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The Paradise Perspective: Commentary from a Free and Compassionate Alternate Reality Volume 1, Number 25 How Liberals Created Our Neo-Con Nightmare And How to Solve the Problem by Glen Allport Exclusive to STR July 17, 2007 Did
American liberals set the stage for Bush and the neo-cons to take over
this country? That
is not a trick question, and the answer is: "Yes, they did." -
- - - - How,
then? Very simply. Here is a basic outline of what happened: First,
note that a government without
rules is a disaster. Make
that, "a government without clear, enforceable
rules that give specific
protection to human rights." Furthermore, these rules must be actually enforced. For a look at what happens without real
protection for human rights, see most of history. The 20th Century alone
saw perhaps 262
million murders by governments world-wide, and that is in addition to
millions of deaths by war. Really: Why do we put up with this? What other
institution causes so much death and destruction? Second,
the U.S. Constitution
is the rulebook for Third,
these constitutional limitations on
government power have always been a
source of frustration to those in power and to special interests. To
get around these limitations, several approaches have been tried. These
include: 1)
Simply seizing more power,
as when Democrat Woodrow
Wilson created the Federal
Reserve in 1913 (with plenty of help from Republicans –
government evil in America is almost always bipartisan). The FED is
exactly the type of central bank that America's
founders warned against, and inflation of the money supply (and thus
of prices) engineered by the FED has been a disaster, especially to the
poor and those on fixed incomes. Twenty dollars bought roughly one ounce
of gold in 1913; as this is written, it takes over $660 to buy an ounce of
gold – 33 times more than
before (you can view today's gold price here.)
History (going
back to 1913
also saw passage of the 16th
Amendment (via ratification by state legislatures, not by a direct
vote of the people), overturning the constitutional prohibition of a tax
on income. The tools were now in place to dramatically ramp up the
wealth and power of the federal government (and its favored corporations
and special interest groups) at the direct expense of – who else? –
ordinary citizens. 2)
Promising to take care of people
in some fashion. This is a brilliant tactic from the power-elite's point
of view, because it makes the victims not merely complicit in their own
enslavement but often gets them to clamor for more
enslavement! Democrat FDR responded to the Great Depression by
dramatically expanding federal government power with his New Deal programs
(mostly welfare, make-work, and other forms of "relief"), and
when the Supreme Court ruled his programs unconstitutional, FDR threatened
to pack the Court with
additional members who would "interpret" the Constitution to
allow such programs. The Court caved in to FDR's wishes and began ruling,
essentially, that the Constitution said things it does not say – and
liberals and progressives cheered. The
ruse of promising to take care of people has created a government larger,
more expensive, and more intrusive than even King George could have
dreamed of. The opportunities for bureaucratic empire-building, for
corporatist "synergy" between business and government, and for
oceanic levels of money-flow from the people to those in power simply
could not be achieved without conning citizens into thinking that such
things were "for their own good." Charity,
retirement planning, and other such things are
good – on their own. Put government in charge, however, and you have at best
a bloated, costly, and inefficient program with ever-decreasing
customer satisfaction. Examples: the New Orleans fiasco (both the
government's efforts to protect against a levy breach and its response
after the disaster), FEMA generally, the FDA
and the USDA,
Social Security (never mind the lousy return on investment and the
inability to pass your "investment" on to your heirs: those in
charge have already spent your
money by borrowing it for the general fund, and an ever-smaller pool of
younger workers will be stuck paying for your retirement, so what you'll
actually get is . . . well, you do the math), and every
single other government program ever devised to "take care of
people." All government programs make things worse in the long
run instead of better. The goal may be fine, but using government coercion
in the service of the goal creates something else entirely. FDR's
other affronts to constitutional protections include (in the "simply
seizing power" category) forcing Americans to turn in their gold to
the government in 1933 under severe penalty of law (yet the Constitution's
never-repealed Section
10 requires our money to be
gold and silver, for good reason) and putting roughly 120,000 Japanese-Americans
into concentration camps during the war. Despite such crimes by FDR
– and "crimes" is exactly what they were – liberals in
academia, in the press, and elsewhere continue to praise FDR as if his
violations of the Constitution were something positive. In fact, by
treating the Constitution as a blank check for those in power, FDR helped create the lawless conditions which allowed for the rise of today's
Republican neo-cons. A government without rules is – well, pretty much
what we have now, isn't it? 3)
Another tactic for
grabbing power involves scaring
people, which leads to that most profitable
of government programs: war –
including "wars" on drugs and other pseudo-dangers. Since everything
(even eating, breathing, or walking down the street) has dangers, the
potential for fear-mongering is endless. The power elite know that
frightened people will give up their freedoms and their money without much
struggle – in fact, when the tactic is executed properly, the public
will beg to have their money
and freedom taken away in exchange for "protection" from the
threat. (Even if the public resists, the compliant and complicit major
media can make it appear otherwise). The "protection" offered by
government is a lie – it reliably makes things more dangerous – but
that's fine for those in power because the more unsafe life seems, the
more money and freedom the public is willing to give up for protection.
