, and destructive
U.S. presidents – probably most of them, in one way
or another – but what about the good ones? Or the
less bad ones – who's your favorite president and
why?
Doug: Well, start with
the caveat that they were all flawed. Plato's ridiculous
notion of the Philosopher King is an illusion – that
type of person wouldn't dream of being a president, because
he'd realize that you shouldn't control other people. That
said, I like guys like Chester A. Arthur, John Tyler, Calvin
Coolidge, and Grover Cleveland.
But we should define what constitutes a
good president. In my view, it would be one whose actions
resulted in peace, prosperity, and liberty for the country.
Peace means no foreign wars; war is the health of the state.
War is the meat that feeds the beast. Prosperity means extremely
low taxes and regulation, and a peaceful environment where
enterprise can flourish. And liberty means being able to
do what you wish, as long as you don't violate other persons
or property.
Perhaps my favorite ought really be Benjamin
Harrison, because he only ruled 40 days before he was assassinated.
He had no time to do any damage and had to have given the
next guy second thoughts – however fleeting –
about the prudence of being elected.
L: [Chuckles] I'd bet most
Americans don't even remember that there was a president
by that name – the true mark of a great president.
Doug: What about you, Lobo,
who's your favorite president?
L: I can't quite bring
myself to believe that any man could win the ultimate pandering
contest and be an individual of real integrity, so none
are heroes in my eyes. That said, I do find myself persuaded
by the argument Larry Reed used to make back when he ran
the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, that Grover Cleveland
might have been the best of the lot. He was a sound-money
advocate, generally pro-market, and had both the personal
ethics and the backbone to face down Congress and the powerful
interests behind the annexation of Hawaii.
The conquest of Hawaii, in my opinion, was
one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history, because
of the massive level of fraud and deceit involved, which
was quite different from the relatively simpler xenophobic
extermination of other natives. Grover Cleveland basically
said that Hawaii would never be annexed while he was president,
and that's exactly what happened.
Doug: I remember that story.
L: I also have to give
credit to George Washington, in spite of the major turn
down the wrong road he took for the whole country when he
suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion by force, because he could
have set himself up as king after the first American Revolution
– and he didn't.
Doug: He had the army,
was very popular, and he could have done it – I agree,
he could have made himself king, or been reelected until
his death. But I can't forgive him for crushing the Whiskey
Rebellion; that set the precedent for federal taxation and
power that eventually led to the Civil War and the bloated
monster in Washington that has now burst almost all of its
chains.
L: So, who was the worst
president?
Doug: That's a really tough
question to answer, because there are so many deserving
candidates for that title. A short list would have to include
McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Hoover, FDR, Truman,
Johnson, Baby Bush, and Obama. But I'd have to say Lincoln
was by far the worst. He plunged the country into a totally
unnecessary and immensely devastating war, and violated
every important part of the Constitution. But he was such
a great rhetorician that he made Americans feel good about
all the horrors he brought about, setting a doubly bad precedent.
L: I think I know what
you'll say, but for our readers who are used to hearing
Lincoln described as some sort of saint, and probably America's
greatest president, can you expand on that? He preserved
the union and freed the slaves…
Doug: The union was not
preserved. A union of free and sovereign states was cemented
into a single super-state, in which each individual state
became nothing more than an administrative region. Who's
to say that a bigger U.S. was a better one anyway? This
Civil War was really the Second American Revolution. Anyway,
it wasn't a civil war, which is technically a contest for
the control of a single government; it was a war of secession,
like that of 1776. I'm no fan of the Confederacy, but the
wrong side won, overthrowing the federal organization that
restrained national power, maximizing political and economic
freedom.
L: Not for the slaves.
Doug: No, not for the slaves. But slavery
was an uneconomic institution that was on its way out anyway
– the Industrial Revolution was about to put an end
to it in the U.S., just as it did most everywhere else around
the world. Brazil was the last major country to be done
with it, in 1850, and its abolition was peaceable everywhere
but in the Land of Lincoln. And Lincoln was not an abolitionist
– he didn't give a fig for the plight of the slaves.
His "emancipation proclamation" freed the slaves
only in the south. Its real purpose was to incite the slaves
to rebellion in the south and weaken his enemies, and to
enlist the support of the abolitionist movement in support
of his disastrously expensive and unpopular war.
L: Lincoln, the great emancipator,
was also the first president to institute the draft, impose
a federal income tax, and to smash opposition press (literally,
sending soldiers to break their printing presses into kindling).
Doug: That's all true,
although George Bush Jr. arguably had the potential to be
an even worse president. At least Lincoln was intelligent
and articulate. Baby Bush was stupid, evil, pig-headed,
thoughtless, and hugely destructive.
L: So, was Bush Jr. worse
than, say, Obama?
Doug: I'm not sure –
Obama could be worse. He's smart and persuasive, like Lincoln,
which makes him very dangerous, because his ideas are totally
destructive. He's not just doing all the wrong things, but
exactly the opposite of the right things – and not
just economically, but in every field. Obama could well
be the president who pushes the U.S. over the edge.
