Interview by Anthony Wile of the Daily Bell —April 2013

The Daily Bell is pleased to present another exclusive interview with Richard Maybury. Richard Maybury publishes U.S. & World Early Warning Report and was formerly Global Affairs editor of MONEYWORLD. One of the most respected business and economics analysts in America, his articles have appeared in numerous major publications. His Uncle Eric series of books are extremely popular among both the general public and home schoolers, and include Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?, Whatever Happened to Justice?, Evaluating Books: What Would Thomas Jefferson Think of This? and eight other titles. Maybury's writings have been endorsed by top business leaders, and he is a consultant to numerous investment firms in the US and Europe.

Daily Bell: Good to speak with you again. Let's jump right in by reminding readers you see the world in part through what is sometimes called the prism of empire. This refers to the belief that the behavior of governments is best understood as the attempt by unfettered politicians and bureaucrats to dominate others. You believe the decline of the federal government's global empire is the lens through which investors must look at the world – at least partially. How do you define an empire?

Richard Maybury: A collection of governments or countries under the control of a single authority. In 1939, President Roosevelt said of President Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, "Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." That does a good job of expressing the spirit of the whole US Empire. The US Empire could be the most powerful force affecting investment markets and practically everything else. Before we go further, I'd like to make a special point. I think the United States of America is a wonderful country and I would not want to live anywhere else. But the country and the government are not the same thing. That's extremely important. Nothing I say should be taken as a criticism of America or of the principles on which America was founded. But the government, I believe, is the country's most dangerous enemy. The federal government has gone renegade, and if it is not returned to the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, the country will be destroyed.

Daily Bell: Okay, that's pretty clear. Please continue.

Richard Maybury: It's very important for those individuals who did (and are) attending government-controlled schools to not believe everything you were taught in school. The schools are (and have been for some time) owned or controlled by government agencies, and they provide a history that is the background for practically every decision you make in your life, whether you are aware of it or not. This official history is flattering to the government because the government controls its own story. To make wise decisions, each individual must understand what actually happened in the past rather than what we were taught. This generally requires re-education for many of us, which is one of the reasons that I wrote the Uncle Eric books.

One thing I try to do in both the Uncle Eric books and Early Warning Report newsletter is explain the need to look back to at least World War II, and preferably a lot farther.

Daily Bell: Why WWII?

Richard Maybury: In my opinion, that war is still the greatest influence on us — on our careers, businesses and investments. Let's begin by doing a quick summary of the war. Three-quarters of the Second World War was the Eastern Front battle between Hitler's German Nazis and Stalin's Soviet Socialists. Americans are taught about Iwo Jima, the invasion of Normandy, the Battle of the Atlantic, and the other parts of the war that Americans were in. But actually, most of the war was fought on the Eastern Front, where Americans weren't even present.

Let me point out that the largest ally President Roosevelt had during the war was Stalin's Soviet Socialists. Except for Obama, Franklin Roosevelt was America's most socialist president. Instead of staying out of the war and letting the German and Soviet barbarians pound each other to dust on the plains of central Europe, Franklin Roosevelt abandoned neutrality and in June 1941 — five months before Pearl Harbor — announced he would back the socialist Stalin. Stalin was the worst known evil in history. In his book about the true nature of old world governments, called Death by Government, historian R.J. Rummel reports the most accurate estimate of Hitler's murders is 20.9 million, and Stalin's death toll was 42.7 million. Franklin Roosevelt backed Stalin, so the worst evil in history won the war, Stalin.

Daily Bell: And we've been trying to live with the results ever since.

Richard Maybury: Correct. By 1945 it was clear Stalin intended to conquer the world. There was near panic in London and Washington as these governments realized what they'd done by aiding Stalin. Only seven months after the War ended, Churchill announced that an Iron Curtain had descended across Europe, and a year later Harry Truman proclaimed the Truman Doctrine in which Washington pledged to help anyone who resisted the Soviet Union. That's the key point – he pledged to help anyone who resisted the Soviet Union.

Daily Bell: So what were the implications of that?

