Those
of us living today have been accorded the opportunity to witness the manifest
failure of the America’s welfare-warfare state, as evidenced by three of the
most important welfare-warfare programs of the federal government: the “war on
poverty,” the “war on drugs,” and military empire and foreign interventionism.
The
war on poverty was declared by President Lyndon Johnson, a man who became
president notwithstanding his crooked stuffing of ballot boxes in South Texas
to win his U.S. Senate seat and his crooked bribery schemes that were virtually
certain to send him to the penitentiary had President Kennedy not been
assassinated.
After
50 years of poverty warfare, what do we hear welfare-statists now saying?
They’re saying that it’s more important than ever to keep the war on poverty
going. What?
It
seems to me that if someone hasn’t won a war that has lasted for 50 years, then
that is fairly persuasive evidence that the war has failed to achieve its
purported ends. After all, we are talking about 50 years—i.e., five decades.
That’s half-a-century. That’s a long time to defeat poverty.
But
the war on poverty didn’t succeed in defeating poverty. Instead, it did the
exact opposite. It exacerbated poverty.
How
could it be otherwise? The war on poverty was based on two simple-minded
notions: (1) Using the federal government to take money from those to whom it
belonged and give it to those to whom it did not belong, and (2) Using
government regulations, such as minimum-wage laws, to forcibly put more money
into the pockets of the poor.
If
defeating poverty was that simple, every nation on earth would be a paradise of
wealth and prosperity. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how to
enact a welfare program or a regulatory law.
As
long as there is a big pool of wealth in a society, the early days or even
early decades of a welfare state seem like a great big party for welfare
statists. Lots of wealth to confiscate and redistribute. Lots of mansions,
gold, and businesses to nationalize.
The
problem, however, is that inevitably the wealth-producing part of society goes
belly-up. Firms go out of business. Ultimately, there is no more pie to
confiscate and redistribute. Everyone is equal. Everyone has nothing.
Minimum-wage
laws have doomed the poor to permanent unemployment and a life of welfare
dependency. Imagine: a chronic, permanent 30-40 percent unemployment rate among
black teenagers! The law makes it illegal to hire them at less than the
mandated minimum and then sends them onto the welfare rolls for a life of
governmental dependency, under the rubric of “care and compassion” for the
poor.
Other
costly economic regulations protect rich, well-established firms from
competition from new companies started by the poor. Licensing laws ensure that
the poor can’t break into a large array of occupations that are protected from
competition.
What
about the war on drugs? Is there anyone at all who claims that that war has
been any more successful than the war on poverty? If there is, check what that
person is smoking. After 40 years of drug warfare, all we hear is how important
it is for the federal government to keep on waging the war on drugs.
But
doesn’t the same point about the war on poverty apply here in the war on drugs?
If the war on drugs hasn’t been won after 40 years (or longer) of drug warfare,
isn’t that fairly persuasive evidence that the war has failed to achieve its
purported ends?
Look
around you. All you see is gang violence, murders, kidnapping, robberies,
thefts, burglaries, exorbitant jail sentences, police and judicial corruption,
asset confiscation, racism, bashing down doors, arbitrary searches and
seizures, and ruined lives.
For
what? For nothing, except, of course, to continue the income streams of those
who depend on the drug war itself, such as drug lords, drug-enforcement agents,
judges, clerks, police, and those taking bribes.
Foreign
interventionism? Al-Qaeda just took control of Fallaja in Iraq, which, along
with Afghanistan, is a model hellhole for the world. After all, after more than
a decade of U.S. military and CIA invasion and “rebuilding” of Iraq and
Afghanistan, would you take your family for a fun vacation to those two
countries? Why, not even the members of Congress, the U.S. military, or the CIA
would do that. The reason? They’d get killed or kidnapped.
Every
American family who lost a loved one in Iraq and Afghanistan has to be asking
himself the same question that the families of those 58,000 American men who
died in Vietnam asked: What did he die for? Indeed, all the soldiers who have
come back maimed or all screwed up in the head are undoubtedly asking
themselves the same question.
Here’s
the answer. He or she died for nothing. Your loss of your legs or other limbs
and your mental instability were for nothing. I’m sure that that’s not a
pleasant thing to consider or accept, but it’s the truth.
The
Iraq invasion and occupation never had anything to do with WMDs or “defending
our rights and freedoms” or “keeping us safe” or ensuring that we could watch
the Super Bowl. It was always about ousting a recalcitrant dictator from power
(a dictator who had served as a loyal partner, friend, and ally of the U.S.
Empire during the 1980s) and installing a friendly pro-U.S. regime in his
stead. That’s what U.S. soldiers killed for and died for in Iraq, and even that
aim wasn’t achieved given the pro-Iranian sentiment within the Iraqi
government.
Afghanistan?
You couldn’t find a better example of a perpetual terrorist-producing machine.
The more people they kill, the bigger and more perpetual becomes the terrorist
threat.
They
say that it is necessary to stay in Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda from establishing
a base of operations there. Oh? But al-Qaeda is in Falluja, which is in Iraq,
not Afghanistan. Didn’t it ever occur to them that al-Qaeda didn’t have to stay
in Afghanistan but could move around, even making plans in the basement of
someone’s home in any country anywhere in the world?
On
the one hand, they say that it’s necessary for “national security” for U.S.
troops to remain in Afghanistan. On the other hand, they say that if Afghan
President Hamid Karzai fails to sign off on the deal, all U.S. troops will
leave the country. Really? But then what about that grave threat to “national
security”? Does that mean that the continued survival of our nation depends on
President’s Karzai’s decision? If that’s the case, I’m sure they’ll just double
or triple the amount of
cash that the CIA brings into his office on a regular basis and
he’ll finally agree to sign off on the deal.
Let’s
face it: After 12 years of “Operation Enduring Freedom,” Afghanistan is nothing
but a hellhole of violence, headed by a crooked, corrupt regime with
totalitarian powers. Moreover, it was a military intervention that has been a
major factor in producing a constant threat of terrorist retaliation that, in
turn, is used to justify a perpetual “war on terrorism.”
Come
to think of it, hellhole pretty much describes Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Somalia, and other parts of that area of the world that U.S.
military empire and intervention were supposed to turn into a paradise of
peace, prosperity, harmony, and freedom. It didn’t work.
Now
is the time for Americans to do some serious soul-searching, especially with
respect to the welfare-warfare state apparatus that was grafted onto our
governmental system in the 20th century. That apparatus has obviously proven to
be a failure and a disaster. Rather than focusing on electing “better” people
to run this failed, crooked, and corrupt apparatus, Americans would be better
off dismantling it and restoring the principles of free markets and a
limited-government constitutional order to our land. Anything less than that
will only result in more failure, more death, more destruction, more poverty,
and more loss of freedom.
Source:
http://fff.org/2014/01/14/failure-failure-everywhere/
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