Stay Afraid: It Sustains The Welfare-Warfare State - The Pentagon, The CIA, And The U.S. Overseas Military Empire
20 February 2013
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Are you pacing the floors? Are you taking anxiety
medication? Are you scared to death?
Well, you should be doing all of the above. Be afraid.
The entire world is going to collapse. Sequestration
day is upon us.
This is really hilarious. Have you noticed that the
mainstream statist editorial writers and commentators
have gone silent with all their horrible predictions
as to how the world is going to come to an end if the
sequestration takes place? That's because a couple of
weeks ago they came to the realization that a deal to
avoid the sequestration might not be cut, in which
case the sequestration would really happen. That's
when they decided that in the abundance of precaution,
they had been stop printing all those scary
predictions.
You see, the scary scenarios are part of the strategy
to keep federal spending and federal debt soaring. If
they can scare people into thinking that disaster is
going to strike if federal spending is reduced, then
frightened Americans will contact their congressmen
and plead, "Please, please, Mr. Congressman. Please do
not reduce federal spending. I am so scared of what is
going to happen if you do."
I still think that a last-minute deal might be entered
into, for no other reason than that Washington, D.C.,
statists, both Republicans and Democrats, are
themselves scared to death, not because of the
sequestration but because people might discover that
nothing bad is going to happen when the sequestration
goes through. When nothing bad happens, what's going
to happen to all the scary scenarios that the statists
will paint about reducing federal spending in the
future, such as when the debt ceiling debate takes
place?
The whole thing is one of the most ridiculous things
I've ever seen. They're not even cutting overall
federal spending. They're spending more in 2013 than
they spent in 2012. How is that a cut? D.C.
bureaucrats aren't getting as big an increase in their
budgets as they want and they call that a "cut" even
though they're getting more than they got last year.
And tthey're going to the warpath, doing what they
always do in such situations: engage in a strategy of
fear-mongering and blackmail.
Everyone knows about "waste, fraud, and abuse" in
federal programs, right? Well, wouldn't you think that
this would be an excellent opportunity to get rid of
the "waste, fraud, and abuse"? Well, that's not what
they're doing. Instead, the bureaucrats, with the full
support of the politicians, are picking out the things
they think are most important to the American people
and announcing that that's what they're eliminating or
reducing. The message is: "Give us the increase we
want or pay the price." It's a war that the
bureaucrats are waging against the American taxpayers.
The entire welfare-warfare state way of life is
founded on fear. The idea has always been that if
federal officials can keep Americans scared, then
Americans will resist libertarian efforts to restore a
free society to our land through the dismantling of
the welfare-warfare state. No one can deny that the
federal fear-mongering has been an enormous success.
The American people are among the most fearful people
in the world.
Consider the welfare state. Most everyone in the
country is inculcated with a deep fear of what would
happen if welfare-state programs, including Social
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, were repealed.
People would be dying in the streets! There would be
mass starvation! Millions would be dying of untreated
illnesses and diseases! No one would care. Dog eat
dog! Oh, thank goodness for the welfare state. We'd
all die without it.
Consider the warfare state. Most everyone in the
country is inculcated with a deep fear of what would
happen if the Pentagon, the CIA, and the U.S. overseas
military empire were dismantled. Oh my gosh! Millions
of terrorists would cross the oceans in transport
ships and invade and conquer America, running the
Interstate Highway System and the public schools. And
if they didn't, the communists surely would! Or the
drug dealers! Or, most scary of all, the illegal
aliens! Aagh!!!
The Pentagon and the CIA are masters at conjuring up
fearful scenarios to keep people afraid. Think back to
the Cold War, when they kept Americans fearful over
the so-called missile gap, where they falsely
maintained that the Soviet Union was ahead of the
United States in nuclear missiles.
And if they have trouble coming up with scary
imaginary scenarios, they just go out and produce
them, as they did with anti-American terrorism. They
go out and poke a bunch of hornets' nests and then
when there is terrorist retaliation, they exclaim,
"We're innocent! We didn't do anything! The terrorists
are coming to get you! National security is at stake!
You need us to keep you safe. Keep us around and, even
better, give us more money."
Consider the drug war. Most everyone in the country is
inculcated with a deep fear of drug legalization. No
one could resist the lure of drugs. The entire country
would immediately fall into a drug-induced stupor,
which would then enable the terrorists, communists,
drug dealers, and illegal aliens to invade and occupy
the country (see previous paragraph). Reefer madness,
cocaine madness, heroin madness, and meth madness
would sweep across the land. No one would be working
anymore. Everyone would go on welfare.
Consider federal spending. If we don't lift the debt
ceiling, economic Armageddon will take place. America
will fall into the ocean. Everyone will die.
It is all so patently ridiculous, but all so necessary
to keep people frightened. Fear is the necessary
prerequisite to maintaining a giant socialist,
interventionist, imperialist apparatus in a
representative democracy. Otherwise, if people were to
lose their fear, they quite rationally might ask, "Why
do we need the welfare-warfare state? Why shouldn't we
experience a free society by dismantling all this
statist junk?"
The best thing that could ever happen to America is a
repeal of all federal welfare-state programs and all
warfare-state programs as well as the taxes that fund
them, including the income tax. Sure, people working
in the federal sector would be dislocated but that's
not a bad thing. They would orient toward the private
sector, where people would be creating new economic
opportunities with the money that they would now be
free to keep. And all those dislocated companies and
workers would now be in the private, productive sector
rather than the public, parasitic sector.
What's the solution to all this statism?
Libertarianism, plus a nation of people who are not
gripped by fear. To paraphrase Franklin Roosevelt, the
only thing we need to do is conquer fear itself,
especially fear inculcated by the welfare-warfare
state.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The
Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised
in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics
from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree
from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney
for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct
professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught
law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the
practice of law to become director of programs at the
Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced
freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all
across the country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto
and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a
regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show
Freedom Watch. View these interviews at
LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.
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