Statism: A Bankrupt Ideology

"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government."--James Madison

Of course, that is exactly what has happened in this country, we have allowed a certain political ideology, composed of members of both the left and the right, to infect it with particular brand of Statism that is little more than a hybrid of Fascism and Socialism.

So, what happened to the Constitutional Republic, why, as Statist claim, didn’t the Constitution remain viable and continue to work if it were such a sublime document as touted by those, like myself, as the ultimate political form for the advancement of society and the individuals who make it up?

What Statist fail, utterly fail to realize or admit, is that this country and its government has fallen to the Statist. Nationalization and Centralization began in earnest during the reign of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln and his cadre of Radical Republicans, Hamiltonians and Nationalist set the stage for the growth and expansion of the State. After Lincoln, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 began the consolidation of the corrupt State ideology.

With the election of James Garfield, the Statist believed that they had finally buried the Ideals of Jefferson. The Sentinel said it best: ““Garfield’s rule will be the transitory period between State Sovereignty and National Sovereignty. The United States Senate will give way to a National Senate. State Constitutions and the United States Senate are relics of State Sovereignty and implements of treason. Garfield’s Presidency will be the Regency of Stalwartism; after that-REX.”

REX was a particularly interesting word to use; it described the ideal of creating the State Oligarchy, a Nationalist Central Government as the dominating political and social power within this country through the elimination of the Constitutional Republic. Indeed, the State has succeeded to a large degree in creating its all-encompassing political machine.

On July 3, 1881, Mr. Garfield himself stated: “The influence of Jefferson’s Democratic principles is rapidly waning, while the principles of Hamilton are rapidly increasing. Power has been gravitating toward the Central Government.”

These Radical Nationalist, these Hamiltonian Statist wrenched power from the former Constitutional Republic through hook and crook, through blunt force and continued through the 1800s to the present to forcefully wield the Nationalist Brand upon this country, dragging it through periods of interventionism both at home and abroad. The example of just how necessary war is to the Statist can be found in the Presidency of the Nationalist McKinley, who was the first to use the Statist instrument of interventionism, on a massive scale, to accomplish the growth of the State Empire with his “fine little war”. So, for the last 110 years the policy of interventionism has dominated the ideology of the State, it has also proven to be dominated with failure.

If such a doctrine were effective then we would live in and witness a far more peaceful world and have far more security within our own country. But under the guise of self-interest/self-defense, and that is all it is, a guise, interventionism is nothing more than the life-blood of the State. The waste of war is absolutely necessary to the State, for it allows the unquestioned expansion of its power and authority. Peace is the enemy of the State, that fact has always been the case. Peace, unlike war, does not allow the State to function as it pleases; peace inhibits the State from the power of imposition and coercion. The State calls it “foreign policy”, but in reality it is simply a medium to enforce its ideals, its ideology and its attributes on both the foreign and domestic fronts. The State has manipulated, as it always has, the use of the term “defense” simply to justify interventionism and imperialism abroad and a specific social construct at home.

To the State, war is an essential system for its own existence and the stable internal structure of politics by which it can legitimatize its right to rule. Without the existence of an external threat, the war system loses its meaning and the necessity of the Massive State Machine can no longer be validated in the minds of the People.

Peace and Prosperity can never accomplish the goals of servitude; only waste and destruction can make servitude possible on a scale that will suit the needs of the Statists. Peace and Prosperity are necessary to create a system that is anathema to that which The State seeks, Peace and Prosperity creates an atmosphere where the Individual can thrive in Liberty to fulfill the ultimate goal of the Natural Rights of Man.

Another essential ingredient for the Statist to accomplish their goal for the State is the Centralization of the economy. These Statist elements have increased the depth and breadth of the reach of the State; its growth depended on a particular monetary system that has always played an important role in every Statist regime in history that system is Money by Government Decree or Fiat. 1913 saw a huge leap forward for the supporters of the State with the passage of the 16th and 17th Amendments, as well as the formation of the Federal Reserve Act.

For at least the last 75 years, the economy has undergone a complete transformation into one of the most centrally planned economies in the world. Of course, this began much earlier; in fact the Statist began increasing the ideals of Corporatism in the late 1800s. While many call that period one of “laissez-faire”, the fact is the period was not that of a free-market, but one in which big business found a very comfortable and very profitable bed partner with the fledgling Statist government. The big Bankers of the day were held in particular esteem by the Statist and realized their prize with yet another attempt at a “National Bank”, this time it was a complete success for the Statist and yet a continuing disaster for the People of this country.

