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 the 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 to obtain 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 that men get richer by graft and by 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 your society is doomed.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a true and accurate chronicle of our time. With consequences so dire and so grave that none of us - even those (especially those) who suppose themselves safe and above it all - will escape those consequences. At the end of the day, it's ultimately not about money. Money's only one of the means to a particular end. An end desired and driven by killers without conscience. And that end is a nightmare world of slaughter and atrocity. The nudge, the gradual squeeze - and then the shove. This is the foundation and the prerequisite for a world in which neither love, nor mercy, nor hope survive. It is a world in which all of your hopes, aspirations and dreams, all of your love of country and family not only count for naught, because they - and you - will be extinguished as if you never had existed. Because you surely must be if these will-to-power driven monsters are to rule without fear of opposition.
There can be only one response to such monstrous evil.
When the government again tries to confiscate gold and silver, spend your gold and silver on lead. You are going to need it.