Restoring Our American Legacy

EDITORIAL

By Ron Holland - October 21, 2013

This is the text of Ron Holland's speech about his new book, Restoring Our American Legacy, presented at the first annual High Alert Investment Conference in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia on October 18, 2013. Later in the article we will tell you how to receive a free digital download of the book.

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It is a pleasure to be here today. I was asked to talk about my new book, due out in a few weeks, entitled Restoring Our American Legacy. I write about the next four years being a unique time of final opportunity and crisis, involving:

the growing threat of a dollar and Treasury debt crisis as the dollar loses its world reserve currency status, which would allow Washington to take most of our wealth and remaining freedoms by presidential executive order,
the potential for tremendous profits with private equity thanks to the JOBS act,
how to protect our existing wealth from a wide range of threats
and finally, I cover the great importance of the last opportunity for political action, over the next four years before the final gates of tyranny close on the great American experiment.

Today I only have time to cover a limited number of topics, chapters and case studies in the book but before I get started I would like to know your views and opinions on a number of current events and historical issues involving America and all the representative democracies of the West. I tend to cover topics by looking at the hidden history of events and politics because I believe Confucius has given us some good advice: "Study the past if you would define the future."

First, I want to read for you something a good friend recently wrote. She formerly worked in GOP politics for a congressman who's since become a well-known TV personality on one of the leading morning cable news shows. She's also one of my favorite historical novel writers. She recently wrote the following: "My culture has grown into an alien environment around me. This is not the America I grew up in. Change is inevitable, but my country's rapid decline is by design. It makes me sad, but far more than that, it makes me angry." – Connie Chastain

How many of you agree with her concerns and view of America today? A recent poll showed that 13% of Americans believe our nation is heading in the right direction. What do you think? Well, it looks like all of us are among the 87% who believe our nation is heading in the wrong direction.

How many of you have enjoyed the writings of Tom Clancy, author of The Hunt for Red October back in 1984 and numerous other best sellers, who passed away several weeks ago? In reviewing my book draft last night while preparing for this talk, I remembered I had placed one of Clancy's quotes first in the book.

"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else." – Tom Clancy, author

How many of you here today would agree with his assessment of the Washington government? As you know, he died a couple of weeks ago. No cause of death has been provided to the public but there are a number of conspiracy theories going around, so Google "what killed Tom Clancy" if you are interested in the speculation.

Jim Rogers tells us why it is so important to study history even though much of it is just propaganda.

"Just look at history. You know, I teach college classes here in New York. My students sometimes ask me what they should study if they want to be successful. I tell them to read history and philosophy. They say, shouldn't we be studying accounting or business…? I say, no you've got to study history because this is all we have…a record of all we've learned or should have learned." – Jim Rogers

Although my first love is history and politics, my work background consists of 40 years in the investment and retirement consulting business. I created the first gold IRA, headed up a registered broker-dealer licensed in 47 states and developed several U.S. registered Swiss franc and global products for American investors.

My latest book, Restoring Our American Legacy, addresses the threats to our liberties, wealth and retirement benefits, how we should protect and grow more wealth with the new JOBS Act and suggests the potential for a boom in private equity and IPO business. Finally, the book highlights why we should be politically involved over the next four years with the freedom movement and candidates inside the GOP in opposing the equally guilty Republican establishment that has destroyed our nation along with the Democrats.

Did you know a typical US household doesn't make any more today than it did a quarter-century ago? Yet the cost of housing has jumped 56%, out-of-pocket spending on healthcare is up 155% and costs for four years of college have rocketed 191%. I know this, as my youngest daughter will be starting college in a year and a half.

As accredited investors, many of us have often been more fortunate than the average American but ultimately a nation where the standard of living and prosperity for the poor and middle class is shrinking will translate into more mob-rule democracy out to transfer more from those who are successful to others. This means more confiscation and less potential capital to invest in private industry that could help those less fortunate attain a better standard of living than through minimum-wage jobs.