Booga-booga! Democrats,
at least as much as Republicans, have been involved in our wars of all
types including the War on Drugs (FDR was president when the Marijuana
Tax Act really got things going in 1937, for example) and no matter
which of the two old power parties is in the White House or in control of
Congress, the War on Drugs continues and grows worse. Even having a Baby
Boomer president who admitted to smoking pot in college (Democrat Bill
Clinton) did nothing to slow the persecution of ordinary citizens who
preferred pot to booze. Democrats
have also been leaders in the fight to keep America's war machine busy,
from Wilson (WWI) to FDR (WW2) to Truman (Korea, not to mention dropping two atom bombs on civilians in Japan at the end of WW2); from
Kennedy and especially Johnson (Vietnam) to Clinton (the depleted-uranium-soaked
war in the Balkans and the intermittent bombing
of Iraq during the long, deadly embargo). Today's Democratic majority
in Congress could defund the In
short, liberals, even more than conservatives, have worked to destroy the
rulebook for How
to Not Solve the Problem There
are several possible ways Americans might take back their freedom. Begging
for even more government is not
one of those ways, however, and this means that liberals and others who
see themselves as "progressive" must accept the truth that coercion is evil – even when used by your favorite politician for
a program you personally support. Charity
is important, but government
charity ruins lives by
the millions while slowly (and sometimes not-so-slowly) eroding a
nation's prosperity. Why? Because government charity is funded coercively
via taxation (and thus does not benefit from competitive market forces);
because central planning from afar (especially by those who are neither
rewarded nor penalized for their results) never works well; and because
bureaucratic costs and corruption siphon off increasing amounts of the
money intended for the recipients. Government charity frequently destroys
self-respect and entrepreneurship, leading to multi-generational
dependency and poverty, as with Johnson's "Great Society"
programs and their aftermath. In Medical
care is important, but
government runs the medical system about as well as it runs farming or
industry – not well at all (see any Communist nation). American medical
costs increased by a factor
of ten (inflation adjusted) from 1960 to 2000, as government
contributed ever-more to medical spending and as related government
regulations increased dramatically. The high-tech factor in the medical
field should be creating better and
cheaper products and services (consider computing or consumer
electronics, for instance); it is only government involvement preventing
this. "Free" medical care provided by government can be
reasonably well-run or not (here's Cuba's,
as ordinary Cubans apparently encounter it when American celebrities are
not around), but the long and sometimes deadly wait
times and rationing
typical of government health care are not
the best we can do. Business
regulation is important,
but government regulations create stagnating, corrupt, and overpriced
industries that are more dangerous than necessary. Industries without
government regulation provide better and cheaper products and services
(for example, supplements, computers, and consumer electronics), with
improvements over time instead of ever-higher prices and ongoing
degradations in service quality. For an example of non-government
regulation, see Underwriter
Labs, or simply note the lower prices and higher safety levels of
over-the-counter supplements versus pharmaceutical drugs. European
regulation of supplements has created much
higher prices for consumers without offering any benefit in return –
except to the medical and pharmaceutical cartels. Education
is important, but
government education is a disaster even on its own terms, and is abusive
to children in the bargain. -
- - - - Conclusion In
an earlier
essay, I posed these questions: "Would
you choose something with a track record of mass murder, famine, war,
extortion, and other violent crime – for anything? If you wanted to
foster compassion, or to improve the world in any way, would you use the
most dangerous and deadly tool in the history of mankind?" Liberals
(with help from their conservative neighbors) have done exactly that, with
predictable results: a nightmare. Love
and freedom are the only answer to our problems, and love
needs freedom, just as freedom needs love. Coercive government is
neither, and the less we have of it, the better. We
