Missing alternatives: on many vital issues, the major media seek to prevent Americans from considering any alternatives that do not further the goals of the media's globalist masters. (Hobson's Choice).

English stable owner Thomas Hobson had a rather peculiar way of selling horses. Customers who arrived at his 17th-century establishment were told they were perfectly free to examine any animal in the barn but, if they wished to purchase one, they must select the horse in the stall nearest the door. His method of doing business gave rise to the phrase "Hobson's choice," a choice that is really no choice at all.

Over the years, this idiom's meaning has been broadened to refer not just to a lack of options but to equally unsatisfactory options. Today, we actually live in a "Hobson's choice" world where our only policy alternatives are offered up by a variety of so-called news providers all parroting some variation of the Establishment line.

Presidential Contests

Perhaps the most persistent practice of presenting Hobson's choices is found in the "debate" every four years between the standard bearers of the Republican and Democratic Parties. According to the media cartel, the Republican Party is supposed to be conservative and the Democratic Party liberal. Yet the leadership of both political parties is dominated by a power elite most visibly represented by the Council on Foreign Relations. Instead of a choice, the American people are offered an echo.

President George W. Bush himself is not a CFR member, but the CFR connection became obvious even before he was elected to office, when he named 1.5 top foreign policy advisers -- 14 of whom were CFR members. Many of these individuals (e.g., Richard Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld) were later awarded important posts in the victorious Republican administration. Democrat Al Gore, like Republican George W. Bush, never joined the CFR. But all 11 members of the foreign policy team he selected prior to election day 2000 (e.g. Joseph Lieberman, Richard Holbrooke, Richard N. Gardner, and Graham Allison) were CFR members.

In fact, the history of presidential races since at least the middle of the 20th century reveals a startling pattern of the CFR Establishment controlling both sides of the presidential contests. In the 1950s, Republican CFR member Dwight Eisenhower twice defeated Democrat CFR member Adlai Stevenson for president. Other presidential candidates who belonged to the CFR (although not necessarily during their candidacies) include: Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. The media cartel is obviously aware of the CER dominance of both major political parties since hundreds of CFR members hold key positions in the media. Yet the media, always on the lookout for collusion in business, is mostly silent regarding this political collusion.

The supposed debate between Republican "conservatives" and Democrat "liberals" benefits the power elite, by making it appear that voters are being offered a choice. Professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University succinctly described the game plan in his history book Tragedy and Hope (1966): "[T]he two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.... But either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will have none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."

What Quigley is describing is a "bipartisan" political cartel in which two largely indistinguishable parties take turns advancing the power elite's agenda for global control. Behind all the fuss and fury generated by partisan squabbles, government power grows and our nation becomes more enmeshed in a UN-administered new world order. Within this framework, the political and media elite offers voters "conservative" and "liberal" Hobson's choices that aid (or, at the very least, do not seriously damage) the power elite. Other alternatives are either ignored entirely or treated as falling outside the mainstream.

Ten common Hobson's choices follow:

1. Should the Federal Reserve raise or lower interest rates?

The missing alternative: The marketplace should set the cost of borrowing, not the Federal Reserve or any other body. The Fed has been given the power to create economic booms or busts by expanding or tightening the money supply.

During the past 18 months, the Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates 11 times. But previous manipulation of the nation's economy, including repeatedly raising interest rates "to cool the economy," brought on the economic downturn in the first place. The media, of course, fail to present the real solution: reestablish precious metal backing for the currency and abolish the Federal Reserve.

2. Should foreign aid be linked to a nation's human rights record? Should foreign aid be increased?

The missing alternative: Cancel all foreign aid programs. The U.S. Constitution does not authorize the federal government to send taxpayers' money to foreign governments. So the discussion should not dwell on whether a recipient nation abuses its own people. The unconstitutionality of these programs should be the consideration.