One major problem is that people conflate
a president's style and personality with his quality as
a leader. An example of that is Teddy Roosevelt. He was
athletic, personally brave, a great outdoorsman, a prolific
writer, something of an intellectual – the kind of
guy who would make for an altogether amusing dinner guest.
But he was also a militarist, an imperialist, and a complete
economic fascist. Teddy the Trust-Buster, popularized the
idea that business is evil from his "bully pulpit."
He gets an A+ for charisma and style, but an F– if
you value peace, prosperity, and liberty.
There's a lot of similarity with his relative,
FDR, who was a total and complete disaster on absolutely
every front. Of course one can argue FDR was just a man
of his time – his contemporaries were Hitler, Stalin,
Tojo, Mussolini, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Peron, and Franco,
among others. All of them, and other world leaders at the
time, were cut from basically the same socialist/fascist
cloth. FDR just cloaked most of his depravations in traditional
American rhetoric – "reforming" capitalism
in order to "save" it and similar nonsense.
Reagan was a fairly good president in terms
of his rhetoric – but like Roosevelt, one can argue
he was also a man of his time, because all over the world,
in the UK with Thatcher, China with Deng, Argentina with
Menem – everywhere really – there was a lot
of free-marketization and reduction in taxes. But Reagan
also started putting deficits and increases in the military
into hyper-drive. And those are trends that will prove nearly
as disastrous as some of those started by Roosevelt. Reagan
is a bit like Jefferson – he talked the talk, but
didn't walk the walk.
What about you – who would you pick
for the worst U.S. president of all time?
L: Well, I have to say
I have an abiding dislike for Bill Clinton, who, among other
crimes, used tax money stolen from me to bomb friends of
mine in Serbia – civilians. But I think that after
Lincoln, whom you've already discussed, FDR was probably
one of the worst. The New Deal was almost a Third American
Revolution, a sweeping wave of socialism that changed America
forever, both attacking and undermining the individualism
and independence of the American people as well as setting
the country on a path to economic self-destruction, the
endgame of which I believe we are now entering into.
Doug: I'd have to agree
with you there, FDR was perhaps the second worst. Wilson
was perhaps the third worst, for getting the U.S. into a
totally pointless world war that he promised to keep the
U.S. out of, and thereby both greatly increasing the scope
of the destruction, and also setting the world on the path
to WWII. It was also on his watch that the Federal Reserve
was set up and the income tax initiated. And when the money
started bearing the images of dead presidents – starting
with the Lincoln penny in 1913.
And, going back to Jefferson, he set up
a terrible precedent for socialized education in Virginia
with the University of Virginia and made the unconstitutional
Louisiana Purchase. Great writer and thinker, but he turned
into Mr. Hyde once in office – there's much more that
was bad about him that made him a mediocre president, at
best.
L: On the other hand, he
did free his slaves upon his death, when he would no longer
be around to make sure they were treated well. And I have
to admit, I admire him for all of his inventions.
Doug: That was a pretty
courageous thing to do at that time – but it would
have been even more courageous to free his slaves while
he lived and then protect them.
L: Can't argue that. What
about today, see any candidates out there who don't seem
stupid, evil, or destructive to you?
Doug: No. I'd like to say
Rand Paul, but although he's riding on his father's coat-tails,
he appears to be just another weakly principled Republican,
who seems to think "supporting our troops," promoting
"traditional values," and thumping the Bible will
somehow restore peace, prosperity, and liberty to the U.S.
I hope that's an unfair assessment of the guy, but I think
not, because the longer people spend in Washington, the
more corrupt and conventional they tend to become. As a
lone voice, his father was a breath of fresh, more principled
air, but he didn't change anything at all that I can see;
the U.S. has continued headlong for the economic and social
cliff he saw as clearly as I did.
L: A pity.
Doug: Maybe, or maybe not.
If he'd made more of a difference, it might have encouraged
other good people to enter politics, instead of doing something
useful with their lives –might have helped prolong
the false belief that anything good can come from politics.
At this point, I don't think we're going to see any meaningful
constructive change until the U.S. government itself implodes.
Which is very likely to happen this decade. The problem
is what comes next… We're in for truly interesting
times.
L: I should have known
you would say that. Okay – investment implications.
Doug: The track records
of the best and worst presidents in America's history might
seem irrelevant to today's problems, but you know what they
say: those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
L: [Chuckles] Or, even
if history doesn't actually repeat, it often rhymes.
Doug: Right. Which leads
to almost all of the conclusions we've come to in our coverage
of the ongoing global economic train wreck in The Casey
Report.
L: Quick summary?
Doug: See our past conversation
on surviving the economic crisis: liquidate, consolidate,
speculate and create. And, of course, diversify your political
risk.
L: Roger that. And Marin
in energy, Alex in technology, and I in metals will do our
best to help with the "speculate" part, in addition
to what you cover in The Casey Report.
Doug: I just hope people
are listening, because that endgame – the Greater
Depression – has started already and will soon get
much worse. And all the evidence suggests that it's going
to be much worse than even I think it will be.
L: Understood – we'll
do our best to help people prepare for, and even to prosper,
in the hard times to come.