Georg Hegel is hard to figure out. There is a lot of disagreement on his political philosophy as Walter Kaufmann admits in the Introduction to the book on Hegel he edited(1). Hegel had an influence on Karl Marx and his philosophy (that is, what I can gather) bore a resemblance to that of today’s neoconservatives. Hegel published four major works, which were added to by his students' lecture notes(2), the dependability of which is doubtful. Also, the authors of the essays in the book have differing points of view on Hegel.
My purpose was to find out how Hegel fits into the neoconservative-leftist picture. It was not easy because of the huge discrepancies among the various interpretations of him.
In the 1820s, Hegel lived in Prussia, a strict monarchy. What he called for in his Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Elements of the Philosophy of Right, usually called Philosophy of Right) was a liberalization(3). Specifically, he wanted a measure of press freedom, trial by jury, a parliament and restrictions on the monarch. Prussia had none of that at the time. However, in other places in the book he does seem to say the individual is a means to the state's ends (although that interpretation is in dispute), and he makes other anti-freedom statements. So, we may gather that, while he thought Prussia was too authoritarian, actual freedom was not an option either. Authority is good, but it must follow the law(4). Judging from what I see in the T.M. Knox chapter in the Kaufmann-edited book, Hegel was rather moderate. He is trying to reconcile individual liberty with a strong government.
Hegel was opposed to popular rule. Government, he believed, is not responsible to the people, but to the state. The state is an end in itself (reminiscent of Machiavelli). In fact, Sidney Hook, author of the chapter "Hegel and His Apologists," says Hegel's philosophy became the "house philosophy" of the Prussian regime, that Hegel's behavior represented a "betrayal of liberal principles"(5), and that Hegel praised Machiavelli extravagantly(6). Hook gives several reasons Hegel could not possibly be a (classical) liberal. In fact, he was quite the state devotee.
Possibly this is why Karl Marx was his follower. But, what, exactly did Georg Hegel have in common with today's neoconservatives?
There are some commonalities(7). He defended war as the health of the state (which it is, and this is one of the main reasons libertarians are opposed to war). He claimed the state has the right to require membership in some church. The chapter did not say if he cared which church. This looks as though Hegel wanted to use religion to keep the masses in line, as Strauss did. He also believed that the purpose of education is to "transform the soul" by reducing the individuality of students.
This reminds me that advocates of private education call our present-day school system "Prussian." In fact, Hegel did have a profound effect on our current public schools. He believed that children are property, not only that, but are the state's property(8). Sounds like "No Child Left Behind" to me.
I just happened to connect Hook's appraisal of Hegel on education with "Prussian," and decided to see if John Taylor Gatto refers to the present system as "Prussian" and I came across a real goldmine of Hegelian influence. I will resist the temptation to go off on a tangent on that now, since I fully intend to mightily flog the public school system on this blog next winter while showing that the government is destroying the family. However I will now point out that Gatto, on the same page, says that Hegel influenced Karl Marx and — I was surprised at first but no longer am — J. P. Morgan.
I do believe that – dare I suggest? – in Georg Hegel we have a connection between Marx and the neoconservatives. Tenuous it might be, but I think I see it! Well, to libertarian eyes, authoritarian philosophies all look pretty much the same.
Hook says(9), and I believe that he has shown, that Hegel has a wide conservative streak. He certainly was a pro-war, law-and-order man. Hook says that "Hegel will always be found to be the philosopher-laureate of the Establishment," a defender of the status quo(10). Change was okay, as long as it did not come from the masses(11).
Hegel was also compared by Hook to Nietzsche in his anti-Christianity(12).
Hegel had a belief that I would say is elitist, similar to that of the neoconservatives. Hook says he believes that if anything needs to be done, it should be done by "those whom the 'world spirit' has entrusted with the destinies of the people, either the officialdom or the great men, the Caesars of world history”(13). And, these "great men" and officials "must not be judged by ordinary principles of morality." In other words, like our present Bush administration officials, they are allegedly better.
Hook then asks if this philosophy bears any resemblance to that of Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, or others like them(14). Of course it doesn't! But it does bear a striking resemblance to both Marxism and neoconservatism.
The chapter goes on showing how Hegel subordinates the individual to society and the state. There really is no point in any further discussion here, as Hook has proven the point I was trying to make, that is, unless Hook has Hegel all wrong.
I could rest my case right here, but I will not. I am not through with the neoconservatives yet.
(1) Kaufmann, Walter, Ed., Hegel's Political Philosophy, Atherton
Press, New York 1970.
(2) Ibid. P. 2-3.
(3) Ibid. P. 22.
(4) Ibid. P. 23-25.
(5) Ibid. P. 93.
(6) Ibid. P.102.
(7) Ibid. P. 95.
(8) Gatto, John Taylor, The Underground History of American Education, the Oxford Village Press, New York 2003 P. 106-107.
(9) Kaufmann P. 96.
(10) Ibid. P.96-97.
(11) Ibid. P. 97.
(12) Ibid. P. 103-104.
(13) Ibid. P. 97.
(14) Ibid. P. 97.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Friend and Foe
President Bush said shortly after September 11 that you are “either for us or against us." Anti-Bush Alice here sat up and took notice. I have believed for a long time that some day dissidents would be in for a rough ride. Well, that day had come.
The most obvious aspect of the friend and foe business is “us” against the terrorists. As much as we do need to be concerned about that, as evidenced by 9-11, the establishment is really cashing in on it.
This mentality on the part of powerful government officials, who think they are better, is intimidating. It is also belligerent and divisive.
It is intimidating because it quiets dissent. We have seen evidence of the quieting of dissent recently in the low turnout by anti-war protestors this past March 18 (2006). We hope it will be much better next time, but I am not optimistic. We also see docility on the part of mainstream media. Now, from the belly of the beast come a couple of censorship threats that would add to the blatant censorship already in effect. One is the specter of Internet censorship allegedly to halt child pornography. The other is an "incumbent protection" law that strictly limits campaigning by and for candidates who are running against incumbents.
The friend and foe mentality is belligerent because the country is at war in two, possibly soon to be three, places in the world, against a nebulous foe called "terrorism." (This does not even mention the fact that we have troops in about 100 additional places.) Rather than having the criminal justice system go after terrorists who have committed heinous crimes, we go after countries (especially oil-rich countries) such as Iraq, which did not attack us. There, we proceed to kill innocent children and others. The whole point of this expansionism is not really oil, although natural resources certainly are a big factor, but it is power! As I have said, power is gravitating to the White House. This is not just domestic political power either. Although both of the Kristols, and Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt all swear they oppose world government (remember their truthfulness record), the neoconservatives want to bring the whole world into U.S. hegemony. This might, in time, give rise to a world government seated in Washington, D.C. They must know this, and the purpose of the friend/foe thing is to unite the public behind them against a foe. Carl Schmitt wrote in 1932 a work called The Concept of the Political that identifies the friend/foe distinction as the essence of politics. This is something that time did not permit me to pursue.
The friend and foe mentality is also divisive. Look, for example at the two old parties (of course this has been going on for decades, but now it is worse than ever). There is a good article on Jerry Falwell's page(1), albeit very pro-Bush. In fact it even calls Bush's 2004 re-election a "sweeping" victory rather than the squeaker it was. The article is about how the Nixon administration destroyed its enemies by way of crooked tax audits and other means. It points out how the Democrats brought down Rep. Tom DeLay. DeLay is not a good guy, obviously, as he supports Bush, but the reason for his downfall at the hands of the Democrats is more due to politics than to any devotion to the Founders' principles.
As this piece is being researched and written, there is a major divisiveness going on that is allegedly the result of some anti-Muslim cartoons. These cartoons caricature Mohammed in a way that Muslims regard as disrespectful, and riots have broken out. Quite honestly, I agree that the cartoons are disrespectful, but the producer does have the right to express an opinion. The cartoons are not, in my opinion, worthy of a response. Why not simply ignore them? Or produce counter-cartoons? Is the effort to censor these cartoons really any different from the Bush administration's effort to censor the Super Bowl half time or us who criticize Bush?
If movies or CD's are released that blaspheme Jesus Christ, I simply refuse to buy that product. So do many other Christians. A good, old-fashioned boycott is the best way I know to deal with that sort of junk. And, a boycott of publications that run junk cartoons is the best way to deal with that, too.
But to hurt people and destroy property are only going to further the establishment's cause. Riots in the street over any issue are divisive and anti-freedom. All it will do is open the door to a crackdown increasing the government's power. This is true here and it is true in Iraq.
We really have to wonder who is really at the bottom of this sort of trouble. Let us not forget who really burned down the Reichstag.
If we really want to fight against the Bush administration's policies, we need to do so with words. The pen is mightier than the sword. The establishment's real foes are us who write and speak, not the half-wits who throw rocks at storefronts.
Of course, part of the use of words is peaceful demonstrations that I do participate in very often, but even this participation is not as productive as a good letter to the editor.
The friend and foe mentality is being used by the neoconservatives to further their agenda.
(1) http://www.moralmajority.com
The most obvious aspect of the friend and foe business is “us” against the terrorists. As much as we do need to be concerned about that, as evidenced by 9-11, the establishment is really cashing in on it.
This mentality on the part of powerful government officials, who think they are better, is intimidating. It is also belligerent and divisive.
It is intimidating because it quiets dissent. We have seen evidence of the quieting of dissent recently in the low turnout by anti-war protestors this past March 18 (2006). We hope it will be much better next time, but I am not optimistic. We also see docility on the part of mainstream media. Now, from the belly of the beast come a couple of censorship threats that would add to the blatant censorship already in effect. One is the specter of Internet censorship allegedly to halt child pornography. The other is an "incumbent protection" law that strictly limits campaigning by and for candidates who are running against incumbents.
The friend and foe mentality is belligerent because the country is at war in two, possibly soon to be three, places in the world, against a nebulous foe called "terrorism." (This does not even mention the fact that we have troops in about 100 additional places.) Rather than having the criminal justice system go after terrorists who have committed heinous crimes, we go after countries (especially oil-rich countries) such as Iraq, which did not attack us. There, we proceed to kill innocent children and others. The whole point of this expansionism is not really oil, although natural resources certainly are a big factor, but it is power! As I have said, power is gravitating to the White House. This is not just domestic political power either. Although both of the Kristols, and Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt all swear they oppose world government (remember their truthfulness record), the neoconservatives want to bring the whole world into U.S. hegemony. This might, in time, give rise to a world government seated in Washington, D.C. They must know this, and the purpose of the friend/foe thing is to unite the public behind them against a foe. Carl Schmitt wrote in 1932 a work called The Concept of the Political that identifies the friend/foe distinction as the essence of politics. This is something that time did not permit me to pursue.
The friend and foe mentality is also divisive. Look, for example at the two old parties (of course this has been going on for decades, but now it is worse than ever). There is a good article on Jerry Falwell's page(1), albeit very pro-Bush. In fact it even calls Bush's 2004 re-election a "sweeping" victory rather than the squeaker it was. The article is about how the Nixon administration destroyed its enemies by way of crooked tax audits and other means. It points out how the Democrats brought down Rep. Tom DeLay. DeLay is not a good guy, obviously, as he supports Bush, but the reason for his downfall at the hands of the Democrats is more due to politics than to any devotion to the Founders' principles.
As this piece is being researched and written, there is a major divisiveness going on that is allegedly the result of some anti-Muslim cartoons. These cartoons caricature Mohammed in a way that Muslims regard as disrespectful, and riots have broken out. Quite honestly, I agree that the cartoons are disrespectful, but the producer does have the right to express an opinion. The cartoons are not, in my opinion, worthy of a response. Why not simply ignore them? Or produce counter-cartoons? Is the effort to censor these cartoons really any different from the Bush administration's effort to censor the Super Bowl half time or us who criticize Bush?
If movies or CD's are released that blaspheme Jesus Christ, I simply refuse to buy that product. So do many other Christians. A good, old-fashioned boycott is the best way I know to deal with that sort of junk. And, a boycott of publications that run junk cartoons is the best way to deal with that, too.
But to hurt people and destroy property are only going to further the establishment's cause. Riots in the street over any issue are divisive and anti-freedom. All it will do is open the door to a crackdown increasing the government's power. This is true here and it is true in Iraq.
We really have to wonder who is really at the bottom of this sort of trouble. Let us not forget who really burned down the Reichstag.
If we really want to fight against the Bush administration's policies, we need to do so with words. The pen is mightier than the sword. The establishment's real foes are us who write and speak, not the half-wits who throw rocks at storefronts.
Of course, part of the use of words is peaceful demonstrations that I do participate in very often, but even this participation is not as productive as a good letter to the editor.
The friend and foe mentality is being used by the neoconservatives to further their agenda.
(1) http://www.moralmajority.com
Money and Power
We have noted how money and power have been gravitating to establishment interests. As I mentioned in "Three Enemies" (below), this has been going on for a long time. Today we are on the verge of economic collapse(1). This is because of debt, and not just federal deficit spending, but because of personal debt. The Bush administration's spending with abandon on the illegal and unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on social programs that are needed only because of all levels of governments taking so much away from people, and on the vigorous enforcement of unconstitutional laws as exemplified by the proliferating drug laws and gun laws, is running up debts so big that nobody can comprehend them(2).
Coupled with that, the Bush administration at least claims to be determined to cut taxes. However, anyone who can do grade-school arithmetic knows that something has to give at some point. Drastic spending cuts are very unlikely by either this administration or the next one, as both old parties favor big government and the basics of the present policies, and new parties have been stonewalled by the two old parties. A tax hike would likely throw the incumbents out of office.
So, how is all this spending going to be paid for besides a tax hike? It will have to be paid for at some point, there’s no getting around that. There is only one other way, and that is for the Federal Reserve to create money out of thin air to pay off these debts. Those new dollars in the economy chasing existing goods and services will cause prices to rise, causing inflation. In fact, rather than a cause of inflation, it is inflation! As stated, Mises and Rothbard wrote extensively about this. I will not belabor it; rather I will urge you to study this very important material so that you will see what is really happening.
The neoconservatives swear by one of the darlings of the Left, John
Maynard Keynes. Keynes' theories are unsound. In fact, they are a disaster. To compare Keynes with Mises or Rothbard is like comparing astrology with astronomy. In fact, Keynes' theories are yet another tie between the neoconservatives and the Left.
The Keynesian/neoconservative propaganda is that the economy is doing really well right now. It does well when people are spending. It is exactly that: propaganda. Your instincts tell you that you will be better off in the long run if you curb discretionary spending and put something aside for the future. Your instincts are right! It is only common sense. You cannot spend yourself rich.
What really concerns me the most (next to terrible monetary policy) is the fact that so many people are deeply in debt. Students graduate from college thousands of dollars in debt. Statistics vary, but they all say that a large number, if not a majority, of people are in debt to the tune of five digits. Between that and the tax burden, people either cannot or will not save, when saving is of paramount importance.
What is going to happen to these people when the inevitable inflation I just mentioned hits the economy? Supply and demand will go haywire.
Businesses will discover they have miscalculated the demands for their products and will lose money. Many businesses will have to downsize, laying off employees. This has been happening already. It will get worse. People, already in debt, will lose their jobs and will be unable to find new jobs. Many will have their homes foreclosed.
Meanwhile, prices will soar because of the inflation, while people pray for price reduction. Of course, Fed Chairman Bernanke has said that price reduction ("deflation") is a must to avoid.
Now, we mustn't allow wealth to slow its gravitation to establishment interests, now must we Mr. Chairman and Mr. President? No? I didn't think so.
Yes, I am bitter, thinking of what this will do to the middle class.
Moreover, homeless people, your ranks are growing! Oh well, we need a bigger homeless and government-dependent voting bloc.
But seriously, what will these people, many of whom are responsible for small children, do? What can they do?
They will do the only thing they know how to do, absent any economic freedom to start up a small business without Big Brother's permission, and absent education that taught self-reliance. They will turn to the Federal government for money and help. What the government is likely to do is similar to what it did in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now, I am speculating, since economic collapse and a natural disaster are two different things. However, we will have the same people, or people of the same mentality, in charge. The government will “help” people by taking what little they have, preventing donations of medical care, money, and other necessities from reaching them, not being there when needed, and being there in the way when not needed.
Government will have succeeded in attaining its goals, claiming wealth and power to itself and making people dependant on government.
With conservatives like these, who needs socialists?
(1) I realize I have been saying this for years but this is because I have seen it coming for years, ever since I have understood the reason for economic ups and downs. Ludwig von Mises pointed this out in Human Action and Murray Rothbard did in America's Great Depression and Man, Economy and State. The cause of depressions is known, but the timing is not. So, although I still maintain that economic collapse cannot be avoided without a complete monetary policy and fiscal policy turnaround, I do not have any idea if it will be tomorrow or twenty years from tomorrow. I just have a very bad feeling about our relatively immediate future.
(2) As I write this, the federal government has just raised the "debt ceiling" yet another time and it is way up in the trillions now.
Coupled with that, the Bush administration at least claims to be determined to cut taxes. However, anyone who can do grade-school arithmetic knows that something has to give at some point. Drastic spending cuts are very unlikely by either this administration or the next one, as both old parties favor big government and the basics of the present policies, and new parties have been stonewalled by the two old parties. A tax hike would likely throw the incumbents out of office.
So, how is all this spending going to be paid for besides a tax hike? It will have to be paid for at some point, there’s no getting around that. There is only one other way, and that is for the Federal Reserve to create money out of thin air to pay off these debts. Those new dollars in the economy chasing existing goods and services will cause prices to rise, causing inflation. In fact, rather than a cause of inflation, it is inflation! As stated, Mises and Rothbard wrote extensively about this. I will not belabor it; rather I will urge you to study this very important material so that you will see what is really happening.
The neoconservatives swear by one of the darlings of the Left, John
Maynard Keynes. Keynes' theories are unsound. In fact, they are a disaster. To compare Keynes with Mises or Rothbard is like comparing astrology with astronomy. In fact, Keynes' theories are yet another tie between the neoconservatives and the Left.
