455 Antonin Scalia, from a speech in Alexandria, Virginia, April 9, 2008.
456 Antonin Scalia, speech at Marquette University, March 13, 2001.
Chapter 66: Socialism Run Amok
With the most important pieces of progressivism in place before World War II, there remained but two more primary goals—socializing the healthcare system, and the money supply.
Recognizing the step-by-step corruption of the American system helps explain the pattern of ruin that all nations have suffered. Just as soon as the ruling powers discover how to rob from the national treasury, they impose the forces of regulation to support that thievery. It becomes just a matter of time before a country caves from within. Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia, Africa, Australia, the U.S., and all others slouching toward socialism did or will in the near future face the same demise if the people fail to wrest back full control of their governments.
The New Deal era in the U.S. accelerated America’s problems as massive government bailouts were used to create a welfare class numbering in the many millions. To support the handout, the government had to chip away at the property rights of others (higher taxes) to fulfill their political promises. And with that, the chains that once bound down the federal government turned to bind down the people.
Beyond the Point of No Return
Now we shift gears to look at the way socialism perpetuates itself in today’s world. It pins a nation beneath massive promises to take care of the people by taking more from the “haves”—
1.National health care. This is the quickest route to win support for a larger and more intrusive government. When desperation justifies it, a nation will vote away their liberty for another handout. Those thinking like socialists shrug and say, “why not?” And that is how the socialists keep the flewage457 flowing.
2.State welfare. This is unemployment benefits, pensions, Social Security, school lunches, publicly-subsidized transportation and utilities, forced hiring practices, meddling in the market, etc.
3.National banking system. Controlling the money is how the socialists control the government and its power, as will be shown.
Learning To Recognize Socialism
Name two abuses of States’ rights imposed by the 14th Amendment. How do these remove political power from the people?
Some Americans dismiss the abuse of the 16th Amendment with, “But look at all the good they’ve done!” What problems do we have today that the Founders’ original tax formula would have prevented? Would the U.S. have $17 trillion in debt and $120 trillion in liabilities if Article 1.2.3 and Article 1.9.4 were intact?
Why did the Founders empower the legislatures to hire and fire the senators? Do senators who betray their parties need to worry much about being voted out? Why not? Do most voters have very long memories? What added watch dog would be let loose on senators if the 17th Amendment was repealed?
Washington, D.C. was supposed to remain politically neutral. Is it? Why is giving federal representation to a city dangerous?
What dangerous precedent did the 25th Amendment establish as happened with Ford and Rockefeller?
Does today’s Supreme Court apply or interpret the Constitution? Jefferson warned that the Court would become a super-legislature. Did it? What did he want to reign in the Court?
Which court case involving steamboats gave the government power to regulate whatever it pleased?
Which court case gave Congress its blank check permission to raise taxes for anything it pleased?
Which court case involving State wages and rules destroyed the 10th Amendment?
Which court case involving property destroyed the 5th Amendment?
What are the two methods to dismantle the Constitution?
What revolution did Friedrich Nietzsche launch?
Who influenced the law schools to abandon Constitutional law in favor of this casebook method? What is casebook law?
What is legal “realism”? “Formalism”? Who pushed “realism”?
What did Antonin Scalia mean by “a dead Constitution”?
Part XI--THE LAST TEMPTATION, PART 1: COMPULSORY CARE
“The surest path to dictatorship is braced with the promises of universal care.”
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457 Flewage: A mass of disgusting waste that flies past the people’s attention with such velocity they can’t recognize it for what it is, and blithely assume its place and importance is being handled by somebody else, and let it go by unchallenged—Author.
Chapter 67: The Last Temptation: Compulsory Care
The number-one contrivance in the socialists’ bag of tricks is popular, enticing, addictive, and fools most of the people most of the time.
The most important survival lesson from history is this: Having problems in common always works—having things in common doesn’t. From Rome’s free bread to Jamestown’s common storehouse, each attempt at “all things in common” has failed.
Whenever the seven pillars of socialism are applied to basic welfare needs, an amazing breakdown of judgment overwhelms common sense.
First, welfare cultivates a sense of entitlement. Recipients become addicted to the regular and timely handout, and adopt assorted and blurred conclusions that, somehow, society owes them everything—food, clothing, medicine, shelter, employment, disability help, retirement, disaster relief, etc.—they eventually demand it as a right.