Richard Maybury: Almost every president since Truman has embraced the Truman Doctrine. For a half-century they sent money, troops and weapons to far corners of the globe to help the armed forces of any regime that claimed to be anti-Soviet. Many of these supposedly anti-Soviet governments were crooks and tyrants. They included the Shah of Iran, Marcos in the Philippines, Manuel Noriega in Panama, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Mobutu in the Congo, Chaing Kai-shek in Taiwan, General Park in Korea, President Diem in Vietnam, Suharto and Habibie in Indonesia. The importance is that nearly every thug who promised to be part of Washington's so-called sphere of influence received military assistance that was in most cases used to brutalize his own people.

Daily Bell: That's quite a rogue's gallery. We assume it included crooks and tyrants in the Islamic world, too.

Richard Maybury: I can see where you are headed with that question, and it's very astute of you. For instance, Washington helped the Shah of Iran for 25 years for no known reason other than the Shah claimed to be anti-Soviet. And for 25 years the Shah of Iran and his secret police terrorized Iranians.

Daily Bell: So you are saying this vast collection of crooks and tyrants in the Mideast and elsewhere became the US Empire.

Richard Maybury: Yes. And I was part of that process. I saw it with my own eyes, which I will get to shortly. It's a crucial part of history that Americans are not taught in government-controlled schools. The US Empire is a mighty dark and nasty beast. It's made up of people you don't want to meet in a dark alley.

Daily Bell: And this empire still exists, and these people make a lot of enemies for America.

Richard Maybury: They certainly do. After the USSR went down, Washington kept the empire going. Look at the thugs that federal officials put in place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and on and on. Those people have enemies, so now their enemies are our enemies.

Daily Bell: We seem to remember you writing elsewhere that the federal government's foreign policy boils down to poking sharp sticks at rattlesnakes.

Richard Maybury: I've been saying that for years, and I see no reason to change it. It's part of a strategy that power junkies have been using with great success since the days of the Roman Emperors. These people shout, "Rattlesnakes from everywhere are trying to bite us! We can't be safe unless we conquer the world!"

Daily Bell: Are you saying these rattlesnakes would behave if Washington would stop poking them?

Richard Maybury: No, no, no. There are lots of bad people. You can see bullies in any schoolyard. But don't provoke them. Leave them alone and arm yourself to the teeth. Be like a porcupine, gentle, quiet, calm, but always ready to put a big hurt on anyone who tries to get rough with you.

Daily Bell: You've said, instead of an imperial military − meaning a giant expeditionary force − have a whole nation of minutemen who can protect themselves, their families or their country if there is trouble.

Richard Maybury: Very good. Like the National Guard once was, or the Swiss still are to a large extent. A defensive military instead of an offensive military. What's wrong with America's foreign policy is not that we have a military, it's that we have...

Daily Bell: ... the wrong type!

Richard Maybury: Again, I see you've caught on to this way of thinking about the government's behavior. Yes, the US Empire, which grew to maturity in World War II, is a giant machine that makes enemies for America — for you and me. And the economy, the financial markets, the whole country will continue lurching from one disaster to the next because of this. For one thing, it's monstrously expensive. Unless I'm missing something, and I don't think I am, the only people who will prosper consistently in this political climate are those whose investments are set up to do well during wartime and currency debasement.

Daily Bell: And that's a great deal of what you write about in your Early Warning Report, newsletter, correct? — ways to cope with and profit from the insanity produced by the US Empire?

Richard Maybury: Yes. My investment model is very simple. Buy things that do well during wartime and currency debasement. As you can imagine, it's been working wonderfully as a long-term strategy.

Daily Bell: So we've heard.

Richard Maybury: Let me go off on a tangent for a moment. I once heard a terrorism expert say that the people the government calls terrorists see every bullet fired at them as made in America. I would add that the so-called terrorists see it that way because the foreign aid sent by Washington to its pet tyrants for more than a half-century does buy those bullets. You can trace this all the way back to the alliance between the socialist Franklin Roosevelt and the socialist Joseph Stalin. Read the book Blowback by Chalmers Johnson.

Daily Bell: For most people this is eye-opening stuff but there is a lot more to cover in other fields. Give us a quick overview of your activities for the past several years.