The Keynesian/neoconservative propaganda is that the economy is doing really well right now. It does well when people are spending. It is exactly that: propaganda. Your instincts tell you that you will be better off in the long run if you curb discretionary spending and put something aside for the future. Your instincts are right! It is only common sense. You cannot spend yourself rich.
What really concerns me the most (next to terrible monetary policy) is the fact that so many people are deeply in debt. Students graduate from college thousands of dollars in debt. Statistics vary, but they all say that a large number, if not a majority, of people are in debt to the tune of five digits. Between that and the tax burden, people either cannot or will not save, when saving is of paramount importance.
What is going to happen to these people when the inevitable inflation I just mentioned hits the economy? Supply and demand will go haywire.
Businesses will discover they have miscalculated the demands for their products and will lose money. Many businesses will have to downsize, laying off employees. This has been happening already. It will get worse. People, already in debt, will lose their jobs and will be unable to find new jobs. Many will have their homes foreclosed.
Meanwhile, prices will soar because of the inflation, while people pray for price reduction. Of course, Fed Chairman Bernanke has said that price reduction ("deflation") is a must to avoid.
Now, we mustn't allow wealth to slow its gravitation to establishment interests, now must we Mr. Chairman and Mr. President? No? I didn't think so.
Yes, I am bitter, thinking of what this will do to the middle class.
Moreover, homeless people, your ranks are growing! Oh well, we need a bigger homeless and government-dependent voting bloc.
But seriously, what will these people, many of whom are responsible for small children, do? What can they do?
They will do the only thing they know how to do, absent any economic freedom to start up a small business without Big Brother's permission, and absent education that taught self-reliance. They will turn to the Federal government for money and help. What the government is likely to do is similar to what it did in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now, I am speculating, since economic collapse and a natural disaster are two different things. However, we will have the same people, or people of the same mentality, in charge. The government will “help” people by taking what little they have, preventing donations of medical care, money, and other necessities from reaching them, not being there when needed, and being there in the way when not needed.
Government will have succeeded in attaining its goals, claiming wealth and power to itself and making people dependant on government.
With conservatives like these, who needs socialists?
(1) I realize I have been saying this for years but this is because I have seen it coming for years, ever since I have understood the reason for economic ups and downs. Ludwig von Mises pointed this out in Human Action and Murray Rothbard did in America's Great Depression and Man, Economy and State. The cause of depressions is known, but the timing is not. So, although I still maintain that economic collapse cannot be avoided without a complete monetary policy and fiscal policy turnaround, I do not have any idea if it will be tomorrow or twenty years from tomorrow. I just have a very bad feeling about our relatively immediate future.
(2) As I write this, the federal government has just raised the "debt ceiling" yet another time and it is way up in the trillions now.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Barry Goldwater (1908 - 1988)
Let us now look at a contemporary who was a true conservative, and compare and contrast (mostly contrast) him with today's so-called conservatives.
That person is Senator Barry Goldwater, Sr., who was returned to the U.S. Senate several times by voters in Arizona. He was nominated for president by the Republican Party in 1964, during the time the GOP was flirting with a vague form of libertarianism. While Goldwater was not a pure libertarian in the Libertarian Party sense or the Murray Rothbard sense, he was certainly much closer to that than he was to present-day neoconservativism.
Though he lost the election very badly to Democrat Lyndon Johnson, he was for a long time thereafter considered the quintessential conservative. Today, President George W. Bush is considered the quintessential conservative. Let us now compare and contrast the two brands of conservatism. We have already shown that Bush's conservatism is very much like the Left. But, what of Goldwater's?
I cut my teeth on this during the 1964 campaign, fiercely supporting Barry Goldwater because of his emphasis on individual freedom. I was very active: I attended meetings and work parties, I rode in motorcades and I was a "Goldwater Girl" at Madison Square Garden. I read everything by him I could get my hands on, including Conscience of a Conservative(1).
If you look at the back of the paperback edition you see a very interesting Goldwater quote: "Freedom depends on effective restraints against the accumulation of power in a single authority." Contrast this with what the "conservative" Bush administration is doing now.
Open the book and, right away, in the foreword, Goldwater states, "The truths that guided our Republic through its early days will do equally well for us." This was written long after the Lincoln or Roosevelt eras, but true conservatism was still alive. The foreword is really straightforward. Today's neoconservatives really should read it. They will not like it, at least not the ones who have left the slightest ability to reason.
He says a number of things: The New Deal was not conservative. Individual self-reliance is. Paternalism is not conservative. Decentralized government (meaning more power to the States than to the Federal government) is. To swallow whole what the mainstream media tells us is not conservative. Independent thought and seeing for oneself is. Belief in a homogenous collective is not conservative. Acknowledgement of individual uniqueness, and respect for differences, is.
True conservatives are progressive in the real sense. It was the eternal truths of individual freedom and self-responsibility that the country was founded on that brought about the progress we have seen. Progress cannot be forced. If it is, it is not progress.
Goldwater said, "Throughout history, true Conservatism has been at war equally with autocrats and 'democratic' Jacobins. ... The conscience of the Conservative is pricked by anyone who would debase the dignity of the individual human being. Today, therefore, he is at odds with dictators who rule by terror, and equally with those gentler collectivists who ask our permission to play god with the human race." (Emphasis mine.) (2)
This just about says it all, doesn't it? I have to interpret that as meaning that we must oppose George W. Bush with the same fervor that we oppose Saddam Hussein.
Of course, Goldwater's international policy was not what libertarians today would endorse. He did call for victory in Vietnam rather than for the immediate troop withdrawal he should have advocated. He thought that Communism would invade our shores if we did not stay active overseas. We now know that it was those very activities – so often seen as imperialist -- that have caused all kinds of trouble both at home and abroad, and that includes the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Be that as it may, Goldwater demonstrates what true conservatism is: very different from neoconservatism.
(1) Goldwater, Barry, Conscience of a Conservative, MacFadden-Bartel Corporation, New York, 1960.
(2) Ibid. P. 13.
That person is Senator Barry Goldwater, Sr., who was returned to the U.S. Senate several times by voters in Arizona. He was nominated for president by the Republican Party in 1964, during the time the GOP was flirting with a vague form of libertarianism. While Goldwater was not a pure libertarian in the Libertarian Party sense or the Murray Rothbard sense, he was certainly much closer to that than he was to present-day neoconservativism.
Though he lost the election very badly to Democrat Lyndon Johnson, he was for a long time thereafter considered the quintessential conservative. Today, President George W. Bush is considered the quintessential conservative. Let us now compare and contrast the two brands of conservatism. We have already shown that Bush's conservatism is very much like the Left. But, what of Goldwater's?
I cut my teeth on this during the 1964 campaign, fiercely supporting Barry Goldwater because of his emphasis on individual freedom. I was very active: I attended meetings and work parties, I rode in motorcades and I was a "Goldwater Girl" at Madison Square Garden. I read everything by him I could get my hands on, including Conscience of a Conservative(1).
If you look at the back of the paperback edition you see a very interesting Goldwater quote: "Freedom depends on effective restraints against the accumulation of power in a single authority." Contrast this with what the "conservative" Bush administration is doing now.
Open the book and, right away, in the foreword, Goldwater states, "The truths that guided our Republic through its early days will do equally well for us." This was written long after the Lincoln or Roosevelt eras, but true conservatism was still alive. The foreword is really straightforward. Today's neoconservatives really should read it. They will not like it, at least not the ones who have left the slightest ability to reason.
He says a number of things: The New Deal was not conservative. Individual self-reliance is. Paternalism is not conservative. Decentralized government (meaning more power to the States than to the Federal government) is. To swallow whole what the mainstream media tells us is not conservative. Independent thought and seeing for oneself is. Belief in a homogenous collective is not conservative. Acknowledgement of individual uniqueness, and respect for differences, is.
True conservatives are progressive in the real sense. It was the eternal truths of individual freedom and self-responsibility that the country was founded on that brought about the progress we have seen. Progress cannot be forced. If it is, it is not progress.
Goldwater said, "Throughout history, true Conservatism has been at war equally with autocrats and 'democratic' Jacobins. ... The conscience of the Conservative is pricked by anyone who would debase the dignity of the individual human being. Today, therefore, he is at odds with dictators who rule by terror, and equally with those gentler collectivists who ask our permission to play god with the human race." (Emphasis mine.) (2)
This just about says it all, doesn't it? I have to interpret that as meaning that we must oppose George W. Bush with the same fervor that we oppose Saddam Hussein.
Of course, Goldwater's international policy was not what libertarians today would endorse. He did call for victory in Vietnam rather than for the immediate troop withdrawal he should have advocated. He thought that Communism would invade our shores if we did not stay active overseas. We now know that it was those very activities – so often seen as imperialist -- that have caused all kinds of trouble both at home and abroad, and that includes the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Be that as it may, Goldwater demonstrates what true conservatism is: very different from neoconservatism.
(1) Goldwater, Barry, Conscience of a Conservative, MacFadden-Bartel Corporation, New York, 1960.
(2) Ibid. P. 13.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Epilogue
I have demonstrated, in the best way I could in the time allocated, that neoconservatism is very closely related to the Left, modern "liberalism" (also known as Social Democracy), and socialism. It can also be linked to Marxism, although I do not believe I really demonstrated that. Possibly someone else can do that or I can at a later date.
In any case, it can easily be shown that all of these various "isms" are variants of collectivism. Its antonym would be individualism. The hallmark of collectivism is that it places people in collectives or groups, and gives the group, or society, or community, priority over the individual. The only difference among these variants of collectivism is the emphasis or degree. From my individualist standpoint, any way arsenic is packaged, in any concentration, it is still a poison.
One thing I demonstrated for certain, by the example of Barry Goldwater is that neoconservatism is far removed from what I consider true conservatism, the political philosophy of the Founders, also known as paleoconservatism, classical liberalism, or libertarianism. In “Three Enemies” I said a little bit about that and how it was pushed aside by a revival of the old mercantilism that the Founders had rebelled against when the country was founded. I also showed that the old mercantilism was brought back by the formation of the present Republican Party and that those who fought in vain to retain (conserve) the country's founding philosophy would be like today's Libertarian Party.
And I pointed out that, aside from a few brief years of flirtation with true conservatism, the GOP has been consistently opposed to the Founders' vision. During that brief period, however, they did quite well in an attempt to restore freedom, the high point being the Goldwater nomination. Otherwise, the GOP has been just another branch of the establishment's pro-government movement, as it is today, along with the Democrats and the Left. They are all cut of the same cloth.
Turning things around right now is what is needed, but what will certainly not happen. The country, and the rest of the world with it, I fear, will have to bottom out before we start rising back up. The neoconservatives and other authoritarians have too much of a stranglehold for the people to learn their lessons the easy way. They will have to learn the hard way. It will be a rough ride for everyone, not just dissidents.
Ludwig von Mises, philosopher and economist, did say that government is based on ideas that are prevalent in the culture. This is why it is very important to reverse the trend towards dependency and collectivism. The government will lie through its teeth to prevent this turnaround, so that money and power will keep gravitating toward it. It will conjure up crises, exaggerate real and imagined problems into crises, lying all the way to the bank.
If we do not learn from previous mistakes we are bound to repeat them. We need to think of what happened in and to authoritarian regimes of the past before we give up what little is left of our freedom.
In any case, it can easily be shown that all of these various "isms" are variants of collectivism. Its antonym would be individualism. The hallmark of collectivism is that it places people in collectives or groups, and gives the group, or society, or community, priority over the individual. The only difference among these variants of collectivism is the emphasis or degree. From my individualist standpoint, any way arsenic is packaged, in any concentration, it is still a poison.
One thing I demonstrated for certain, by the example of Barry Goldwater is that neoconservatism is far removed from what I consider true conservatism, the political philosophy of the Founders, also known as paleoconservatism, classical liberalism, or libertarianism. In “Three Enemies” I said a little bit about that and how it was pushed aside by a revival of the old mercantilism that the Founders had rebelled against when the country was founded. I also showed that the old mercantilism was brought back by the formation of the present Republican Party and that those who fought in vain to retain (conserve) the country's founding philosophy would be like today's Libertarian Party.
And I pointed out that, aside from a few brief years of flirtation with true conservatism, the GOP has been consistently opposed to the Founders' vision. During that brief period, however, they did quite well in an attempt to restore freedom, the high point being the Goldwater nomination. Otherwise, the GOP has been just another branch of the establishment's pro-government movement, as it is today, along with the Democrats and the Left. They are all cut of the same cloth.
Turning things around right now is what is needed, but what will certainly not happen. The country, and the rest of the world with it, I fear, will have to bottom out before we start rising back up. The neoconservatives and other authoritarians have too much of a stranglehold for the people to learn their lessons the easy way. They will have to learn the hard way. It will be a rough ride for everyone, not just dissidents.
Ludwig von Mises, philosopher and economist, did say that government is based on ideas that are prevalent in the culture. This is why it is very important to reverse the trend towards dependency and collectivism. The government will lie through its teeth to prevent this turnaround, so that money and power will keep gravitating toward it. It will conjure up crises, exaggerate real and imagined problems into crises, lying all the way to the bank.
If we do not learn from previous mistakes we are bound to repeat them. We need to think of what happened in and to authoritarian regimes of the past before we give up what little is left of our freedom.
End Notes: Recommended Reading
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/january2006/200106Bin_Laden_Tape.htm Watson, Steve, "Latest Bin Laden Tape: Another of the NeoCons' 'Greatest Hits'" Illustrates how far they will go to create a crisis mentality and justify war. I am not sure of the correctness of the article's particulars, but this is the neo-cons' general mentality.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts139.html Roberts, Paul Craig, "Bush has Crossed the Rubicon." How power has gravitated to the Executive, especially now in Bush's second term. With Justice Alito confirmed, he now has a majority on the Supreme Court who favor enlarged presidential powers. Also, the use of "signing statements" has enabled Pres. Bush to bypass statutes passed by Congress and signed into law by him. This little-known tool has tremendously increased his power.
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr011806.htm Paul, Dr. Ron, "Searching for a New Direction." Paul on the neo-conservative Bush administration's fiscal and monetary irresponsibility.
http://www.mises.org/story/1973 Rothbard, Murray, "What is the Free Market?" Dr. Rothbard explains in everyday language why everyone benefits if the market is free from government interference, as opposed to the neo-conservative limitations placed on it.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011706I.shtml Pitt, William Rivers, "The New Fascism." The author describes what is going on in the country now.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4655196.stm Brookes, Adam, "US Plans to 'Fight the Net' Revealed. Newly declassified document reveals how the Bush administration wants the military to control the Internet for propaganda purposes. Written by Pentagon officials in 2003, Donald Rumsfeld signed it.
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=8329 Roberts, Paul Craig, "A Criminal Administration." It is apparently treasonous to reveal Bush's illegal behavior, according to the Bush administration. It is out to bust the patriotic hero who broke the spying news in The New York Times, even as it goes on committing blatant crimes!
http://mises.org/story/2051 Rockwell, Llewellyn H., Jr., "The Myth of the Math and Science Shortage." Lew Rockwell is one of the best libertarian writers on the planet. In this article he is disputing one of many blatantly false statements in President Bush's 2006 State of the Union speech. That was the idea that more scientists and mathematicians are needed. Actually, lawyers command much higher wages, showing that lawyers are in much higher demand in the marketplace. This is due to the plethora of rules and regulations imposed by government. Bush's comments betray his lust for central planning. I would only add that the study of the sciences takes time away from the study of the humanities which is desperately needed if students are ever going to realize how they are being led down the garden path to despotism. Good scientific knowledge and technique are no guarantee that one can think critically about authority vs. liberty. I know this first hand having been in a scientific field myself and remembering the inane and anti-freedom comments of some (otherwise) very bright co-workers and students.
http://villagevoice.com/news/0607,hentoff,72136,6.html Hentoff, Nat, "The War on Privacy." The general public is becoming aware of and concerned about infringements on privacy rights, according to Zogby polls. I hope they are right, as today the only way to communicate with guaranteed privacy is the in-person conversation.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods28.html Woods, Thomas E., Jr., Reviews Anne Norton's Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (Yale, 2004). In it he points out many of the highlights of the book. As anything but a conservative in the real sense, Leo Strauss opposed the idea of individual rights and, despite his words to the contrary, was a Machiavellian. Willingness to act outside the law is a mark of "statesmanship." In fact, I had quite an "Aha!" moment when I saw that the Straussians have great admiration for Abraham Lincoln, precisely because he broke the law. See my Three Enemies essay on my blog. A related article by Thomas Di Lorenzo is found at http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo80.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11968.htm Roberts, Paul Craig, "Conservatives Endorse the Fuhrer Principle." The Conservative Political Action Conference met in February, 2006. Former congressman Bob Barr, a real conservative, reminded them that nobody, including the president is above the law. He was received negatively.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block58.html Block, Walter, "Those Cartoons: A Libertarian Analysis." A libertarian commentary on the cartoons. The first link in the article shows some of the cartoons.
http://lewrockwell.com/orig7/asingleton1.html Singleton, Aaron, "Legally Lewd: A Right Reserved Only For Cops." This illustrates the two-class system where government people are treated as a privileged class, when they can engage in an activity on the taxpayers' money, while the taxpayers are strictly forbidden to engage in the same activity.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory109.html Gregory, Anthony, "On Being Anti-State, Anti-War, and Anti-Bush." He says that anyone who loves liberty must be anti-Bush. That is abundantly clear. (Well, I don't call myself Anti-Bush Alice because of my tiddlywink game.) However, some libertarians are confused as to being pro-state and pro-war even as they are pro-liberty. The Left is also confused, and as statist as Bush.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer132.html Shaffer, Butler "V for Vendetta." A review of the movie V for Vendetta which is an absolute must-see. Shaffer says the movie is overtly anti-state.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts159.html Roberts, Paul Craig, "Bush Is No Conservative." This is yet another indictment of Bush and the neoconservatives showing they are anything but conservative in the true sense.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Another open letter to President Bush
Dear President Bush:
YOU HAVE HIT AN ALL-TIME LOW, MR. PRESIDENT, BY FLOUTING THE FOURTH AMENDMENT AND AUTHORIZING SPYING ON LAW-ABIDING AMERICANS.
