This article was originally published by George Ford Smith at The Mises Institute.
Wars are mass murder, massive theft, and unrelenting propaganda. In this country, they are lucrative overseas entanglements, as the government diverts loot from taxpayers to the war industry. They’re also perpetual, as war embellishes the sanctity of the state, as well as providing grounds for increased plunder of its population. Wars are government as Houdini—drawing attention to the bloody far-away while diverting attention to the corrupt close-at-hand. For the victor, the propaganda is inked as truth in the history books. War is the health of the state, Randolph Bourne concluded, but not for the people under it:
In the freest of republics as well as in the most tyrannical of empires, all foreign policy, the diplomatic negotiations which produce or forestall war, are equally the private property of the Executive part of the Government, and are equally exposed to no check whatever from popular bodies, or the people voting as a mass themselves.
Government-controlled monetary policy is a cover for counterfeiting, an insidious form of taxation that creates gross economic distortions and inequalities. Presidential elections are extravagant contests between straw men owned by those behind the throne. Formal education is indoctrination into dominant narratives. The US Constitution is a feel-good distraction from the larceny and depravity of the political class.
Blogger J.D. Breen has published a brief history of the 21st century in two parts (here and here). “As last century was launched when the Maine sank in Havana harbor, this one turned when the Twin Towers were toppled. . . . The remnants of the U.S. Constitution went in the shredder.” Shocking, but not surprising, he said, given the destruction wrought by US intervention in Muslim countries over the decades.
But government, as we’ve learned, is never accountable for wrongdoing. If it was, it would imply the state is fallible, a blasphemous idea.
Instead of blaming their own covert coups and military misadventures, government officials told us “the terrorists hated us for our freedoms”. So to keep us safe, they stripped more of them away.
They invaded countries they’d already wanted to conquer, cracked down on the one they already ruled, and counterfeited trillions of new currency so we could pay for their “mistakes”.
According to a Brown University report, the estimated total cost of the post-9/11 government adventure was $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths. And what of 9/11 itself? Was it merely a coincidence that it amounted to the New Pearl Harbor sought by the neocon think tank, the Project for the New American Century (1997-2006)? Is it possible the exceptional nation is completely devoid of moral scruples?
It’s not as if our condition has improved since then—see Part II of Breen’s history. And what do we make of the end phase of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, conducted by Israel, funded involuntarily by US taxpayers? Or the proxy war in Ukraine, another wealth- and lives-draining operation? Or the regime’s war on the First Amendment following the assassination of a beloved conservative activist?
“We must have government,” Robert Higgs wrote in chapter one of his classic, Crisis and Leviathan, originally published in 1988. “Without government to defend us from external aggression, preserve domestic order, define and enforce property rights, few of us could achieve much.” Since then, Dr. Higgs has taken a different perspective:
Everyone can see the immense harm the state causes day in and day out, not to mention its periodic orgies of mass death and destruction. In the past century alone, states caused hundreds of millions of deaths, not to the combatants on both sides of the many wars they launched, whose casualties loom large enough, but to “their own” populations, whom they have chosen to shoot, bomb, shell, hack, stab, beat, gas, starve, work to death, and otherwise obliterate in ways too grotesque to contemplate calmly.
Yet, almost incomprehensibly, people fear that without the state’s supposedly all-important protection, society will lapse into disorder and people will suffer grave harm.
And for assurance, we can do it if we try, as I’ve quoted many times, from Thomas Paine:
There is a natural aptness in man, and more so in society, because it embraces a greater variety of abilities and resources, to accommodate itself to whatever situation it is in. The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act: a general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
If we want a consistent, moral approach to life, we should let the engine of prosperity and peace, the laissez-faire free market, meaning a market unobstructed by government, serve as our governing apparatus, not “government” as we’ve known it.
A Revised Birth Certificate
The following is, at best, a draft of what a new Declaration of Independence—Declaration of Independence from the American state—might look like:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people possess certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, we recognize that sovereignty resides with each person only, that we are free to contract with security agencies for protection of life and property, as we judge necessary.
We further hold that the American state secures its false sovereignty through a monopoly of force over the area comprising its claimed boundaries, which, through repeated infractions of our natural liberties, threatens our survival, prosperity, and general well-being.
Though prudence will dictate that governance long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, we hold that our American society is approaching full collapse due to the state’s means of governance, consisting of, but not limited to:
- Plunder of the people through vast and complex schemes of taxation;
- State control of the monetary unit through its central bank, the Federal Reserve, that produces severe economic inequalities, periodic crises, and crushing debt;
- Suicidal foreign policy with an end-of-civilization nuclear component;
- Onerous regulations that fatten administrative state functions while draining wealth from those who produce it;
- Corrupt elections and corruption of elected officials by other states;
- State-controlled education and media that ensures preferred narratives remain unchallenged from mainstream sources;
- Numerous false flags used to violate our freedom and safety while justifying war;
- Propaganda, an ongoing stream of lies and deceptions;
- Widespread psychological problems, including drug and alcohol addiction
We, therefore, as voluntary signatories to this Declaration, declare we are absolved from all allegiance to the American state, and that all political connection between it and us is hereby totally dissolved. And, for the support of this Declaration, should the state refuse to recognize our freedom, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Read the full article here
