Everywhere you look, there are crises. Healthcare. Immigration. Social Security. Drugs. Violence. The Middle East. Afghanistan. Federal spending and debt.
There is a common denominator to all this mayhem, to this socialism, interventionism, and imperialism. It is, in a word, statism, the philosophy that views the government as a daddy or, even worse, a god, one that is charged with taking care of people, forcing them to be good, and keeping them “safe,” mostly from dangers that the government itself produces.
The statists have brought us a political and economic system that is based on the destruction of life, liberty, privacy, and property. Consider what massive statism has been brought to our nation:
- A system of mandatory charity that statists foisted on us in the 1930s, one that is based on using the political process to take money from people to whom it belongs in order to give it to people to whom it does not belong. That’s not charity, and it’s not compassion. That’s just plain old stealing, in the name of forcing us to be good and caring. There is no way to reconcile mandatory charity with the principles of a free society.
- A socialist healthcare system that statists introduced to America in the 1960s, in the form of Medicare and Medicaid. It succeeded in destroying the finest healthcare system in history, one that had been based largely on free-market principles. Rather than acknowledge the manifest failure of Medicare and Medicaid and ditching them, statists instead have moved us further down the road to a full-fledged socialist healthcare system, just like the ones in Cuba, North Korea, and China.
- The war on drugs, which statists introduced into our society decades ago, which is one of the most evil, immoral, destructive, and racially bigoted government programs in our nation’s history. It has brought violence, death, kidnapping, assassinations, drug gangs, corruption, ruination of countless lives, and the destruction of liberty and privacy.
- The war on immigrants, which is based on a socialist immigration-control system. It has produced death, suffering, misery, and corruption, not to mention an immigration police state in the American Southwest.
- Economic sanctions, embargoes, tariffs, and trade wars, which have brought death, suffering, and impoverishment to countless innocent people in foreign countries and have infringed the rights of economic liberty, freedom of travel, and freedom of association of the American people.
- The immoral, illegal, and unconstitutional perpetual wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and now extending into Africa, which have brought massive death and destruction to people living in those lands and produced the perpetual threat of terrorist retaliation, which has then been used to destroy civil liberties and privacy here at home. That’s how we have come to live under a regime that conducts secret surveillance of its own citizens and wields the military power to take them into custody, place them into military dungeons or detention centers, torture them, and even assassinate them.
- Ever-increasing gun-control measures, with the ultimate aim of disarming the American people entirely, thereby preventing them from defending themselves and their families from violent criminals and would-be political tyrants.
- The federal debt, which now exceeds $22 trillion, with $1 trillion being added to it every year. The ultimate outcome is predictable: massive confiscation of personal assets, with monetary debasement as its primary instrument, to finance the ever-burgeoning expenses of the statist welfare-warfare state.
What should we do about all this? Should we just accept that the statists have won and can never be defeated? Should we just embrace their tyranny and moral debauchery and pretend it’s freedom?
I say no! No direction is inevitable, especially when it involves a philosophy that produces killing, violence, failure, death, suffering, impoverishment, and destruction of liberty. I say we libertarians should continue speaking the truth and standing squarely for sound ideas on liberty. That’s the way we turn things around in our nation — through truth, principles, and ideals.
It’s just a matter of finding more Americans who say enough is enough — who conclude that the principles of the Declaration of Independence are worth fighting for — who determine that socialism, interventionism, and imperialism are not what they want for America any longer — and who decide that they are going to join up with us libertarians and support a philosophy of individual liberty, free markets, private property, and a limited-government republic.
Will you help us share our principled perspectives on liberty with more people in the coming year with a generous end-of-year donation to The Future of Freedom Foundation?
Yours for liberty,
Jacob Hornberger
P.S. Become a new member of our Freedom Club with a donation of $250 or more and you’ll receive my monthly video message on the principles of liberty and FFF activities and an autographed copy of our book Freedom Daily: Daily Quotations on Liberty.