“Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Indeed, it is a part of the general patterns of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.”
Can you guess the author of the above quote? While it’s insightful to know who said this, he would agree I’m sure that it’s more important to understand the message; to understand that we need to work backwards, starting with the phrase regarding the fear of peace. Why would anyone fear peace, especially the leaders of our country?
Power is the currency of politicians who are not exactly working to the benefit of their constituents but for their own advancement. For them, crisis is not a problem, it’s an opportunity. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s Chief-of-Staff, once advised “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Can you imagine in the absence of any crisis what such politicians would do? You don’t need imagination, just observation – they would create one.
This phenomenon is not something new; try the Spanish American War, followed soon thereafter by US entry into the Great War, which in effect was the cause of WWII, which led to the Korean War, then the Viet Nam War, then the Iraqi Wars, and the never ending Afghanistan War. Wars are expensive, so little wonder that Ron Paul once observed that “It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.” If you’re politicians playing this bloody game, you need a big bank, and so the Federal Reserve is there for you.
The author of the opening quote was Five Star General Douglas McArthur, who served in all the above wars through to and including the Korean War. He was one of only five generals to ever rise to the rank of General of the Army, clearly a man we can rely on to know what he’s talking about.
So how did a republic devolve into a statist organism capable of manipulating such a carefully crafted balance of power, designed to prevent the realization of such a distorted vision of purpose from peaceful productivity to a war machine? It was an evolutionary process, so it did take time. It can be argued that the root of this evil was sown in the immoral neglect allowing slavery to continue despite our revolution against tyranny, eventually leading to the ultimate crisis of the Civil War, out of which ashes emerged a different nation whose political structure was tragically altered toward more centralized power, ironically the key development for statism to repress the very liberty for which the war was fought.
In his famous 1952 article entitled “The Rise of Empire” Garet Garrett, American journalist, outlined what he called the “Hallmarks of Empire”, summarized as the dominance of executive power, subordination of domestic policy to foreign policy, ascendancy of the military, development of foreign satellite or proxy regimes, and vaunting and fear.
While the above have become obvious in our current politics it is the last that illustrates the tragic end game of The Warfare State. It’s about a nation whose leaders spun and sold the illusion of a manifest destiny but now finds itself a victim of its own misguided policy, having become the world’s policeman at the expense of its own liberty, security and economic wellbeing.
While it was not inevitable that our Republic would descend into imperialism, it is obvious that it has. Until Americans realize that Statism thrives on war, whereas a truly free country thrives on peace and prosperity, we are doomed to endless wars. These wars are sold to us like Crusades where sold to Christian Europe to free the Holy Land, when in fact it was all about looting and pillage; now it’s really about things like oil, preservation of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, spreading democracy, throw in an occasional humanitarian cause, nation building, catering to despotic allies…….any interventionist cause and fabricated crisis that provides the opportunity to grab more power.
Interventionism is bred into both of our major political parties although their methods at times differ as some work toward the Welfare State to harvest their power, a topic for another post; regardless of their labels and methods these politicians are the same, so to get power you need a crisis, and if there isn’t one create it, if there is one don’t let it go to waste.
If that sounds like gang talk, well it is; listen to a Polish lawyer, author, and political philosopher who went through the pain of living under such a gang and working for the liberation from one of the biggest imperial powers in Europe known as the USSR. “What makes the difference between a gang and a state is the belief that there is a difference between a gang and a state.” Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
Libera Voce 