OPINION:
The people who are pulling out all the stops to destroy former President Donald Trump are also bent on destroying American freedom.
They tested our limits with lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re using climate change to enfeeble the United States and empower a world kleptocracy. Part of this plan is to get rid of our dollar bills.
The World Health Organization, which kowtows to China, caused enormous economic and social damage with COVID lockdowns and vaccination mandates modeled on China’s.
The WHO is trying to secure amendments to its international health regulations that would give it unilateral power to impose (not just suggest) policies such as digital vaccine passports on sovereign nations, including the United States.
The Biden administration thinks this is great and is trying to get around the advise and consent clause for Senate treaty approval the way then-President Barack Obama engineered the Iran nuclear deal.
The administration is also waging inflation-causing war on fossil fuels, gas-powered stoves and cows on behalf of the green lobby, which has been endowed with billions of our tax dollars. Millions wind up in Democratic campaign coffers each election cycle.
Now, about those dollar bills. The World Economic Forum, which has been accruing power and influence at its Davos conclaves since its founding in 1971 by Klaus Schwab (cue theme music from “Dr. No”), is backing the elimination of cash.
They don’t like the anonymity that cash affords. They prefer electronically tracking every penny.
To that end, several powerful affiliated financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements, or BIS, are developing a worldwide central bank digital currencies system.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are developing the digital yuan to replace the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency.
Our own Federal Reserve is studying the possibility of issuing CBDCs along with paper currency and perhaps eventually replacing dollar bills altogether.
An executive order signed by President Biden on March 9, 2022, orders research and development of CBDCs. The order says that such a system could aid “equitable” financial access (redistribution) and reduce “negative climate impacts” (don’t think of investing in oil, natural gas or coal).
This is what the Federal Reserve says about CBDCs on its website:
“While the Federal Reserve has made no decisions on whether to pursue or implement a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, we have been exploring the potential benefits and risks of CBDCs from a variety of angles, including through technological research and experimentation.”
Agustín Carstens, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, made a statement at an IMF-chaired seminar on Oct. 19, 2020, that should alarm any lover of liberty:
“We don’t know who’s using a $100 bill today, and we don’t know who’s using a 1,000-peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”
The key words here are “absolute control.”
Any system that amasses this much power and moves us toward a cashless society puts us closer to a totalitarian system like China’s. By recording every purchase, no matter how small, the Chinese government creates personal profiles.
The Chinese “social credit” system denies ideologically deficient citizens the ability to buy a train or plane ticket, enter certain buildings, borrow money, operate businesses or buy certain items. In other words, it strangles dissent.
This is an Orwellian nightmare that we in the United States could experience if we don’t resist the lure of central bank digital currencies.
We’re not talking here about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not centralized and not subject to government manipulation. Texas legislators have proposed a state, gold-backed digital currency that will protect privacy and economic independence.
Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution allows no state to “make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”
The proposed Texas bill would allow the creation of a gold-backed debit card as “tender.” It is specifically designed to decentralize the monetary system.
CBDCs, on the other hand, are tailor-made for centralizing power and enforcing ideological compliance. Proponents argue that CBDCs would make financial transactions cheaper and faster and would deny anonymity to drug dealers and other criminals who use cash.
But the price would be the most severe invasion of our privacy in history. If we don’t have the liberty to buy and sell what we want, we’re no longer free.
All the talk about CBDCs should send a shiver down the backs of Christians familiar with the Mark of the Beast passage in Chapter 13,16-17 in the Book of Revelations. But we don’t even have to go into apocalyptic Scripture to see how CBDCs could threaten our liberties.
Ruling elites already use their power to enforce “woke” ideology. As part of International Women’s Day, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said, “The IMF is committed to applying a gender lens to our surveillance, lending, and capacity development work.”
Translation: Toe the radical line, including support for abortion and the LGBTQ movement’s increasingly aggressive agenda — or else. Much of corporate America agrees.
What are liberty-loving Americans to do in the face of all this?
Use more cash.
Support efforts to decentralize everything from education to the marketplace.
Seek out alternative media.
Boost lawmakers and candidates who want less government and who unapologetically oppose the left’s assault on the moral order.
Strengthen our families and local community.
Above all, pray for divine intervention and national revival.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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