Richard Maybury: Mostly I've been researching and writing our newsletter, Early Warning Report. That's my primary job. It's a newsletter for investors, based on geopolitics and economics. Everyone knows that geopolitics and economics steer the broad movements in the investment markets, but very few writers cover these areas, especially the geopolitics, so we do.

Daily Bell: Your readers have found there is much to be gained by knowing what others don't.

Richard Maybury: Yes. For readers, it's a source of prestige as well as profits. I'm sure you at The Daily Bell have found there is no faster way to draw a crowd at a party than to begin explaining the geopolitical facts of life and their ramifications.

Daily Bell: To what do you attribute this difference between you and the other analysts? Lots of them get deeply into economics but why do so few address geopolitics?

Richard Maybury: I don't know but I expect it has something to do with the Vietnam War, which I managed to miss, mostly, only to end up in other wars.

Daily Bell: Other wars?

Richard Maybury: Washington is always in lots of wars. I'm sure some of your readers do not realize the Vietnam War got the media's attention because it was just the biggest war that was going on at that time. In the 1960s I received my draft notice and wound up in Central America, in the Air Force's 605th Special Operations Squadron. Our job was to help prop up some of Washington's crooks and tyrants that I mentioned earlier. For instance, in training the troops of these thugs, I worked directly with the CIA's notorious School of the Americas, and even helped train Manuel Noriega, who later became Washington's pet dictator in Panama.

Daily Bell: Wow. So you saw real politics, up close and personal, while other Americans were back in the States thinking that politics is about speeches and ballots.

Richard Maybury: (Laughing.) I love this. Very well said. I can see the Daily Bell has an excellent grasp of what's really happening in the world. Politics isn't so much about ballots as it is about bullets. The typical American doesn't have the foggiest idea what the US government is really doing in other countries.

Daily Bell: And you are saying that very few other investment analysts have the geopolitical experience you do so perhaps they are not as comfortable writing about how real politics — the genuine muzzle of a gun reality — affects the economy and investment markets.

Richard Maybury: I have no way of knowing what the geopolitical experiences of other investment analysts may or may not be. As far as I can tell, I am the only one who has connected these dots and presented the completed picture to my readers.

Daily Bell: Can you give us an example of covert operations you were involved in?

Richard Maybury: I wish I could paint a complete picture but most of the missions were secret not only to keep Americans from finding out but so the troops were unaware as well. We were told only what we needed to know to do our jobs, and in some cases I didn't find out till 20 or 30 years later what I had really been doing. At the time of the events, I just saw bits and pieces, and like the young fool I was, I simply trusted that the politicians were risking my life for good causes. I believed what I was taught in school, that the government is good, kind, wise and just, and would never send me to die for purposes that were dishonorable.

Daily Bell: We bet you weren't the first to feel this way.

Richard Maybury: Right. Everyone should read a book called War is a Racket, by two-star general Smedley Butler. One of the Marine Corps' top heroes, Butler fought in 121 battles and was awarded two Medals of Honor, as well as a lot of other medals. After he retired, Butler began researching what he had actually been doing. He was appalled, and tried to speak out, but he was mostly ignored. It's outrageous. Most Americans simply do not want to believe their government has an empire.

Daily Bell: Let's look at the secrecy issue. Why keep things secret from Americans when the enemy knows what is happening? For instance, in the bombings of Cambodia, the enemy knew the bombs were falling on him, obviously, but Americans didn't know. What was the purpose of keeping Americans from finding out what the enemy already knew?

Richard Maybury: All over the world, Washington's enemies know they are being shot at but Americans don't know. I remember in Central America and South America we were sent on some strange missions that decades later I found were probably in pursuit of Che Guevara. Guevara was a smart guy; he probably noticed the bullets buzzing around him but those missions were secret from the American people.

Daily Bell: So the secrecy was intended to keep Americans from finding out what their government was doing in other countries?

Richard Maybury: That's my guess, though I have no way to prove it. I'm not a mind-reader. A politician gives a particular order and stamps it top secret but who knows why he's really doing it. All I can say with great confidence is that Washington does a lot all over the world that increases its power, but the American people know little about it, or about its effects on the economy or the investment markets — or Americans' safety at home or abroad.