This has been going on for years and you finally have the backbone to admit it.
I have to wonder what your ulterior motive is.
If I wanted to be watched, I would go to a crowded place and expose myself while passing out copies of my bank statement.
But, I want my God-given right to privacy, as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.
Word is that you called the Constitution a "G.D. piece of paper."
None of this is or should be a surprise to anyone who has a brain in his head.
I HEAR SOME MEMBERS OF CONGRESS ARE KICKING AROUND THE IMPEACHMENT IDEA. THIS IS THE BEST IDEA TO COME OUT OF WASHINGTON FOR YEARS.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Alice Lillie's Statement to President Bush
The official war death count among American servicepeople in Iraq is 2,000. President Bush said this sacrifice was "worth it."
EXCUSE ME, MR. PRESIDENT, BUT THAT IS NOT YOUR CALL.
WHETHER THE LOSS OF A LIFE FOR THIS WAR IS WORTH IT CAN ONLY BE DETERMINED BY THE OWNER OF THAT LIFE, THE PERSON WHO DIED.
Each of those 2,000 was a human being. An individual.
He or she had hopes, dreams, a family ... a LIFE!
Just like you.
We do not honor these individuals by sending more to their deaths.
WE MUST END THIS WAR RIGHT NOW.
IT WAS A GRAVE MISTAKE TO ELECT YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE AND THEN A WORSE ONE TO ALLOW YOU TO PROSECUTE THIS ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL WAR.
IT WAS A GRAVE MISTAKE TO ELECT YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE AND THEN A WORSE ONE TO ALLOW YOU TO PROSECUTE THIS ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL WAR.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Prolog
The mainstream press is no longer free. We wonder why the press is such a lapdog to the Bush administration. Are reporters lazy? Busy? Maybe some are lazy. All are likely busy. But there are threats hanging over their heads. Look at what happened to ace reporter Gary Webb. He was out of a job for years. He recently died, reportedly having committed suicide by two gunshots. (Two? Are we really sure it was a suicide?)
And consider what is happening to reporters who refuse to disclose (read rat on) confidential sources. Some have wound up in prison after breaking no law, like the New York Times and Time Magazine reporters who gallantly refused to name sources of information about the leakage of a covert CIA agent's name. And, now, recently, there is a move to include bloggers under the provision of the obviously unconstitutional McCain-Feingold.
I am not a reporter. But in addition to the new blog I do post an occasional Zine to the Internet and am proud to be politically incorrect. I think that being factually correct and independently thinking is a lot more important than being politically correct, come what may.
I am about to issue a series of Zines and will be the first to admit that some feathers are going to be ruffled. Some bubbles will be burst. But please understand that my own was too while I was learning.
This series will be on the three people who I believe are the worst American enemies of liberty. Each will be the worst enemy of one of three centuries, the 19th, the 20th, and the 21st so far.
The decision to do this series came out of an investigation of the many facets of the "New World Order" that has been in the works for decades and that the Bush administration is now pushing us into. Economic and political power have been gravitating toward establishment interests in general and, in particular, political power has been gravitating to the White House.
As mentioned, the mainstream media kowtow to the Bush administration. The difference between "left-slanted" and "right-slanted" reporting is in the detail only. Both are slanted towards big, powerful government, the difference being only in emphasis.
Big Business and the Bush administration are so closely knit that I don't think anyone denies that any more. The only question is, is Big Business running the Federal government, or has the Federal government turned Big Business into a puppet? It could be some of both, but I think it matters little when so much of the money and power are concentrated in one place. Even inside the federal government the balance of power is upset; the executive branch seems to have the lion's share now.
So I had to wonder, how did all this get started? History was my worst subject in school, so I didn't know. I started learning. Early on I learned the most important lesson. That lesson was that what they teach in most schools that passes for history is one long praise-a-thon for government. So, I guess I am now ‘way ahead of the "A" students.
The schools teach that the Civil War, or the War for Southern Independence, was about slavery, and that the slaves were freed when gallant Northerners rode in and defeated those terrible Southerners.
That is not true!
And, when I went to school in the Northeast, we were not even told about the internment of Americans of Japanese (and other) descent. We were told that no person in America was ever denied any freedom.
We were also taught the patently ridiculous falsehood that the New Deal ended the Great Depression.
That is not true either!
Now, schools are teaching, and many still believe, that the attacks of September 11 were carried out by perpetrators who are jealous of our freedom and prosperity, and not because so much anger has been generated by our imperialism and our playing policeman of the world for the last century.
How wrong can that be?
The New world Order is based on propaganda and lies that have been fed to us for more than a century and a half. I intend to do my part to dispel these lies, and a good way to start might be to choose three of the most dreadful American enemies of liberty who have been heroes in the minds of the majority, and to show why they should not be heroes at all to anyone who believes in the Founders' principles and who favors individual liberty.
The Alice Lillie E-mail Zine is not copyrighted. Please feel free to forward it on or post it anywhere. However, please make sure that credit is given where applicable and that the general meaning is not changed.
There will be four more segments to this Three Enemies series, and they will be quite long. You can read them all on my blog. The blog is at http://www.alicelillieandher.blogspot.com.
If you are reading this on my blog, you may reply on the blog. Because I am endeavoring to keep the intellectual level high, and am encouraging children and young adults to read the blog, please keep the language appropriate. One can express any viewpoint without foul language, and all points of view are welcome, but language that is inappropriate for young readers will be taken down.
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The Worst 19th Century American Enemy of Liberty
As I stated before this series is very contrary to establishment dogma and I do hope that I don't lose any friends over it. However, I do have to tell it as I believe it is. I see and hear with libertarian eyes and ears, and consequently my interpretation of events is thoroughly libertarian.
Generally speaking, this country started out as a basically, but not entirely, free country. There were a few low taxes and tariffs, and some restrictions on civil and economic liberties, but these were nothing in comparison to what existed in other parts of the world, and to what we have here today. In fact, the taxes, tariffs, and regulations that were imposed by the British and that triggered the American Revolution were very benign compared to what we have been saddled with for decades now.
Very few could vote in the beginning, but taxes were low and government was largely absent from every aspect of life, so possibly individuals were not that concerned about the vote. I personally would be willing to stop voting if I could stop paying taxes and stop the adverse effect of books and books of statutes and regulations that affect me directly and indirectly. Actually, if we are going to have voting at all, I think it should be universally permitted, and we are moving in that direction, but that is another topic for another Zine.
Democracy does not guarantee freedom. Actually, liberty has diminished as suffrage has increased.
As for the loss of liberty, has it gradually occurred, or have there been some definite turning points?
There have been turning points, and in my opinion three of them have been major.
One major turning point was at the middle of the Nineteenth Century. It was at that time that freedom took at least two very mighty blows from which it never even began to recover.
The person who was primarily responsible for these two blows to liberty was one I consider to be the greatest American enemy of freedom of the Nineteenth Century.
He was Abraham Lincoln.
Now, this is certainly quite a shock to libertarians and others who have always believed that Lincoln ended slavery in this country. Needless to say, every libertarian on this earth vehemently opposes any form of slavery. However, Lincoln did not end it, nor did he even try.
Lincoln made it quite plain that he did not care one way or the other if slavery existed. He also was what we today would consider a vehement racist; he considered whites superior to blacks and he did not think blacks should be permitted to vote, serve on juries, or even mingle with whites (1). Like all racists, Lincoln placed his own race in the superior position.
Therefore I will move on from that issue and describe the two hard blows Abraham Lincoln dealt to liberty.
The first blow was an end to the relatively free market system we had been enjoying. The free market brought about a prosperity never before known. By today's standards, Americans were dirt poor, but we must remember that this was before most technological development. Almost everything had to be done by hand or by rudimentary tools, which left little time to invent and make new tools. A lack of tools (capital goods) means an increase in the amount of work done, a decrease in the amount of goods produced, or, more likely, both. There was only time for necessary work. Over time, however, people were able to set aside the time and resources to obtain better tools that, in turn, freed up more time and resources (2). Under our almost-free market at that time, government did not stand in the way.
Beginning with the Lincoln administration, however, economic liberty was greatly curtailed. Lincoln was a big admirer of another American enemy of liberty, Henry Clay, who had come up with a set of ideas he called the "American System." This system was no more American than was the British system that provoked the American Revolution.
This "American System" Clay was calling for was pure mercantilism (3). He was a Whig, the Whigs being forerunners of the present Republicans. Clay and Lincoln were both Whigs and they worked for about thirty years to replace the free market with mercantilism (4). The Whigs called themselves "Whigs" to make themselves appear to oppose centralized government and to fool the public (5). The earlier Whigs of the Eighteenth Century had been classical liberals, i.e., libertarians. In order to ram their program through, the Whigs needed to fool the public, since at that time it was generally known that a concentration of power is inimical to liberty. True to their mercantilism, debt and pork barrel projects were the Nineteenth Century Whigs' hallmarks.
These pork barrel projects, or "internal improvements" as the Whigs insisted on calling them, were chiefly beneficial to Northeastern establishment industry and were paid for by tariffs which hit the South especially hard. (This ties directly into Lincoln's second blow to liberty.)
This is glaringly inimical to liberty. When Henry Clay was in Congress sponsoring pork barrel projects, the great Founder James Madison was president and he vetoed these bills.
Now, just exactly what is this "mercantilism" that enraged the Founders, and that Abraham Lincoln and his mentor, Henry Clay, were trying to reinstate?
The great economist, Murray Rothbard, in Making Economic Sense (P. 183-184), defines mercantilism, the system of western Europe in the Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries, as big government with high taxes, large bureaucracies, and massive regulations, the point being to grant monopolies, cartels, and subsidies to favored groups. Political favorites of that time were those who gave the king something in return, or were possibly friends or relatives of the king. Analogous today would be major contributors to political campaigns, either directly or through soft money or volunteer work. Corruption is certain.
The Whigs, and later the Republicans, led by those like Lincoln and Clay, worked hard to institute this system. Like the Jacobins, the Republicans favored this authoritarian agenda even as they couched their rhetoric in the language of freedom, i.e., they thought nothing of lying in order to increase their power (6). To their credit, the Democrats at the time (before they gave up their Jeffersonian roots) stood for the separation of economy (and just about everything else) and state. They were the true liberals (i.e., classical liberals) much as today's libertarians are (7), and fought hard to fend off this major blow to the Constitution and to freedom.
However, once Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, mercantilism prevailed and the major blow was dealt. Murray Rothbard lists some specifics including, but not limited to, high tariffs, high excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco, railroad subsidies, an income tax (fortunately later repealed), an end to the gold standard, and quasi-nationalization of banks.
Abraham Lincoln was warming up in the bullpen for his second major blow to freedom. The cause of this major blow can be summed up in one word:
TARIFFS!
Tariffs are Constitutional, of course, although most free market economists oppose them, and this history is good reason to oppose them. Their distortion of the economy is only the beginning of the problems they can cause, and in the case of Lincoln's tariffs, they alienated people so much that it caused a war.
To see how this happened, we need to follow the money, which drifted away from the South toward the North, and to Lincoln cronies.
Prior to Lincoln and Clay's dreadful "American System," the Industrial Revolution had really taken hold in the North and most people were really prospering more than they ever had. In the South, there was an agricultural economy and not much industry, so the South had to bring in a lot of things from elsewhere. They could either buy these things from Northern companies or from overseas. If they bought from overseas they had to pay a tariff, which was purposefully kept high enough to make importation prohibitively expensive. So, all else equal, they could get their supplies cheaper if they bought from the North. Of course, that encouraged Northern businesses to charge higher prices, higher, but not high enough to lose customers back to overseas companies. So, money flowed from the South to the North and its big guys and their mercantilist buddies, who made out like the bandits they were.
Southerners were stuck. Even though the market was most likely free enough that Southerners could build their own factories, they apparently found that it would not pay to do so. For reasons known only to them, they opted not to do this; rather they took other steps to solve the problems they faced due to tariffs.
Left-wingers today who justly complain about corporate power are advised to read up on what happened during the Lincoln administration, as this is when the government went out of Constitutional bounds and formed partnerships with business. Abraham Lincoln and his mentor, Clay, were the main culprits. Most of the tariff money was spent on pork-barrel projects lining establishment pockets even more.
The South was, understandably, alienated by the tariffs, especially in 1828 when the "Tariff of Abominations" was passed. This tariff, which imposed different rates on different goods, was obviously tailored to cater to special interests. This was the last straw for South Carolina, which nullified the tariff in that state.
Nullification of a Federal law by a state was regarded as a Constitutional right up until that time. The Founders were wise enough to realize that any government that is allowed to determine the extent of its own power will eventually assume unlimited power. Even though tariffs are Constitutional for revenue purposes, South Carolina exercised its right to nullify this tariff on the grounds that it would enrich some at the expense of others and that would violate the General Welfare clause (8).
South Carolina had grown impatient and exercised its right because Fort Sumter in Charleston was where most of the tariff was collected, enforced by federal troops stationed there. However, the situation cooled down for a while as the Feds backed down on the tariff in 1832. But things heated up on another front. The mercantilist Whig party went belly-up because of internal disagreements on Western territories and in 1854 the infamous Republican Party was founded by advocates of tariffs and centralization, including Abraham Lincoln and Henry Clay. They also took a divisive stand on slavery in the Western territories. They wanted slavery outlawed in these territories, not because of any anti-slavery beliefs (we already know that Lincoln was a rabid white supremacist who cared not at all if every black person was permanently enslaved [9]) but because they feared that free white labor could not compete with slave labor.
In 1860, the new Republican Party adopted a platform calling for tariffs and "internal improvements" (meaning for making the South pay for Northern pork barrel projects) and it nominated Lincoln as its presidential candidate.
South Carolina became angry again because of this and exercised its right to leave the Union on December 18, 1860. The federal government promised to evacuate Fort Sumter, but instead sent provisions to the troops there. South Carolina fired warning shots. The same kind of thing was happening in Florida at Fort Pickens in Pensacola Bay, and Florida also left the Union on January 10, 1861. These seceded states did not want federal troops at these forts any more than the Americans wanted British troops here during the American Revolution.
Lincoln had not been in office even a month before he sent troops to Fort Pickens, by secret executive order bypassing Congress. This was regarded by the South as an act of war, especially since the South had tried to negotiate a settlement. By that time, five more states had left the Union.
In my opinion, the South really had no choice about the firing on Fort Sumter. The right to secede from the Union was beyond question, for there is nothing in the Constitution that said this could not be done. Besides that, these states obviously existed before the Union did. Once they had bowed out, Washington had no more business in their jurisdictions than it had in Canada. But the federal (Northern) government dug in its heels and gave the South no choice but to fire on Fort Sumter.
Four more states seceded as a result of Lincoln's use of military force (10). Lincoln apparently had totally forgotten what he had said only a few years earlier about the right to get rid of an old government and form a new one being a most sacred right (11). This kind of change seems to go with the territory of being in a position of power.
The whole Northern establishment was further galvanized against the South because of jealousy as well. The new Confederate Constitution called for very low (if any) tariffs and very low taxes that, of course, caused the economy to boom in the South and stagnate in the North (12).
But, let's stop here for a general discussion of secession.
The military attack on the South was the beginning of Lincoln's second major blow to liberty. It was the beginning of the end of the United States as a republic, meaning it was the beginning of federal government dominance over the states. This was directly in contradiction of the Tenth Amendment and resulted in the gravitation of political power to the federal (read central) government and away from individuals and localities. Of course, politically, Lincoln had no choice either, because if he allowed secession he might have gone down in history as a weak president. So, to appear strong, he dug in his heels and fought even though it was in total disregard for the supreme law of the land. He engineered the situation in such a way that the South would fire the first shot. Besides that, a war unites and at the time the country was divided, Lincoln was low in the polls, and the Republicans had been whipped pretty badly in elections (13).
The right of a state to secede is based upon the fact that the Union is a voluntary pact among sovereign states. What really gives teeth to this right is the fact the Constitution is silent on the matter and does not deny the right. However, it does say in the Tenth Amendment that the federal government can only do what it is expressly permitted to do, and no more. All other rights are reserved to the states or the people.
Most anti-secessionist arguments come from Lincoln's first Inaugural Address of 1861 (14). He said that every government rejects the idea of its own termination. Well, don't we all? But that does not make anything permanent. Lincoln also claimed that the constitution is a "contract" rather than like a treaty. How? I do not remember signing it. Do you? We could bow out. The people of any state could decide to bow out. He gave other arguments but none can stand up to the Tenth Amendment.
One major argument against secession is that the states implicitly gave up that right when they joined the union. They did? Do we implicitly give up the right to leave any organization when joining? Do we have to call for a vote to be allowed to leave? Since when?
According to anti-secessionists, Union victory in the war settled the issue. I have just shown that it did not. Anti-secessionists also argue that, in Texas vs. White, the Supreme Court settled it. But I think it was wrongfully. The Supreme Court, which is made up of human beings like the rest of us, can be wrong. Even if the issue is settled from a legal standpoint, it is far from settled morally.
In such “settled” matters as the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court eventually reversed itself. Scott Peterson has "settled" the issue of Lacie and Connor Peterson's futures, too, but is it right?
The fact that the Constitution is silent on this issue implies to me the right of secession is assumed. As someone who interprets the Constitution very strictly, I believe the right of a state to secede from the Union is absolute and is one right that guards all the other rights of a state and the people in it.
Therefore, when Lincoln "settled" the issue of secession in the manner he did, he dealt the second major blow to liberty, which ended state and hence individual sovereignty.
The sorry state of Lincoln's damage to freedom and decentralization could be left at that, but I would like briefly to describe some of his specific infringements on liberty that were precedent setting.
The South was no threat to the North. Lincoln could have let it go, but he was determined to punish. Congress never declared war, so when Lincoln went to war it was illegal and unconstitutional, besides being uncalled for. (15) John V. Denson, in Reassessing the Presidency, claims that this made Lincoln "America's first dictator" (16). This began a major assault on constitutional rights, beginning with the suspension of habeas corpus and the arrest of a judge who did not agree.
