One of the worst results of America’s welfare-warfare state way of life is that it has brought into existence one of the weakest, most frightened nations in the world. Think about that: Americans live under the most powerful government in history and yet we have one of the weakest, most frightened citizenries in the world.
That’s not a coincidence. As I wrote in my article The Stronger the Government, the Weaker the Nation, a big and powerful government produces a weak, frightened, and dependent nation.
Yesterday, I received an email from a rightwinger who is scared to death that Hispanic “invaders” are coming to get him in the state of Wyoming. He has convinced himself that all those immigrants who are crossing the border are planning to unleash a massive nationwide attack on the United States from within. He and several of his rightwing cohorts in Montana are especially terrified over the fact that they recently counted 60 Hispanics in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, who the rightwingers are convinced are the advance element of a massive attack that, they say, is going to take place on the Fourth of July this coming summer.
This is what the all-powerful welfare-warfare state has done to the American people. They live their lives under deep unfathomable and irrational fear, notwithstanding the fact that they live under the most powerful government in history. No matter how much they continue to trade away their freedoms and no matter how much power they continue to vest in their government in the quest to be kept “safe,” their fear only gets bigger and bigger.
I advised my rightwing correspondent to never visit my hometown of Laredo, Texas, which has a population of over 250,000, of which more than 95 percent are Hispanic. Scary!
My rightwing correspondent is especially concerned that most of the people who are crossing the border are “military-aged” young men. I pointed out to him that people who have the intestinal fortitude to leave their country, family, friends, language, culture, and legal system to come to a country where they are going to get abused, insulted, and humiliated are customarily younger people. It didn’t do any good. He is 100 percent convinced that those “military-aged” immigrants are secret members of an immigrant army that is “invading” America and planning on attacking and conquering our country, no doubt beginning in the state of Montana.
I have no doubts that when the Fourth of July comes, my rightwing correspondent will not be on the streets of Jackson Hole watching the parade. He will be safely ensconced in the basement of his home getting ready to surrender to the “invaders” when they come to get him, fall on his knees, and beg to be treated well.
Remember what happened after the 9/11 attacks. Americans were over-eager to trade away their liberties in the quest to be kept safe from the terrorists and the Muslims. That’s how we got the USA Patriot Act, the TSA takeover of the airports, the illegal telecom surveillance schemes, Gitmo, torture, assassination, indefinite detention of both Americans and foreigners, and full-scale, unconditional support for the wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq and the massive death and destruction that was unleashed on the people of those two countries. The deep fear of the Reds, which had undergirded the entire Cold War racket, easily morphed into a deep fear of the terrorists and the Muslims.
Today, there is a combined deep fear of the terrorists, Muslims, Reds, Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians, drug dealers, and, of course, illegal immigrants. The good news is that the deep fear of the North Vietnamese Reds, which undergirded the Vietnam War, seems to have dissipated somewhat.
And then there is the fear that people will lose their Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other welfare-state largess. Americans are 100 percent convinced that without their socialism, people would be dying in the streets. On the warfare side of things, people are scared to death that they might lose their military bases and military projects on which they have become economically and psychologically dependent.
In the meantime, many citizens, especially writers of editorial and op-eds in the mainstream press, get their courage vicariously through the government. The “tougher” the government, the braver they feel. They say that “we” have to “do something” to stop Iran, Russia, China, or whoever happens to be the boogeyman of the day. By “we,” of course, they mean U.S. troops. The more they advocate foreign military interventionism, the braver they feel.
Like I say, a powerful government and a very weak nation.
How do we restore a strong, fearless, independent nation? There is only one way: Weaken the federal government by dismantling the entire welfare state and the national-security state (i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, the military-industrial complex, and their vast empire of domestic and foreign military bases) and restoring a nation based on freedom, free markets, voluntary charity, and a limited-government republic with just a small, basic military force. As our 19th-century ancestors understood, that’s how you get a nation of strong, fearless, independent, charitable, and self-reliant people.