Second, welfare is circular. As the payouts grow, the tax burden on everyone else also grows. With shrinking profits, businesses suffer and turn to cutting back and laying off workers. The unemployed are then let loose into a community with no income source, so they go to the government offices and apply for welfare. Increased welfare rolls require more funding, so, taxes must rise, and that makes more unemployed, and it repeats—it’s a snake eating its tail.
Third, state welfare lifts the weight of personal responsibility and corrupts the innate sense of compassion from individuals. This puts the chore of caring for the needy right on the doorstep of that innocuous, faceless and soulless entity called government.
Fourth, state welfare leaves the poor with little incentive to improve their situation because their basic needs are being met. A free ride through life doesn’t help people in the long run—it destroys their greatest capacity to learn and grow. That’s what Benjamin Franklin discovered during his difficult years in Europe—
Chapter 68: Franklin Speaks ...
Benjamin Franklin did more than talk about welfare—he lived it.
Benjamin Franklin was a “have not” in England for several years. He was an eye witness to compulsory welfare in action—and had a lot to say about its failings.
Writing to his friend, Franklin said, “I have long been of your opinion, that your legal provision for the poor [in England] is a very great evil, operating as it does to the encouragement of idleness. We have followed your example, and begin now to see our error, and, I hope, shall reform it.”458
Addictive Welfare Not Natural
The Christian ideals of helping your neighbor were already a part of the American culture in the 1700s. Franklin and the Founders believed helping others was not someone else’s job, it was everyone’s. But it must be dealt with in the correct way, Franklin said—
“To relieve the misfortune of our fellow creatures is concurring with the Deity; it is godlike; but, if we provide encouragement for laziness, and supports for folly, may we not be found fighting against the order of God and Nature, which perhaps has appointed want and misery as the proper punishments for, and cautions against, as well as necessary consequences of, idleness and extravagance? Whenever we attempt to amend the scheme of Providence, and to interfere with the government of the world, we had need be very circumspect, lest we do more harm than good.”459
Helping, Not Hurting
Franklin
said the poor are not led out of their problems by giving them easy handouts. The goal must be to help them help themselves until they are on their own feet. Too much help achieves precisely the opposite.
“I am for doing good to the poor,” Franklin said, “but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
Four Flaws in State Welfare
Franklin taught that state welfare is always counterproductive. His personal experience led him to identify four major flaws:
Avoids Real Problem: State welfare that helps a drunk indulge in more drunkenness hasn’t solved any problem at all. It hasn’t fixed a thing. It only perpetuates those failings that already existed in the first place.460
Creates Dependency: State welfare that makes people dependent on others has also failed to get them back on their own feet. The goal, Franklin said, is always to help them become dependent on no one but themselves and their own private work ethic.461
Permanently Debilitating: State welfare engenders a spirit of entitlement. The entitlement society has become a new class in American society that is self-perpetuating, spawning follow-on recipients who grow up believing that society owes them everything. It’s a new segment of desperately dependent citizens whose daily work is to “work the system,” and make a comfortable living at that.462
Ruins Initiative: Welfare that numbs any yearning to strive toward excellence and personal progression consigns to the ash heap of history untold millions of otherwise productive people. The wrong kind of help turns people’s temporary setbacks into permanent failings of wasted dreams and unfulfilled potentials. When initiative dies, so die a million creative ideas that had the potential of helping countless others in ways unimaginable.463
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458 Smyth, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 10 p. 64.
459 Ibid., p. 135.
460 Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 538.
461 Ibid., p. 123.
462 Ibid., Vol. 3, pp. 135-36.
463 Ibid., p. 135.
Chapter 69: Bastiat speaks ...
Reckless welfare corrupts everyone and everything.
Frederic Bastiat was a gifted writer who could clarify in simple terms an amazing array of complex ideas. He issued the following cautions about welfare in 1848, the same year Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto. Bastiat warned that Marx and Engel’s ideas about levelling are old, tired and dangerous traps that ruin people and destroy economies—
“[The socialists declare] that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens, that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; ...that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth.
“Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? ... But is it possible? ... Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary?
“Finally ...we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: ‘Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs.’ Everyone’s effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success.”464
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464 Frederic Bastiat, Justice and Fraternity, in Journal des Économistes, June 15, 1848, p. 319.
Chapter 70: The Twisted Roots of Modern Welfare
Several centuries before Franklin and Bastiat, the foundations for state welfare were laid in the wake of a deadly plague. It was a desperate time in the 1300s—what was a king to do?