Then, with Southern Congressmen now out of Congress, Lincoln and the Republicans went right to work in enacting the Republican agenda, i.e., the Clay "American System" that we have been saddled with ever since.
Lincoln allowed martial law to be declared and had more than thirteen thousand people arrested in the North without warrants and convicted without any due process in military courts. That is a large number of people, especially when the population was so much lower than it is now. Some of these cases were overturned, but the idea that this can be done in the first place is appalling.
Lincoln also ordered the arrest of state legislators who he feared might vote for secession in their legislatures. Railroads were nationalized, and more than 300 newspapers that opposed his policies were closed.
Some opinions are that these policies started us on the road to imperialism and were the precedent for presidential war powers, which give a president unlimited powers during a war (17). I could add that the end of states' rights is also the end of natural rights, the central government and the president becoming deified.
The above rights violations were, at least in part, the reason that the Cherokee Nation supported the South (18).
On the economic front, Lincoln kept signing more tax and tariff bills. Additionally, his National Currency Acts began central banking which students of economics know causes inflation which is really a back-door tax through money depreciation (19). Bonds were sold. The printing up of new money was deemed necessary to finance the war.
New bureaucracies were set up to administer the new taxes and other areas the rapidly growing government was encroaching upon. The military-industrial complex was born (20). The "imperial presidency" was here.
After the war, the assaults on freedom did not end. The seceded states, once pulled back into the Union, were treated like mere provinces rather than states.
The behavior of the Union soldiers in the South during the war was not to the standards that had been followed by European warriors for about two centuries. These standards called for leaving the civilian population alone (21). It makes sense to leave them alone as, not only are they not involved in the war but a soldier cannot tell which side, if any, a given civilian is on. It is naive to think that every citizen of a country unconditionally supports his or her government in every war. Individuals do have the God-given ability (and right) to think for themselves and there were certainly those Southerners who opposed secession. But Union soldiers, like spoiled brats, purposefully went right ahead and destroyed civilian property and civilians themselves to the equivalent of bombing them back to the stone age.
Union General William Sherman was the worst offender. He allowed (or ordered) troops to commit crimes so dastardly against the Confederate population that even conventional, mainstream history touches on it. This behavior was so unacceptable in the Nineteenth Century that even Sherman himself admitted that according to his West Point training, he could have been executed for it (22).
There were more examples of this sort of thing on the North's part. But, in all fairness, Southern soldiers were not totally innocent either. In fact there probably has never been a war where atrocities against the innocent have been uncommon. This by itself is a good reason to oppose war.
Though President Lincoln possibly did not order the atrocities, he allowed them, which proves yet again that he had no regard for the rights of the individual or any state, meaning no regard for the Constitution except to trot it out when it served his purposes.
I could stop right here as my point is proven. But, I will forge ahead.
Lincoln thought ahead to what he would do about the seceded states after the war. His belief, contrary to the Constitution which was meant to be strictly interpreted, was that secession was impossible; therefore the states had not actually seceded. He seemed to think of them as runaway slaves, to be brought back to his plantation and severely dealt with.
My first response is: Therefore secede again! Lincoln might have thought of that. All he demanded was loyalty oaths from certain people (23). His death occurred before he could do much more, so he cannot be blamed for what the federal government did to the South during reconstruction.
But, because it was his Republican party that was in power, I will briefly list some major rights violations.
After the seceded states had jumped through all the hoops that they were required to by the Andrew Johnson administration (Vice President Johnson had become president upon the death of Lincoln), the reconvened Congress refused to seat the representatives from those states. This refusal was an authoritarian one-size-fits-all, rather than a case-by-case refusal. It was blatantly political. The Republicans wanted to stay in power. The same goes for their plans for the enfranchisement of the freedmen. This had less to do with fairness than it did with bolstering the Republican vote.
It was the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment that was the worst thing the federal government did after the war. Now, the Fourteenth Amendment had some really good content such as "equal protection of the laws" and other superior ideas. But my focus here is not on the content of the Amendment. Regardless of the merit of the ideas, it is still inimical to freedom because, for one thing, it set yet another precedent for federal power over the states. The states were compelled to adopt the ideas therein. If the states were compelled to follow the Fourteenth Amendment, then no telling what the federal government could and would shove down their throats later on behalf of this amendment, not to mention other federal laws that might be passed.
Another reason to oppose it was the way the Fourteenth Amendment was "passed." Only one in the eleven former Confederate states would ratify it.
In response, Lincoln's Republicans passed some laws that would call for martial law and military governors in the other ten states until they "ratified" the Amendment, among other things. This means that, morally, the Amendment is null and void having been ratified involuntarily. Even if the forced ratification could morally count, voting irregularities would make it illegal anyway (24).
To his credit, President Johnson vetoed these means of coercion, the Reconstruction Acts, on the grounds that they only proved the point the Southerners made when they seceded in the first place. Of course, he was right. Over-ridden, but right (25).
President Johnson made some statements that were leaning very heavily in the libertarian direction and make me wonder how he ever became Lincoln's running mate. Perhaps this "balanced ticket" nonsense showed that then, as now, stands on issues took a back seat to party loyalty.
To recap, Abraham Lincoln was the worst Nineteenth Century American enemy of liberty because of the two major blows he dealt to liberty.
One was the replacement of the relatively free market that had brought about unprecedented economic prosperity for the common person with the tired old mercantilist system that favored government and establishment interests at the expense of the common person.
A person who has not studied economics will counter that people were far poorer before the Lincoln administration than they were after. This is true, but the reason is the technological progress we have made thanks to inventive individuals who could envision cheaper and more efficient ways of getting consumer needs satisfied. Harnessing electricity for light and power tools, the internal combustion engine for faster transport, refrigeration for comfort and food preservation, the telephone and the computer chip are but a few of the thousands of ideas that have come to fruition thanks to individuals who think and take the initiative.
And, more is to follow if there is sufficient freedom. The above improvements will become obsolete as new ones are developed to serve consumer wants better. A clean environment is one thing that consumers demand, and if government will just get out of the way, inventors and entrepreneurs will rise to that challenge.
The American people were still relatively independent, self-reliant, and frugal in the Nineteenth Century. They had the insight to save and invest for the future and enough freedom left to make it possible to do so. A large portion of the gross national product was invested in capital goods (tools of production), creating higher productivity (26).
Mercantilism and its sibling, the welfare state, have done nothing at all to bring any of that about. In fact, mercantilism has curbed progress by its many taxes, regulations and prohibitions.
So, when we are discussing how the Lincoln administration affected prosperity, we must not compare the economic well-being of before Lincoln to that of after Lincoln. Rather, we must compare what we have to what we would have had if the market had remained free. We do not know what we would have had, but we would have had a lot more than we have except for the number of hours necessary to work in order to feed our families.
The other major blow dealt by Lincoln was the blow to state and individual sovereignty in favor of a more powerful federal government. Power and money started their gravitation to Washington and this trend has never slowed down. States are now stuck in the Union, like it or not, and are ruled from Washington. The common person has no real voice as he or she might at the state or local level, since it is impossible to get one voice heard in Washington. The person's money does go there, by force, in large amounts.
We are not a free country today as a result.
(1) Woods, Thomas E., The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, Regnery Publishing, 2004, Washington, D.C., P. 66-67.
(2) Rothbard, Murray N. Man, Economy and State, with Power and Market, Scholars' Edition, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2004, Auburn, Ala., P.47-52 ff.
(3) Rothbard, Murray N. Making Economic Sense, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995, Auburn, P. 183-184. Hallmarks of mercantilism are big government, high taxes, large bureaucracies, and massive regulation, the point of which is monopolies, cartels, and subsidies to favored groups.
(4) Denson, John, ed. Reassessing the Presidency, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2001, Auburn, P.203-204.
(5) Ibid, P. 211
(6) Denson, John, ed. The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories, Transaction Publishers, 1998, New Brunswick, P. 159.
(7) See http://www.lp.org/
(8) Woods, P. 37-40
(9) Denson, Reassessing the Presidency, P. 242-243.
(10) Woods, P. 61.
(11) Ibid, P. 63.
(12) Denson, Reassessing the Presidency, P. 252.
(13) Ibid, P. 250.
(14) Dorf, Michael C. "Does the Constitution Permit the Blue States to Secede? With Permission, Perhaps; Unilaterally, No."
(15) Denson, Reassessing the Presidency, P.270.
(16) Ibid, P. 274.
(17) Ibid, P. 280.
(18) Woods, P. 70-71.
(19) DiLorenzo, Thomas J. "An Abolitionist Defends the South."
(20) Denson, The Costs of War, P. 28-31.
(21) Woods, P. 71-73.
(22) Woods, P. 73.
(23) Woods, P. 77.
(24) Woods, P. 88-89.
(25) Woods, P. 86-87.
(26) Higgs, Robert, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, Oxford University Press, 1987, New York, P. 79.
Generally speaking, this country started out as a basically, but not entirely, free country. There were a few low taxes and tariffs, and some restrictions on civil and economic liberties, but these were nothing in comparison to what existed in other parts of the world, and to what we have here today. In fact, the taxes, tariffs, and regulations that were imposed by the British and that triggered the American Revolution were very benign compared to what we have been saddled with for decades now.
Very few could vote in the beginning, but taxes were low and government was largely absent from every aspect of life, so possibly individuals were not that concerned about the vote. I personally would be willing to stop voting if I could stop paying taxes and stop the adverse effect of books and books of statutes and regulations that affect me directly and indirectly. Actually, if we are going to have voting at all, I think it should be universally permitted, and we are moving in that direction, but that is another topic for another Zine.
Democracy does not guarantee freedom. Actually, liberty has diminished as suffrage has increased.
As for the loss of liberty, has it gradually occurred, or have there been some definite turning points?
There have been turning points, and in my opinion three of them have been major.
One major turning point was at the middle of the Nineteenth Century. It was at that time that freedom took at least two very mighty blows from which it never even began to recover.
The person who was primarily responsible for these two blows to liberty was one I consider to be the greatest American enemy of freedom of the Nineteenth Century.
He was Abraham Lincoln.
Now, this is certainly quite a shock to libertarians and others who have always believed that Lincoln ended slavery in this country. Needless to say, every libertarian on this earth vehemently opposes any form of slavery. However, Lincoln did not end it, nor did he even try.
Lincoln made it quite plain that he did not care one way or the other if slavery existed. He also was what we today would consider a vehement racist; he considered whites superior to blacks and he did not think blacks should be permitted to vote, serve on juries, or even mingle with whites (1). Like all racists, Lincoln placed his own race in the superior position.
Therefore I will move on from that issue and describe the two hard blows Abraham Lincoln dealt to liberty.
The first blow was an end to the relatively free market system we had been enjoying. The free market brought about a prosperity never before known. By today's standards, Americans were dirt poor, but we must remember that this was before most technological development. Almost everything had to be done by hand or by rudimentary tools, which left little time to invent and make new tools. A lack of tools (capital goods) means an increase in the amount of work done, a decrease in the amount of goods produced, or, more likely, both. There was only time for necessary work. Over time, however, people were able to set aside the time and resources to obtain better tools that, in turn, freed up more time and resources (2). Under our almost-free market at that time, government did not stand in the way.
Beginning with the Lincoln administration, however, economic liberty was greatly curtailed. Lincoln was a big admirer of another American enemy of liberty, Henry Clay, who had come up with a set of ideas he called the "American System." This system was no more American than was the British system that provoked the American Revolution.
This "American System" Clay was calling for was pure mercantilism (3). He was a Whig, the Whigs being forerunners of the present Republicans. Clay and Lincoln were both Whigs and they worked for about thirty years to replace the free market with mercantilism (4). The Whigs called themselves "Whigs" to make themselves appear to oppose centralized government and to fool the public (5). The earlier Whigs of the Eighteenth Century had been classical liberals, i.e., libertarians. In order to ram their program through, the Whigs needed to fool the public, since at that time it was generally known that a concentration of power is inimical to liberty. True to their mercantilism, debt and pork barrel projects were the Nineteenth Century Whigs' hallmarks.
These pork barrel projects, or "internal improvements" as the Whigs insisted on calling them, were chiefly beneficial to Northeastern establishment industry and were paid for by tariffs which hit the South especially hard. (This ties directly into Lincoln's second blow to liberty.)
This is glaringly inimical to liberty. When Henry Clay was in Congress sponsoring pork barrel projects, the great Founder James Madison was president and he vetoed these bills.
Now, just exactly what is this "mercantilism" that enraged the Founders, and that Abraham Lincoln and his mentor, Henry Clay, were trying to reinstate?
The great economist, Murray Rothbard, in Making Economic Sense (P. 183-184), defines mercantilism, the system of western Europe in the Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries, as big government with high taxes, large bureaucracies, and massive regulations, the point being to grant monopolies, cartels, and subsidies to favored groups. Political favorites of that time were those who gave the king something in return, or were possibly friends or relatives of the king. Analogous today would be major contributors to political campaigns, either directly or through soft money or volunteer work. Corruption is certain.
The Whigs, and later the Republicans, led by those like Lincoln and Clay, worked hard to institute this system. Like the Jacobins, the Republicans favored this authoritarian agenda even as they couched their rhetoric in the language of freedom, i.e., they thought nothing of lying in order to increase their power (6). To their credit, the Democrats at the time (before they gave up their Jeffersonian roots) stood for the separation of economy (and just about everything else) and state. They were the true liberals (i.e., classical liberals) much as today's libertarians are (7), and fought hard to fend off this major blow to the Constitution and to freedom.
However, once Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, mercantilism prevailed and the major blow was dealt. Murray Rothbard lists some specifics including, but not limited to, high tariffs, high excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco, railroad subsidies, an income tax (fortunately later repealed), an end to the gold standard, and quasi-nationalization of banks.
Abraham Lincoln was warming up in the bullpen for his second major blow to freedom. The cause of this major blow can be summed up in one word:
TARIFFS!
Tariffs are Constitutional, of course, although most free market economists oppose them, and this history is good reason to oppose them. Their distortion of the economy is only the beginning of the problems they can cause, and in the case of Lincoln's tariffs, they alienated people so much that it caused a war.
To see how this happened, we need to follow the money, which drifted away from the South toward the North, and to Lincoln cronies.
Prior to Lincoln and Clay's dreadful "American System," the Industrial Revolution had really taken hold in the North and most people were really prospering more than they ever had. In the South, there was an agricultural economy and not much industry, so the South had to bring in a lot of things from elsewhere. They could either buy these things from Northern companies or from overseas. If they bought from overseas they had to pay a tariff, which was purposefully kept high enough to make importation prohibitively expensive. So, all else equal, they could get their supplies cheaper if they bought from the North. Of course, that encouraged Northern businesses to charge higher prices, higher, but not high enough to lose customers back to overseas companies. So, money flowed from the South to the North and its big guys and their mercantilist buddies, who made out like the bandits they were.
Southerners were stuck. Even though the market was most likely free enough that Southerners could build their own factories, they apparently found that it would not pay to do so. For reasons known only to them, they opted not to do this; rather they took other steps to solve the problems they faced due to tariffs.
Left-wingers today who justly complain about corporate power are advised to read up on what happened during the Lincoln administration, as this is when the government went out of Constitutional bounds and formed partnerships with business. Abraham Lincoln and his mentor, Clay, were the main culprits. Most of the tariff money was spent on pork-barrel projects lining establishment pockets even more.
The South was, understandably, alienated by the tariffs, especially in 1828 when the "Tariff of Abominations" was passed. This tariff, which imposed different rates on different goods, was obviously tailored to cater to special interests. This was the last straw for South Carolina, which nullified the tariff in that state.
Nullification of a Federal law by a state was regarded as a Constitutional right up until that time. The Founders were wise enough to realize that any government that is allowed to determine the extent of its own power will eventually assume unlimited power. Even though tariffs are Constitutional for revenue purposes, South Carolina exercised its right to nullify this tariff on the grounds that it would enrich some at the expense of others and that would violate the General Welfare clause (8).
South Carolina had grown impatient and exercised its right because Fort Sumter in Charleston was where most of the tariff was collected, enforced by federal troops stationed there. However, the situation cooled down for a while as the Feds backed down on the tariff in 1832. But things heated up on another front. The mercantilist Whig party went belly-up because of internal disagreements on Western territories and in 1854 the infamous Republican Party was founded by advocates of tariffs and centralization, including Abraham Lincoln and Henry Clay. They also took a divisive stand on slavery in the Western territories. They wanted slavery outlawed in these territories, not because of any anti-slavery beliefs (we already know that Lincoln was a rabid white supremacist who cared not at all if every black person was permanently enslaved [9]) but because they feared that free white labor could not compete with slave labor.
In 1860, the new Republican Party adopted a platform calling for tariffs and "internal improvements" (meaning for making the South pay for Northern pork barrel projects) and it nominated Lincoln as its presidential candidate.
South Carolina became angry again because of this and exercised its right to leave the Union on December 18, 1860. The federal government promised to evacuate Fort Sumter, but instead sent provisions to the troops there. South Carolina fired warning shots. The same kind of thing was happening in Florida at Fort Pickens in Pensacola Bay, and Florida also left the Union on January 10, 1861. These seceded states did not want federal troops at these forts any more than the Americans wanted British troops here during the American Revolution.
Lincoln had not been in office even a month before he sent troops to Fort Pickens, by secret executive order bypassing Congress. This was regarded by the South as an act of war, especially since the South had tried to negotiate a settlement. By that time, five more states had left the Union.
In my opinion, the South really had no choice about the firing on Fort Sumter. The right to secede from the Union was beyond question, for there is nothing in the Constitution that said this could not be done. Besides that, these states obviously existed before the Union did. Once they had bowed out, Washington had no more business in their jurisdictions than it had in Canada. But the federal (Northern) government dug in its heels and gave the South no choice but to fire on Fort Sumter.