will not solve the problem of Ultimately,
the solution to the horrors of coercive government is to stop
using coercion to run society. No, that is not "utopian" but
instead sane and compassionate and practical. We won't get rid of
government-run wars and government-run death camps and government-enabled
corruption any other way. To save ourselves (and our civilization, and our
species, and perhaps our planet) we really must, at last, understand what
Henry David Thoreau wrote in Civil
Disobedience (1849): -
- - I
heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs
least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and
systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I
believe -- "That government is best which governs not at all";
and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government
which they will have. . . . The objections which have been brought against
a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail,
may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing
army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself,
which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will,
is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act
through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a
few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for in the
outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. This
American government -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one,
endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant
losing some of its integrity? -
- - If
we must have a government, let it at least follow the rules, and let
those rules clearly forbid using government coercion in all but a handful
of sensibly-chosen areas of life. The Constitution, including its Bill of
Rights, is that rulebook –
the highest law of the land, which no signing statement, no law from
Congress, and no bureaucratic decree may legally violate. "Whatever
is repugnant to the Constitution is null and void": that would be
most of today's federal government. How
can you truly and effectively support a return to lawful, limited
government in this country? Surprisingly, there is a way I can recommend:
become familiar with – and support – libertarian (although running as
a Republican) Dr. Ron Paul and his presidential campaign. Dr.
Paul put himself through medical school as a milkman; he is not the
"rich white male" that some have called him. He has had a long
career in the private sector, caring for young mothers and delivering
babies. Because he strictly and consistently votes against laws which
violate the Constitution, some of his positions will seem strange to those
used to thinking of ever-more government as the only way to do things. For
example, Paul is against federal "hate crime" laws. Why? Crime
is a problem for states and localities, not the federal government (which
has no
constitutional crime-fighting mandate at all). Besides: making a crime
against you (or because of who
or what you are) a bigger deal than the same crime against your neighbor is discrimination we don't need. "All men are created
equal," as our Declaration of Independence puts it, and the more we
live up to that, the better. Dr.
Paul's views are the same as in 1988, when he ran for President as a
Libertarian. Few take third parties seriously, and Paul's showing was in
single digits. Yet today, running as a Republican – and with massive
help from the internet – Ron Paul's support is growing so fast that if
it continues at this pace, he could be the outright winner in 2008.
Paul has more cash on hand than McCain (who has raised more but has spent
more). I refuse to be optimistic about an actual win for Paul, but am enthusiastic about the power of his campaign to reach and to
educate Americans who are ready to have love
and freedom replace cruelty and tyranny in their nation. That could be
enough to spark a real change. For
readers who are interested, here are four links to video with Dr. Paul: A
collage of clips and quotes, titled "Stop
Dreaming" (8 min 46 sec): The
full 65 minute interview/Q&A
session with Dr. Paul at Google headquarters from last week. Note
that, as always, Paul answers extemporaneous questions in full,
intelligently, without notes, and without evading the issues. Youtube's
current list of Ron Paul video. Glen Allport is the author of The Paradise Paradigm: On Creating A World of Compassion, Freedom, and Prosperity and maintains paradise-paradigm.net. This is one in a series of columns on the human condition.
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