I would like to get your reaction to the following news reports & headlines:

Internet Is Now Main News Source for Young Americans – Huffington Post
NSA collects millions of e-mail address globally – The Washington Post
Ratings Downgrade – Sun setting on dollar supremacy and American power… – UK Telegraph
"There is no safe haven….The best you can hope for is that you have a diversified portfolio of different assets and that they don't all collapse at the same time….Bank deposits are no longer safe; money and treasury bills are not 100% safe; and equities in the US are relatively expensive by any valuation metric." – Marc Faber
Ratings Downgrade – A Chinese ratings agency downgraded its US sovereign credit rating Thursday despite Washington's resolution of the debt ceiling deadlock, warning that fundamentals for a potential default remained unchanged.
After sudden plunge, gold traders cry conspiracy as 5,000 gold futures contracts were dumped on the market.
US watching for signs of Israeli strike on Iran… – Washington Times

Well, it appears the entire room here agrees that we, like most young people, get most of our news from the Internet rather than the establishment sources, the NSA spying surprises none of us, we are concerned about the American dollar and Treasury debt ratings, we know there is no guaranteed safe haven and that the gold market is and has been manipulated for decades.

Next… How many of you:

Fear for your wealth?
Fear for your liberties?
Have given up on politics?
Believe the dollar will lose its world reserve currency status within the next decade?

Theft, whether by governments or criminal gangs (if there is a difference), has changed little in thousands of years. When we study real history, not the false establishment government, educational, history and media propaganda, it is apparent that almost all government actions by all nations are just an excuse for wealth confiscation and theft.

Wars are external theft of private wealth from other nations. Forced internal taxation for protection from the "fear du jour" – terrorism, economic crisis, foreign national threats – is theft just as surely as if roving bands of bandits or the mafia raided your home or farm annually demanding protection money or else they would rape your wife, burn your home and crops and take your children as slaves. Governments have always stolen on two levels: institutional theft internally and theft against nations and groups externally.

As productive, working citizens of our respective nations who have done well financially compared to the poor and lower middle classes, in the US we would be considered accredited investors. I have three recommendations in the book and my discussion today.

Accredited investors should:

protect and preserve their existing wealth from both domestic and international threats.
seek to grow and expand our wealth by not following the majority of investors down the usual Wall Street path to poverty and impoverishment.
attempt to create an improved political environment over the next four years to better secure our wealth from government actions, terrorist threats, false-flag operations and the corrupt legal system.

9/11 Really Did Change the World

The U.S. has engaged in the War on Terror, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs and the recent war on tax havens. These have all been designed to advance government power and destroy personal and financial privacy worldwide. The 9/11 event was used to create the nightmare world we live in today of global NSA surveillance, America being turned into a permanent warfare state and in the process changing air travel and border security into the TSA nightmare it has become. Taken all together these responses have effectively killed legal, constitutional and civil liberties for all Americans.

Traditional Non-government Risks to the Wealth of High Net Worth Americans

In the book I first cover the standard risks to the wealth of high net worth investors including greed and revenge from former friends, partners and associates as well as wives, girlfriends and boyfriends and mistresses. In this chapter we have a Big Money Divorce Case Study about a very wealthy inventor who made many millions of dollars and lived in a magnificent plantation in the South. Fear of a particular lawsuit caused him to put much of his wealth in his wife's name against the recommendation of his lawyer.

One day after his wife left to go shopping a process server showed up at his door with a divorce action. He said, "Sorry, buddy, but you have the wrong house as I just finished breakfast with my wife" a little while ago. Guess what? She was divorcing him after he had transferred the bulk of his assets into her name. Then she turned him into the IRS for what she didn't get.

Next I cover the importance of investment risks, suggesting that investors forget the promises and lure of potential profits and ask the investment person what could go wrong in a worst-case situation. This is followed by my warning to enjoy distant, offshore, exotic locations and trips but to be especially careful investing with an advisor or undertaking any kind of financial dealings there. Offshore promoters are another often unregulated risk you rarely hear about.

