Upon reading my article of yesterday about master worrywart Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the retired head of the NSA, a longtime supporter of The Future of Freedom Foundation asked how it would ever be possible to bring down an omnipotent governmental structure like a national-security state and replace it with our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.
It’s a great question. After all, no one can expect the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and their massive army of well-heeled “defense” contractors to voluntarily dissolve and go peacefully into the night.
Moreover, no one would ever expect the thousands of cities and towns across America that are dependent on military bases and military largess to eagerly give up their military dole.
Also, a violent revolution is out of the question, given the massive, overwhelming power of the military-intelligence establishment and, equally important, the willingness to use that power against American citizens to maintain itself in existence.
Given all this, is the point that I have long made that we need to dismantle the national-security establishment and restore a limited-government republic in order to achieve a free society utterly futile? Am I engaging in nothing more than fanciful thinking? Are we consigned to forever live our lives under a totalitarian-like governmental structure, one that wields omnipotent, non-reviewable powers like assassination, torture, indefinite detention, invasions, occupations, and wars of aggression, one that is getting us ever closer to the prospect of all-out nuclear war?
The answer to all those questions is: No.
There is a reason why totalitarian dictatorships shut down people who publicly advocate liberty. Think North Korea or China. The regimes in those two countries wield omnipotent power, just as the U.S. national-security state does. One big difference between those two nations and the United States is that North Korean and Chinese citizens cannot own guns. Total gun control is built into the system, which ensures that the citizenry will never be able to violently revolt against their regime.
Therefore, from all appearances, the North Korean and Chinese regimes have absolutely nothing to worry about. Their hold on power is seemingly 100 percent secure.
Yet, notice something important: Neither regime will permit people to express the types of ideas I expressed yesterday in my article. If people in those two countries publicly expresses the notion that their own national-security state governmental structure should be dismantled in favor of a limited-government republic, they will be immediately arrested, incarcerated indefinitely, or even assassinated.
The question though is, Why? Why do they feel the need to shut people down for expressing freedom ideas, given that the regimes have total power over the citizenry? What could they possibly fear, especially given that they have all the guns in society?
They fear the power of ideas on liberty. They know that ideas on liberty can inflame the hearts and minds of people and spread like wildfire across society. They know that that type of wildfire, if not contained, has the potential of bringing down even regimes that wield omnipotent power over the nation.
What we need here in the United States is a critical mass of people who are passionately committed to the dismantling of the national-security state and the restoration of our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic. Once that critical mass of people who want freedom is reached, they will figure out how to bring bring the free society into existence. Therefore, we should instead continue focusing on the dissemination of sound, principled ideas on liberty, with the aim of arriving at that critical mass of people who want freedom.