The change that took place in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s was
as remarkable as the Russian Revolution which had taken place decades
before. Through his domestic and international New Deal philosophy and
programs, President Franklin D. Roosevelt revolutionized the political and
economic system of the United States.
It is impossible to overstate the unusual nature of American society for
more than 100 years after the inception of the federal government in 1787.
There were no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, drug laws,
occupational-licensure laws, income taxation, gun control, public schooling,
immigration controls, travel restrictions, and foreign aid.
Our ancestors believed that (1) it is morally wrong to use government to
take money from a person to whom it belongs in order to give it to someone
to whom it does not belong; (2) a person has the right to accumulate
unlimited amounts of wealth and decide what to do with it; and (3) people
have the right to engage in any peaceful enterprise and to travel and trade
anywhere in the world.
That is what it once meant to be an American, notwithstanding the tragic and
ultimately costly exception of slavery. That is what it once meant to be
free.
Roosevelt's New Deal constituted a total rejection of that philosophy of
freedom. Unfortunately, however, Americans refuse to confront that truth and
to recognize the enormous moral and political consequences of what they have
done through their adoption of the welfare state. They live what might be
called "the life of the lie" or the life that denies reality. The words of
the great German thinker Johann Goethe perfectly capture their plight: No
one is more hopelessly enslaved than the person who falsely believes he is
free.
In their ardent devotion to their paternalistic welfare state, Americans
simply ignore the severe immorality of using government coercion for
"charity" and "compassion." They also block out of their minds that the
velvet glove of their paternalistic welfare state -- which now has the power
to take care of them, school them, feed them, provide their health care and
retirement, and equalize their wealth, and which purports to protect them
from incompetent hairdressers, drug purveyors, and terrorists -- envelopes
an iron fist that protects the interests of the welfare state.
Some of the traces of this iron fist are: Syphilis experiments on
unsuspecting black men and radiation experiments on unsuspecting U.S.
servicemen. Deadly and flammable gas used on adults and children at Waco.
Bullets into the head of Vickie Weaver and into the back of her teenage son
as well as the feds' perjury and obstruction of justice during the criminal
prosecution of Randy Weaver.
Tens of thousands of people killed or jailed in the decades-long war on
drugs. Millions of American taxpayers terrorized by the Internal Revenue
Service with what IRS officials describe as a "voluntary" tax system.
The capture and repatriation of Cuban refugees into communist tyranny and
the construction of a Berlin Wall on America's southern border. The refusal
to permit German Jews to immigrate to the United States from Nazi Germany.
World War II concentration camps for innocent Americans. The deliberate
targeting of civilians at Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. The "liberation"
of the Polish and Czech people through their delivery to Soviet communist
domination, which lasted for more than 50 years.
Complicity in the cover-up of the Soviet Union's World War II murder of
thousands of innocent Polish military officers (Internet search term: "Katyn
Forest"). Active participation in the post-World War II murder of an
estimated one million innocent Russian people (Internet search term:
"Operation Keelhaul"). The wrongful execution of World War II Japanese Gen.
Tomoyuki Yamashita (www.washingtonpost.com: "Vengeance Did Not Deliver
Justice" by Stephen B. Ives Jr.).
Formal partnerships with nasty, brutal people, such as Soviet communists,
German Nazis, and American and Sicilian Mafiosi.
Assassinations and ousters of foreign leaders, some even democratically
elected. Active training and assistance provided to brutal right-wing
regimes that torture, terrorize, and murder their own citizens.
The killing of hundreds of thousands of foreigners in violation of law
through the waging of wars lacking the constitutionally required
congressional declaration of war. The killing of hundreds of thousands of
innocent Iraqi civilians, including children, with a decade-long warlike
embargo and blockade.
Decades-old files of the CIA and the military-industrial complex kept secret
in the name of "national security."
And Americans blithely go along with it all, either supporting it, or
ignoring it, or convincing themselves it's all just a series of isolated
mistakes or errors in judgment rather than accurate reflections of the
mutated, abusive, perverted government into which Roosevelt's welfare state
has metastasized.
Today, when Americans say, "Freedom is under attack," they mean the
"freedom" of FDR's "superpower" welfare-state empire to do whatever it wants
to whomever it desires anywhere in the world. It is not the type of freedom
to which our Founders and ancestors subscribed.