Of course, if you really like a particular offshore location, consider investing in a condo or home there to use as a vacation residence, generate rental income and serve as a safe haven home should a crisis develop in the United States. But this should be your decision. Do not let an offshore consultant or real estate agent push you into buying foreign real estate. My favorite locations are Spain, Colombia, Costa Rico, Chile, Argentina, the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas and Vancouver Island, Canada.

Recommendations:

Never deal with lone individuals or questionable strategies, products or jurisdictions.
Run if an expert "salesperson" mentions tax benefits or privacy for Americans, as Washington has destroyed both.
Utilize well-known financial institutions and top tier offshore jurisdictions.

Noted author Gore Vidal said, "Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age" and many successful American victims of the corrupt legal system would certainly agree but today corruption is everywhere, in all former respected US institutions.

But as a former president of a stock brokerage firm, I realize firsthand the fact that the corruption is universal, in Wall Street as well as the court system. Stockbrokers may well be the world's fifth oldest profession, following in the "proud tradition" of prostitutes, pimps, politicians and tax collectors. Therefore, if you do not build a secure wealth preservation strategy, you probably will not have the time, desire or money for the first two professions. Woody Allen described stockbrokers best when he said, "A stockbroker is someone who takes all your money and invests it until it's all gone."

Government Confiscation Risks Are Growing

"The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." – Voltaire

Since 1913 wealth confiscation has been elevated from war-like plunder and pillage expeditions against political and geographical targets to organized, institutional and systematic plunder.

Consider 25 percent of the population in the 13 colonies supporting King George and many of these loyalists had their property and wealth confiscated after independence. Many moved to Canada or back to England to start over, often penniless unless they had previously owned property or wealth outside the US. While American history is silent on this mass migration and wealth confiscation, many towns and villages in Canada are today called "loyalist" towns, founded by escaping people on the losing side in the American Revolution.

The Secret History of Government Theft

Government propaganda and establishment-approved and -promoted history is often just a cover-up for theft. Remember, the winners always get to write the history and this is naturally done in such a way that makes the winners look good and the losers bad. All approved histories are actually more like historical fiction than the real truth about the period or event covered.

After World War One a British propaganda expert was asked why they fabricated charges of Germans bayoneting babies, using human skin for lampshades and dead bodies for soap. Feeling no remorse, he said, "If we hadn't said those things, our soldiers wouldn't have fought and died for the empire."

People of every nation want to believe they are virtuous, honorable and patriotic whereas their enemies are barbarians and aggressors. Do you think most regulators, politicians, IRS agents or even German camp guards during the Second World War thought they were evil or participating in theft? Of course not. They were doing their patriotic duty to their country, or so they believed.

Let's see a show of hands. How many of you:

believe America has a voluntary tax system?
believe terrorists hate us because we are free?
know who were Rome's "barbarians"?

Theft and Cover-ups Are Normal for All Governments

Perhaps you've heard this quote by General Sherman, of burning Atlanta and Colombia SC fame, who wrote concerning the Indians, "All have to be killed or maintained as a species of paupers." Do you read about this in history books?

How about Lincoln's plan to move all African Americans back to Africa after the Civil War, to Liberia. How many of you are aware of this hidden historical tidbit?

We all know about the Nazi holocaust during World War Two but what was the second worst holocaust in European history? The answer is the Armenian holocaust but few Americans, unless they have Greek heritage, are aware of this.

Theft is in the eyes of the beholder and those subjected to the theft usually aren't in a position of power or influence after the fact to give their side of the story. Consider the history of Native Americans and African slaves.

Beware Arbitrary Executive Branch Decrees

Presidential Executive Orders are how Roosevelt legally confiscated the private gold in 1933. Lincoln used this to jail political opponents, shut down opposition newspapers and intimidate the press. This is the greatest risk to every American's wealth, liberty and freedom.

