Two eminent scholars, Thomas Woods, Jr. and Kevin Gutzman wrote a book last year with a startling and disconcerting thesis. Their argument is that the Constitution is dead not just dying, and they identified a dozen ways—the dirty dozen—in which all three branches of the federal government have removed restraining elements from federal officials so they can do whatever they want! Before discussing Number Six there’s a point worth making in terms of the broader sweep of history, which perhaps warrants a pause to consider just where we are headed. The point speaks to Original Intent and federalism, but also to a sea change in attitudes amongst the polity—those of us who vote and care enough to participate politically. It may speak to the harmful cumulative effect of inattention in a democracy, and the difficulty of holding government to account or hitting the reset button as it were. In my opinion, it speaks to the way in which freemen and freewomen are turned into vassals by their own government.

To wit, Americans knew that for the federal government to prohibit something like alcohol, it would require an amendment to the Constitution. The Eighteenth Amendment was adopted and ratified therefore to do just that. A policy that worked tolerably well at state level, however, demonstrably did not transfer well to the national level and instead gave rise to organized crime for much the same reason that drug violence is rife today in Mexico. The Eighteenth Amendment was overturned by the Twenty-First, the only constitutional amendment ever to have been repealed. Fast forward: Congress now bans products willy-nilly without the least constraining compunction, and marijuana is an excellent example because of its similarity to alcohol. This is done by the way without any amendment empowering it to do so!

Speaking of the harmful cumulative effect of inattention in a democracy, where once the people’s money was safe it is now utterly debased. The dollar may give way to an international currency yet, and it will when it is worthless. The dollar used to be based on gold and precious metal, then on confidence and a few shreds of integrity left in the system. Today the value of one dollar is close to a delete function away. The government won’t even tell you how many are in the economy. If they did, you might try to calculate what’s been done to it. And while you never know where the story will end, in hindsight it is easy to see the first big heist which is Number Six in our dirty dozen—the great gold robbery of 1933. Americans hardly read about it or know it happened, and that’s another story how history in public classrooms is almost as debased as the dollar.

The U.S. Dollar was defined as roughly one-twentieth of an ounce of gold throughout most of our history. Indeed, gold was the actual money but paper represented the specie, being lighter and easier to handle, etc. Assume your raffle ticket is good for a TV—it’s only good if you can make the exchange. The point is that paper notes could be redeemed for gold at any time prior to March 1933 when the federal government announced a banking emergency and, in order to cope with it "recalled" all the monetized gold in the U.S. That is to say, if you possessed gold in the bank or a stash of gold coins in the closet, the Government ordered you to turn it in. The Trading with the Enemy Act (left over from 1917!) was amended to give the president authority to "investigate, regulate, or prohibit" hoarding of gold. In other words, anyone who kept his gold money was unpatriotic and quite probably an enemy of the New Deal Republic to be dealt with accordingly. Now consider that the confiscation of gold was in the name of a banking and currency management crisis, so most Americans absolutely assumed it would be returned when the emergency abated. The difference between borrowing and theft has a lot to do with whether or not you give it back! People and corporations were given an equivalent amount of paper currency for their gold holdings because of the temporary shortage of gold in the banking system since banks had loaned out too much and held too little in reserve. As soon as the gold was collected, however, the president and Congress passed a joint resolution, which nullified the promise to repay in gold. Payment would henceforth be in whatever the government declared was legal tender. Democrat Senator Thomas Gore of Oklahoma told Franklin Roosevelt to his face, "Why, that’s just plain stealing, isn’t it, Mr. President?"

Not only that but it is hardly constitutional. In 1785, even before the Constitution was drafted and some four years before it was ratified, Congress declared the American monetary unit to be the dollar and the Treasury fixed its value to the silver Spanish milled dollar. The power to regulate the dollar in the Constitution is in the same clause as the power to fix weights and measures, i.e., to codify existing standards in order to ensure uniformity. The Constitution did not give politicians or bankers the power to assign arbitrary value to money, any more than Congress can say that one-tenth of a pound now equals a pound or an ounce is the same as a cup. While the value of precious metals does change, the idea behind congressional power to regulate currency is to set the exchange rate of coins and paper in circulation, vis-à-vis some objective standard for predetermined periods of time, and to make it publicly known. The reason they do this is to ensure that an equivalent means exists throughout the country for satisfying payment of debt or purchase of goods.

According to Woods and Gutzman, there are two fundamental reasons why the federal government turned criminal and basically stole from the American people. They are the same reasons we need to begin now reintroducing objective standards and redeemable equivalents in precious metals to our currency: first, "gold severely restricts the ability of government to manipulate the money supply on behalf of the politically well connected"; and second, "Irredeemable paper money…gives the government an easier time of financing war and welfare, which can be portrayed as essentially costless." The government took us to the cleaners, but it’s time to get our money back.

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