Are Republicans capable of learning and heeding the lessons of history, economics and common sense, and the lessons of past Republicans' abandonment of the Founders' principles of limited government? Well, they had better learn quickly, and realize that repealing every policy of government interventionism is the only way to reverse the moral decline and economic impoverishment into which our politicians have brought us for the past century.
So far, the Republicans and conservatives seem to have the same kind of reluctance to reduce government's intrusions as do the left.
For instance, after his 1980 election as president, Ronald Reagan promised to eliminate the Department of Education and Department of Energy because he recognized that socialism and federal intrusions into education and energy increase bureaucracy, and reduce the quality of education and create misallocation of energy resources, and he was exactly right. But did Reagan fulfill his promise? No.
Reagan cut taxes, but he also raised taxes, on business and capital gains, and through higher Social Security taxes, higher fees, plugging loopholes, and other methods, according to economists Murray Rothbard and Sheldon Richman.
And after the 1994 Republican Revolution, the Republicans, rushed into Washington to reverse the Clinton Big Government partying, caved and kowtowed to Democrats and special interests in a new race to outspend the Clinton Democrats. After 2000, the Bush "compassionate conservatives" continued the trend of ever-increasing socialism and government spending, waste and debts.
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There are two aspects to the root of problem: human nature, and the system of centralism.
With so many of our politicians, as soon as they get to Washington and get absorbed into a system of such huge centralized power and control, they can't seem to control themselves with such power – even the most noble amongst us. The power just mesmerizes them, unfortunately.
And systemically, for the past century the U.S. government has become a Leviathan socialist regime, particularly with such regressive institutions as President Wilson's income tax and Federal Reserve, and the welfare-state interventionist schemes of FDR's Social Security and LBJ's Medicare. And the policies of Wilson-Progressive foreign interventionism continue to this day.
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Not unexpectedly, we have already seen the Republicans' lack of understanding from their House Pledge to America, which promises to repeal ObamaCare but replace it with a little less socialism (but enough to get reelected). Alas, if only they could recognize the main causes of the American medical system's high costs and dysfunctions – the government intrusions, mandates, bureaucracy, taxes, licensure and regulations already in place – then they might see the light of the real solution: repealing all those initial intrusions, cutting those chains of government-imposed bondage and letting the people be free to control their own medical associations and contracts. Then the costs will come down, way down, and private individuals and organizations will then additionally be able to afford to help those in need, like it used to be before FDR arrived and usurped that freedom away.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's usurpations were through his taking advantage of the utter despair and vulnerability that many Americans suffered following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, even though he campaigned on a platform of reducing the burdens that the Hoover Administration had placed on Americans and their businesses that were Hoover's quick, short-term fixes for the damage that occurred following the Crash. FDR's grandiose interventions laid the groundwork for the further destruction we are now suffering.
The Truth about Social Security
The truth is, Social Security is not the "retirement account" that many Americans think it is. It is a real-time redistribution of wealth scheme, in which the younger workers' paychecks are siphoned by the federal government and redistributed to retired people (and others). FDR manipulated the panic and vulnerability of many Americans and literally removed actual independence and prosperity from Americans' retirements in this deceptive scheme. FDR's other transgressions included new intrusive bureaus and mandates, and higher confiscations of the fruits of Americans' labor.
These socialist programs helped FDR to get reelected, and help our current politicians get reelected, as they promise the voters, "I won't touch Social Security." But while short-term fixes really help the politicians' self-interests, government-mandated and administered socialist programs are immoral and have disastrous long-term consequences.
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Now, if Americans were to finally accept the truth about Social Security and end that program, then that would probably terrify many Americans with the thought of losing their only means of sustenance. That is why the income tax would also have to end. The removal of income and Social Security taxes will enable people who are still working to care for their elderly family members. These actions, though initially difficult, would be the moral and practical way of saving Americans' ability to plan their retirement years.
Unfortunately, people whose paychecks were siphoned by the central planners in Washington for many decades may just have to accept those losses. The Social Security system is inherently flawed, and we need to deal with that reality now, because kicking the can will only make things even more difficult for future generations, whereas dealing with it now will free future generations and their ability to care for themselves and their families.
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The Federal Reserve
In 1913, the Federal Reserve was created, turning America from a mainly laissez-faire economy into one of "centralized statism," as Rothbard explained. The Fed was a product of President Wilson and the Progressive movement. Progressives over the past century have shown a love for government and for State control over private economic matters, including money, one of our most important commodities.
