RUTHFULLY YOURS

With the 80th anniversary marking the end of World War II fast approaching, the number of combatants still alive is shrinking. The Bureau of Veteran Affairs estimated last year that, out of over 16 million Americans who served in the War, approximately 66,000 men and women are still with us, with an estimated 55 dying each day. As well, we are rapidly losing even those with memories of the War.

So it is fitting to mark battles in which members of our families participated. By early January 1945, the ultimate outcome of the War was obvious, yet an estimated 49,000 American GIs were yet to die in combat. Okinawa, Iwo Jima and the Battle of Berlin were yet to be fought. Among the lesser well-known battles was one that took place in Italy, where an estimated 100,000 German troops under General Albert Kesselring were embedded along what was called the Gothic Line, a roughly 200-mile defensive line running along the Apennines from Spezia on the Ligurian Sea to Pesaro and Ravenna on the Adriatic. Following the fall of Rome in early June 1944, Germans retreated north to this mountainous defensive position that protected the farm-rich Po Valley and the cities of Bologna and Verona. The key was Mount Belvedere, the highest peak, which overlooked Highway 65, the main road between Florence and Bologna.  

In March 1944 my father, then thirty-three, married and father of three (with a fourth on the way), was drafted. After basic training at Fort McClellan in Alabama, he transferred to the 10th Mountain Division – the “Ski Troops,” who had trained in Colorado, but were then stationed at Camp Swift, about 40 miles east of Austin. In December, the 10th was sent to Fort Patrick Henry in Virginia, prior to being shipped to Italy later that month. A full complement of 14,000 men, under Major General George P. Hays, were sent to rout Kesselring’s troops from their mountainous redoubts. In Mountain Troopers, Curtis Casewit quoted General Hayes: “Mt. Belvedere must be captured before we can advance.”

In November 1944, elements of the British 8th Army and the U.S. 5th Army had attacked Germans entrenched on Belvedere. German counter-attacks caused them to retreat. Three months later, on February 19th, the 10th Mountain Division (now part of the 5th Army) made its ascent, beginning at 0030 hours. The night before the 1st Battalion of the 86th Regiment captured Riva Ridge, which overlooked slopes on Belvedere. Along with others, C Company (my father’s unit) of the 87th Regiment were ordered to move silently forward, with Division artillery supporting the attack. They walked single-file, ten feet apart. “The way up,” Peter Shelton wrote in Climb to Conquer, “was long and folded, riddled with streams and ditches, with sharp ravines and bombed-out wagon roads.” They had to avoid mined fields and went past “ghostly remains of U.S. tanks,” abandoned on that earlier attempt. Because of walking past German sentries, the GIs, with fixed bayonets, carried grenades but no live ammunition – at least until daylight. Unfortunately, several soldiers were killed by mines. By 0430 Company C had attained its objective atop Belvedere, but with three of its men killed. Hays was again quoted by Curtis Casewit: “Mt. Belvedere and the occupied ground will be held at all costs.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/de-tocqueville-on-the-difficulty-of-freedom/

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”  (Alexis de Tocqueville)

There have actually been people in history who have found slavery to be more comfortable than freedom, and indeed, I would argue that many such individuals exist today.  They would rather be taken care of by the government (or, socialism) than risk the “freedom of opportunity” necessary to provide for themselves.  Sadly, that just feeds the egos and lusts of power-hungry politicians who live to control other people and tell them what to do.  And when you control somebody’s finances, you definitely control them.  Congress can’t even go home for Christmas until they try to pass some kind of budget that gives them trillions of dollars to spend to enslave the masses.

We today don’t call such government oppression “slavery” (our Founding Fathers did), but in one sense, that is exactly what it is.  People are “enslaved” if it is only the government which allows them to have and do.  “Allowed freedom” is not freedom, it is indeed another term for slavery.

But many who do want freedom do not really understand what it is or where it comes from.  It is a gift of God, as Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, and thus is defined by that Author.  “There is no liberty without morality,” Edmund Burke wrote, and by that, he meant the morality that comes from on High.  Modern Marxist Leftism has rejected that morality for a human-defined selfishness and decadence that starts with “every man does that which is right in his own eyes.”  But this godlessness and immorality will end in tyranny, not freedom.  And Leftists know it.

Burke explained this very nicely:  “Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within [i.e., self-control], the more there must be without [government].  It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.  Their passions forge their fetters.”  Self-government is not Washington, D.C.  Self-government is a person governing themselves, controlling themselves in harmony with the laws of God, which provide true freedom.  Otherwise, as Burke said, a person’s “passions forge their fetters.”  They will be self-destructive, and destructive of others.

Burke further wrote:  “But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”  This is what de Tocqueville meant in the quote at the beginning of this article.  Too many people do not know how to use freedom for they do not know from whence it comes.  Such has long been a curse of man and the main reason why “slavery” (government oppression) is far more common in history than true freedom is.

https://fee.org/articles/hayeks-nobel-50-years-later/

Fifty years ago, Friedrich Hayek and Karl Gunnar Myrdal won the Nobel prize “for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.” Hayek’s Nobel is notable for several reasons, and each relates to the importance of intellectual humility.

First, his Nobel address—delivered 50 years ago today—was an exercise in humility, as highlighted by FEE’s own Larry Reed. Hayek even went so far as to argue that there really shouldn’t be a Nobel prize for economists due to the disproportionate intellectual authority the prize bestows.

Second, Hayek’s work, including much of the work he won his Nobel for, is based on recognizing the limits of the intelligentsia to plan society and, in particular, the economy.

To understand Hayek’s work, we must understand two key contributions of his mentor Ludwig von Mises. It’s no surprise that Hayek’s Nobel would be connected to Mises. Nobel-winner Paul Samuelson, who departs from the work of Hayek and Mises on many points, has previously argued that Mises himself would have won the Nobel had it been awarded earlier in history.

Economic Fluctuations

First, Hayek’s prize was linked to his work on money and economic fluctuations. There’s no doubt that this work is placed under the umbrella of Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT). ABCT is by no means an invention of Hayek. Rather, he developed the theory which has its foundations at the beginning of the Austrian school with elements in Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, and finally Mises.

Hayek, in particular, focused on how capital goods transform over the various stages of production. As capital goods advance in time toward the customer, they fundamentally change in kind. So, when a central government monetary policy (such as an increase in the supply of money) causes an increase in long-term loans, these-long term loans change the structure of capital goods in society.