The problem with the Statist Monetary System is that it, and therefore the entire State Machine, is built upon a system that has an inherent terminal life span. Fortunately, when the Monetary System Collapses under the weight of its irreversible debt, so too will the State itself collapse. Ah, on that day, after duly being tried for their Treason, the Central Bankers and their Statist Hacks will dangle as they piss themselves hanging from the Liberty Tree to the delight of all Constitutionalists.

The Statist reveled in the election and Administration of FDR, for it consolidated the power of the State to a degree that had never been possible prior to that point in history. The State was able, within a few short years, to contrive a massive increase of novel and intrusive programs and agencies to accomplish its goal. Many of those same programs remain albatrosses upon the future well being of this country.

Yes, the New Deal…what didn’t it do? Very little for the common man, but what a jackpot for Statism. FDR and many within his Administration thought highly of Mussolini and the Cooperative System under Italian Fascism. In fact, if you read the papers of both FDR and his advisors, like Rexford Tugwell, and you will find them advocating almost the exact same system as Mussolini, with fascism’s Public Works Projects, Corporatism, organization of trade and industrial groups under direct government supervision. There were those in his Administration who admired Stalin and the Stalinist model of State, thankfully few of those ideals influenced the direction FDR took this country, the Mussolini model was bad enough.

Similar to Mussolini’s tax program, the New Deal was financed by tripling various federal taxes and the creation of taxes on just about everything you can imagine, most of the consumer goods taxed during the New Deal were everyday consumer items used by the common working man. These excise taxes hit the poor and the working class harder than anyone else because it included taxation on things like cigarettes, matches, margarine, fruit juices, telephone calls, movie tickets, playing cards, dice, electricity, radios, soft drinks, cars, tires, even tires on wheel chairs.

The New Deal was a bad deal for those who had to finance it, mainly the ones it was suppose to help, in fact these taxes exceeded all personal income taxes and corporate taxes until the beginning of WWII and those taxes fell, according to the Treasury Department at the time, “disproportionately on the less affluent.”

While it is true that FDR started many relief programs under the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), The Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933), National Labor Relations Act (1935), the statistics of the day indicate that those programs fostered a steady unemployment rate of 17%. In fact, these programs forced industries to cut back production and forced wages above what the market could bear and made it very difficult for employers to hire people, especially those who were unskilled. It was estimated that over a half a million African Americans lost their jobs because of the NIRA (1933). Tenant farmers were hit the hardest by the Agricultural Adjustment Act, forcing many off the land and the land owners to leave the fields bare and unproductive. The National Labor Act actually led to violence as workers went on strike as compulsory unionization created mass layoffs. All of these things actually precipitated a second financial crisis in 1938 that almost brought this nation to its knees again.

Of course, we rarely hear of the WPA strikes, we rarely hear about the fact that FDR vastly increased WPA jobs right before he won his second term only to lay off those same 400,000 workers immediately after the election.

If you look at how the New Deal was financed and who financed it you will soon learn that not only didn’t it do what most people think it did, but also it increased the suffering of far more than it helped. The “little man” had far less because of the heavy taxation pressed upon him by the New Deal, less to spend on food, essential items, clothes, shoes, fuel and other necessities of life. Also, something else is overlooked, because the vast majority of funds came from taxation, there was actually little economic stimulation from real business concerns that would have had an effect on the economy.

Also, a fact that few people ever consider when speaking about the New Deal, is that the majority of the funds were siphoned off of and away from of the poorest States, those found in the South. Once again, the South was at the mercy of the North and the same heavy taxation was used once more. Those funds, drained from the South, were pumped into massive projects in the East and the West. It is a strange fact when you begin to look at the political implications of those actions by the Administration of FDR.

Oh, but what about the Tennessee Valley Authority (a government corporation), didn’t it bring electricity to the South? Sure it did and it did so at a very high cost to the people of the area, especially the thousands upon thousands of people expelled from their land, many of whom were very poor sharecroppers who didn’t own the land and received no compensation from the government for robbing them of their lives and livelihoods. Ah, but the State could not be opposed from achieving its goal and its push for modernization of the State Machine.