Now, there have been many warnings about executive orders over the years but much of this risk was fear mongering by newsletter writers out to sell copy and fear-based financial promotions rather than real. But since 9/11 this threat only requires a real or contrived false-flag event to declare a national emergency and totally shut our country down along with your wealth, freedoms and ability to resist.

Secret Presidential Decision Directives are even more frightening because they don't have to be published nor put in the public record and most relate to national security – or at least they are supposed to.

In Restoring Our American Legacy I include a case study called "The Final Presidential Executive Order," which shows how many of our liberties and all of your wealth could be taken away overnight if a series of small terror attacks took place. While this is an extreme scenario about what Washington could do, this scenario about presidential executive orders issued during a crisis is intended to illustrate the point of how easy all of this could be accomplished by a real or contrived event.

I had some fun writing the order creating a domestic terrorism response team called the Board of Executive Action Stopping Terrorism, as the initials for you Bible scholars is "BEAST." While you will have to read the case study chapter in the book for the details, one section is called the "Safe Banking Accountability Act." Like most government actions, the name is totally opposite of the intent.

During the national emergency or crisis, the act calls for:

the immediate seizure and taxation of all private safe deposit box contents
full disclosure and taxation of all private gold and cash hoarding
a call-in of existing dollars and replacement with new legal tender currency
the immediate passport and drivers license seizure for unpaid tax obligations
closing of all financial institutions, markets and related financial products for crisis period and
exchange controls and a halt to foreign funds transfer for private citizens.

Beware Empire, or Foreign Policy Risk

American foreign policy, or what I describe as empire risk, really does threaten your wealth and remaining liberties.

I recommend the John Galt approach to defending your wealth and liberties. First, vote with your assets – choose a secure, safe haven second home location and build protected wealth outside the dollar and your home country jurisdiction. Forget depending on depraved politicians, parasitical bureaucrats or a corrupt legal system to protect you.

There are three unique risks posed by empires as we look back at the rise and fall of large empires throughout history. You should have some of your wealth stored or with a custodian outside the US and specifically outside the New York City area.

Military Overreach – All empires expand militarily for financial wealth, resources and other foreign policy reasons until they simply overreach and cannot expand any further. At this point empires go into the defensive position and fight a delaying action to hold what they've captured.

National Bankruptcy – Most empires have historically over time bankrupted themselves in the quest to capture or defend an empire. Sometimes the bankruptcy comes from currency collapse, warfare or too much debt but in the end every empire goes bankrupt. America will be no different and, in fact, as in World War One, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire collapsed not so much on the battlefield as on the economic and financial fronts.

Today's Global Terrorism – The British fighting lightly armed tribesman in Africa really did not have much to fear back in London but 9/11 has shown that today this has changed. There are tens or hundreds of millions of foreigners who hate American foreign policy. All it takes are a few in the US or abroad who can get their hands on a WMD and everything will change overnight. This is a substantial and growing risk for the American empire whether the target is terror or destruction, financial or economic in nature. Just be aware of the risk. Regardless of the NSA spying and police state domestic controls, eventually some terror element will get through.

We know the US faces substantial terrorist risk. But what would you calculate to be the terrorist risk to Switzerland, as an example? What nations have the Swiss invaded, attacked or droned lately?

I have a history question for you: What do all of these entities have in common – Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Knights Templars, Ottoman Empire, Italians, the French and the British? The answer is they all attempted to invade and occupy the Middle East with military forces.

How many are still there today? I think this should be food for thought both for the American people, who contribute a tremendous amount of treasure and blood to this effort through taxes and the military, and our government leading this failed military action for the empire.

What Happened to the America Dream?

We've lost our guarantees of limited government, private property and secure wealth.

