"If the American people ever allow banks to issue their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and [bank owned] corporations which will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it.

To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker, but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.

"When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free, and never was free again."

"The government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, or to decide who is a patriot and who is not. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them."

"In the beginning of change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, and still yet if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you, and only a precarious chance for survival.

There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

Speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776

"If you love [the promise of dispossessed] wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you [or allow you to eat, only for the while]. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye [who would neither stand for or deserve what is right] were our countrymen."

LETTER TO THOMAS JEFFERSON:

"All the perplexities, confusions and distresses in America arise not from defects in the Constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation."

"Freedom is never an achieved state. Like electricity, we must keep generating it, or the lights go out. We now witness a fire sale of American liberty at the bargain basement price of the false promise of security. The America being designed this moment will not resemble the America we have been defending. The danger is not that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans will not realize he is already inside the castle walls."

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

"To the American people I bid a fond farewell. Guard your liberties. It is the trust of each generation to pass a free republic to the next. If I know you right, you will rouse yourself from slumber to ensure exactly that."

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket, and then that society vanishes in a spread of ruins and slaughter. Do you wish to know whether that day is coming?

Watch Money. Money is a barometer of a society's virtue.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need permission from men who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that our society is doomed.

Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection, and the base of a moral existence."

As Congressman Louis T. McFadden notes in his June 10, 1932 appearance before Congress (excerpted below), the platform of the Democrat Party explicitly promised not to create a central bank. President Wilson thus violated campaign promises to make one of the most destructive mistakes in history — the unassented creation of the private banking monopoly intentionally given the deceptive name, "Federal Reserve."

While the 1912 election was won on this dishonored promise, Wilson was instrumental in passing the so-called Federal Reserve Act on the eve of December 23, 1913, in the Christmas absence of the many legislators who opposed it.

Guilt surely contributed to a stroke and infirmity in his final term. He took shame to his grave:

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country.

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation therefore, and all our activities, are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world — no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

Congressman Louis T. McFadden served as Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency from 1920 thru 1931. The following excerpts are from a speech which is now difficult to obtain from the Congressional Record, in which he addressed the House of Representatives in the midst of the first Great Depression, June 10, 1932.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Mr. Chairman, at the present session of Congress we have been dealing with emergency situations. We have been dealing with the effects of things, rather than the cause of things.

In this particular discussion, I shall deal with some of the causes that lead up to these proposals. There are underlying principles which are responsible for conditions such as we have at the present time, and I shall deal with one of these in particular which is tremendously important in the consideration you are now giving this bill.

Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks.

The Federal Reserve Board has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself; and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.

Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are NOT government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.

In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislation; and there are those who maintain an international propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us and of wheedling us into the granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again their gigantic train of crime.

Those 12 private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this country by bankers who came here from Europe. Those bankers took money out of this country to finance Japan in a war against Russia. They created a reign of terror in Russia with our money in order to help that war along. They instigated the separate peace with Germany and Russia, and thus drove a wedge between the allies in the World War. [WWI]

[Elsewhere in this speech, Congressman McFadden unknowingly testifies that the Federal Reserve is removing sixty billion dollars annually in gold from the U.S. Treasury to finance the military preparations of Hitler for WWII, and even to pay the debts of the corresponding Japanese military expansion to German munitions makers. World War II would occur seven years later.]

They financed Trotsky's mass meetings of discontent and rebellion in New York. They paid Trotsky's passage from New York to Russia so he might assist in the destruction of the Russian Empire. They fomented and instigated the Russian revolution, and they placed a large fund of American dollars at Trotsky's disposal in one of their branch banks in Sweden, so that through him Russian homes might be thoroughly broken up and Russian children flung far and wide from their natural protectors. They have since begun the breaking up of American homes and the dispersal of American children.

It has been said that President Wilson was deceived by the attentions of these bankers and by the philanthropic poses they assumed. It has been said that when he discovered the manner in which he had been misled by Colonel House, he turned against that busybody, that "holy monk" of the financial empire, and showed him the door. He had the grace to do that; and in my opinion he deserves great credit for it.

President Wilson was a victim of deception. When he came to the Presidency, he had certain qualities of mind and heart which entitled him to a high place in the councils of this Nation. But there was one thing he was not, and which he never aspired to be: He was not a banker.

He said that he knew very little about banking. It was therefore on the advice of others that the iniquitous Federal Reserve Act — the death warrant of American Liberty — became law in his administration.

CONCLUSION OF SPEECH

Mr. Chairman, last December I introduced a resolution here asking for an examination and audit of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, and all related matters. If the House sees fit to make such an investigation, the people of the United States will obtain information of great value.

This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Consequently, nothing should be concealed from the people.

The man who knows or suspects that a crime has been committed, and who conceals or covers up that crime, is an accessory to it. Mr. Speaker, it is a monstrous thing for this great Nation of people to have its destinies presided over by a traitorous government board acting in secret concert with international usurers.

Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its power. But the truth is, the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the government of the United States.

It controls everything here; and it controls our foreign relations. It makes or breaks governments at will. No man, and no body of men, is more entrenched in power than the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks.

These evil-doers have robbed this country of more than enough money to pay the national debt. What the National Government has permitted the Federal Reserve Board to steal from the people should now be restored to the people. The people have a valid claim against the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. If that claim is enforced, Americans will not need to stand in bread lines. Homes will be saved. Families will be kept.

The Federal Reserve Act should be repealed; and the Federal Reserve Banks — having violated their charters — should be liquidated immediately. Faithless government officers who have violated their oaths of office should be impeached and brought to trial.

Unless this is done by us, I predict the American people — outraged, robbed, pillaged, insulted, and betrayed as they are in their own land — will rise in their wrath and send a President here who WILL sweep the money changers from the temple."