The Balance of Tomorrow:  Who Will Win the War for Justice

by Dr. Robert D. Crane


  Half a century ago, in the inaugural issue of the journal, Orbis: A Quarterly Journal of World Affairs, its founding editor, Robert Strausz-Hupe, published a seminal article entitled “The Balance of Tomorrow.”  This article in 1957 laid the foundation for what later became known as Neo-Conservatism, based on a fearsome forecast of chaos in the world toward the end of the twentieth century after the collapse of Communism.  Although Professor Strausz-Hupe posited moral superiority as the ultimate strength of America, he developed the doctrine that the only way to counter the population explosion, totalitarian extremism, and the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Third World would be to impose a New World Order through an American monopoly of military might.

  He was right in his extremely far-sighted forecast for the future of the world, including his assumption that Communism would implode in his lifetime, but his prescription of unilateral military preemption as the only means to preserve the peace in the interests of America has served only to increase the threats that the NeoCon policies were intended to overcome. 

  Strausz-Hupe’s choice of peace through power is a losing paradigm in the cause of peace, prosperity, and freedom.  The intellectual H-bomb in the pursuit of global peace today is the paradigm of compassionate justice.  Unfortunately, in recent years this concept has been foreign to both of America’s major political parties. 

  Indeed, we are in the middle of a Fourth World War against totalitarian extremists with potential access to weapons of mass destruction, but countering fire with fire is not the best way to win.  Furthermore, fighting on the defensive is a sure path to defeat.

  The real issue in the Election Year 2008 is which party is best suited by origin and tradition to promote justice both at home and abroad in order to overcome the injustices that cause alienation, hopelessness, extremism, hatred, and destruction.  We worry about the balance of power today, but we should worry more about the balance of justice both today and tomorrow. 

  The issue is which paradigm will triumph, the paradigm of post-modernist totalitarianism or the traditionalist paradigm of divine revelation, natural law, and human reason.  The traditionalist thought of America’s Founders combines these three interdependent sources of human responsibilities and rights into a single paradigm of transcendent justice. 

  The more specific issue right now is which paradigm will triumph within each of the major political parties in America.  The issue is not whether a successful civilization in the modern world should provide free health care, free education, and good retirement benefits for every citizen.  Clearly, it should.  But these three tasks are not the job of government.  The best solution is to get the government out of the way, because reliance on governmental attempts to promote justice may end up by turning America into a socialist, totalitarian state.

  The macro-economic path to justice was pioneered by Abraham Lincoln who was the real founder of the Republican Party.  Building on James Madison’s and Thomas Jefferson’s conviction that widespread property ownership is the key to political freedom, Lincoln introduced the Homestead Act, which provided free land to every citizen who was willing to build on this capital asset.  This sparked the great American economic boom that turned America within a few decades into a world economic powerhouse. 

  In the modern world, the principal source of wealth is still capital, but the key now is not who will own land but who will own the capital embodied in America’s modern economy.  The critical issue in planning for the future half a century from now is whether we can introduce a Capital Homestead Act to broaden capital ownership as a universal human right in America and as the key to marginalize terrorism by making America a model for the world?

  The blueprint for real change has been developed in great detail over the years by the Center for Economic and Social Justice, which was founded in 1984 to advise President Ronald Reagan on how to implement it.  He spelled it out in his various writings, but failed to follow through.  See the relevant documents at http://www.cesj.org and in its book, Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen. 

  The strategic key is the concept of pure credit, which was legislated in Article 13 of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.  This was intended to provide money to jumpstart economic enterprises beyond what was possible using only the pool of past savings available in the market.  The most ambitious enterprise, capital homesteading, would provide every U.S. citizen at birth with $7,000 and the same amount every year to invest, subject to careful regulations, in productive enterprises, so that dividends would provide a good income throughout life, in addition to salaries and wages, and the capital asset at retirement would be worth at least $600,000, enough to provide a good retirement whenever one wants to retire. 

  Both parties in America in the Year 2000 call for change, because experiments during the 20th century in both totalitarian socialism and oligarchical capitalism have failed.  The Democrats call for “change,” but they go no farther than to call for tweeking the bankrupt system of today.  They might argue that governmental palliatives to reduce the pain of a bankrupt economic system are safer, but maintaining the existing system is not change. 

  The best and safest way to support the universal human right to justice in a capital intensive economy is to broaden individual capital ownership in a system based on private property ownership and free markets as the most powerful tools for both economic and political self-determination. 

  The bottom line of real change is simple.  Whoever controls money and credit controls economic power, and whoever controls the wealth in society controls the government.  Rather than instituting federal government programs to take care of the people, which means bribing them so they will not revolt and stealing money by transferring it from property owners to the propertyless, the people should reduce the role of government to only three areas, namely, money, domestic security, and national defense.

  Fundamental institutional change is possible, but the only party that might have the courage to implement it may be the Republican Party.  First, however, the new Republican leaders must recapture the Party from the NeoCon fascists who have hijacked it.  John McCain’s track record shows that he may have the courage and backbone to do this.  His greatest moment of courage was his decision to appoint Sarah Palen to help lead the team, because he knows that he will need her commitment to principle and her proven guts to accomplish what the Founders of America considered to be its divine destiny as a model of justice for the world.