Although historically during war and economic crisis we've flirted with tyranny, generally these threatening measures have been temporary. After each crisis most of the excesses were curtailed. However, I fear the police state today is different and HERE TO STAY!

A few examples of previous, temporary measures include:

Lincoln imprisoned political enemies without trial, closed newspapers, imprisoned Francis Scott Key's grandson in Fort McHenry where the Star Spangled Banner had been inspired.

Wilson closed US stock and commodity exchanges for four months during the First World War and Roosevelt confiscated private gold in 1933. Freezing assets of foreign nations has always been popular and most Americans are unaware that in 1941 Roosevelt froze Swiss assets, before our involvement in the war while both nations were still neutral.

Another example is the War on Drugs. This has caused the US to have the highest incarceration rate in the world today. Russia is second contrasting with Canada at 123rd and China 120th. This is not a statistic in which I want American to be number one.

"I fear for our nation. Nearly half of our people receive some form of government subsidy. We have grown weak from too much affluence and too little adversity. I fear that soon we will not be able to defend our country from our sure and certain enemies. We have debased our currency to the point that even the most loyal citizen no longer trusts it." – Roman senator, 63 AD

Part 2: How To Secure and Build Wealth and Liberty

So Where Do We Go From Here?

"Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July but the democrats believe every day is April 15." – Ronald Reagan

This is my favorite Reagan quote but actually untrue, as in reality both major political parties work together to achieve common goals decreed by special interests. The Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty of destroying our economy and future prosperity through massive debts and in building our permanent warfare state. Yes, each party attempts to gain votes and support through meaningless gestures like the debt ceiling debate, healthcare issues and foreign policy but this is only a game sort of like a rigged sports event you watch on television.

Politics in America is simply an illusion of choice in a closed, special interest-controlled, two-party system. Regardless of party, America loses at every election to powerful special interests. Our system is just an illusion of choice inside a closed political monopoly run by special banking, central bankers and multi-national interests. Bush and the GOP destroyed our liberties and Obama just continues the trend.

Therefore, politics is totally corrupt in our closed two-party monopoly but the only game in town. This is why I like Rand Paul the politician in addition to his father, Ron Paul the educator, because Rand is a realist. The time for voter education to help solve our national problems has run out. Today requires a successful combination of individual and political actions over the next four years or the game is over – if we have even that long.

Why The Swiss Are Right on Direct Democracy and Foreign Policy

Switzerland is the most successful country model to follow concerning government structure. Their decentralized confederation with direct democracy where the people still rule due to the rights of referendum and initiative are a winning combination today and historically.

In Switzerland the people can actually initiate legislation and laws or kill bad laws and legislation if parliament fails to follow the will of the people. Imagine for a moment how the United States or other European nations would be different if we had these political rights. But their system certainly isn't perfect. In addition, Switzerland was once an investor haven of privacy and secure money yet I now fear Switzerland is doomed as a financial center for American citizens due to the actions of the US government.

The next few chapters of my book cover the advantages of a return to the George Washington style foreign policy of trade with all nations but few political or military alliances. I believe in order to decrease the terrorist threat Washington must embark on a new paradigm in foreign policy.

"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop." – George Washington, farewell address, 1796

Foreign policy is followed by the benefits of turning programs and services as well as social questions, education, drug laws and victimless crimes back to the states. Finally, I cover the new JOBS Act and suggest how this legislation will benefit private equity investing. I go into some detail about how this eventually could spark a private equity boom in the US in spite of the fact that the law was passed primarily as a bone for the hedge fund industry, a favored contributor to the Democrat Party.

Finally, since I view terrorism and the future collapse of US Treasury debt and the dollar as the American currency loses its status as the world's reserve currency as significant risks, I cover wealth protection strategies in the final sections. I believe there will be a payback period when the end of our petrodollar and reserve currency status could cause the dollar to lose up to 50 percent of its value compared to gold, the Swiss franc and even the euro.

