The Soviet Union Won the Cold War

The Soviet Union won the Cold War, and most people in the United States are completely oblivious to that fact. Every time I read an article like this one, or this one, or this one, I'm reminded of just how many people buy into the mindset of central planning.

The government decides that it wants a certain neighborhood to look a certain way so, by Jove, that's how it's going to look. If it wants retail stores, then it will only allow retail stores; if it wants restaurants, then it will only allow restaurants. The desires of consumers are irrelevant, it is only the desire of those in government that is important, and government will mold society according to its own wants. Government officials treat the world around them like a giant game of SimCity or Civilization. You want to open a hardware store? Too bad, zoning won't allow it. Want to build townhouses? Too bad, you can't get occupancy permits. And when governmental restrictions on what can be built where end up leading to an increase in housing prices or to a dearth of grocery stores, hardware stores, or gas stations, who gets blamed? I'll give you a hint: it's not the government.

The market will always be blamed for the failures of government. After all, didn't you know that we live in an unfettered, laissez-faire, free market society? It's practically the Wild West we live in today. Banks are completely unregulated and corporations are running around trampling on the rights of citizens because government fails to intervene. The fact that the financial sector is completely and utterly in bed with government is ignored. TARP never happened. Regulations A through YY (yes, there really are that many) are overlooked. The barriers to entry into banking or to any business, the most burdensome of which are direct result of government intervention to protect existing market players are taken as a given, rather than as obstacles to be dismantled. Progressives have thrown Brer Rabbit corporations into the briar patch and pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

How many states and localities have planning commissions and economic development boards? I doubt there's a city or county out there that doesn't have one or the other. And if they decide they want a certain area to look a certain way, they will do whatever it takes, right down to seizing property through eminent domain, in order to do it. The people who engage in and support this centralized planning seem to believe that if the government wasn't around to tell us what to do, half of us would do nothing but sit around in our underwear drinking beer and getting high, while the other half would run around on murderous rampages. They seem to believe that if it weren't for government telling us how to tie our shoelaces, how to brush our teeth, etc., etc., civilization would come to a total and complete collapse.

In fact, it's just the opposite. It is the state that is the greatest threat to civilization. The state is built on one principle: might makes right. It uses force or the threat of force to try to make people act the way it wants to, and we currently live in an era in which the reality of the state's brutality is more and more evident every day. It is also the state whose failed central planning leads to economic failures that are blamed on the market, the solution to which is -- surprise, surprise! -- yet more central planning. And there's almost no one who questions any of this. Society is so inured to government intervention into and dictation of every facet of our lives that no one gives it a second thought. Just read the comment sections under most of these articles and most people quibble about the details and aims of these government plans, but almost no one takes issue with the fact that government is getting involved in this stuff in the first place. I realize that most people are busy living their own lives, which is great, but that's not incompatible with enhanced awareness of the depredations of governments.

How Far Gone is the US?

National Journal this afternoon published an execrable piece of bootlicking. In a short editorial, Jill Lawrence proclaimed that:

Rand Paul’s drone filibuster, while admirable as an expression of principle, took place in a theoretical world of civil liberties. Presidents operate in the real world of Americans under continuing threat – just ask President Obama or George W. Bush – and their top priority is to avoid terrorist killings on their watch.

As is usual with Big Government's sycophants, Mrs. Lawrence has things completely backwards. The erosion of civil liberties is a practical, everyday reality, while terrorist attacks are the theoretical possibility. How many rights have Americans given away since 9/11, all for the Sisyphean quest for complete security? The right to travel, the right to bear arms, the right to be safe and secure in our persons and possessions, and every other God-given right that is supposed to be recognized and protected by the government is under attack, each and every day. The only terrorist attacks we might face are those resulting from blowback from the United States' continuing meddling overseas. And yet our leaders imagine themselves as the protagonists of "24," making excuses for torture and unchecked murder both at home and abroad.

Mrs. Lawrence ends her piece by stating "let's not tie our presidents' hands." I can't think of a statement that is more ludicrous. Of all government officials, the president's hands are those which are most in need of tying. It is precisely because the executive is the one person who can bring the enormous power of the government to bear that his exercise of that power must be strictly limited and severely counteracted in the event that he oversteps those limits. The Founding Fathers knew as much, which is why they sought to check the power of the federal government, setting up a set of checks and balances among the federal government, state governments, and the people. But so much of that framework has, not surprisingly, been eroded away over time as the people gladly gave up their liberty in order to suck on the government teat. Have we reached the point of no return? I sincerely hope not, and the wave of young people joining the liberty movement does give some cause for optimism.

But reading articles like this makes me wonder if I'm in 1930s Germany. The embracement of the police state and the "it can't happen here" mentality is so entrenched, and especially among people in Washington, that it's sickening. Politics has always been the exercise of war by other means, but normally politicians have taken great care to hide the unseemly bits from plain view. Nowadays the façade is being stripped away more and more every day and revealing the naked aggression and deadly consequences of political decisions, yet so many in DC continue to treat politics like a game. As long as Team A beats Team B and makes Team B look bad in the press, it's mission accomplished and damn the consequences. They'd rather gloat that "their guy" won the election than challenge his dictatorial policies. And by the time George Bush IV begins to use those policies to eliminate his domestic enemies, it'll be too late for them to stop anything.

To people such as Mrs. Lawrence I have but one thing to say, quoting the great Samuel Adams:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!