Daily Bell: Let's move on to another of your projects of recent years, the Uncle Eric books.

Richard Maybury: Good idea. As you can imagine, after my experiences in the Air Force I've had a deep and abiding wish for young people to be taught the things that are omitted or whitewashed in the government-controlled schools. It really bothers me when I see a young person marching off to war without the foggiest understanding of what he or she is getting into.

Daily Bell: And this is not just in regard to military matters. There are all sorts of vitally important materials that have been erased from school curricula. It's in finance, economics, law, history. And your Uncle Eric books are your effort to provide the side of the story that has been omitted from conventional classroom instruction.

Richard Maybury: Yes, I think children are purposely made very naïve, very vulnerable.

Daily Bell: That is certainly a bold accusation. What's your authority for it?

Richard Maybury: I was a public school teacher for four years, and I was also hired by a major textbook publisher to write an economics textbook for high schools. I know how much government-approved books are censored. By no stretch of the imagination are children getting the knowledge they need to make them savvy about the real world.

Daily Bell: It seems like that's what your real job is, teaching people about the real world.

Richard Maybury: Good point. Perhaps you are right. I must have some sort of phobia about seeing good people walk into booby traps, and that is what I see government-controlled schools to be, booby traps. They set children up to graduate into life's realities unprepared.

Daily Bell: And you are trying to prepare them.

Richard Maybury: Yes, I'm very passionate about that. My 11 Uncle Eric books are what I would say to a young person if I were that individual's uncle. Each book is loaded with questions young people and adults might ask if they discovered their mainstream schools and colleges were slanted to make them vulnerable − to make them believe the way the government wants them to. My Uncle Eric books provide the other side of the story, a model that I believe will better equip them for life – which is why the 11 Uncle Eric books, collectively, are also known as Uncle Eric's Model of How The World Works.

Daily Bell: So the point of your Uncle Eric books is to help children and adults, including investors, see what the government does not want them to see. But what is the alternative to government-controlled schools?

Richard Maybury: From what I have observed, private schools are better, and home schooling, even better. This isn't to say all private schooling and home schooling are perfect. In any field, there are always people who will do a bad job. But there is no private school or home school that could possibly do as much damage as government-controlled schools have done.

Daily Bell: Why is that?

Richard Maybury: Just sheer size, for one thing. If a private school or home school wants to try an experiment, and the experiment fails, the failure is confined to that one group of children. And it is short-lived. For example, if the curriculum doesn't work for a home school student, the parent can change the curriculum within days. If the state or federal government wants to try an experiment — which they do all the time — all the public schools in the state or country have it forced onto them. When I was a child, most of my generation was taught sight-reading instead of phonics, and so millions of children across the country, including future teachers, grew up with poor reading skills. Those children were guinea pigs. And it can take years to adopt new books or change regulations.

Daily Bell: And this applies across the school subjects, including history, economics, finance, you name it.

Richard Maybury: Yes. I think young adults today graduate from high school and college as gullible as I was. They're brainwashed. For example, if they are taught economics at all, they are usually taught Keynesian economics. Don't worry, students, the Federal Reserve and FDIC will keep your money safe. Taxes are collected for your own good. It's safe to believe government statistics. The purpose of wars is to protect those you love. You got an A on your history test because you were able to name the four greatest presidents and the wonderful things they did for you. The majority voted for this so it must be right. Don't worry about being unfairly accused; you will always get a fair trial. The politicians and bureaucrats have your best interests at heart. And most importantly, school textbooks tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Daily Bell: Scary. Can you give us another reason you believe private schools and home schools are better?

Richard Maybury: Yes. In eleven words, they don't have the hidden political agenda that public schools do. Let me point out that if you can't home school your children full time, you can do it part time. On the Internet you will find lots of home school organizations that can help you. My main point is, do something to counteract what the government is doing to your children.

Daily Bell: Is there some kind of giant conspiracy to brainwash the population?