The media cartel regularly provides glimpses of starving children, homeless families, and other heart-rending human tragedies while promoting foreign aid. But Americans are not told that all foreign aid monies are given to governments, not to the victims of those governments. This funding strengthens the recipient regimes, encourages waste and bureaucracy, and discourages private initiative. People in the countries where we give money recognize that our funding only helps entrench their corrupt leaders. Consequently, our aid engenders hatred among the oppressed people of these countries. Americans have always been generous when others are in need. Funds and supplies from the people, collected and distributed by private and religious groups, can and do assist the needy while creating good will for our country.

3. Should the federal government expand job-creating programs? Should unemployment payments be extended?

The missing alternative: Taking from some to create jobs or supply benefits for others stifles the very sector of society that creates real jobs in the first place. Taxation required to fund such government programs inhibits the growth or creation of enterprises that would, if not so constricted, create more jobs for willing workers.

4. Should federal funding for education be increased?

The missing alternative: Get the federal government out of education entirely. The word "education" does not appear in the Constitution, and, as should be expected, the Constitution does not authorize federal involvement in this field. Education lobbyists and liberal politicians claim that more federal education dollars will mean quality education, but since the federal government began funding public education decades ago, education quality has declined.

Few realize that the nation's literacy rate was higher at the time of our nation's founding. Yet that was a period when most youngsters were taught at home and the few who experienced formal school weren't subjected to the dubious benefits of public education. Today, we live in an era of compulsory school attendance, a multiplicity of federal guidelines, and graduates of schools whose ability to read, write, and compute is incredibly poor.

5. Should taxes be lowered despite mounting deficits? Or is it better to keep taxes high to maintain important government services while getting the deficits under control?

The missing alternative: Lower taxes through less government! When the government borrows existing money to support its deficit spending, it creates upward pressure on interest rates. But when it borrows newly created money by "monetizing" the debt through the Federal Reserve System, it creates upward pressure on prices. Expanding the money supply (inflation) is in fact a hidden form of taxation.

6. Should the Constitution be amended to ban abortion, criminalize flag burning, return prayer and Bible reading to the schools, and/or force Congress to balance the budget?

The missing alternative: Amending the Constitution to correct either revolutionary court decisions or federal spending excesses implies that something is wrong with the Constitution, not with some judges and a majority in Congress. The Constitution provides a remedy for federal judicial excesses in its Article III, Section 2 where power is given Congress to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in any matter. (The lower federal courts exist entirely at the pleasure of Congress.) A simple congressional majority can strip the judicial branch of any authority regarding the subjects of abortion, prayer, flag desecration, etc. And a majority in Congress can, any time it has the courage to do so, balance the federal budget either by cutting programs or raising taxes. The Constitution isn't deficient. The deficiency lies in the Congress and the voting public that elects its members.

7. Should America go to war against Iraq alone, or should we do so only with United Nations authorization?

The missing alternative: Mind our own business, don't go to war, and cease being the UN's globocop. The alternative of going to war alone does not even exist because President Bush has already placed our nation's decision in the hands of the United Nations. And in October 2002, both houses of Congress complied with his illegal assumption of this power by overwhelmingly approving House Joint Resolution 114, authorizing the president to "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq."

8. Should the federal government give the states more flexibility in deciding how to spend its federal grants?

The missing alternative: Cease arguing over what method should be used to administer federal grants that should be terminated. In December 2002, an Associated Press report praised Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) for advocating "flexibility in spending federal education funds." Unfortunately, his attitude is prevalent throughout Congress.

9. Should NATO be expanded?

The missing alternative: The U.S. should withdraw from NATO and let the alliance go out of business. Fraudulently sold to the American people and Congress in 1949 as a needed bulwark against westward Soviet expansion, NATO was described by then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson as "an essential measure for strengthening the United Nations." As its own Charter states, the pact derives its legitimacy from Articles 52-54 of the Charter of the United Nations. But NATO has been expanded to include political and economic roles in addition to employing the U.S. military as its armed force. It is a major step toward a UN-led world government.

10. Should we strengthen the United Nations, or should we insist on "reforms" first?

The missing alternative: Get America out of the United Nations. Senator Robert Taft courageously labeled it "a trap" only a few years after it was formed. Americans should revert to the wisdom of our nation's founders who stressed government "noninvolvement" in the affairs of other governments.