At the time that the people needed help the most with the cost of goods and services was the very time that they received it the least. They were forced to pay higher than normal prices especially after FDR implemented the Anti-Chain Store Act (1936) and the Retail Price Maintenance Act (1937); these essentially banned the discounting of all goods, especially household goods and food. We rarely hear that the Agricultural Adjustment Administration ordered farmers to destroy crops, kill livestock in order to increase prices, which in turn made if very difficult for the workingman to put food on his family’s table.

Granted, the WPA and the CCC workers did some wonderful things, but the picture that is painted by those up hold the New Deal up as the salvation of this country during the Great Depression never, ever seem to want to reveal the entire story because it is not in their political interest to see such facts and face them while upholding their ideology.

We never hear that FDR feared a massive revolt among the American People or that he considered imposing a dictatorship similar to one of his favor fascist Mr. Mussolini. FDR hated independent organized labor and he looked the other way as “industrial big wigs” used strong-armed tactics, using armed strike-busters and even city police departments to break up many of the violent strikes between 1933 and 1937. Oh yeah, FDR was for the common man all right as long as the common man lined up with FDR’s programs.

The New Deal left out two main sectors of the population: blacks and women. Blacks in particular were excluded from labor laws, the GI Bill, Social Security, educational programs, home ownership programs and anything to do with small businesses. FDR exempted several groups of farm labor and domestic help from all labor protection, unemployment insurance and SSI. FDR also refused to pass or consider legislation that would have desegregated the Armed Force, anti-lynching laws, or abolishing the poll tax.

Read about the shameful Bracero Programs if you want to see the real deal about the New Deal. Basically, it allowed the legalized enslavement of guest workers by big farmers in the Southwest. Don’t forget the Japanese Americans either…nothing like Concentration Camp justice to show the real deal behind FDR and his peculiar form of Statism.

The New Deal did little for over a hundred thousand homeless women and children who were forced to roam the city streets begging for food and it did nothing for almost 4 million unemployed women. If a woman was divorced, or single or widowed, they were hopelessly pushed aside in this marvel called the New Deal. It was not until almost a decade later that women actually was given some assistance under a limited program and then only a small percentage was allowed to work under the WPA leaving almost 3 million unemployed and another 2 million were only allowed part-time work that was barely enough to live on.

At the end of eight years, FDR was frantic about still having over 8 Million men and several Million women unemployed, many homeless and that left only one thing to do: allow, prompt, or prod a crisis to infuse the economy with capital…what better way to do that then a war. Indeed, this technique by the warmongers has been used very successfully before and since, most recently was the use of the Iraq War to pump capital into the economy after 9/11, unfortunately they misjudged the amount of Fiat would need to be borrowed to execute the war, the first war to be completely finance through borrowing.

Concerning SSI, the man who actually coined the term Social Security, Abraham Epstein, cried out against it and he was one of the strongest liberal reform proponents of the time. He said that the SSI bill would “transfers the entire burden…to the backs of the young workers and their employers… Since industry will make every effort to pass on its levy to the consumers, it means that the young employees—in their dual role of workers and consumers—will bear the major cost…No other nation has ever put into operation a plan of this nature without government contributions derived from the higher-income groups…in placing the entire burden of insecurity upon the workers and industry, to the exclusion of the well-to-do in the nation, the present social-security bill violates the most essential modern principles of social insurance.” An example of Statism at its best, I must say.

Today, the poor and the working class are still paying for the New Deal. Corporatism that found its friend during the New Deal now reigns over a massive working class of producers. Workers who labor to receive dollars debased of value, poor who must submit to the authority of the government’s restrictions on the benefits they receive. Today we have a heavily planned economy, thanks primarily to the New Deal that is now suffering under its own weight. The entire system is crumbling, inherently terminal and yet we continue to believe the promises of politicians who have not only benefited from the system, but also have been induced into many of their political opinions solely based upon the monetary system that controls them. When we fail to understand, when we fail to pull back the curtain we can only continue to believe that the “little elite man” pulling the levers behind that curtain is the Great and Powerful OZ.

The major problem with Statists is that they completely buy into their own political superstitions and myths about The State. Statist believe in liberty, but it is not the Liberty of the Individual, but the liberty of the State and it only accepts the individual as long as the interests of the individual coincide with those of the State. The State becomes all to the Statist and the only expression of the individual is within the State, which in order to be totally successful must become all embracing to the point that it a self-perpetuating myth imbued with the ideal of the multiple unity of State Authority. The problem with the myth that the ordinary Statist fail to see is that if you are not in the upper echelon of the State Oligarchy, then you are nothing but a peon, a cog in a system that must demand both creative and intellectual conformity to maintain its control and its ability to coerce through compulsion and fear.