Unfortunately, the mainstream pundits and economists blamed laissez-faire economic freedom for the Crash of u201829, as well as the downturn of 2008, even though both crashes were actually caused by the government intrusions into private economic matters that Congress and presidents installed prior to those points. In fact, the Federal Reserve itself was created by interventionists in 1913 as a solution for the business cycles – the booms and busts – and the panics and depressions that were actually caused by previous government interventions.
With the 2008-2010 bailouts and stimulus, the passage of medical care usurpations and the Dodd financial regulatory bill, and with the Federal Reserve's obsessive authoritarian top-down micromanaging of the economy and distorting the markets, we have seen up close how literally delirious our government bureaucrats really are.
A good example of the pathology of centralized statism is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's hinting at further interventionism. Bernanke, referred to by economist Robert Wenzel as a "mad scientist," may be printing more money, with the hope that it will decrease the unemployment rate. Wenzel describes this as "going nuclear," and says that Bernanke is using new "tools" to attempt to manipulate monetary and economic matters, while ignoring the old tools used by most other Fed chairmen. Bernanke's first new tool, interest on excess reserves, has resulted in a trillion dollars in excess reserves and is out of control, according to Wenzel. And Bernanke has more new tools, such as selling Treasury securities to money market funds, to fix the first out-of-control tool, and Wenzel predicts that any new flood of money printing will lead to further instability and the "dagger" of hyperinflation.
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Rothbard noted that the Fed's money printing not only causes the devaluing of the currency and thus effects in inflation, the rise in prices of everyday goods, but is a system whereby the money printers and early receivers of the newly printed money (the big banks) are expropriating assets from the later receivers (particularly those on fixed incomes), a "massive scheme of hidden redistribution."
The new Congress needs to take a serious look at the entire authoritarian centralized Federal Reserve system, and needs to consider competitive alternatives in banking and currency. Like Social Security and all other forms of centralized government interventionism, the Federal Reserve is inherently flawed. Only free markets under the Rule of Law can adequately adjust to the changes in economic activities, while bureaucratic monetary central planners and government-protected bank cartels stifle those factors. Socialist central planning intrusions of government interventionism in money and banking in fact undermines the Rule of Law, and thus it should be no wonder that such a system has led to so much fraud and corruption at this time.
Foreign Interventionism
For decades, the U.S. government has been engaged in many acts of interventionism in other countries' affairs, and has expanded its various government apparatus in foreign territories.
Unlike entrepreneurs in the private sector, who must compete through the structure of profit and loss in the free market and based on the private producer's ability to allocate scarce resources, the government bureaucrat lacks the incentive of profit and loss and instead relies on central planning committees and agencies and whose main goal, stated or not, is the survival and expansion of the bureaucracy. Unlike private businesses that must follow the Rule of Law and must respect the property rights of others and may not trespass, governments do not seem bound by the same rules. And because the government bureaucrat is given a monopoly that the citizenry are compelled to patronize without any alternative choices, the expansion of government, its bureaus and the bureaucrats' power become the main incentives of the government bureaucrat. And this is the case in foreign policy as well as domestic policy.
For the past decade, the federal defense bureaucrats have given us more government, more bureaucracy and more intrusions at home and abroad. Iraq is now under Sharia Law, and Afghanistan is a mess. And Americans are becoming increasingly uneasy with the additional intrusions – not just inconveniences, but intrusions, groping pat-downs and virtual strip searches – at American airports.
Meanwhile, some people have raised the point that the hundreds of U.S. military bases and other government apparatus on foreign territories since World War II have been serious provocations, particularly in Middle Eastern countries.
Likewise, Americans probably would react negatively if President Obama were to sign an agreement with China to install Chinese military bases in Texas or Montana.
That hypothetical is a fair comparison, because the idea of national sovereignty is important. The U.S. government is not the Government of the World, and its various apparatus on other countries' territories are intrusions, and clearly go against the Founders' original intent.
Conclusion
The Founding Fathers would never have approved of any redistribution schemes that involved the taking of any individual's wealth or property. They would have recognized that as theft, pure and simple. Most of the Founders were against fiat paper money and centralized banking, and they certainly would not have approved of hundreds of U.S. military bases and other U.S. government apparatus on other countries' territories or the U.S. government involving itself in other countries' affairs. The Founders believed that governments must not violate the liberty or property of its own citizens or of those in foreign countries, and believed that governments must behave under the Rule of Law.
With their regained control in Washington, Republicans had better get back to the Founders' principles of Liberty and limited government. If the politicians' recklessness and utter violations of the Rule of Law continue too much longer, then secession of states might have to be the next alternative.
