Feds Seize Gold Coins Worth $80 Million from Pennsylvania Family

File Under: When you have something good going, don't go to the government to verify it.

Legal thievery...our gov't at its finest, doing what it does best!

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/07/feds-seize-gold-coins-worth-80-million.html

what Phlockers!

http://www.angelfire.com/az/sthurston/parallels.html

http://thecoldvoiceofreason.blogspot.ch/2012/05/review-ominous-parallels-by-leonard.html

Review: The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff
What is the cause of Nazi Germany? What turned "an educated, industrialized, *civilized* Western European nation, a nation renowned throughout the world for the luster of its intellectual and cultural achievements" into Nazi Germany? This is a serious question that has haunted mankind since the end of the Second World War. Unfortunately, virtually nobody has been able to offer even a semi-plausible account of the rise of Nazi Germany. Consider, for example, the popular view that Nazi Germany was born out of the economic hardship caused by The Great Depression. If that was true, then you would expect many more countries, including America, to end up as totalitarian dictatorships.

In The Ominous Parallels, Leonard Peikoff offers, for the first time, a rational account -- an account which has alarming implications for the future of America.

Peikoff's account revolves around an analysis of the culture of pre-Hitler Germany: politics, economics, art, education, psychology and science. He quotes, at length, the most influential and prominent politicians, thinkers, writers, intellectuals, artists, scientists and educators. Peikoff uncovers a culture thoroughly steeped in ideas such as: reason is invalid (i.e., irrationalism); man is only aware of a distorted (by reason, class or race) version of reality (i.e., subjectivism); there are nonrational means of knowledge (i.e., mysticism); the essence of morality is to do your duty and sacrifice yourself for others (i.e., altruism); the individual is nothing and the group is everything (i.e., collectivism) -- ideas which served as the ultimate justification for the totalitarian Nazi state.

Peikoff traces these ideas, underlying and representing the essence of the German culture, all the way back to Plato, Kant and Hegel. Thus, Peikoff proves that the *fundamental* cause of Nazi Germany is the science which deals with *fundamental* ideas: *philosophy*.

The Nazis were merely practicing what everybody had been preaching for centuries. The public regarded them as *idealists*. So, to the extent the public had any issues with the Nazis, they couldn't offer any *fundamental* opposition; they sensed the Nazis were philosophically and morally in the right. Peikoff: "No weird cultural aberration produced Nazism. No intellectual lunatic fringe miraculously overwhelmed a civilized country. It is modern philosophy -- not some peripheral aspect of it, but the most central of its mainstreams -- which turned the Germans into a nation of killers". Peikoff, therefore, concludes: "The land of poets and philosophers was brought down by its poets and philosophers".

Peikoff doesn't stop here. He also compares the culture of pre-Hitler Germany with the culture of pre-New Left America. Peikoff illustrates how virtually every single idea that created Nazi Germany has more or less taken over the American culture. I warn you: this part of the book will make your hair stand on end. Peikoff, therefore, concludes that America is facing the same fate as the Weimar republic: "No one can predict the form or timing of the catastrophe that will befall this country if our direction is not changed. No one can know what concatenation of crises, in what progression of steps and across what interval of years, would finally break the nation's spirit and system of government... What one can know is only this much: the end result of the country's present course is some kind of dictatorship..."

The Ominous Parallels is well written and well argued. Peikoff knows how to clearly explain and relate the meaning of Plato's, Kant's and Hegel's ideas to the statements and actions of the intellectuals, artists, scientists, educators, and the Nazis themselves. Here is one example:

During the Hitler years -- in order to finance the party's programs, including the war expenditures -- every social group in Germany was mercilessly exploited and drained...

[T]he Nazis defended their policies, and the country did not rebel; it accepted the Nazi argument. Selfish individuals may be unhappy, the Nazis said, but what we have established in Germany is the ideal system, socialism. In its Nazi usage this term is not restricted to a theory of economics; it is to be understood in a fundamental sense. 'Socialism' for the Nazis denotes the principle of collectivism as such and its corollary, statism -- in every field of human action, including but not limited to economics.

'To be a socialist,' says Goebbels, 'is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.'

By this definition, the Nazis practiced what they preached. They practiced it at home and then abroad. No one can claim that they did not sacrifice enough individuals.


Peikoff's case is conclusive. The primary value of The Ominous Parallels is, therefore, that it finally provides us with a rational account of the cause of Nazi Germany. There is, in addition, a wider and deeper value of the book: it concretizes the *fundamental* role of philosophy in a man's life and in the history of man. The Ominous Parallels, thereby, indicates how the subject of history should be studied, namely in terms of fundamental abstractions, i.e., *philosophical* ideas. This is an important lesson if you really want to know what it means to *understand* something where we have been (history), where we are now (the headlines of today), and where we are going (the future).

The Ominous Parallels is a true masterpiece. This is a "must read" if you are interested in history and the role of ideas. (If you have already read it but it was a while ago, then I recommend that you re-read it. It is probably the best way to warm up for Leonard Peikoff's upcoming book: The DIM Hypothesis.) Let me end by paraphrasing Ayn Rand: If you love the works of Ayn Rand, you will love this book.