Liberty Asylum
Barbarous Relic 
Screenwriting Sanctuary
|
Liberty Asylum
Barbarous Relic
|
|
By George
Articles
Demagogue's Survival
Guide
|
Addicted to Big Government By George F. Smith Americans take pride in their offspring, Big Government. They're always clamoring for more laws to make things right. Even now, with soaring government incompetence, 80 percent of the people are eager to swap freedom for more government security measures, according to a recent USA Today Gallup Poll. [1] In his book, Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs says crisis and the proper "ideological climate" ratchet the growth of government. [2] The right climate is guaranteed by our government-controlled education system. When a crisis strikes, the people expect the government to "do something." The something it does is grab power. It smothers us with new or enlarged bureaucracies, redefines the Constitution, issues statutory constraints on economic activities, conscripts, raises taxes, seizes property, nationalizes industries, debases our currency, intimidates dissenters, and rounds up suspect individuals without due process. When the crisis passes, the state surrenders the power it seized -- but only part of it. Government never retrenches to the precrisis state. Government at all levels had been decreasing in power up until the 1850s. Historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel tells us the "United States, already one of the most prosperous and influential countries on the face of the earth, had practically the smallest, weakest State apparatus."[3] Then Lincoln and his assault on the South changed all that. Hummel sees the Civil War as both the realization and repudiation of the American Revolution. Black chattel slavery, the last major blight on liberty, was eliminated as an unintended consequence of the war. But gone also was the union of sovereign states, our check against tyrannical central authority. The whole country was now fair game for an aggrandizing government. "In the years [following the Civil War], coercive authority would wax and wane with year-to-year circumstances, but the long-term trend would be unmistakable. Henceforth there would be no more major victories of Liberty over Power," Hummel observes.[4] During and following the war, the federal government corrupted business entrepreneurship through subsidies, tariffs, land grants, and special privileges to cronies. Government's push for a transcontinental railroad illustrates this clearly. By giving the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads free land and cash loans for each mile of track they completed, the feds created incentives for shady undertakings. "The two lines spent little time choosing routes; they just laid track and cashed in," Burton Folsom notes. [5] To get more cash, they often built circuitous roads. They even laid track in winter on ice and snow that had to be rebuilt in spring, giving them double the subsidies. Lincoln's pal, William Tecumseh Sherman, led the charge in clearing away the Plains Indians so they wouldn't interfere with government's "Manifest Destiny." In Sherman's words: "We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress of the railroads." He told Ulysses S. Grant in 1866 that the Sioux must "feel the superior power of the Government." He ordered his troops to kill them all -- men, women, and children. He referred to his policy as the "final solution to the Indian problem," a lesson Hitler applied 70 years later. [6] The UP and CP received 44 million acres of free land and over $61 million in cash loans. When they completed the transcontinental railroad in 1869, both were almost bankrupt. Because they were more of a racket than an enterprise, with poor construction and wasteful routes, the roads had high fixed costs that customers had to bear. By contrast, James J. Hill built the Great Northern railroad without any government aid and ran it at a profit. He built slowly and helped develop the areas where he was laying track. For instance, he imported 7,000 cattle and gave them free of charge to settlers near his line. He used durable materials and chose his routes carefully, seeking short distances, low grades, and minimum curvatures. Hill "paid the Indians and other landowners free-market prices for rights-of-way across their property."[7] In 1893, the UP and CP went bankrupt, while Hill cut his costs another 13 percent from 1894 - 1895. [8] In short, government aid, which included genocide, attracted predators; predators bred inefficiency; inefficiency created consumer wrath; consumer wrath led to government regulation. [9] And government regulation builds up the leviathan state. Government meddling in other industries produced similar results. The guilt of some spread to all, and most people failed to distinguish between wealth-creators and crooks. We pay a price by not studying history more critically. Our founders caged government because they knew how dangerous it could be. The horrors of today and the century just ended have proved them right, but not enough of us are getting their message.
References [1]. The dangers of physical safety, Alan Keyes, [2]. Higgs, Robert, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 78. [3]. Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, Open Court, 1996, p. 350. [4]. Ibid, p. 359 [5]. Folsom, Burton, The Myth of the Robber Barons: A new look at the rise of big business in America, Young America's Foundation, Herdon, VA, 1996, p. 18. [6]. The Feds versus the Indians, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=99&sortorder=authorlast [7]. Ibid [8]. Folsom, p. 29 [9]. Ibid, p. 22
Next in State Treachery
|
Other Interesting Sites
Ron Paul's Classics of Libertarian Thought Greenspan's 1966 "Gold and Economic Freedom"
|
|
|