Gold Daily And Silver Weekly Charts - Statism Is Relativism With Reference Only To Itself

"If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. 

From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable. ” 

Benito Mussolini, Diuturna

That philosophy described by Benito is fiat with a capital 'F.'   

All values, including money, are whatever we say that they are, to the extent that we can back them up with whatever amount of fraud and force that are required.  Everything that a tyrant does is legal, because they hold their power as the ultimate source of the law.

This is directly opposed to the principle of a higher justice embodied in the rule of law.   There can be no real justice if there is no truth transcending human power.  If there is no standard of truth, then all ideas are equally meaningless and without inherent value unless backed by power and the will to decree 'let it be done.'  

A trillion dollars may be represented by market tested legal debt, by a finite store of gold, a single platinum coin, or the stalk of a rotting turnip, if we say that it is so.  All of these ideas are equally true says the sophist.

This is the very blueprint for abuse from the extremes of both the left and the right, the statists of the Socio-Political Continuum who see power as the greatest good.  

The great American innovation was to claim that certain values are self-evident, true without contingency to a counterparty, because they have been endowed as a part of nature by a transcendent God.   They may have made distinctions between religions and a transcendent power, but that acknowledgement of the subordination of the law to certain higher values is unmistakable.

Yes, we can argue about the implications, dimensions and definitions of freedoms.  But we can never cynically dismiss them as did the statists of the 20th century, most of whom also by necessity adopted official atheism or a vague neo-pagan mythology of the blood or some other state sponsored belief that was a tool of their official will.

I know this should be obvious, but it is remarkable how easily people can forget the basis for the great American experiment and the principles that inspired it.  It is the philosophical notion of the legal restraint of power and accountability of government to its source in the people themselves.

Now, one can certainly argue how those standards will be incorporated into the law, and what those standards ought to be in practice.  But it is undeniable that there must be standards, and that the law is not in any way sufficient to itself, no form of legalism or a religion of the law.  The law itself is answerable to those standards by the ultimate authority of the consent of the governed recognizing that which exists transcendently.

"If there's no God and no life beyond the grave, doesn't that mean that men will be allowed to do whatever they want?'   

'Didn't you know that already?' he said and laughed again. 'An intelligent man can do anything he likes as long as he's clever enough to get away with it."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

And once again, I am not saying that there ought to be a gold standard per se. Not at all. There are many ways to set standards and maintain them, with gold having many of the key characteristics of a good external standard. All things can be turned to evil, even inherently good things.  Our system is capable of corrupting almost anything including the word of God itself.  Our hypocrisy knows few bounds, and our law has often descended into a mere ritual of legality with little enough reference to justice.

But those things that are transcendent of human power and our pride at least remind us that we are doing evil, and that we are not sufficient unto ourselves as the arbiters of the universe.  

But I will go so far to say that virtually every would-be statist who wishes to set themselves up as an authority by fiat will almost certainly find gold to be troublesome, an impediment, and something to be feared and if possible, controlled.   

Like private conscience, and a belief in a higher power than the power of the state, gold whispers in the silence to us, that something is terribly wrong.

It was a quiet option expiration on the Comex today.  More on that tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.