Four more states seceded as a result of Lincoln's use of military force (10). Lincoln apparently had totally forgotten what he had said only a few years earlier about the right to get rid of an old government and form a new one being a most sacred right (11). This kind of change seems to go with the territory of being in a position of power.
The whole Northern establishment was further galvanized against the South because of jealousy as well. The new Confederate Constitution called for very low (if any) tariffs and very low taxes that, of course, caused the economy to boom in the South and stagnate in the North (12).
But, let's stop here for a general discussion of secession.
The military attack on the South was the beginning of Lincoln's second major blow to liberty. It was the beginning of the end of the United States as a republic, meaning it was the beginning of federal government dominance over the states. This was directly in contradiction of the Tenth Amendment and resulted in the gravitation of political power to the federal (read central) government and away from individuals and localities. Of course, politically, Lincoln had no choice either, because if he allowed secession he might have gone down in history as a weak president. So, to appear strong, he dug in his heels and fought even though it was in total disregard for the supreme law of the land. He engineered the situation in such a way that the South would fire the first shot. Besides that, a war unites and at the time the country was divided, Lincoln was low in the polls, and the Republicans had been whipped pretty badly in elections (13).
The right of a state to secede is based upon the fact that the Union is a voluntary pact among sovereign states. What really gives teeth to this right is the fact the Constitution is silent on the matter and does not deny the right. However, it does say in the Tenth Amendment that the federal government can only do what it is expressly permitted to do, and no more. All other rights are reserved to the states or the people.
Most anti-secessionist arguments come from Lincoln's first Inaugural Address of 1861 (14). He said that every government rejects the idea of its own termination. Well, don't we all? But that does not make anything permanent. Lincoln also claimed that the constitution is a "contract" rather than like a treaty. How? I do not remember signing it. Do you? We could bow out. The people of any state could decide to bow out. He gave other arguments but none can stand up to the Tenth Amendment.
One major argument against secession is that the states implicitly gave up that right when they joined the union. They did? Do we implicitly give up the right to leave any organization when joining? Do we have to call for a vote to be allowed to leave? Since when?
According to anti-secessionists, Union victory in the war settled the issue. I have just shown that it did not. Anti-secessionists also argue that, in Texas vs. White, the Supreme Court settled it. But I think it was wrongfully. The Supreme Court, which is made up of human beings like the rest of us, can be wrong. Even if the issue is settled from a legal standpoint, it is far from settled morally.
In such “settled” matters as the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court eventually reversed itself. Scott Peterson has "settled" the issue of Lacie and Connor Peterson's futures, too, but is it right?
The fact that the Constitution is silent on this issue implies to me the right of secession is assumed. As someone who interprets the Constitution very strictly, I believe the right of a state to secede from the Union is absolute and is one right that guards all the other rights of a state and the people in it.
Therefore, when Lincoln "settled" the issue of secession in the manner he did, he dealt the second major blow to liberty, which ended state and hence individual sovereignty.
The sorry state of Lincoln's damage to freedom and decentralization could be left at that, but I would like briefly to describe some of his specific infringements on liberty that were precedent setting.
The South was no threat to the North. Lincoln could have let it go, but he was determined to punish. Congress never declared war, so when Lincoln went to war it was illegal and unconstitutional, besides being uncalled for. (15) John V. Denson, in Reassessing the Presidency, claims that this made Lincoln "America's first dictator" (16). This began a major assault on constitutional rights, beginning with the suspension of habeas corpus and the arrest of a judge who did not agree.
Then, with Southern Congressmen now out of Congress, Lincoln and the Republicans went right to work in enacting the Republican agenda, i.e., the Clay "American System" that we have been saddled with ever since.
Lincoln allowed martial law to be declared and had more than thirteen thousand people arrested in the North without warrants and convicted without any due process in military courts. That is a large number of people, especially when the population was so much lower than it is now. Some of these cases were overturned, but the idea that this can be done in the first place is appalling.
Lincoln also ordered the arrest of state legislators who he feared might vote for secession in their legislatures. Railroads were nationalized, and more than 300 newspapers that opposed his policies were closed.
Some opinions are that these policies started us on the road to imperialism and were the precedent for presidential war powers, which give a president unlimited powers during a war (17). I could add that the end of states' rights is also the end of natural rights, the central government and the president becoming deified.
The above rights violations were, at least in part, the reason that the Cherokee Nation supported the South (18).
On the economic front, Lincoln kept signing more tax and tariff bills. Additionally, his National Currency Acts began central banking which students of economics know causes inflation which is really a back-door tax through money depreciation (19). Bonds were sold. The printing up of new money was deemed necessary to finance the war.
New bureaucracies were set up to administer the new taxes and other areas the rapidly growing government was encroaching upon. The military-industrial complex was born (20). The "imperial presidency" was here.
After the war, the assaults on freedom did not end. The seceded states, once pulled back into the Union, were treated like mere provinces rather than states.
The behavior of the Union soldiers in the South during the war was not to the standards that had been followed by European warriors for about two centuries. These standards called for leaving the civilian population alone (21). It makes sense to leave them alone as, not only are they not involved in the war but a soldier cannot tell which side, if any, a given civilian is on. It is naive to think that every citizen of a country unconditionally supports his or her government in every war. Individuals do have the God-given ability (and right) to think for themselves and there were certainly those Southerners who opposed secession. But Union soldiers, like spoiled brats, purposefully went right ahead and destroyed civilian property and civilians themselves to the equivalent of bombing them back to the stone age.
Union General William Sherman was the worst offender. He allowed (or ordered) troops to commit crimes so dastardly against the Confederate population that even conventional, mainstream history touches on it. This behavior was so unacceptable in the Nineteenth Century that even Sherman himself admitted that according to his West Point training, he could have been executed for it (22).
There were more examples of this sort of thing on the North's part. But, in all fairness, Southern soldiers were not totally innocent either. In fact there probably has never been a war where atrocities against the innocent have been uncommon. This by itself is a good reason to oppose war.
Though President Lincoln possibly did not order the atrocities, he allowed them, which proves yet again that he had no regard for the rights of the individual or any state, meaning no regard for the Constitution except to trot it out when it served his purposes.
I could stop right here as my point is proven. But, I will forge ahead.
Lincoln thought ahead to what he would do about the seceded states after the war. His belief, contrary to the Constitution which was meant to be strictly interpreted, was that secession was impossible; therefore the states had not actually seceded. He seemed to think of them as runaway slaves, to be brought back to his plantation and severely dealt with.
My first response is: Therefore secede again! Lincoln might have thought of that. All he demanded was loyalty oaths from certain people (23). His death occurred before he could do much more, so he cannot be blamed for what the federal government did to the South during reconstruction.
But, because it was his Republican party that was in power, I will briefly list some major rights violations.
After the seceded states had jumped through all the hoops that they were required to by the Andrew Johnson administration (Vice President Johnson had become president upon the death of Lincoln), the reconvened Congress refused to seat the representatives from those states. This refusal was an authoritarian one-size-fits-all, rather than a case-by-case refusal. It was blatantly political. The Republicans wanted to stay in power. The same goes for their plans for the enfranchisement of the freedmen. This had less to do with fairness than it did with bolstering the Republican vote.
It was the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment that was the worst thing the federal government did after the war. Now, the Fourteenth Amendment had some really good content such as "equal protection of the laws" and other superior ideas. But my focus here is not on the content of the Amendment. Regardless of the merit of the ideas, it is still inimical to freedom because, for one thing, it set yet another precedent for federal power over the states. The states were compelled to adopt the ideas therein. If the states were compelled to follow the Fourteenth Amendment, then no telling what the federal government could and would shove down their throats later on behalf of this amendment, not to mention other federal laws that might be passed.
Another reason to oppose it was the way the Fourteenth Amendment was "passed." Only one in the eleven former Confederate states would ratify it.
In response, Lincoln's Republicans passed some laws that would call for martial law and military governors in the other ten states until they "ratified" the Amendment, among other things. This means that, morally, the Amendment is null and void having been ratified involuntarily. Even if the forced ratification could morally count, voting irregularities would make it illegal anyway (24).
To his credit, President Johnson vetoed these means of coercion, the Reconstruction Acts, on the grounds that they only proved the point the Southerners made when they seceded in the first place. Of course, he was right. Over-ridden, but right (25).
President Johnson made some statements that were leaning very heavily in the libertarian direction and make me wonder how he ever became Lincoln's running mate. Perhaps this "balanced ticket" nonsense showed that then, as now, stands on issues took a back seat to party loyalty.
To recap, Abraham Lincoln was the worst Nineteenth Century American enemy of liberty because of the two major blows he dealt to liberty.
One was the replacement of the relatively free market that had brought about unprecedented economic prosperity for the common person with the tired old mercantilist system that favored government and establishment interests at the expense of the common person.
A person who has not studied economics will counter that people were far poorer before the Lincoln administration than they were after. This is true, but the reason is the technological progress we have made thanks to inventive individuals who could envision cheaper and more efficient ways of getting consumer needs satisfied. Harnessing electricity for light and power tools, the internal combustion engine for faster transport, refrigeration for comfort and food preservation, the telephone and the computer chip are but a few of the thousands of ideas that have come to fruition thanks to individuals who think and take the initiative.
And, more is to follow if there is sufficient freedom. The above improvements will become obsolete as new ones are developed to serve consumer wants better. A clean environment is one thing that consumers demand, and if government will just get out of the way, inventors and entrepreneurs will rise to that challenge.
The American people were still relatively independent, self-reliant, and frugal in the Nineteenth Century. They had the insight to save and invest for the future and enough freedom left to make it possible to do so. A large portion of the gross national product was invested in capital goods (tools of production), creating higher productivity (26).
Mercantilism and its sibling, the welfare state, have done nothing at all to bring any of that about. In fact, mercantilism has curbed progress by its many taxes, regulations and prohibitions.
So, when we are discussing how the Lincoln administration affected prosperity, we must not compare the economic well-being of before Lincoln to that of after Lincoln. Rather, we must compare what we have to what we would have had if the market had remained free. We do not know what we would have had, but we would have had a lot more than we have except for the number of hours necessary to work in order to feed our families.
The other major blow dealt by Lincoln was the blow to state and individual sovereignty in favor of a more powerful federal government. Power and money started their gravitation to Washington and this trend has never slowed down. States are now stuck in the Union, like it or not, and are ruled from Washington. The common person has no real voice as he or she might at the state or local level, since it is impossible to get one voice heard in Washington. The person's money does go there, by force, in large amounts.
We are not a free country today as a result.
(1) Woods, Thomas E., The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, Regnery Publishing, 2004, Washington, D.C., P. 66-67.
(2) Rothbard, Murray N. Man, Economy and State, with Power and Market, Scholars' Edition, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2004, Auburn, Ala., P.47-52 ff.
(3) Rothbard, Murray N. Making Economic Sense, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995, Auburn, P. 183-184. Hallmarks of mercantilism are big government, high taxes, large bureaucracies, and massive regulation, the point of which is monopolies, cartels, and subsidies to favored groups.
(4) Denson, John, ed. Reassessing the Presidency, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2001, Auburn, P.203-204.
(5) Ibid, P. 211
(6) Denson, John, ed. The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories, Transaction Publishers, 1998, New Brunswick, P. 159.
(7) See http://www.lp.org/
(8) Woods, P. 37-40
(9) Denson, Reassessing the Presidency, P. 242-243.
(10) Woods, P. 61.
(11) Ibid, P. 63.
(12) Denson, Reassessing the Presidency, P. 252.
(13) Ibid, P. 250.
(14) Dorf, Michael C. "Does the Constitution Permit the Blue States to Secede? With Permission, Perhaps; Unilaterally, No."
(15) Denson, Reassessing the Presidency, P.270.
(16) Ibid, P. 274.
(17) Ibid, P. 280.
(18) Woods, P. 70-71.
(19) DiLorenzo, Thomas J. "An Abolitionist Defends the South."
(20) Denson, The Costs of War, P. 28-31.
(21) Woods, P. 71-73.
(22) Woods, P. 73.
(23) Woods, P. 77.
(24) Woods, P. 88-89.
(25) Woods, P. 86-87.
(26) Higgs, Robert, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, Oxford University Press, 1987, New York, P. 79.
The Worst 20th Century American Enemy of Liberty
Following the disastrous Lincoln era, the country stepped back and reinstated certain liberties, but certainly not to the extent that liberty was completely restored. The income tax and the draft were repealed and the central bank was closed. Posse Comitatus came into being and the Bill of Rights was partially revived (1).
The people of the late Nineteenth Century had all of that to be thankful for, but thanks to Lincoln's never-ending legacy, the country had begun its decline into despotism.
As the Twentieth Century began, a parade of liberty's fierce enemies began. It was very difficult to decide who would be the worst American enemy of liberty in the Twentieth Century. After the century began, we were once again saddled with the income tax (this time for good), the Federal Reserve (this time for good also) and the draft (off and on), and added to that were Federal prohibition of alcohol (partially lifted) and narcotics, Federal control of foods and drugs, "progressive education" (pretty Neanderthal in my opinion), curbs on other personal behavior, an imperialist foreign policy, censorship (again) and the incarceration of dissidents (again).
It was indeed very difficult to decide who was the worst enemy as it took many to fool the public into believing that the above were improvements and to institute them.
My pick for the worst American enemy of liberty in the Twentieth Century was a man who landed two more fierce blows to liberty, right into the fist-prints of Abraham Lincoln. A part of one of these blows hit home to me personally, and I consider this to be a major detriment to my entire life.
That man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
If I believed in reincarnation, which being a Christian I do not, I would be positive that these men, along with the worst American enemy of liberty in the Twenty-first Century so far, were one and the same. They certainly all have the big-government, imperialist mentality.
There are many specific comparisons between Lincoln and Roosevelt (2). They could both use rhetoric to sway large numbers of people. They both oversaw, and won, great wars that have been shown to be unjust, and of course wars always unite the majority who do not have time to or will not question the government propaganda.
The most important thing the two had in common was how they ruled the country. There is no doubt in my mind that FDR studied Lincoln and took many pages out of his book, but not having been there, not having been anywhere at the time in fact, there is nothing specific that I know.
Franklin Roosevelt's first mighty blow to liberty, like Lincoln's, was economic. However, unlike Lincoln, he did not deal the blows quite simultaneously, even though they did overlap.
When Roosevelt came to office in 1933, the Great Depression had begun. We now know, of course, that the stock market crash in 1929 was caused by the Federal Reserve's intervention in the economy in the form of bank credit expansion (3). I will not dwell on that, but if it is not generally known it should be.
Republican Herbert Hoover was president at that time and he dove right in with interventions which were picked up and expanded on in 1933 by President Roosevelt and these interventions caused the Depression to go on and on for about seventeen years. History books say that it went on for about ten years, but in my opinion that is wrong. Reasons will be given below.
It is an establishment article of faith that Roosevelt's interventions in the economy (actually a government takeover of the economy plus significant infringements on civil liberties) "saved capitalism from itself." On the contrary, the great economist Murray Rothbard shows that an unfettered economy would have prevented the problem in the first place, but the economy was anything but unfettered. This "saved capitalism from itself" would be stand-up comic material if it were not so serious. First of all "saving from itself" is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has any marginal brain activity as it makes no sense at all. Secondly, what capitalism? Ever since Henry Clay's "American System" had been ushered in by Lincoln, capitalism (which really means laissez faire) had been at least partly stomped out in favor of mercantilism.
Mercantilism had been built upon steadily, especially since the turn of the Twentieth Century and had laid the groundwork for Roosevelt's nearly fatal blows to liberty.
Dr. Rothbard points out (4) that if a depression or recession does occur, the best way to alleviate its effects and restore normality as quickly as possible is to keep government's hands off. Roosevelt (and Hoover before him) must have had a premonition of Rothbard and the other great economist, Ludwig von Mises, as he did the very things that they said would deepen and prolong the Great Depression. Had he wanted to worsen the situation and gravitate wealth and power toward establishment interests (as Lincoln did), he couldn't have done a better job.
The Great Depression was the crisis that Roosevelt used to rally support for what was called the "New Deal," a militaristic and corporatistic top-down regimentation of the entire economy that was modeled after the fascist Mussolini system in Italy (5). As power was centralized in the federal government, graduates of "progressive education" rallied behind it. But, there were those on the right and the left who were independent enough to oppose it, and since FDR just happened to be a Democrat, those are now called the "old right." Ironically, Roosevelt warned the country that if these dissidents got their way and turned the country away from his Mussolini-type course, it would put the country at risk for fascism.
As a staunch believer that rights come from God and accrue to the sovereign individual, and that the ownership of (and therefore complete control over) one's body along with one's real and personal property is the chief of these unalienable rights, meaning I, as a libertarian, hardly know where to begin when discussing Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal"! It must have been a libertarian's worst nightmare (6).
The entire program was harm heaped upon harm to individuals. And, obviously, since society is made up of individuals, to harm individuals is to harm society as a whole. Insult was literally added to injury when the American people were told that all of this was "for their own good." The harm continues to this day in both general and specific ways.
The general harm that continues to this day that has stood out in my mind over my whole life is the attitude of the American people toward paternalistic authority or the "nanny state." A loss of freedom for more "security" is welcomed. If something is mandated or prohibited for reasons of health, safety, or financial security, people welcome government intervention rather than resent it. I believe this is a sickly, not a healthy, way of looking at things, and I believe the Founders would agree with me on that. I also believe the turning point from individual self-reliance to the seeking of government protection came during the Roosevelt years, the seeds having been sewn by "progressive education," (in quotes because it was neither progressive nor education).
This does not mean that a person who participates in voluntary society is dependent. Far from it. The person who takes the initiative to buy, sell, trade, and seek pleasure by interacting with other unique individuals is just as independent as the recluse. But this initiative is often lacking today, as people wait for or consult government (or lawyers) to tell them what they can and cannot do. They don't trust themselves to understand the difference between right and wrong and think things through for themselves.
As for a specific example of how the New Deal still forces individuals into dependency to this day, I will come to that later as I show how I have personally been gravely harmed, and so have you if you have a speck of independence.