Richard Maybury: I don't think so, not at all. It's just government employees teaching today's children a view of life that most government employees were taught when they were students. The solution to every problem is more government. What else would we expect a government employee to teach? The whole thing works in a very automatic fashion with no need for anyone to guide it.

Daily Bell: A child who learns it gets good grades and one who doesn't gets bad grades.

Richard Maybury: Yes. All my adult life I've been watching good people suffer and very often miss wonderful opportunities because in the schools and colleges they were taught a picture of the world that just isn't so. My whole life has been like standing on a big-city street corner and watching what happens to people who were taught that a red light means go.

Daily Bell: Standing on that street corner would tend to make anyone uncomfortable.

Richard Maybury: I've come to realize that there's a pressure inside me that keeps growing all the time because my job requires me to have an ever-deepening understanding of the things the government sent me into 45 years ago. I was unknowingly a part of the building of the empire, and now the empire is collapsing, and I must stay on top of that, to help my subscribers. Writing the Uncle Eric books has been my effort to provide the side of the story that isn't usually told. The more a person learns what he wasn't taught in school, the better prepared he is to prosper during these temporary hard times as the empire collapses.

Daily Bell: That's one reason your Uncle Eric books are on the Daily Bell's Must Read list. Let's get more deeply into specifics about the books. Can you give us a bit of an overview of them?

Richard Maybury: As I said, there are 11 books in the series and they've been doing very well. Total sales now are almost a half-million, and the secondary readership must be at least another half million, so people like them, and they tell others. Last year alone, over 32,000 Uncle Eric books sold. Just the first three alone (Uncle Eric Talks About Personal, Career, and Financial Security, Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? and Whatever Happened to Justice?) are tremendous eye-openers to most. I often receive comments such as, now I know why I took a bath in the stock market, and, thanks for helping me get rich. More information about the books is available here.

Daily Bell: We've heard you won an important award.

Richard Maybury: Yes. We received a feather in our cap. We won first place in the Mary Pride Practical Homeschooling Reader Award (www.home-school.com) in the Government Category. I think that's a measure of how helpful people find my alter ego, Uncle Eric. From what I've seen, the books have become central in the home school movement and other alternative educational venues. The people who homeschool their children are aware children are being misled by what they're being taught in conventional schools, and both full time and part time home schoolers use the books to fill in what's been omitted.

Daily Bell: Can you expand a little about areas of information that are being omitted from government schooling, and give us a few examples of specifics?

Richard Maybury: You'll find I often refer to events in history because I'm a historical person. I'm aware the world we live in today is the result of what happened in the past. With the schools, it's so important that people understand that back in the early part of the 20th century the hot new philosophy was socialism. There were people such as John Dewey, who was an educator, who believed that socialism was a wonderful system and it was workable. These socialist leaders wanted everybody in the world to be taught to be socialists, and began changing the schools. So school materials today are very heavily socialist and they deliver subtle socialist messages in much of what the children study.

I'm not saying people such as Dewey were evil or were in league with the devil. I think they were honest teachers who really, truly believed that socialism was a good idea, and they got hold of the schools and used them to essentially turn the whole US population socialist.

Daily Bell: Can you give us one of these subtle socialist messages?

Richard Maybury: Sure. In a lot of schools and colleges, in the teaching of writing, students are forbidden to use the word "I". Rarely is the student allowed to say, "I believe this," or "I saw that." Try to find in any big newspaper or magazine an article written from the viewpoint of "I". Nearly everything sounds like it was written by a committee. That's what the writers were taught in school, because it's what socialists want. To them, the individual is unimportant, even expendable. There is no me, there is just us, we. Private property is evil, because everything is or should be owned by everyone as a group. It's okay to raise taxes to the sky, because the government is just confiscating what rightfully belongs to us all. That's the socialist view. English teachers teach it without recognizing what it really is. This is one of the reasons I wrote the Uncle Eric book, Evaluating Books: What Would Thomas Jefferson Think About This? It provides guidelines and indicators to help the reader identify bias in books, media presentations, etc.

Daily Bell: Another example?

