 Okay, last year at this conference someone from the back of the room came up to me and said that they were taking bets on How long it would take me to mention Lincoln? Even though my topic had nothing to do so so by my accounting it took about five seconds So if you're still making that bet that's What I'm gonna talk about you know is uh I Want to start out talking about the dollar hegemony one of the link between dollar hegemony and foreign policy I thought I could have something to say about that and I read across I read across last week one of my favorite publications by the council on foreign relations In it an article called the future of dollar hegemony in and this was from August 22nd 2023 and it says this the dollar's global hegemony gives the US government power to impose crippling Sanctions and wage other forms of financial welfare against adversaries and it's like they're celebrating of you know, yeah That's there's a good thing in 2022 more than 12,000 entities were under sanctioned by the Treasury Department a more than 12 fold increase since the turn of the century US sanctions do ensure that targeted adversaries pay a significant price for continuing to engage in actions the United States government opposes Okay, it reminded me of one of my favorite bumper stickers that I saw a couple years ago There was an American flag on it and it said do as we say or we will bring democracy to your country And Of course sanctions are a major tool for this But you know politicians are such that you can't come out and say we're gonna Destroy your economy unless you let us confiscate the sugar crop for the benefit of the Florida sugar Corporations or you can't you have to you have to come up with some sort of Morality tale about how exceptional morally exceptional you are Protectionist can't come and say well we we're gonna just raise prices because we want our Political benefactors the people who finance our political careers to be able to plunder you as their customers You can't come out and say that and you can't say things like General Smedley Butler the Marine Corps general Who wrote this the famous little essay war is a racket? He's said to be the most highly decorated Marine Corps Officer in American history is sort of the World War One era He said you can't say this he said it but you know politicians know you can't say these things He said I spent most of my time in the Marine Corps for decades Being a high-class muscle man for big business for Wall Street and for the bankers I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests and this is after his career He's retired he was a two-time Medal of Honor winner and all that and he's decided late in life This is what I did is what I spend my life doing And so you can't say that you have to come up with some sort of morality tail And that's where why I use the language of American exceptionalism and and here's where I get back to Lincoln, of course Called this the mother of all government lies In 1960 Life magazine invited Robert Penn Warren famous novelist to write a book on this about the centennial of the Civil War and And in war so he wrote a book called the legacy of the Civil War very interesting by highly recommended, you know Written by one of the greatest American novelists ever Robert Penn Warren and One of one of the things really stands out in this in this book of his as he talks about the one effect of the Civil War was He says that the US government claimed to have a treasury of virtue He said he calls it this I'm quoting him a plenary indulgence for all sins past present and future The government emerged so full of righteousness that there is enough Overplus stored in heaven to take care of all the small failings and oversights of the descendants of the Crusaders I guess the Crusaders was the Union army the Sherman and the people like that And he says a moral narcissism Fueled the Crusades of 1917 and 1918 American intervention in World War one and 1941 to 1945 and our diplomacy of righteousness with the slogan of unconditional surrender and universal rehabilitation for others Not for us. Well, we don't need to be rehabilitated. We're already perfect, but but for others Yeah, we will bring democracy to your country Okay, and then he said the effect of this conviction of virtue is to make us lie automatically And so, you know, all governments are empires of lies, but this is the unique American Method of institutionalized lying and then he goes on to say that you must to believe this this treasury of virtue You have to forget about a lot of history You can he goes down he has a whole list of things Congress declared that the war was not about slavery The Republican platform of 1860 pledged everlasting protection of slavery the Emancipation Proclamation freed no one because it only applied to rebel territory He quotes Lincoln and Lincoln Douglas debates saying I'm not or ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races and he goes on and on that, you know, you have to just Believe a bunch of nonsense to believe the treasury of virtue story and that's what Americans believe So what did the US government do with this treasury of virtue? I believe this is true Especially after Lincoln was assassinated He was deified by the Republican Party and the New England clergy who worked hand-in-hand with the Republican Party And that led to the deification of the presidents, you know, more or less and and the government itself This is a treasury of virtue. I think it's a very important idea So what did the US government commence doing with all of this virtue? Well three months after the war was over. This is the war to prevent southern independence Sherman was put in charge of the military district of the Missouri Which is all land west of the Mississippi and they commenced a 25-year war of genocide against the Plains Indians General Sherman himself said we're not going to let a few thieving ragged Indians check and stop the progress of the railroads That was the purpose the main purpose of the trip the government subsidized transcontinental railroads Mike Michael Sherman a biographer of Sherman said the great triumvirate of the Civil War effort Generals Grant Sherman and Sharon and pursued what Sherman called the final solution to the Indian problem My first read any quotes. He's quoting Sherman is saying that this is not Michael Felman This is Sherman's I'm not read that I thought I was kind of spooky isn't it the final solution to the Indian problem And Felman goes on and he said that He quotes Sherman is saying what he was trying to achieve was quote a racial cleansing of the land Sherman said all the Indians will have to be killed or maintained as a species of poppers and Be obliterated or beg for mercy and he gave Sherman Quote prior authorization to slaughter as many men women and children as well as men when attacking villages Because it would be too time-consuming to sort them out Sherman Sherman said so that went on. This is a period of time where these Indian villages were pretty primitive in the US US Army had Gatlin guns and cannon rifled cannon and and so forth Okay, and so that's the first thing