The Future of Freedom Foundation has just launched its newest ebook, entitled The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State. I am the author. The ebook can be purchased at Amazon. It’s price: 99 cents.
I discovered libertarianism almost 40 years ago. I took to it like a duck to water. My early years of libertarian self-study consisted almost entirely of economic and political principles. I was reading Leonard Read, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Frederic Bastiat, Murray Rothbard, and many others, mostly from The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and Laissez Faire Books.
I discovered what other libertarians come to realize — that America is not the “free enterprise” system that we’re all taught it is in the public (i.e., government) schools to which our parents are forced to send us. Instead, as a result of what can only be described as a revolutionary change in America’s governmental system in the 1930s, we live under a socialist, welfare-state, interventionist, managed-economy, regulatory type system that has “free enterprise” features to it.
I also learned that the America that existed prior to that revolutionary change had a totally different political and economic system — one without such programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, drug laws, immigration controls, economic regulations, the Federal Reserve, paper (i.e., fiat) money, a government-managed economy, and an income tax and an IRS.
Two completely opposite systems. Americans living under the previous system were convinced they were living lives of freedom. Today’s Americans are convinced that they’re living lives of freedom. They both can’t be right since the systems under which they have lived are opposite.
I came to the realization that for genuine freedom to be attained, it’s necessary to dismantle infringements on liberty. That’s just logical. It has never made any sense to me as to why conservatives believe that you can have freedom with infringements on freedom being left intact, albeit in reformed or modified fashion.
Obviously, the welfare-state, paternalistic way of life poses an enormous challenge to libertarians. So many people have become dependent on the state. They’re scared to death of freedom. They cannot imagine that life could really go on without Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, and all the rest. Worst of all, they’re convinced that the welfare state has brought them freedom, epitomizing Goethe’s famous quote: None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
It wasn’t until after I went to FEE to work as program director in 1987 that I discovered the other half of the problem facing libertarians, one that actually is much bigger. That problem is the national-security state, the apparatus that was grafted onto our federal governmental system in the 1940s and, like the welfare state, without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.
Like the welfare state, the warfare state — or what President Eisenhower would call the military-industrial complex — revolutionized America’s governmental system. That’s because a national-security state is a totalitarian type of governmental structure. Consider any totalitarian regime, either today or in history: You will find that an enormous, permanent military establishment and highly secretive agencies are an inherent part of such regimes.
Why did America adopt a totalitarian type of governmental structure? U.S. officials said that it was necessary to do so in order to wage a “Cold War” against the Soviet Union, which had been America’s World War II partner and ally and which itself, as a totalitarian regime, was a national-security state. As soon as the Cold War was over, U.S. officials maintained, this revolutionary change in America could be brought to a close.
But when the Cold War ended some 25 years ago, America’s national-security state did not come to an end. Instead, it succeeded in refortifying itself as the most powerful branch of the federal government, one that the other three branches have deferred to since the very inception.
In the beginning were the regime-change operations in foreign countries, which involved coups, assassinations, bribery, embargoes, and invasions, most of which were conducted in the utmost secrecy.
The justification for all such actions, none of which are authorized by the Constitution, are what have become the two most important words in the lexicon of the American people: “national security.” No one knows what the term means, it’s never been defined, and it’s not mentioned in the Constitution. But it has long provided the justification for some of the most extraordinary totalitarian and destructive powers in history.
Such powers now include the power to assassinate people, including Americans, the power to round up people, including Americans, incarcerate them for life in a concentration camp or military dungeons and torture them, and the power to secretly monitor the activities of the American people and others and to keep secret files on them.
Does that sound like a free society to you? Or does it sound like a dark, totalitarian regime?
One problem for us advocates of liberty is that the national-security establishment is more deeply embedded into our society than even the welfare state. So many people are absolutely convinced that without a national-security state, United States would cease to exist or be conquered by what amounts to an ever-shifting array of official enemies. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real question is whether America and freedom in America can survive under a national-security state. What conservatives and even some libertarians just don’t get is that the national-security state constitutes a much graver threat to our freedom and well-being than the welfare state, both of which are bankrupting our nation with their out of control spending and borrowing.
But nothing is inevitable, and ideas on liberty have the potential of capturing people’s hearts and minds, which can bring the sudden shift toward a free society for which we libertarians long. If statists could foist a welfare state and a national-security state onto America, it’s possible for libertarians to restore a free-market, limited-government society to our land.
To that end, The Future of Freedom Foundation publishes its newest ebook: The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State. Purchase price: 99 cents. Hopefully, this ebook will help accelerate the day when a free, prosperous, harmonious, and peaceful society is restored to our land.