Richard Maybury: I'm sure you have noticed that men often have worse handwriting than women. It's natural to conclude this is because schoolboys are less careful or precise than schoolgirls. But that's not so. The truth is that the small muscle development of boys lags that of girls by perhaps six months. Socialists teach that everyone should be equal, so all children are taught handwriting at the same time. This all-the-same idea carries through to every subject. Each child has a different mind and body, and is ready to learn a given subject at his or her own time. I might be ready to learn math at age 10, and you might be ready at age 4, but the school wants us to be equal and it teaches us all at the same time. The individual does not count; only the group does. The children absorb that belief even without it being directly taught.

Daily Bell: And that's why we see so much support for gigantic government programs these days. The population grows up in this socialist environment and has been taught that the answer to every problem is more government. There's nobody giving the children the other side of the story.

Richard Maybury: Few teachers are aware they are teaching a viewpoint they subtly absorbed as students. I am sure everyone at the Daily Bell and everyone reading this right now can remember as children being assigned to write letters to their congressmen asking the congressmen to fix this problem or that, or punish so-and-so.

Daily Bell: And those children grow up to be investors.

Richard Maybury: Yes, which means even well informed investors are operating without the other side of the story. They think what they were taught in school is true, and they don't question it. What the Uncle Eric books are designed to do is to give everyone, young and old alike, what is missing, what was actually removed forcibly from the schools a century ago. Based on sales and letters from readers of the Uncle Eric books, I believe my books succeed in presenting the other side of the story. And I have found when teachers learn about the bias in their curriculums, many realize it's their responsibility, at the very least, to present opposing viewpoints to their students.

Daily Bell: Can you explain how Dewey and his friends were able to have that much influence?

Richard Maybury: As I said, socialism was the hot new philosophy. If you were an intellectual 100 years ago, you would be thrown out of the intellectual club if you still believed in liberty and free markets. Such beliefs meant you were not a modern person. The colleges and high schools were just loaded up with people who believed that socialism was the wave of the future. These people became teachers, and they taught their students, and those students grew up and became teachers, and their students became teachers, and so on until there are probably hundreds of thousands of teachers out there today who have no idea they are socialists.

Daily Bell: Isn't that covered in your Uncle Eric book called Are You Liberal, Conservative or Confused?

Richard Maybury: Yes, and directly or indirectly in several other of the Uncle Eric books.

Daily Bell: In the minutes leading up to this interview you were mentioning that it's important for people to ask: Why is a free press a good thing?

Richard Maybury: Yes. What's so important about it? Well, we don't want our minds to be in the hands of the government. We want lots of other people giving us information to help us have open minds and to be able to think for ourselves. That's why a free press is sacred in a free country. So, what's the point of handing the minds of our children over to the government? If a free press is a good thing, then why not let the children's minds be free, too? Why let the helpless little ones be programmed by followers of Dewey?

Daily Bell: So that's one of the things the Uncle Eric books are trying to do − to give the children more open minds and let them think for themselves rather than just swallow the spoon-fed school literature that is censored.

Richard Maybury: Yes! Uncle Eric Talks About Personal, Career and Financial Security specifically discusses this topic in the chapters on Models, Sorting Data, Evidence, Tautology and others. And I'd like to emphasize the fact that the material children get in school is censored. And don't take my word for it. Talk with your child's teachers. Ask if the books are examined line by line, and approved or disapproved, by government committees. Ask if the writers of the history and economics books are given politically influenced guidelines they must follow in order for each sentence to be accepted. And bear in mind these are often the same books, updated, that the teachers were taught from.

Daily Bell: Government committees?

Richard Maybury: Yes, government committees look over all of the textbooks to make sure they are not embarrassing to the government. The committees don't consciously add lies; they just delete facts that are awkward, so that the child has a very positive, uncritical view of political power.

Daily Bell: Uncritical?

Richard Maybury: Yes, talk with your friends. Most everyone comes out of school with this attitude that political power is wonderful stuff and everyone should have some. Political power is the solution to all our problems.

Daily Bell: Thank you for saying that. We think very few parents are aware of it. At bottom, you're saying we've all been brainwashed.