Back to the New Deal itself: It was a whole slew of economic fallacies that aggravated and prolonged the Great Depression. As an advocate of the gold standard I will begin with Roosevelt's treatment of gold. A gold standard serves as an anchor of sorts, keeping the ship of monetary policy from drifting into currents of a wildly fluctuating (usually rising) money supply. Of course, a greater money supply does not cause prosperity. What causes prosperity is a greater supply of goods and services. Absent those, being knee-deep in dollar bills will not help. Dr. Rothbard treats this subject very well as I have pointed out.
Roosevelt abandoned the gold standard, thereby cutting the chain to the anchor. The whole idea of that was to raise prices in the marketplace, a counterproductive and wrong-headed approach per Rothbard. Up until this time, gold coins had been our standard money (7). Not only that, the Federal government confiscated (euphemistically "bought") all gold, except for jewelry, fillings, and the like from the people.
One thing I would like to find out about this gold confiscation is why anyone in his or her right mind obeyed. Any reader who can remember back that far and can tell me that is welcome to contact me. It seems to me that, defiant attitude aside, it would be in one's economic self-interest to hide the gold for profitable sale later.
Also came the abominable Agricultural Adjustment Act (or AAA) and the National Recovery Administration (or NRA) that turned the entire economy into a couple of government-run cartels with all of the efficiency of the Postal Service and all of the compassion of the Internal Revenue Service. These, as I stated, were modeled after the Italian fascist system.
The purpose of the AAA was to cartelize agricultural markets and the purpose of the NRA was to cartelize industrial markets. This cartelization stifled competition, which is essential to bringing higher quality goods at lower prices to consumers. And, during the Great Depression, people were actually going hungry, so lower prices and a greater abundance of goods were particularly important to consumers.
However, true to the bogus economic hypotheses of John Maynard Keynes and against the wisdom of the great economist Ludwig von Mises, and against my own simple logic, the Roosevelt administration was determined to increase government, raise prices, and cut productivity.
I do not believe I need to tell you why raising prices and cutting productivity during a depression is idiotic. But I might need to point out that increased government spending is wrong. It is because the taxes required will decrease individuals' ability to save and invest, which helps to end a depression. (Taxation also, obviously, takes away money they may need for the necessities of life.) (8)
The methods employed to cut productivity need to be pointed out. Not only did this keep food, clothing and other goods away from the needy, but it was also a very severe infringement on civil liberties. Thomas DiLorenzo points out in Reassessing the Presidency that detailed and hairsplitting rules and regulations were made that were strictly enforced with severe penalties. Work hours were curtailed in productive (private) sectors while cushy jobs were handed out to favorites in the non-productive (government) sector. One of the single worst instances was, while children were going hungry, the government was paying farmers with their parents' money to burn crops and slaughter livestock. This was a PR disaster, of course, so they began to pay farmers to not produce in the first place (9) or to meticulously regulate the crops allowed. (10)
Fortunately, for the country, we had a Supreme Court at that time (before FDR managed to pack it) that had a small handle on freedom. In 1935, after government tactics gave rise to a protest (there were still enough people then who still believed in freedom), the Supreme Court ruled that both the AAA and the NRA were unconstitutional. But this did not at all faze the worst Twentieth Century American enemy of freedom.
Undaunted, President Roosevelt forged on towards destruction with his "Second New Deal." This brought on a host of new assaults on the badly beaten economy and comatose freedom. This time it was aimed at the average wage earner. I hardly know where to begin, but let us begin with something most people favor, and that is the Fair Labor Standards Act, which decreed a minimum wage.
Now, we all want to see wages rise, and under the minimum wage, some wages will rise. However, other wages will go down to zero as some employees will be laid off because employers no longer find it worthwhile to hire them. These employees are the very people who need work the most. Now, with this law, they are prohibited from working at wages below the minimum. They have two choices: to find someone who will hire them at the higher wage or not to work at all. They always had these choices, along with the choice to work at the lower wage. Now the third choice has been taken away which hurts those who would have made that choice for one reason or another (usually because they just could not find anything better). Unemployment is the result of the minimum wage.
A corollary to that was the National Labor Relations Act (aka the Wagner Act) which gave special privileges to labor unions. Of course, special privilege for one means an infringement on the rights of another. One special privilege the unions received under this act was to be able to compel someone to join the union. No club, church, or sewing circle that I know of can do that. It would be unthinkable because you and I have the right not to join. However, this union special privilege takes away this right not to join. The unions could make workers in their particular trade join, they could make employers allow union officials trespass on employers' private property to look at employers' books, they could mete out damage and injury with impunity, and they could do more. In other words, unions were (and still are to a large extent) above the law. At the same time, government control over labor relations was basically similar to that under Hitler and Mussolini (11).
The state (meaning the Roosevelt administration), along with its establishment cronies benefited greatly to the major detriment of everyone else.
And, that boils down to one thing: The individual, the building block of the whole thing, simply did not count under Roosevelt. All this effort that was (allegedly, anyway, that is if you believe Roosevelt was really trying to improve things) put into lifting society from depression was for naught because individuals were ignored. Individuals always pursue their own and their families' interest, but they were kept from doing so in the name of society, and, of course, because society is the individuals in it, society was not helped.
Another program, but the last one I will touch upon here (there are many more and I could write a whole book), is the dread Social Security Act which dealt a terrible blow to freedom of Americans yet unborn, and insulted their intelligence besides. This is the thing that adversely affected me personally, possibly more than any other single thing.
The best I can muster to say about Social Security is that it is a Ponzi scheme. It takes earnings out of the pockets of younger workers and gives this money to retirees (that is, what is left of the money after a hefty overhead). It is actually a transfer program, but what we are told about the program is an insult twice over.
First, we are told that the money taken from younger workers is held in a "trust fund" to be given back to them over time after they retire. This is insulting, first, because we are expected to believe this when we know, or should know, full well that it is really a transfer program whereby the money goes directly from worker to retiree, with a hefty percentage going for administration, meaning to government bureaucrats who do not produce any real goods or services. We need to keep in mind that government jobs destroy private sector jobs (12). In the Social Security "fund" there are only IOU's (13).
Secondly, it is insulting because the program is compulsory and we are told it is for our own good. Individuals have the God-given right to make that decision. If an individual puts that money in a bank account, even with interest rates as they are right now in early 2005, very low, he will be ahead of the game financially. After all, it is the individual's responsibility to look ahead, and if one fails to do that, there are churches and charities to help. Proper tax reform would fill up those offering plates.
We also need to remember two promises made to us at the beginning of Social Security. One was a ceiling on the amount to be taken, which was 3 percent. The other was that the Social Security number would never be used as a national identification number. We all know what happened to both of these promises, and most other government promises.
Another thing that most people do not seem to understand is that we are told that our employer must kick in a matching contribution and that is a "freebie." It is not a freebie, since, to make our employment worthwhile to our employer, we must produce enough to cover the cost of this employer contribution.
I personally deeply resented this intrusion into my life, but found no way to both earn an honest living and opt out of Social Security without sacrificing other principles even dearer to me. So, the harm was done and I am that much worse off. Money that could have been saved and invested over the years is gone and so are opportunities to do some good with it. Will I get anything back? For years I assumed that would not, but now it looks like I might get something back. And, if I do, true to a vow I made when I learned there was no way to avoid being harmed so much "for my own good," I will make sure every penny of it goes to one or more organizations that are actively fighting to restore our liberty in general, and this liberty in particular (14).
I am determined that this particular harm will be turned around to do something good, no matter what.
Meanwhile, the New Deal(s) sank the country even deeper. Government spending grew which, as I stated, made things worse because money spent by government bureaucrats cannot also be spent according to consumer preferences in the private sector. Government spending "crowds out" private spending in areas which the consumers have decided are the more important areas. Plus, government spending is just that: spending (meaning consumption). Government propaganda notwithstanding, it is not investment or saving, both of which are actually of paramount importance for lifting an economy out of a depression (15). Therefore, reduced government spending and tax cuts are called for, but true to form, the Roosevelt administration did not do that. Rather, it taxed and taxed, spent and spent, creating many pork barrel projects (16).
The pork projects were typical as they were aimed at Western swing states during election time rather than the poorer Southern states that were Roosevelt strongholds (17). In other words, like pork barrel projects from the sorry beginning of organized civil governments, their real purpose was to aggrandize establishment interests.
In fact, the entire New Deal was political! It had to be. Roosevelt had all those advisers, and anyone who has studied even freshman-level economics understands that there is no way for such a program to improve the economy. This is not rocket science.
The second major blow dealt to liberty by Roosevelt was very similar to that of Lincoln, only it was very likely worse.
It was the U.S. participation in World War II, a war that was totally unnecessary and actually caused by our totally unnecessary and wrongful participation in World War I.
What happened was that our participation in World War I and our signing of the Treaty of Versailles gave rise to Hitler (18), and Roosevelt really dug in his heels on the Treaty, thus making some Treaty opponents sympathetic to Hitler. Eventually it resulted in the declaration of war on the part on England and France. After Roosevelt's campaign promises not to do so, he and Winston Churchill conspired to draw the U.S. into the war in a Lincolnesque manner by falsifying information, tampering with elections and other means (19), not to mention provoking Germany and then provoking Japan into the first shot at Pearl Harbor (20). I think it is generally known now (or at least it should be) that Roosevelt knew that was coming and even provoked it, just as Lincoln anticipated and provoked the attack on Fort Sumter. In fact, I would highly recommend chapter 16, "Roosevelt and the First Shot: A Study of Deceit and Deception" in Reassessing the Presidency. This gives a complete and well-documented rundown of why and how Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and saw it coming.
Over a year before Pearl Harbor was hit, and once Hitler had conquered France, polls were showing that the American people were very afraid of Hitler and preferred our getting into war to allowing him to win a war with England (21). While Roosevelt wanted to get into a war and the "progressively educated" populace sheepishly followed, some dissented. Many of these dissenters were the same people who realized how unworkable and downright wrong-headed the New Deal was. Of course these people were demonized and some wound up in prison.
Roosevelt wanted to get into the war "to help the British" defeat Germany for the usual reasons presidents get into wars, which is to increase their power and prestige. He was also interested in help from Britain to get a world organization started. This was something just about all libertarians, including myself, fiercely oppose: the United Nations. We see it as a threat to our national sovereignty and to the supreme law of the land, the U.S. Constitution.
After the "surprise" attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt formed a commission to investigate what happened that allowed the attack. The commission was to investigate it at the Hawaii end only, and not at the Washington end, where provocation and anticipation of the attack were known (22). The cover-up continued on and on (23). The top military officers who were in charge were scapegoated, but posthumously exonerated.
All those people, more than 2,000 (24), were killed that day because Franklin Delano Roosevelt had become a power-hungry, imperial president and had dealt a severe blow to the face of liberty in the fist-print of Abraham Lincoln. He would have said he "haaaaad" to go to war, and "haaaaad" to impose all the economic policies, thus sounding like a sheep.
Had we stayed out of World War II, maybe two of the worst dictatorships that the world has ever seen (Hitler and Stalin) would have fought until they both went belly up, saving the lives and life-styles of millions and making world peace a possibility.
Of course, what was going on here at home during the war could only be described as a dictatorship. International (imperial, or world police) power is not the only reason a president would want to get into war, as we saw during the Lincoln discussion. Lincoln had set the dangerous precedent of presidential war powers at home and Roosevelt exercised these unconstitutional powers to the fullest extent. It was not that difficult. The economy had been regimented through most of the 1930s and the "progressively educated" populace bought into the myths about the New Deal being the solution to the Great Depression and about U.S. entry into World War II being what finally ended the Depression.
The Depression was not over by any means. People were still having grave difficulties, and the only reason the unemployment rate went way down was because so many men went to war and so many other people were hired to administer the bureaucracies. This did not end the Depression any more than throwing a rock through a window will bolster an economy when it gives a window-repair person a day's work. The idea that war is good for an economy is what Nineteenth Century classical liberal economist Frédéric Bastiat called the Broken Window Fallacy (25). The American people were ignorant of sound economic policies and woefully ignorant of the great libertarian principles of the Founders. They had become used to being told what to do and were now totally united behind the president, at least as far as the war was concerned. Of course, people are prone to human nature, and the cost of the war was always passed to someone else whenever possible (26).
So, Roosevelt and his accomplices got away with everything a power-monger could ever want. They lost no time in exercising "war powers" and covering up the cost.
Of course, those who decided to get into war were not the same people who were to fight it. If they were to go themselves, maybe they would have taken a more sensible approach. Rather, in the same spirit as the years of economic compulsion, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, or the male draft, was passed. Some groups of men were exempt, public officials being one. (Wonder why?) In addition, the Act called for businesses to fill government orders on a priority basis, a possible eminent domain-like proceeding being a penalty along with fines and jail time.
The draft involuntary servitude was also used to shame the rest of the citizenry into sacrifices on the grounds that their sacrifices were "lesser."
So much for civil liberties.
On the economic front (although, as pointed out, the draft law did impact businesses), the Federal government got itself involved in every aspect of business. In fact, in many areas it was downright socialist. Roosevelt tried to tell the American people that the loss of life, limb, and property were not a sacrifice, but a "privilege." With privilege like that, who needs Communism? In fact, with privilege like that, it is time for individuals to assert their rights!
And, just as they were in Communist Russia and Nazi Germany, these "privileges" were backed up by iron-fisted methods. Congress compliantly gave Roosevelt the powers he was craving. We had a full-blown socialist command economy (27).
The cost of all of this to government was enormous. So, rather than raise taxes, which would have been poor in the PR department, the government inflated the currency. One or the other has to be done to cover deficit spending. Inflation actually is a hidden tax. Then the government tried to hide inflation by way of price controls (28), while it continued its drunken-sailor spending on the military, bringing about the military industrial complex as it crushed the economy and dished out more power to the president (29).
It cost the average person even more. Of course price ceilings always produce shortages. So, when wages were exempt from the ceilings, mainly to please unions, causing more unemployment, regular people were not helped. Rationing was tried as a solution, but that only gave rise to favoritism and corruption on the part of handpicked members of rationing boards. At the end of the day, the government was making all decisions, and the military came first.
I had a co-worker who was a pre-schooler at that time. Like so many small children, she had an ear infection. Penicillin had just been introduced and this would have cured a painful earache. However, it was not available to little children. Soldiers came first. Soldiers who should never have been in a war that should never have happened got priority over innocent children who could have been maimed for life. This is an example of how government decision-making can affect an individual.
And to think that all this authoritarian centralization was for the purpose of whipping National Socialism!
And, unlike their brave actions taken when they struck down some New Deal programs as unconstitutional, this time the Supreme Court did nothing to defend freedom! Of course, by that time Roosevelt had packed the Court with his own collectivist appointees.
And as far as state nullification was concerned, that had been long forgotten!
The most outrageous act of the Supreme Court justices, however, was when they turned their back on 110,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry (and others), most of whom were law-abiding American citizens (30). This was truly an all-time low.
President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that would take three years of life away from these 110,000 people by sending them to internment camps with absolutely no due process of law whatsoever, no opportunity to protest, and almost no time at all to get ready (31). This act was proof positive that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had absolutely no regard for the rights of the individual and thought in terms of collectives, just as Abraham Lincoln had done before him in his attitudes toward the blacks. This is racism, pure and simple, and this and all other types of collectivism are entirely wrong.
What is truly the most incredible thing about the internment of these law-abiding Americans is that while I was growing up in the Northeast, we kids were never even told this had happened. Of course, I cannot remember the actual time, but when I was in grade school it was not really that long after World War II.
I am positive that why we were not told is that the schools were constantly praising our great government's gallant defense of freedom. I went to public school through junior high and firmly believe that my time would have been better spent swinging on tree branches like a monkey. Even an 8-year-old in second or third grade could easily see a major disconnect between the internment and the alleged defense of freedom.
But what of the adults? What did they know? I have not done so yet, but I will be asking my elderly relatives about this later this year when I visit the Northeast. Now, I know that the generation of the day was profoundly obedient, thanks largely to "progressive education" (read one-size-fits-all mass indoctrination in "good citizenship," group first, cooperation, team playing, and other such collectivist nonsense), and either the lapdog news media did not report the internment at all or sugar-coated it the best they could.
The government can twist around the news in such a way as to get people to go along. It did under Lincoln (non-conforming editors faced prison), and now it was doing so under Roosevelt. But internment camps? Perhaps they were less crowded, cleaner, and more comfortable than Auschwitz, perhaps families were not separated, and perhaps more food and medicine were available, but the people were confined there, like it or not so, realistically, this was a major violation of rights that cannot possibly be justified.
Once the war was over, the peace dividend kicked in and the Great Depression finally lifted. Much of the government intervention in the economy ended as did the use (waste) of time and resources on war materials and the populace, with unspent money, started to save, invest, and spend. Of course, Roosevelt was out of office in early 1945 to the immense joy of freedom lovers, not that Truman was a model libertarian, but at least "that man" was gone.
Fortunately at that time, most people still understood the benefits of frugality, so they did not spend all they had; rather they put a lot of their money into banks to be invested in capital. The rest of their money, what did not go to charity (Europe was in desperate need of help and Americans were very generous) was spent on needed items, which were snapped up as they rolled off the assembly lines.
The left will be quick to point out that women, who had done a top-notch job filling in for men at work while the men were overseas, were let go from these jobs in many cases when the men returned. While this must be judged on a case-by-case basis, I do agree that there is a major issue here in light of the fact that women can do everything men can do (aside from those requiring more muscular strength on average). However, we must remember that over time people have since learned to be more realistic.
Unfortunately, we did not live happily ever after. People had been trained to do what their government told them to do. The federal government made many inroads in the demise of liberty, which included a precedent for confining large numbers of law-abiding citizens in camps, and paved the way for bigger and worse things. Government was bigger and more powerful than it ever had been in the U.S., and big government was here to stay.
President Roosevelt was not content with confining his quest for power to the U.S. He wanted to rule the world!
