"Will you come into my parlor said the spider to the fly".
The party organization dangles its electorate "bait" and will continue to do so until such time as the greedy electorate "fish" becomes too conscious of its make-belief to "bite". For years, the Labour party insisted that "public ownership" of the means of production and exchange was essential to social salvation. For year the working man and the "underprivileged" believed it until they tasted the sweets of "nationalisation". Now, a large section of the Labour Party has decided that "public ownership" is no longer necessary. "Public control" will suffice to restrain "economic power". For years the Conservative party insisted the "Sound Finance" "retrenchment" - "economy" "balanced budgets" - "saving for investment" etc., was essential to social salvation. For years the middle and property-owning classes believed it until they tasted the bitters of financial "deflation" and economic "depression". Now, the Conservative party has decided that "sound finance", "solvency", "repayment of debt", and a "balanced budget", are no longer necessary.
'Au contraire". "Neither a lender or a borrower be", must now read; "Every man a borrower must be". Hire-purchase is good for you; "full employment" has proved the best "bait" of all, and full employment means apparently getting even deeper into debt to the money power and its banking institutions. And again I would quote the American statesman, Thomas Jefferson:
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to the government and to the people to whom it belongs... If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the corporation that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children wake up homeless in the continent their fathers conquered."
The Conservative party organization pretends to have no fear of banking institutions and their debt claims upon society. "Full employment" must be maintained whatever the debt incurred. What does the average member of a party organization know or care about credit power or debt bondage, taxation or inflation, banruptcy or enslavement? Why should he worry if present taxation does stand at 33% of the national income and will reach 100% by the end of the century? (These and the following figures refer to the United Kingdom but the situation is parallel here in Canada. Ed.). Why should he worry if bank indebtedness, zero in 1600, increased by 47% during the XVIIth century, by 466% during the XVIIIth century, and, by 12,000% during the XIXth century? Has not the Brookings Institute of Washington published a book entitled, "The New Philosophy of Public Debt", in which it is said that "a huge public debt is a national asset rather than a liability", and that "continuous deficit spending is essential to the economic prosperity of the nation?"
T.V. HOLMES, Credit Notes, Sept. '60
The re-education, the remoulding of the human race, if it is to produce the effects expected from it, must be informed first and foremost by a religious inspiration. It must spring from the doctrine of the divine Redeemer, as its only possible fountain source; it must be effectively governed by a whole-hearted spirit of justice; charity must be its crowning completion.
Pius XII, Encyc. Summi Pontificatus