Richard Maybury: Not all. Some fall through the cracks. But I didn't fall through till I was in my 20's. A friend was in his 60's.

Daily Bell: The Uncle Eric books hasten the process of falling through the cracks.

Richard Maybury: Yes, that's a good way of looking at them. Before we move on, could I issue a challenge to all history teachers?

Daily Bell: Certainly.

Richard Maybury: If you do not teach your students what the US government has been doing in foreign countries for more than a hundred years, then you are helping set them up to volunteer for missions that they will someday not be proud of. I am the voice of experience. I was one of those soldiers who trusted the government, because my history teachers taught me to, and I hope you will not make the mistake my teachers did. Give the children points of view that are different than the official ones. You can give the official ones, but please also tell them what political power really is and that it's not a miracle cure-all, it's poison.

Daily Bell: What do you think about a war with Iran?

Richard Maybury: I think it's a definite possibility because both governments would benefit from it greatly. It would be another wonderful opportunity for them to acquire more power over their populations. There's nothing like an international emergency to cause people to just throw up their hands and say, "Do whatever it takes to protect me even if it means putting chains on me!" I think in the United States a war would be another chance for the federal government to burn more of the Constitution. And the Iranian government, too, wants to acquire more power just as much as the US government does. A war would constitute a wonderful partnership between the two.

Daily Bell: Is China a growing military adversary of the US?

Richard Maybury: Absolutely, but I shouldn't say China. I don't want to paint all Chinese with the same brush. The Chinese government is a different thing than China. The Chinese government, yes, I think definitely wants to increase its military power, like most other governments, and from the reports I've seen they are apparently building up their military forces. The Far East once belonged to the Chinese government and they want it back, and I think they plan to take it.

Daily Bell: You believe they are very likely trying to develop strategies, tactics, and weapons that will make it possible to chase the US Navy out of the Far East?

Richard Maybury: I do, and my guess is they're going to eventually be able to do it. We don't know how much resistance Washington will put up. US officials obviously think the federal government has some right to dominate the Far East, and I think US officials will try to hang onto that area for a while. If that leads to a war, I'm sure the Chinese government wouldn't mind it at all, as long as it doesn't go nuclear. They would find nuclear radiation inconvenient. But they really do need something to divert their population's attention away from the growing economic problems. If I were Washington, I'd get my armed forces out of the Far East right now, instantly.

Daily Bell: Instantly? Really?

Richard Maybury: Yes. Think about it. If I'm right that China's rulers would see a war with the US as a solution, not a problem, then where is the most likely direction events are headed?

Daily Bell: Your paradigm regarding the US as an empire seems to be a valid one. In fact, sometimes it seems like the whole world is exploding. As a specialist in military affairs from an investment standpoint, what's the trigger for all this fighting?

Richard Maybury: One thing to understand is that people fight wars for numerous reasons and the most prevalent reason is they fight because they always have. There are all sorts of cultures, tribes, clans, and ethnic groups around the world who have hated their neighbors and fought with them for centuries. A good example is the Russians and the Chechens. No matter what the United States does, the Russian government and the Chechens are still going to hate each other, they are still going to want to fight, and there is nothing we can do about it.

When the US goes around the world getting into these fights, all we do is make it worse. The idea that Americans have some special talent for going into a foreign country and cleaning the place up is crazy! No matter what we do the Chechens and the Russians are still going to hate each other.

Daily Bell: These problems won't get solved unless someone gets steamed enough to shout them from the rooftops. You are one of the few who ever have. So what is the real reason for the generally increasing battle zones in the Middle East and Northern Africa – Mali, Syria, Libya, and Egypt, for instance?

Richard Maybury: A general answer to all those sorts of questions is that if a person is in the federal government, either as a politician or a high level bureaucrat, then that person is clearly a power seeker, and there is no more satisfying use of power than military force. There's this automatic tendency among people who want to get into the government to want to fight. Power seekers want to use their power. And I think with that observation alone you can explain at least half of any war Washington is in. My three war books, World War I, World War II, and The Thousand Year War in the Mideast, discuss these issues thoroughly.

Daily Bell: Where do we go from here? To generalized war? Is it to some degree an economic war?

