Once upon a time, not so very long ago, a certain nation was one of the richest countries in the world. [World War II] had left it a creditor nation; it was owed * * * billions of dollars by Britain alone. The derelict state of the European economies gave [this country] an assured market for its exports, while making it difficult to import much from Europe, thus enabling this country to protect its own * * * industries. After the neglect of the thirties there was money for public spending and the country was * * * absorbing a flow of immigrants * * * [who] were not illiterate and unskilled, but scientists, skilled workers, intellectuals.

What country was this? The United States? No-Argentina. [1]

The whole world knows what has happened in Argentina since then, and is still happening there. Informed individuals also know why: because Argentina's dysfunctional leadership classes adopted faulty economic and political principles. Moreover, Americans can expect much the same thing to happen here, if the same conditions precedent are fulfilled. For although History may never repeat itself exactly, bad principles will bring about similar perverse consequences whenever and wherever they are put into operation. And America's equally dysfunctional leadership classes have adopted the most dangerous of those principles. So, absent a radical correction in this country's present course, the Argentina-ization of the United States is very likely to take place.

As in Argentina, America's present economic and political systems are controlled by arrogant men and women steeped in avarice and ambition, and driven by their appetites for abusive power. The lyric by Enrique Santos Discepolo, master composer of the tango, sums up the situation here just as it did in postwar Buenos Aires:

Don't you see, you poor fool, 

That whoever's got the most dough is right? 

That honor's sold for cash, and morals for pennies? 

That no truth can withstand two bucks? [2]

Simply put: Greed, accompanied by every manner of chicanery, both economically in the marketplace and politically in public office, has become this country's one and only "hard currency".

Nowhere does this appear more starkly than in the political arena. Contemporary politicians recognize no limits to their raw power. Observe that I do not say their "authority"-because to the extent that they act outside of the Constitution, they have no legal authority whatsoever (and, in the strictest sense, no power, either). Yet most of them do imagine themselves entirely outside of the Constitution-at least in terms of the constraints it imposes on them when they act under color of law in the guise of "government". Indeed, they openly express their disdain for the Constitution. For instance, recently, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was asked at a press conference where in the Constitution Congress finds authorization to enact national health-care legislation. Her response was, "Are you serious? Are you serious?" No one asked whether she was serious-because, of course, everyone knew that she was.

That Representative Pelosi was quite serious is as disturbing as it is revealing. For the Constitution explicitly commands that public officials "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution". [3] So, every time that officials treat constitutional limitations on their prerogatives as some kind of contemptible joke, they are in effect committing perjury. Yet America is saddled with governments, at every level, comprised largely of individuals for whom the willingness to commit serial perjury in furtherance of their own selfish interests appears to be a condition of obtaining and operating within public office.

Inasmuch as "Oath[s] or Affirmation[s], to support th[e] Constitution" are ultimately made to the American people as a whole, these rogue public officials plainly feel no sense of legal or moral obligation to the people. Doubtlessly they are strengthened in this malign conviction by their belief that the electoral system is so tightly controlled by the two major political parties and their clients and partisans in special-interest groups and the big media that the people can do nothing to change the situation in any event. In this belief, however, they are woefully mistaken.

Political loyalties move on a two-way street. Masses of economically deprived, socially dislocated, and politically disenfranchised, disgruntled, and disgusted people-who have next to nothing left and therefore almost nothing more to lose-are unlikely to entertain any obligation to the political system under which they happen to live, or to the political parties, politicians, and special-interest groups that run that system for their own parochial benefit. When America's economy slips into the free-fall of hyperinflation or depression, impoverished people will rebel. First, against ever-worsening conditions, by demanding that public officials correct the situation. Then, when their protests accomplish little or nothing, they will rebel against incumbent officials at the next election. Finally, when they discover that the two major political parties are really one party with an empty cranium and a pair of duplicitous faces, and that changing the political personalities in office does not ameliorate the conditions that arise out of the government's hare-brained economic policies, they will rebel against this country's governmental institutions as a whole.

A general disdain for legality will become the order of the day. After all, if public officials refuse to obey the Constitution, which is the sole source of their authority, what obligation has anyone else to obey any law that those officials enact or attempt to enforce? Now, as many as 200,000,000 to 300,000,000 firearms and an immense store of ammunition are estimated to be held in private hands throughout this country. Can anyone believe that, in the midst of what promises to become the most severe economic crisis of modern times, perhaps of all time, this profusion of armaments-in the hands of people who have been rudely stripped of their financial security, disabused of their political illusions, and driven to the edge of desperation by homelessness, hunger, and loss of hope-will not come into play in the most direct manner possible? Can anyone believe that these people's natural and justified antagonisms against public officials, politicians, and special-interest groups will not turn to rancor-rancor to hatred-hatred to an urge for revenge-and an urge for revenge into actual violent retaliation in more than a few isolated instances and in only a short period of time? Of course, no sensible person wants this to happen. But no sensible person can deny that it could, and very likely would, happen under the posited circumstances.

One can only speculate as to how widespread and intense such violent reactions could become in the course of a catastrophic economic collapse throughout the United States. The circumstances that provoked previous episodes of mass violence in America, however, pale in comparison to what should be expected from hyperinflation or depression today. For instance:

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/contact/