A mental error was embraced by the American people and the American federal government a century ago. No longer would individual liberty and limited government be the guiding principles in the land of the free.
Instead hyper-interventionism by the federal government would be unleashed, both domestically and internationally. The false idea that government is a tool (not to protect individual liberty) but to re-make and perfect the citizens, took hold.
But American citizens wouldn't be the only ones to be re-made, All the people of the world would fall under this purification project.
President Woodrow Wilson explained this new philosophy in saying: “We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world. The interests of all nations are our own also.”
The interests of "all nations" would now be the interest of the American government.
One cannot concoct a more un-American idea, no matter how hard one tries. Not only was government converted from servant to master, it was converted to master of the world!
We are now 100 years into this 'new' philosophy, and look at what it has done.
Internationally, the U.S. has around 1,000 military bases peppered all over the earth, and has (predictably) fought in never-ending wars.
Domestically, the federal government is involved in virtually every aspect of the American citizen's life. Prior to about 1913, the only real interaction that Americans had with the federal government was through the U.S. Post Office. Today, an American cannot even imagine the federal government being so detached from our everyday lives.
Since the federal government is involved in everything, it's only logical that everything has become political. Every detail of life is a political issue, and since politics is the use of force, Americans fight with one another over everything.
Divide-and-Rule rules the day.
Americans are sliced-and-diced into "groups" and then encouraged to fight with one another over every piece of minutia. Government then swoops in and expands its powers in order to provide the "solution."
Every government "solution" creates a whole new set of problems and the process repeats...over and over.
Problems multiply ... the fighting multiplies ... and government power multiplies exponentially.
No longer do Americans see themselves as the sacred individuals that they are, but instead see themselves as members of some group or team that must destroy the other group or team.
Alas, after a century of this ridiculous nonsense, the former limited government of the United States has swelled into the biggest government to ever exist in mankind's history.
Just as good ideas produce good consequences, so do bad ideas produce bad consequences. Everything in our physical lives is a mirror reflection and manifestation of ideas.
There have now been two Americas, one a result of the ideas of liberty, and the current America that is driven by the ideas of authoritarianism.
Bad ideas only get worse with time. Even this writer's grandparents, who only passed away a few decades ago, would not believe what has happened to their country; a country that they once escaped to in order to flee the horrors of European totalitarianism.
During the 1900's, communist and fascist governments gave shocking examples of just how bad it can get.
Karl Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto: “communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.”
Leon Trotsky summed up the relationship between bureaucrat and citizen when he said: “In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”
"Who does not obey, shall not..."
Those are the key words.
Can you see and feel them today?
He who does not obey in wearing a mask over his face, shall not...
He who does not obey, and chooses to open his business in order to financially survive, shall not...
He who does not obey in speaking only approved ideas...shall not...
He who does not obey, and who questions "the science"...shall not...
He who does not obey and does not get a vaccine...shall not...
Can you see and feel the downward slide?
Can it ever reach the point of "He who does not obey shall not eat?"
You only have one guess.
Life is Liberty.
Americans better re-discover that eternal truth, and they better re-discover it fast!