Richard Maybury: As for generalized war, I think that's likely. The government can get away with so many secret activities in other countries now that top officials can steer the population into anything they want. As for the economics, all wars are economic in the sense that the military needs bullets and beans in order to fight, and they've got to be able to buy those bullets and beans. Now, a lot of people conclude, economics is causing war. I have never seen a case where that was so. War is the most expensive thing humans do, so economics always argues against war. Any alternative is cheaper.

So in a sense, no war is ever economic because the economics always argues against it. But economics is used as an excuse. Leaders are constantly pointing to various economic factors and calling those "vital interests" and then arguing that the US should go to war over these "vital interests". What they're really saying is that your son or daughter's life is not as valuable as a barrel of oil so they're willing to expend that life in order to steal the oil. It's propaganda and completely insane. Again, I'm speaking as someone who was there on the inside.

Daily Bell: Expand on the worst problem the US is suffering from. You believe it is ethics because empires tend to lose their ethics. How can America recover?

Richard Maybury: In my book, Whatever Happened to Justice?, in a few of the other Uncle Eric books and in my newsletter, I often point out that the two fundamental laws that make civilization possible are 1) Do all you have agreed to do and 2) Do not encroach on other persons or their property. The first is the basis of contract law, and the second is the basis of tort law and some criminal law. If you have a population that's dedicated to these laws, and the laws are widely obeyed, then you can have a very ethical civilization, one that moves forward very quickly.

If, however, you have somebody or some large group of people who are violating those laws, then that civilization can't operate very well and it begins to decline. We see this all over the world. When legal systems are mutated to be tools of government policy rather than tools for producing a peaceful society, then it all goes to wrack and ruin. And this is repeated over and over again, throughout history.

I come back to that all the time. America has drifted entirely away from those two laws. Most Americans have never heard of them. Those laws were extracted from the British common law, which goes back to the Middle Ages. It used to be that in the schools the children were taught common law. In fact, at the time of the American Revolution, the common law was American history. If two Americans were talking about history they would be talking about common law. Most Americans today don't have the foggiest idea what common law was, and civilization is in a downhill slide because it can't go any other direction without those two laws.

Again, I refer to these in the Uncle Eric books and in Early Warning Report quite often. You've got to have those two laws or you're sunk, and the federal government has done a very, very thorough job of erasing our memories of those laws.

Daily Bell: Richard, this has been most enlightening. Thanks for your time!

Richard Maybury: My pleasure. I always enjoy working with the people at The Daily Bell. You are some of the best informed I have ever met.

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We thank reader M.G. for his insightful comments and for spreading the word. Here is what he said to his family and friends about Richard Maybury's interview with the Daily Bell:

Dear friends and family,

This is probably one of the most important "forwards" that I've done. It is rare that we find someone, who has a public forum, who can articulate our personal views to such a wide range of people. Richard Maybury is just such an individual, in my case. He and I have virtually traveled the same path militarily, economically and politically, at the same times and same places, to a large extent. I know, without any doubts, that he tells it like it is, and, is to come.

Please subscribe to the Daily Bell... it's free, for many excellent interviews. But, more importantly, read the complete interview of Richard J. Maybury and consider following him via his web site and maybe even his newsletter. I have read several of his books, attended the CIA sponsored School of the Americas, in Panama, to which he refers, and done many of the military operations which he alludes to. Actually, I've participated in a lot more, which allows me to support his opinions about our government and it's goals to even a greater extent.

You can even read a sample of his newsletter from Sept-Oct 2012, on his web site. I highly recommend this so as to give you some insight to his writings. He, like me, loves America and it's people, but recognizes that our governments, at all levels, have chosen the path of destruction. In the above referenced newsletter, he gives a projection of how it will end and what the country will become. Please take the time to read it.

The odds of salvaging the America that we all love, is probably not achievable without a huge price to pay and many years of restructuring. The die is caste, in my opinion, but there is hope for a better day, especially for our children and grandchildren. And, there are steps we all can take to lessen the impact of the coming bad times on our personal lives. This is my prayer for all.

M.G.