they did with all this Virtue that the Civil War created another thing is the the Philippine insurrection the Filipinos had just finally kicked out the Spaniards and In the but the Americans the US government wanted the Philippines to be their colony There were no longer a Spanish colony, but the US government wanted them to be their colony And so the Philippine insurrection was an insurrection against the US government trying to take over the Philippines and If you do a little digging you'll you'll find that the historians say that some 200,000 Filipinos were killed by American soldiers during this time Although I found one historian said it might have been as many as a million so they don't seem to know but most of them seem to think it was 200,000 and Teddy Roosevelt At the times was supporting this you know making speeches about this He denounced the Filipinos as and I'm quoting Teddy Roosevelt Chinese half-breeds Savages barbarians a wild and ignorant people so there's the you know the demon is a the dehumanization of the Filipinos a US senator called Albert beverage of Indiana said the Philippines are ours forever The Pacific Ocean is ours. He's bragging about this and and he called them a savage and senile people Senator Bill Tillman the US senator Bill Tillman Said these people are a people racially unfit to govern them themselves The other senator beverage. He said that it was America's duty to bring Christianity and civilization to a savage and senile people Well, the Filipinos had been Catholics for about 400 years at that point, so they didn't need to have Christianity brought brought to them Jim Powell is a friend of mine Jim Powell. He wrote a book on Teddy Roosevelt and and he quotes Teddy about the Filipinos as Talking about what he called the menace of peace and Afterwards right shortly afterwards. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize And Teddy himself plotted against Cuba Hawaii Venezuela China Panama Chile Dominican Republic Nicaragua and Canada when you've got a treasure of virtue You can be the bully of the planet Because whatever you do is virtuous by the fact that it is you doing it That's that's what Robert Penn Warren said about that This was of course followed by the month long three month long Spanish-American War and And I recommend the great essay by William Graham Sumner the conquest of the United States by Spain Where he talks about how we became we became an empire like the Spanish Empire by by getting involved in this Okay, and so So these are some of the things that were done You know with this all this virtue one more example, I'll give is the conquest and subjugation of Hawaii that happened The American American corporations wanted to get it take over the pineapple industry God got Got the army to go into Hawaii and their Constitution is known as the new Constitution that was adopted Around this time in 19th century. It was called the bayonet Constitution the government appointed a man named judge Sanford Dole as the head of the new puppet government in Hawaii and They sent a paramilitary organization called the Honolulu rifles They literally forced the Hawaiian King at bayonet point to sign a Constitution Just like that scene in the Godfather movies whether whether the head of the mafia says either your brains Are your signature will be on this contract? Yes, there's literally what they did and so of course they signed this he signed the Constitution that disenfranchised all Asians as quote an inferior race along along with native Hawaiians and of course, of course the wealthy American landowners Were the only ones left with the right to vote In Hawaii in that day and this was 22 years after the end of the Civil War the American Civil War The the war for racial purity that that was waged by by the north and so judge Dole was the head of this new government and by mere coincidence. I'm sure his cousin James Dole Then founded the Dole Fruit Company in in Hawaii So that was another good example of the use of all this virtue by the u.s. government Shortly after it created the treasury of virtue Teddy Roosevelt again, you know, he's I call him the he was sort of the the biggest blowhard in American political history Teddy Roosevelt Tom Woods once said that he thought the only reason why the media liked him so much He gave him so much good press as they liked his giant teeth He had big teeth and they just like to take pictures of him with the big teeth like horse teeth I should have had a picture of Teddy and his teeth What true story about Teddy Roosevelt when he was president He was found one morning at daybreak Grappling across the Potomac River on a wire And someone asked him what on earth that you do that for he said I thought I needed to strengthen my wrists So it's kind of I mean Here's what he said in 1895 about Hawaii I feel that it was a crime against the white race that we did not annex Hawaii three years ago That's teddy Okay, so so these are these are the things that this treasury virtue Gave us and of course you go throughout American history after that world war one World war two the idea of unconditional surrender. Oh, where does that come from as it was I think in my view It's this idea of treasury of virtue if you fast fast forward all the way to Almost present day during the the second bush administration An article that I wrote about on lose lose website was Newt Gingrich wrote an article entitled Lincoln and Bush And in it he advocated an American military invasion of libya libya saudi arabia syria Iran and in one or two other middle eastern countries And Lincoln and bush was the title of the article was because he's saying this is what Lincoln would do If Lincoln was advising George W. Bush, that's that's what he would do and and so And even mabaric the former dictator of pakistan when he imposed martial law in his country He quoted Abe Lincoln is saying well Lincoln did it so it has to be virtuous And so even so even foreigners are start trying to you know adopt this treasury of virtue idea attached to the american political history To to just justify tyranny in their countries And so, you know, so what is the you know the connection between The dollar decline and all of this Is that I think you know, what's going on now is that I think this treasury of virtue has pretty much run its course um Naomi wolf describes the current resident in the white house As a senile puppet run by the chinese communist party. That's what that's what Naomi wolf calls And uh, and it seems like the the primary goal of the u.s. Government today is to be in bed with the nazis who run the ukrainian government And so how much how virtuous can that be? And that's a good thing Because this undermines the whole use of sanctions and being the bully of the world in my in my view And and and we need we need to ramp up the production of those bumper stickers that that say Do as we say or we will bring democracy to your country because I think humor and lampooning these people Can be very effective and they and they well deserve it don't they? And so and I think my time is about up somebody just held a card that said get off the stage You