Protection can be built through cost averaging into gold and silver bullion, diversification outside the dollar and US jurisdiction and through offshore real estate with a secure second home location, etc. It is also important to remember that cash, liquidity and bullion coins will be king during this crisis. Finally, many wealthy Americans will likely lose more assets to looming retirement benefit, qualified plan and IRA controls, excessive distribution penalties and forced investment into collapsing Treasury debt than through the dollar collapse.

I've written two books on this threat over the last 20 years and will have the third ready by January 2014, titled Retirement Trap 2015.

In Conclusion

Western-style representative democracy began with the best of intentions as a people based self-government solution to overcome slow travel and information flow. But it has been bastardized into a flawed government structure now used to control most of the world.

Today it is little more than a Trojan horse for global corporations, foreign interests, the major banks and central banking cartel to control most Western nations without regard to the will of the voters by providing a false illusion of political participation without any real substance or ability to control or even impact government policies.

A better way to view the world is to look at national boundaries as franchise territories for individual plantations and central banks where they control the money and tax rates. Some plantations hire slave masters who are better than others at taking care of their slave property with varying degrees of terror and incentives but in the end we are all slaves to a global plantation system.

The entire West, with a few exceptions such as Switzerland and Iceland, have built their entire political structures on representative democracy where the Congress or parliaments are controlled by special interests not the people.

Massive government debt has been used to pay benefits to voters to maintain political controls and now the debt load is too great. Something will give but it will not be the political system and special interests unless they are forced to do so in order to survive.

I want to close with author Connie Chastain's quote because I believe she expresses our concerns about America today far better than I can:

"My culture has grown into an alien environment around me. This is not the America I grew up in. Change is inevitable, but my country's rapid decline is by design. It makes me sad, but far more than that, it makes me angry."

I fear Thomas Jefferson could have been looking into what was then the future of our nation, beginning in 1913 until today, when he said, "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterable through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery."

Much of the Western world is being reduced to slavery due to debt-financed representative democracy. This is not immediate, as many of us in this room are successful and well off but remember, as I described in The Final Presidential Executive Order, it can happen overnight and there will be nothing you can do about it after the fact. We could be like the Jews in France when that country surrendered to Hitler. One day you are free; the next day your days, liberty and wealth are numbered just waiting for the day when they get around to you.

Remember what Martin Niemöller said in a similar time in history when fascism and a police state were built supposedly to protect a nation from threats both foreign and domestic:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – ?Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.

– Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor living under the Third Reich

It can happen here. Let's work together to build and secure our wealth, educate others and use the political system, as broken as it is, to defend the vision of our Patriot Founding Fathers.

When the vast majority of a population are doomed to poverty with little hope for the future, those of us with assets will wake up one day during a real or contrived crisis and find our assets looted and our future dark. I urge you to take action now before it is too late.

Finally, if those who plan to loot us win I promise you the theft of our wealth and liberties will be little more than a footnote in establishment propaganda "history" and shown to be legal and in the public interest. That is unless The Daily Bell's Internet Reformation takes hold sooner rather than later. Then maybe things will be different.

My final quote explains how they will justify and make the theft legal.

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." – Frédéric Bastiat

If you would like a complimentary digital version of the new book, just e-mail me at rholland@eastnet.ch and I'll email it to you in a few weeks when it is available. Alternatively, you will also be able to buy the book online in the future.

Restoring Our American Legacy

Part 1: What Went Wrong: Why Your Wealth Is Threatened

1. Relax – I Don't Have Anything to Sell You

2. 9/11 Really Did Change the World

3. How US Political and Foreign Policy Threaten Your Wealth and Liberties

4. Traditional Risks to the Wealth of High Net Worth Americans

5. Government Confiscation Risks

6. The Secret History of Government Theft in America

7. Beware Arbitrary Executive Branch Decrees

8. The Final Executive Order: Death of the Republic, Case Study 5

9. The Empire Risk

10. Paradise Lost: What Happened to the American Dream?