It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who introduced the country to intrusive international policy and globalism (32) just as Lincoln introduced it to the mercantilist economic system. Woodrow Wilson, the other main contender for worst Twentieth Century American enemy of liberty, had entered and fought World War I to "make the world safe for democracy" and proceeded to make the world impossible for freedom. Now, during the trouncing of Americans' economic and civil liberties nearly to death, Roosevelt wanted to export the whole thing. He determined to do a couple of terrible things: to establish the United Nations that, as we know, would later push and be pushed by the establishment to become a world government (subordinating our Constitution), and to make major concessions to Communist dictator Stalin, who was in the process of killing by starvation, execution, and by other means tens and scores of millions of people and impoverishing hundreds of millions more.
Roosevelt, like Lincoln, was power-hungry, and he admired (and perhaps envied) Stalin. He covered up for Stalin a particularly gruesome atrocity that took place in 1939, called the Katyn Forest Massacre, in which the Russians murdered 15,000 Polish soldiers for no reason and then left their bodies there. Years later they were found by the Germans. When the Red Cross wanted to investigate, Roosevelt suppressed it (33). For all we know, this is not the only such incident. For every such thing that sees the light of day, we do not know how many remain hidden. Sugar-coating rights violations in Russia made it possible for the American people to accept the Soviet Union as an ally.
The U.S. extended material aid to Russia during the war through Roosevelt's "Lend-Lease" proposal to send arms and supplies to them with no strings attached.
And, of course, all this time he was lying about his intentions of getting into the war. He swore up and down that he would stay out, even as he was looking for an excuse to get in. Once that excuse came, American taxpayers, whose children were crying for food and medicine, not only had to finance that, but also had to finance increased aid to the Soviet Union.
And, once in the war, Roosevelt talked of a German "unconditional surrender" which prompted Hitler to dig in his heels. Japan also would not consider "unconditional surrender." Clearly, Roosevelt wanted to get into war and stay there. He played with the lives of people all over the world to stay in the war and to please his buddy Stalin. As a result, half of the world's population wound up under the yoke of Communism (34) and there was no way that much, if any, of the rest could be described as "free." Everybody (except top establishment cronies) was poorer as a result.
Some historians claim that Roosevelt had naively been sucked in by Stalin, but my opinion is that Roosevelt had hordes of advisors at his service, and if I can figure this out, he could. There is no excuse for either Roosevelt or Lincoln.
To fight and win that war and to establish the U.N. (which did not happen until later, of course, but it did happen), which were Roosevelt's goals, along with his idea of the U.S. as the world's policeman to keep Communism at bay, were most detrimental to liberty.
In closing, Roosevelt's mighty blows to liberty were, in the fist prints of Lincoln, first in authoritarian, collectivist, centralist domestic policy which devastated individual liberty in the U.S., and second in imperialist, interventionist warmongering which caused the deaths of hundreds of millions, destroyed unknown amounts of property, and shattered or at least reduced individual liberty all over the world (35). His legacy is deeply reflected in the platforms of both branches of the Authoritarian Party.
(1) Gregory, Anthony, "Are Current Bill of Rights Erosions Unprecedented?" http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/gregory1.html
(2) North, Gary, "Lincoln and FDR" http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north34.html
(3) Rothbard, Murray, America's Great Depression, Richardson and Snyder, 1983, New York. The whole book, especially Chapter 1. If you read only one thing to understand economic upturns, downturns, booms, recessions, and depressions, please make sure it is this chapter. You can read this and other great books online at http://www.mises.org. Also see other works by Dr. Rothbard such as What Has Government Done to Our Money? and The Case Against the Fed. To obtain these, see "catalog" at mises.org.
(4) Ibid P. 25-26
(5) Denson, John V., ed., Reassessing the Presidency, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2001, Auburn, Ala., P.435.
(6) Ibid, Chapter 15. The entire chapter, "Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal" by Thomas DiLorenzo, gives a very good rundown of all the various New Deal programs.
(7) Ibid P.434. Also Rothbard, Murray N., Making Economic Sense, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995, Auburn, Ala., P. 298-300.
(8) Rothbard, America's Great Depression, P. 28.
(9) Denson, P. 434.
(10) Rothbard, Making Economic Sense, P. 85-88. Some of these rules were still in effect when Dr. Rothbard published his book, and may still be now, thanks to government-enforced farm cartels.
(11) Denson, P. 441.
(12) Ibid. P. 443.
(13) http://www.sierratimes.com/05/03/09adamo.htm (Please make sure you pick up the entire URL) Adamo, Christopher G., "Why Liberals Abhor True Social Security Reform" explains this. Problem is, he seems to favor President Bush's plan that will, I think, only make matters worse.
(14) One might simply refuse to accept the money, which I did consider. But why leave it in the hands of those who would spend it to kill Iraqi kids or perpetuate the insane war on drugs? So I will apply for it. Yes, you do have to apply for it, and you start 3 months before you become eligible by calling the nearest Social Security office.
(15) Rothbard, America's Great Depression spells this out very well.
(16) Denson, P. 444-445.
(17) Ibid, P. 446.
(18) Higgs, Robert, Crisis and Leviathan, Oxford University Press, 1987, New York, P. 198.
(19) Denson, P. 486-491.
(20) Denson, P. 496-501. Also see Woods, Thomas E. Jr., A Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004, Washington, D.C., P. 174-176.
(21) Higgs, P. 199.
(22) Denson, P. 515.
(23) Ibid, P. 515-517. In this important chapter, Denson (the book editor who wrote this chapter) credits Robert B. Stinnett's Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor with bringing this to the light of day.
(24) Woods, P. 181.
(25) Hazlitt, Henry, Economics in One Lesson, Laissez Faire Books, 1996, San Francisco, P. 11-12. A very good beginning book on economics that appeals to reason, aimed at the rugged individualist.
(26) Higgs, P. 198. This whole chapter is an excellent source of information on Roosevelt's wartime domestic policies.
(27) Ibid, P. 204-211.
(28) Rothbard, America's Great Depression, P. 29
(29) Higgs, P. 212.
(30) Ibid, P. 225.
(31) http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-6,GGLD:en&q=%22Executive+Order+9066%22 There is a wealth of information here.
(32) Denson, Reassessing the Presidency, P. 528.
(33) Ibid, P. 530.
(34) Ibid, P. 542.
(35) Woods, Chapter 14, entire chapter.
The people of the late Nineteenth Century had all of that to be thankful for, but thanks to Lincoln's never-ending legacy, the country had begun its decline into despotism.
As the Twentieth Century began, a parade of liberty's fierce enemies began. It was very difficult to decide who would be the worst American enemy of liberty in the Twentieth Century. After the century began, we were once again saddled with the income tax (this time for good), the Federal Reserve (this time for good also) and the draft (off and on), and added to that were Federal prohibition of alcohol (partially lifted) and narcotics, Federal control of foods and drugs, "progressive education" (pretty Neanderthal in my opinion), curbs on other personal behavior, an imperialist foreign policy, censorship (again) and the incarceration of dissidents (again).
It was indeed very difficult to decide who was the worst enemy as it took many to fool the public into believing that the above were improvements and to institute them.
My pick for the worst American enemy of liberty in the Twentieth Century was a man who landed two more fierce blows to liberty, right into the fist-prints of Abraham Lincoln. A part of one of these blows hit home to me personally, and I consider this to be a major detriment to my entire life.
That man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
If I believed in reincarnation, which being a Christian I do not, I would be positive that these men, along with the worst American enemy of liberty in the Twenty-first Century so far, were one and the same. They certainly all have the big-government, imperialist mentality.
There are many specific comparisons between Lincoln and Roosevelt (2). They could both use rhetoric to sway large numbers of people. They both oversaw, and won, great wars that have been shown to be unjust, and of course wars always unite the majority who do not have time to or will not question the government propaganda.
The most important thing the two had in common was how they ruled the country. There is no doubt in my mind that FDR studied Lincoln and took many pages out of his book, but not having been there, not having been anywhere at the time in fact, there is nothing specific that I know.
Franklin Roosevelt's first mighty blow to liberty, like Lincoln's, was economic. However, unlike Lincoln, he did not deal the blows quite simultaneously, even though they did overlap.
When Roosevelt came to office in 1933, the Great Depression had begun. We now know, of course, that the stock market crash in 1929 was caused by the Federal Reserve's intervention in the economy in the form of bank credit expansion (3). I will not dwell on that, but if it is not generally known it should be.
Republican Herbert Hoover was president at that time and he dove right in with interventions which were picked up and expanded on in 1933 by President Roosevelt and these interventions caused the Depression to go on and on for about seventeen years. History books say that it went on for about ten years, but in my opinion that is wrong. Reasons will be given below.
It is an establishment article of faith that Roosevelt's interventions in the economy (actually a government takeover of the economy plus significant infringements on civil liberties) "saved capitalism from itself." On the contrary, the great economist Murray Rothbard shows that an unfettered economy would have prevented the problem in the first place, but the economy was anything but unfettered. This "saved capitalism from itself" would be stand-up comic material if it were not so serious. First of all "saving from itself" is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has any marginal brain activity as it makes no sense at all. Secondly, what capitalism? Ever since Henry Clay's "American System" had been ushered in by Lincoln, capitalism (which really means laissez faire) had been at least partly stomped out in favor of mercantilism.
Mercantilism had been built upon steadily, especially since the turn of the Twentieth Century and had laid the groundwork for Roosevelt's nearly fatal blows to liberty.
Dr. Rothbard points out (4) that if a depression or recession does occur, the best way to alleviate its effects and restore normality as quickly as possible is to keep government's hands off. Roosevelt (and Hoover before him) must have had a premonition of Rothbard and the other great economist, Ludwig von Mises, as he did the very things that they said would deepen and prolong the Great Depression. Had he wanted to worsen the situation and gravitate wealth and power toward establishment interests (as Lincoln did), he couldn't have done a better job.
The Great Depression was the crisis that Roosevelt used to rally support for what was called the "New Deal," a militaristic and corporatistic top-down regimentation of the entire economy that was modeled after the fascist Mussolini system in Italy (5). As power was centralized in the federal government, graduates of "progressive education" rallied behind it. But, there were those on the right and the left who were independent enough to oppose it, and since FDR just happened to be a Democrat, those are now called the "old right." Ironically, Roosevelt warned the country that if these dissidents got their way and turned the country away from his Mussolini-type course, it would put the country at risk for fascism.
As a staunch believer that rights come from God and accrue to the sovereign individual, and that the ownership of (and therefore complete control over) one's body along with one's real and personal property is the chief of these unalienable rights, meaning I, as a libertarian, hardly know where to begin when discussing Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal"! It must have been a libertarian's worst nightmare (6).
The entire program was harm heaped upon harm to individuals. And, obviously, since society is made up of individuals, to harm individuals is to harm society as a whole. Insult was literally added to injury when the American people were told that all of this was "for their own good." The harm continues to this day in both general and specific ways.
The general harm that continues to this day that has stood out in my mind over my whole life is the attitude of the American people toward paternalistic authority or the "nanny state." A loss of freedom for more "security" is welcomed. If something is mandated or prohibited for reasons of health, safety, or financial security, people welcome government intervention rather than resent it. I believe this is a sickly, not a healthy, way of looking at things, and I believe the Founders would agree with me on that. I also believe the turning point from individual self-reliance to the seeking of government protection came during the Roosevelt years, the seeds having been sewn by "progressive education," (in quotes because it was neither progressive nor education).
This does not mean that a person who participates in voluntary society is dependent. Far from it. The person who takes the initiative to buy, sell, trade, and seek pleasure by interacting with other unique individuals is just as independent as the recluse. But this initiative is often lacking today, as people wait for or consult government (or lawyers) to tell them what they can and cannot do. They don't trust themselves to understand the difference between right and wrong and think things through for themselves.
As for a specific example of how the New Deal still forces individuals into dependency to this day, I will come to that later as I show how I have personally been gravely harmed, and so have you if you have a speck of independence.
Back to the New Deal itself: It was a whole slew of economic fallacies that aggravated and prolonged the Great Depression. As an advocate of the gold standard I will begin with Roosevelt's treatment of gold. A gold standard serves as an anchor of sorts, keeping the ship of monetary policy from drifting into currents of a wildly fluctuating (usually rising) money supply. Of course, a greater money supply does not cause prosperity. What causes prosperity is a greater supply of goods and services. Absent those, being knee-deep in dollar bills will not help. Dr. Rothbard treats this subject very well as I have pointed out.
Roosevelt abandoned the gold standard, thereby cutting the chain to the anchor. The whole idea of that was to raise prices in the marketplace, a counterproductive and wrong-headed approach per Rothbard. Up until this time, gold coins had been our standard money (7). Not only that, the Federal government confiscated (euphemistically "bought") all gold, except for jewelry, fillings, and the like from the people.
One thing I would like to find out about this gold confiscation is why anyone in his or her right mind obeyed. Any reader who can remember back that far and can tell me that is welcome to contact me. It seems to me that, defiant attitude aside, it would be in one's economic self-interest to hide the gold for profitable sale later.
Also came the abominable Agricultural Adjustment Act (or AAA) and the National Recovery Administration (or NRA) that turned the entire economy into a couple of government-run cartels with all of the efficiency of the Postal Service and all of the compassion of the Internal Revenue Service. These, as I stated, were modeled after the Italian fascist system.
The purpose of the AAA was to cartelize agricultural markets and the purpose of the NRA was to cartelize industrial markets. This cartelization stifled competition, which is essential to bringing higher quality goods at lower prices to consumers. And, during the Great Depression, people were actually going hungry, so lower prices and a greater abundance of goods were particularly important to consumers.
However, true to the bogus economic hypotheses of John Maynard Keynes and against the wisdom of the great economist Ludwig von Mises, and against my own simple logic, the Roosevelt administration was determined to increase government, raise prices, and cut productivity.
I do not believe I need to tell you why raising prices and cutting productivity during a depression is idiotic. But I might need to point out that increased government spending is wrong. It is because the taxes required will decrease individuals' ability to save and invest, which helps to end a depression. (Taxation also, obviously, takes away money they may need for the necessities of life.) (8)
The methods employed to cut productivity need to be pointed out. Not only did this keep food, clothing and other goods away from the needy, but it was also a very severe infringement on civil liberties. Thomas DiLorenzo points out in Reassessing the Presidency that detailed and hairsplitting rules and regulations were made that were strictly enforced with severe penalties. Work hours were curtailed in productive (private) sectors while cushy jobs were handed out to favorites in the non-productive (government) sector. One of the single worst instances was, while children were going hungry, the government was paying farmers with their parents' money to burn crops and slaughter livestock. This was a PR disaster, of course, so they began to pay farmers to not produce in the first place (9) or to meticulously regulate the crops allowed. (10)
Fortunately, for the country, we had a Supreme Court at that time (before FDR managed to pack it) that had a small handle on freedom. In 1935, after government tactics gave rise to a protest (there were still enough people then who still believed in freedom), the Supreme Court ruled that both the AAA and the NRA were unconstitutional. But this did not at all faze the worst Twentieth Century American enemy of freedom.
Undaunted, President Roosevelt forged on towards destruction with his "Second New Deal." This brought on a host of new assaults on the badly beaten economy and comatose freedom. This time it was aimed at the average wage earner. I hardly know where to begin, but let us begin with something most people favor, and that is the Fair Labor Standards Act, which decreed a minimum wage.
Now, we all want to see wages rise, and under the minimum wage, some wages will rise. However, other wages will go down to zero as some employees will be laid off because employers no longer find it worthwhile to hire them. These employees are the very people who need work the most. Now, with this law, they are prohibited from working at wages below the minimum. They have two choices: to find someone who will hire them at the higher wage or not to work at all. They always had these choices, along with the choice to work at the lower wage. Now the third choice has been taken away which hurts those who would have made that choice for one reason or another (usually because they just could not find anything better). Unemployment is the result of the minimum wage.
A corollary to that was the National Labor Relations Act (aka the Wagner Act) which gave special privileges to labor unions. Of course, special privilege for one means an infringement on the rights of another. One special privilege the unions received under this act was to be able to compel someone to join the union. No club, church, or sewing circle that I know of can do that. It would be unthinkable because you and I have the right not to join. However, this union special privilege takes away this right not to join. The unions could make workers in their particular trade join, they could make employers allow union officials trespass on employers' private property to look at employers' books, they could mete out damage and injury with impunity, and they could do more. In other words, unions were (and still are to a large extent) above the law. At the same time, government control over labor relations was basically similar to that under Hitler and Mussolini (11).
The state (meaning the Roosevelt administration), along with its establishment cronies benefited greatly to the major detriment of everyone else.
And, that boils down to one thing: The individual, the building block of the whole thing, simply did not count under Roosevelt. All this effort that was (allegedly, anyway, that is if you believe Roosevelt was really trying to improve things) put into lifting society from depression was for naught because individuals were ignored. Individuals always pursue their own and their families' interest, but they were kept from doing so in the name of society, and, of course, because society is the individuals in it, society was not helped.
Another program, but the last one I will touch upon here (there are many more and I could write a whole book), is the dread Social Security Act which dealt a terrible blow to freedom of Americans yet unborn, and insulted their intelligence besides. This is the thing that adversely affected me personally, possibly more than any other single thing.
The best I can muster to say about Social Security is that it is a Ponzi scheme. It takes earnings out of the pockets of younger workers and gives this money to retirees (that is, what is left of the money after a hefty overhead). It is actually a transfer program, but what we are told about the program is an insult twice over.
First, we are told that the money taken from younger workers is held in a "trust fund" to be given back to them over time after they retire. This is insulting, first, because we are expected to believe this when we know, or should know, full well that it is really a transfer program whereby the money goes directly from worker to retiree, with a hefty percentage going for administration, meaning to government bureaucrats who do not produce any real goods or services. We need to keep in mind that government jobs destroy private sector jobs (12). In the Social Security "fund" there are only IOU's (13).