The Black Death did more than kill millions of people around the world. It also inadvertently killed Europe’s fabric of private compassion, a safety net for the needy that had been developing for many centuries. This fascinating tale of twisting intrigue, collapse, and interwoven collisions of freedom and force had its beginning after Rome collapsed.
A Millennia of Good Works
Soon after the fall of Rome in A.D. 476, various religious aid societies took on the role of civic humanitarians for Europe. They lent a helping hand at the most intimate levels of people’s lives—helping the needy, keeping order, attending to marriages, baptisms, child births, burials, local elections, and giving food, shelter, clothing, financial aid, sometimes employment, sometimes education, and sometimes protection and public safety. Not all at first, but over time, society’s fabric grew strong enough to bear the burdens of caring for one another voluntarily.
As the centuries passed, these activities were institutionalized in the Roman Catholic Church and in its thousands of representative parishes scattered all over Europe.
Journeying toward these well-propertied stone edifices, the faithful gathered to petition God’s clerics to have their eternities massaged and secured, and their mortal probations cleansed of impurities—for which they were willing to pay a tithe. These accumulated funds provided food for the poor and helped expand Church-owned estates, influence, and ever-increasing wealth.
Church Infighting Leaves a Lasting Weakness
At the very root of modern-day welfare is a break in relations between the Roman Catholic Church and its flocks, starting in the 1300s. It began with the new pope, Clement V, a Frenchman who took office in 1305.
With Rome engaged in local uprisings, Clement V decided the city was dangerous to live in, and chose to stay at Avignon, south of ancient France. The Roman cardinals wanted him to move to Rome for fear he was vulnerable to corruption and collusion with the French king. Clement V refused, and so began the “Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy.” The schism lasted through 67 years and seven successive popes until 1376.
Black Death Changes Society
Meanwhile, King Edward III had a complete disaster on his hands and didn’t know what to do. The Black Death had recently indulged its horrific rampage from A.D. 1348-1350, taking millions of lives from all across the continent. England suffered tens of thousands dead, 30-40 percent in most villages, and more than 80 percent in others.465 London lost at least 35,000 of its 60,000 inhabitants.466
Sporadic outbreaks of the plague that followed are said to have precipitated a death toll of 50 million out of an estimated 80 million in Europe. Worldwide, perhaps as many as 100 million died.467
Across the grassy knolls of England’s farmlands, landowners found themselves in a terrible strait. A significant portion of the farmhands who had reliably worked the land year after year were now dead. They were the backbone of England’s agricultural prosperity. Without their help, much of the farmland went fallow. Herds of cattle wandered untended. Farm production fell off, food prices rose, and landowners were left desperate to make an income.
To entice those few workers who were available, landowners competed against each other by offering higher wages, more benefits, and p
romises of future prosperity. They were good capitalists and passed along these higher wage costs in the form of higher food prices. So began a period of medieval inflation.
Increasing food costs wasn’t helping King Edward rebuild the country. As he went groping about for some workable solutions, he detested the sight of relatively healthy people loafing around the street corners, begging for handouts. At a time when farm help was so desperately needed it was outrageous to let capable laborers stand about living off the dole and doing nothing.
As the plague abated in 1349 and 1350, King Edward dealt with the loafers by passing laws that forced them to go to work—or else. He also tried to force wages and food prices back to the same levels before the plague. These changes gave temporary help but not a permanent fix. More laws were added to prevent workers from moving around to other jobs, a transience that was creating havoc.
Schism in Church Mortally Wounds Compassion
A second round of Church discord was triggered in 1378 when a fight over divine authority broke out in Rome. In protest, the newest pope, Gregory XI, packed his bags and returned to France. For 30 more years the French popes resisted any form of Roman authority, but unlike the previous schism, this time, almost everyone in Europe considered the French popes to be illegitimate and in the wrong.
The battle for authority was finally settled at the Council of Constance in 1414-1418. Rome won the tug-of-war, and the papacy was returned to its historic home in Italy.
Legacy of Holy Opulence
For centuries after Rome’s fall, the Church worked to fortify its presence wherever it could with massive landholdings, large stone cathedrals, and an involvement in everyone’s day-to-day affairs. Over time numerous social imbalances appeared such as many of the nuns and clergy enjoying a standard of living far superior to that of the impoverished masses. The poor watched this with envy and discontent. Opulence in the name of Jesus became a dangerous sore spot, and reformers started rallying support for change. They challenged the Church to return to its more humble roots and practice that universal simplicity as originally taught by Jesus.
The Naked Socialist Page 39