An interesting quote from La Boétie tells the story of how the power of the State or tyranny retains generational control over the population: “It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they are born…the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection.”

Today, the people of this country, for the most part, live in a type of ignorant bliss following the dictates of the State, unaware of their own situation as they blindly bask the State’s perpetual servings of political pablum. The electoral process in this country readily fits the needs and fulfills the goals of a Statist System. It is, by any real standard, little more than insipid intellectual fare filled with all the elements of entertainment that is devoid of serious questions demanding serious solutions to the very problems that the State itself has caused over the decades. There is nothing more than a comfortable commonality with the vast majority of candidates presented by the entrenchment political parties, each fulfilling their own part in maintaining the status quo of State ideology.

Again, La Boétie states the need of the State to promote entertaining diversions for the People: “ Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beast, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, there were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.”

Amazing isn’t it? La Boétie knew all the tricks of the Statist trade, even in 1500s. He went on to say: “they never undertake an unjust policy, even one of some importance, without prefacing it with some pretty speech concerning public welfare and common good.” Statist constantly reinforce their ideological propaganda through an almost deliberate mystification and adept misdirection.

It is a doctrine that must rely upon a type of creative and intellectual bankruptcy melded together to benefit the State and only the State. The Statist System is extremely stratified into two very distinct classes made up of those who rule and those who do not question its rule. Statism is the unthinking man’s ideology for it requires the unquestioning dedication to the ideals of the State and the dictates of its leadership. It requires a certain passive obedience that binds the population en masse to surrender their freedom of will, their freedom of action in subordination to the will of the State. There is, after all, a certain poverty of philosophy within the ideology of Statism, this poverty is out of necessity as much as it is inherent in the nature of Statism itself. The best environ for the Statist is one of ignorance among the masses and an unquestioning allegiance to a source of power for guidance and direction.

A quote from Tolstoy on Statist Oligarchy: “The situation of the oppressed should not be compared to the constraint used directly by the stronger on the weaker, or by the greater number on the smaller. Here, indeed it is the minority who oppresses the majority, thanks to a lie established ages ago by clever people, in virtue of which men despoil each other.”

To the Statist, the State becomes the expression of all personality and seeks to make the State an inward standard and rule of conduct for all, it is, in a word a pure dogmatic doctrine that requires adherence through faith, faith in the State and the State alone. It is difficult to understand how so many can fall for such an ideology, to submit and suffer themselves to the authority and power of a few who usually possess no more competence or wisdom than anyone else. Statism usually highlights the incompetence of those who within power more than any other political system, simply because the entire system relies upon and focuses on the leadership of the system. Usually, the leadership of such a system must continue to press into service more and more novel programs, new agencies, more legislation in response to the exponential growth in problematic issues caused by other programs, agencies, and legislations of the State.

The results of this political and social malignancy of Statism is evident as you view the current state of affairs within this government as the Statist Ideology metastasizes throughout our highly centralized and nationalized government with outcroppings of inefficiency, dysfunctional agencies, and waste on a scale that pales any disaster in comparison. For Statist who decry the ideals of the Constitutional Republic, they ignore the fact that for the last century and a half we have not seen a Constitutional Republic operating in this country, we have seen nothing but the steady expansion of the Nationalist ideology of the State. The results of such Statism dominates our daily lives, programs upon programs, agencies heaped upon agencies, codes, legislations, acts and regulations all point to the State as a defunct political system void of anything that can be equated with success and efficiency. Look around, you will see the sum total of 147 years of Statism at its best and it is a model of failure upon failure.

Statism, as it always has been, is an infection, it is parasitic and it can only sustain itself through siphoning off financial, political and social resources from the people they seek to rule. All Statist Ideologies implode upon themselves, they all outgrow their ability to be efficient and functional.

So, to those Statist, take a good look around, look at our country, look at the massive mountain of incoherent legislative and bureaucratic regulations, taxations, fees, licenses, and regulations. Not surprisingly, the Statist always find need for more, they always clamor for more bureaucracy and legislation, in so many instances, the mounts of bureaucratic mumblings are little more contradictions to previous mounts of legislations. The State and its Statist supporters allow such blindness to influence their desires and their actions that they fail to see their failures.

Welcome to the Nationalist State of America!

In Liberty,

Republicae-Seditionist