Secondly, it is insulting because the program is compulsory and we are told it is for our own good. Individuals have the God-given right to make that decision. If an individual puts that money in a bank account, even with interest rates as they are right now in early 2005, very low, he will be ahead of the game financially. After all, it is the individual's responsibility to look ahead, and if one fails to do that, there are churches and charities to help. Proper tax reform would fill up those offering plates.
We also need to remember two promises made to us at the beginning of Social Security. One was a ceiling on the amount to be taken, which was 3 percent. The other was that the Social Security number would never be used as a national identification number. We all know what happened to both of these promises, and most other government promises.
Another thing that most people do not seem to understand is that we are told that our employer must kick in a matching contribution and that is a "freebie." It is not a freebie, since, to make our employment worthwhile to our employer, we must produce enough to cover the cost of this employer contribution.
I personally deeply resented this intrusion into my life, but found no way to both earn an honest living and opt out of Social Security without sacrificing other principles even dearer to me. So, the harm was done and I am that much worse off. Money that could have been saved and invested over the years is gone and so are opportunities to do some good with it. Will I get anything back? For years I assumed that would not, but now it looks like I might get something back. And, if I do, true to a vow I made when I learned there was no way to avoid being harmed so much "for my own good," I will make sure every penny of it goes to one or more organizations that are actively fighting to restore our liberty in general, and this liberty in particular (14).
I am determined that this particular harm will be turned around to do something good, no matter what.
Meanwhile, the New Deal(s) sank the country even deeper. Government spending grew which, as I stated, made things worse because money spent by government bureaucrats cannot also be spent according to consumer preferences in the private sector. Government spending "crowds out" private spending in areas which the consumers have decided are the more important areas. Plus, government spending is just that: spending (meaning consumption). Government propaganda notwithstanding, it is not investment or saving, both of which are actually of paramount importance for lifting an economy out of a depression (15). Therefore, reduced government spending and tax cuts are called for, but true to form, the Roosevelt administration did not do that. Rather, it taxed and taxed, spent and spent, creating many pork barrel projects (16).
The pork projects were typical as they were aimed at Western swing states during election time rather than the poorer Southern states that were Roosevelt strongholds (17). In other words, like pork barrel projects from the sorry beginning of organized civil governments, their real purpose was to aggrandize establishment interests.
In fact, the entire New Deal was political! It had to be. Roosevelt had all those advisers, and anyone who has studied even freshman-level economics understands that there is no way for such a program to improve the economy. This is not rocket science.
The second major blow dealt to liberty by Roosevelt was very similar to that of Lincoln, only it was very likely worse.
It was the U.S. participation in World War II, a war that was totally unnecessary and actually caused by our totally unnecessary and wrongful participation in World War I.
What happened was that our participation in World War I and our signing of the Treaty of Versailles gave rise to Hitler (18), and Roosevelt really dug in his heels on the Treaty, thus making some Treaty opponents sympathetic to Hitler. Eventually it resulted in the declaration of war on the part on England and France. After Roosevelt's campaign promises not to do so, he and Winston Churchill conspired to draw the U.S. into the war in a Lincolnesque manner by falsifying information, tampering with elections and other means (19), not to mention provoking Germany and then provoking Japan into the first shot at Pearl Harbor (20). I think it is generally known now (or at least it should be) that Roosevelt knew that was coming and even provoked it, just as Lincoln anticipated and provoked the attack on Fort Sumter. In fact, I would highly recommend chapter 16, "Roosevelt and the First Shot: A Study of Deceit and Deception" in Reassessing the Presidency. This gives a complete and well-documented rundown of why and how Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and saw it coming.
Over a year before Pearl Harbor was hit, and once Hitler had conquered France, polls were showing that the American people were very afraid of Hitler and preferred our getting into war to allowing him to win a war with England (21). While Roosevelt wanted to get into a war and the "progressively educated" populace sheepishly followed, some dissented. Many of these dissenters were the same people who realized how unworkable and downright wrong-headed the New Deal was. Of course these people were demonized and some wound up in prison.
Roosevelt wanted to get into the war "to help the British" defeat Germany for the usual reasons presidents get into wars, which is to increase their power and prestige. He was also interested in help from Britain to get a world organization started. This was something just about all libertarians, including myself, fiercely oppose: the United Nations. We see it as a threat to our national sovereignty and to the supreme law of the land, the U.S. Constitution.
After the "surprise" attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt formed a commission to investigate what happened that allowed the attack. The commission was to investigate it at the Hawaii end only, and not at the Washington end, where provocation and anticipation of the attack were known (22). The cover-up continued on and on (23). The top military officers who were in charge were scapegoated, but posthumously exonerated.
All those people, more than 2,000 (24), were killed that day because Franklin Delano Roosevelt had become a power-hungry, imperial president and had dealt a severe blow to the face of liberty in the fist-print of Abraham Lincoln. He would have said he "haaaaad" to go to war, and "haaaaad" to impose all the economic policies, thus sounding like a sheep.
Had we stayed out of World War II, maybe two of the worst dictatorships that the world has ever seen (Hitler and Stalin) would have fought until they both went belly up, saving the lives and life-styles of millions and making world peace a possibility.
Of course, what was going on here at home during the war could only be described as a dictatorship. International (imperial, or world police) power is not the only reason a president would want to get into war, as we saw during the Lincoln discussion. Lincoln had set the dangerous precedent of presidential war powers at home and Roosevelt exercised these unconstitutional powers to the fullest extent. It was not that difficult. The economy had been regimented through most of the 1930s and the "progressively educated" populace bought into the myths about the New Deal being the solution to the Great Depression and about U.S. entry into World War II being what finally ended the Depression.
The Depression was not over by any means. People were still having grave difficulties, and the only reason the unemployment rate went way down was because so many men went to war and so many other people were hired to administer the bureaucracies. This did not end the Depression any more than throwing a rock through a window will bolster an economy when it gives a window-repair person a day's work. The idea that war is good for an economy is what Nineteenth Century classical liberal economist Frédéric Bastiat called the Broken Window Fallacy (25). The American people were ignorant of sound economic policies and woefully ignorant of the great libertarian principles of the Founders. They had become used to being told what to do and were now totally united behind the president, at least as far as the war was concerned. Of course, people are prone to human nature, and the cost of the war was always passed to someone else whenever possible (26).
So, Roosevelt and his accomplices got away with everything a power-monger could ever want. They lost no time in exercising "war powers" and covering up the cost.
Of course, those who decided to get into war were not the same people who were to fight it. If they were to go themselves, maybe they would have taken a more sensible approach. Rather, in the same spirit as the years of economic compulsion, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, or the male draft, was passed. Some groups of men were exempt, public officials being one. (Wonder why?) In addition, the Act called for businesses to fill government orders on a priority basis, a possible eminent domain-like proceeding being a penalty along with fines and jail time.
The draft involuntary servitude was also used to shame the rest of the citizenry into sacrifices on the grounds that their sacrifices were "lesser."
So much for civil liberties.
On the economic front (although, as pointed out, the draft law did impact businesses), the Federal government got itself involved in every aspect of business. In fact, in many areas it was downright socialist. Roosevelt tried to tell the American people that the loss of life, limb, and property were not a sacrifice, but a "privilege." With privilege like that, who needs Communism? In fact, with privilege like that, it is time for individuals to assert their rights!
And, just as they were in Communist Russia and Nazi Germany, these "privileges" were backed up by iron-fisted methods. Congress compliantly gave Roosevelt the powers he was craving. We had a full-blown socialist command economy (27).
The cost of all of this to government was enormous. So, rather than raise taxes, which would have been poor in the PR department, the government inflated the currency. One or the other has to be done to cover deficit spending. Inflation actually is a hidden tax. Then the government tried to hide inflation by way of price controls (28), while it continued its drunken-sailor spending on the military, bringing about the military industrial complex as it crushed the economy and dished out more power to the president (29).
It cost the average person even more. Of course price ceilings always produce shortages. So, when wages were exempt from the ceilings, mainly to please unions, causing more unemployment, regular people were not helped. Rationing was tried as a solution, but that only gave rise to favoritism and corruption on the part of handpicked members of rationing boards. At the end of the day, the government was making all decisions, and the military came first.
I had a co-worker who was a pre-schooler at that time. Like so many small children, she had an ear infection. Penicillin had just been introduced and this would have cured a painful earache. However, it was not available to little children. Soldiers came first. Soldiers who should never have been in a war that should never have happened got priority over innocent children who could have been maimed for life. This is an example of how government decision-making can affect an individual.
And to think that all this authoritarian centralization was for the purpose of whipping National Socialism!
And, unlike their brave actions taken when they struck down some New Deal programs as unconstitutional, this time the Supreme Court did nothing to defend freedom! Of course, by that time Roosevelt had packed the Court with his own collectivist appointees.
And as far as state nullification was concerned, that had been long forgotten!
The most outrageous act of the Supreme Court justices, however, was when they turned their back on 110,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry (and others), most of whom were law-abiding American citizens (30). This was truly an all-time low.
President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that would take three years of life away from these 110,000 people by sending them to internment camps with absolutely no due process of law whatsoever, no opportunity to protest, and almost no time at all to get ready (31). This act was proof positive that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had absolutely no regard for the rights of the individual and thought in terms of collectives, just as Abraham Lincoln had done before him in his attitudes toward the blacks. This is racism, pure and simple, and this and all other types of collectivism are entirely wrong.
What is truly the most incredible thing about the internment of these law-abiding Americans is that while I was growing up in the Northeast, we kids were never even told this had happened. Of course, I cannot remember the actual time, but when I was in grade school it was not really that long after World War II.
I am positive that why we were not told is that the schools were constantly praising our great government's gallant defense of freedom. I went to public school through junior high and firmly believe that my time would have been better spent swinging on tree branches like a monkey. Even an 8-year-old in second or third grade could easily see a major disconnect between the internment and the alleged defense of freedom.
But what of the adults? What did they know? I have not done so yet, but I will be asking my elderly relatives about this later this year when I visit the Northeast. Now, I know that the generation of the day was profoundly obedient, thanks largely to "progressive education" (read one-size-fits-all mass indoctrination in "good citizenship," group first, cooperation, team playing, and other such collectivist nonsense), and either the lapdog news media did not report the internment at all or sugar-coated it the best they could.
The government can twist around the news in such a way as to get people to go along. It did under Lincoln (non-conforming editors faced prison), and now it was doing so under Roosevelt. But internment camps? Perhaps they were less crowded, cleaner, and more comfortable than Auschwitz, perhaps families were not separated, and perhaps more food and medicine were available, but the people were confined there, like it or not so, realistically, this was a major violation of rights that cannot possibly be justified.
Once the war was over, the peace dividend kicked in and the Great Depression finally lifted. Much of the government intervention in the economy ended as did the use (waste) of time and resources on war materials and the populace, with unspent money, started to save, invest, and spend. Of course, Roosevelt was out of office in early 1945 to the immense joy of freedom lovers, not that Truman was a model libertarian, but at least "that man" was gone.
Fortunately at that time, most people still understood the benefits of frugality, so they did not spend all they had; rather they put a lot of their money into banks to be invested in capital. The rest of their money, what did not go to charity (Europe was in desperate need of help and Americans were very generous) was spent on needed items, which were snapped up as they rolled off the assembly lines.
The left will be quick to point out that women, who had done a top-notch job filling in for men at work while the men were overseas, were let go from these jobs in many cases when the men returned. While this must be judged on a case-by-case basis, I do agree that there is a major issue here in light of the fact that women can do everything men can do (aside from those requiring more muscular strength on average). However, we must remember that over time people have since learned to be more realistic.
Unfortunately, we did not live happily ever after. People had been trained to do what their government told them to do. The federal government made many inroads in the demise of liberty, which included a precedent for confining large numbers of law-abiding citizens in camps, and paved the way for bigger and worse things. Government was bigger and more powerful than it ever had been in the U.S., and big government was here to stay.
President Roosevelt was not content with confining his quest for power to the U.S. He wanted to rule the world!
It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who introduced the country to intrusive international policy and globalism (32) just as Lincoln introduced it to the mercantilist economic system. Woodrow Wilson, the other main contender for worst Twentieth Century American enemy of liberty, had entered and fought World War I to "make the world safe for democracy" and proceeded to make the world impossible for freedom. Now, during the trouncing of Americans' economic and civil liberties nearly to death, Roosevelt wanted to export the whole thing. He determined to do a couple of terrible things: to establish the United Nations that, as we know, would later push and be pushed by the establishment to become a world government (subordinating our Constitution), and to make major concessions to Communist dictator Stalin, who was in the process of killing by starvation, execution, and by other means tens and scores of millions of people and impoverishing hundreds of millions more.
Roosevelt, like Lincoln, was power-hungry, and he admired (and perhaps envied) Stalin. He covered up for Stalin a particularly gruesome atrocity that took place in 1939, called the Katyn Forest Massacre, in which the Russians murdered 15,000 Polish soldiers for no reason and then left their bodies there. Years later they were found by the Germans. When the Red Cross wanted to investigate, Roosevelt suppressed it (33). For all we know, this is not the only such incident. For every such thing that sees the light of day, we do not know how many remain hidden. Sugar-coating rights violations in Russia made it possible for the American people to accept the Soviet Union as an ally.
The U.S. extended material aid to Russia during the war through Roosevelt's "Lend-Lease" proposal to send arms and supplies to them with no strings attached.
And, of course, all this time he was lying about his intentions of getting into the war. He swore up and down that he would stay out, even as he was looking for an excuse to get in. Once that excuse came, American taxpayers, whose children were crying for food and medicine, not only had to finance that, but also had to finance increased aid to the Soviet Union.
And, once in the war, Roosevelt talked of a German "unconditional surrender" which prompted Hitler to dig in his heels. Japan also would not consider "unconditional surrender." Clearly, Roosevelt wanted to get into war and stay there. He played with the lives of people all over the world to stay in the war and to please his buddy Stalin. As a result, half of the world's population wound up under the yoke of Communism (34) and there was no way that much, if any, of the rest could be described as "free." Everybody (except top establishment cronies) was poorer as a result.
Some historians claim that Roosevelt had naively been sucked in by Stalin, but my opinion is that Roosevelt had hordes of advisors at his service, and if I can figure this out, he could. There is no excuse for either Roosevelt or Lincoln.
To fight and win that war and to establish the U.N. (which did not happen until later, of course, but it did happen), which were Roosevelt's goals, along with his idea of the U.S. as the world's policeman to keep Communism at bay, were most detrimental to liberty.
In closing, Roosevelt's mighty blows to liberty were, in the fist prints of Lincoln, first in authoritarian, collectivist, centralist domestic policy which devastated individual liberty in the U.S., and second in imperialist, interventionist warmongering which caused the deaths of hundreds of millions, destroyed unknown amounts of property, and shattered or at least reduced individual liberty all over the world (35). His legacy is deeply reflected in the platforms of both branches of the Authoritarian Party.
(1) Gregory, Anthony, "Are Current Bill of Rights Erosions Unprecedented?" http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/gregory1.html
(2) North, Gary, "Lincoln and FDR" http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north34.html
(3) Rothbard, Murray, America's Great Depression, Richardson and Snyder, 1983, New York. The whole book, especially Chapter 1. If you read only one thing to understand economic upturns, downturns, booms, recessions, and depressions, please make sure it is this chapter. You can read this and other great books online at http://www.mises.org. Also see other works by Dr. Rothbard such as What Has Government Done to Our Money? and The Case Against the Fed. To obtain these, see "catalog" at mises.org.
(4) Ibid P. 25-26
(5) Denson, John V., ed., Reassessing the Presidency, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2001, Auburn, Ala., P.435.
(6) Ibid, Chapter 15. The entire chapter, "Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal" by Thomas DiLorenzo, gives a very good rundown of all the various New Deal programs.
(7) Ibid P.434. Also Rothbard, Murray N., Making Economic Sense, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995, Auburn, Ala., P. 298-300.
(8) Rothbard, America's Great Depression, P. 28.
(9) Denson, P. 434.
(10) Rothbard, Making Economic Sense, P. 85-88. Some of these rules were still in effect when Dr. Rothbard published his book, and may still be now, thanks to government-enforced farm cartels.
(11) Denson, P. 441.
(12) Ibid. P. 443.
(13) http://www.sierratimes.com/05/03/09adamo.htm (Please make sure you pick up the entire URL) Adamo, Christopher G., "Why Liberals Abhor True Social Security Reform" explains this. Problem is, he seems to favor President Bush's plan that will, I think, only make matters worse.
(14) One might simply refuse to accept the money, which I did consider. But why leave it in the hands of those who would spend it to kill Iraqi kids or perpetuate the insane war on drugs? So I will apply for it. Yes, you do have to apply for it, and you start 3 months before you become eligible by calling the nearest Social Security office.
(15) Rothbard, America's Great Depression spells this out very well.
(16) Denson, P. 444-445.
(17) Ibid, P. 446.
(18) Higgs, Robert, Crisis and Leviathan, Oxford University Press, 1987, New York, P. 198.
(19) Denson, P. 486-491.
(20) Denson, P. 496-501. Also see Woods, Thomas E. Jr., A Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004, Washington, D.C., P. 174-176.
(21) Higgs, P. 199.
(22) Denson, P. 515.
(23) Ibid, P. 515-517. In this important chapter, Denson (the book editor who wrote this chapter) credits Robert B. Stinnett's Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor with bringing this to the light of day.
(24) Woods, P. 181.
(25) Hazlitt, Henry, Economics in One Lesson, Laissez Faire Books, 1996, San Francisco, P. 11-12. A very good beginning book on economics that appeals to reason, aimed at the rugged individualist.
(26) Higgs, P. 198. This whole chapter is an excellent source of information on Roosevelt's wartime domestic policies.
(27) Ibid, P. 204-211.
(28) Rothbard, America's Great Depression, P. 29
(29) Higgs, P. 212.
(30) Ibid, P. 225.
(31) http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-6,GGLD:en&q=%22Executive+Order+9066%22 There is a wealth of information here.
(32) Denson, Reassessing the Presidency, P. 528.
(33) Ibid, P. 530.
(34) Ibid, P. 542.
(35) Woods, Chapter 14, entire chapter.
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