Jefferson Area Libertarians, Charlottesville, VA

An Account of Socialism in America and How to Revive Liberty

by John Munchmeyer, Chairman, Jefferson Area Libertarians

johnm speaking 7

The best analogy of what has happened to the American people is the story of the frog in the pot. The frog was placed in a pot of water at room temperature on the stove and heat was slowly added. The frog did not notice this very slow temperature rise; he thought everything was fine. In the end, the frog is boiled alive and cooked.

I am not going to give you a complete account of the degradation of freedom; that would simply require far more time than I have here today, and we can debate as to when it started, but the really bad instances started right after the War Between the States. The political party that emerged victorious after the war sought and achieved three objectives: high tariffs to supposedly protect northern industries, government subsidies for railroads, and a central bank. The first two objectives were met, and they eventually got their central bank in 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act put all of the monetary policy in the hands of a few. This was sold as a way to end cycles of boom and bust, but after the implementation of the Fed, boom and bust cycles have actually been worse than before the Fed. What is the economy? It is the conglomerate of billions of individual transactions every day; to think that anyone can “manage” it is a foolhardy venture.

1913 was a terrible year for liberty. Not only did we get the Federal Reserve, but also the direct election of U.S. Senators with the 17th Amendment and the income tax with the 16th Amendment.
U.S. senators were previously chosen by the state legislatures, thus giving states an important check on the power of the Federal government. This balance of power was removed by the 17th Amendment. The income tax has been and continues to be the fuel for the massive explosion of federal spending. The bulk of this spending is in areas where the federal government should play no role. IRS regulations are almost 10,000 pages in length. No one can understand them, particularly nominees for the current cabinet. The amount of money and time we taxpayers spend complying with these regulations is revolting.

Socialist Party
The most successful third party in American history was the Socialist Party. In 1912, their presidential candidate received 6% of the popular vote. Although they for the most part went away and melted into the two major parties after it became unpopular to be a socialist, they were absolutely effective, because eventually every plank in their platform was passed into law.

Next came Alcohol Prohibition in 1919-1933. It has been called “The Noble Experiment”. This experiment was a miserable failure. It is a great example of the fact that all government action has unforeseen negative side effects. Prohibition was not repealed due to people suddenly concluding that alcohol was not so bad, it was repealed because people were fed up with the crime, violence, drive-by shootings, corruption of the police and government, and the fact that it made gangsters and criminals rich and powerful.

In 1933, The New Deal included unprecedented government interference in banking, money, farming, and make work projects. Then in 1935 came Social Insecurity. At the time, there were 42 workers for every retiree. Now there are three workers for every retiree and there soon be two. It is unsustainable. It is a Ponzi scheme, where current recipients are paid by those currently contributing. If any business did what government does with social security, those people would be prosecuted and put in prison.

Payroll withholding of taxes came during World War II and has been with us ever since. This has been particularly insidious because people now are unaware of how much they actually pay in income taxes. They only look at take home pay and are actually happy when they get a tiny, tiny amount of their own money back from the government. We should eliminate withholding. If people had to cut that check once per year, then you would see people getting seriously upset about the growth of government.

Taxes have grown to the point that if you take income tax, social security tax, Medicare tax, state sales and income tax, property taxes, the gasoline tax, hidden taxes that businesses pay at every step in the manufacturing process that they pass on to the next company in the chain, and many, many others, the level of taxation in America today is more than serfs in the Middle Ages paid! Can you believe this country was founded on a tax revolt? Of course any taking and spending by government is less efficient than that done by the free exchange of willing participants. If you doubt that, just look at the things they are funding, and the inefficiency, waste, and fraud in any government operation. With all this talk about stimulus, can you imagine what we could do if we could just get the government off our backs?

Next came Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. This started out small, but like all government programs, it grew out of control. Today 51% of the money in health care comes from federal, state, and local government, regulations and paperwork are overflowing, and everyone is scratching their heads trying to figure out what the problem is. For goodness' sake, it’s staring us right in the face! We already have a pseudo-socialist system. We don't need more government involvement in health care, we need LESS government. In the course of 45 years, government meddling has driven up the cost of health care to FIVE TIMES what it would cost in a free market, and every step of the way, the politicians have blamed the free market as the culprit and as the excuse to continuously expand government's role. Adjusted for inflation, seniors now pay MORE for health care than they did before Medicare!

In 1971 Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “Public Enemy #1” and thus began The War on Drugs in earnest. I call it the Forgotten War, but it still rages. It is yet another in a long line of failed government programs that destroy liberty. It has resulted in absolute violations of the Bill of Rights - search and seizure laws, asset forfeiture laws (where in many cases no one is ever charged with a crime) and government snooping in our bank accounts. It is used as an excuse to infringe on our Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Drug Prohibition needs to be repealed not because drugs are O.K., but because, just like alcohol prohibition, the illegality is the cause of the crime, the violence, the drive-by shootings, the corruption of the police and government, the degradation of freedom, the $62 Billion price tag, the absolute chaos that is occurring at our southern border, and the fact that it makes gangsters, criminals, drug dealers, and indeed terrorists rich and powerful. Heaven forbid that a weapon of mass destruction ever crosses our southern border and annihilates one of our cities. You will have the War on Drugs to thank, because this was the incentive for drug dealers to devise ways to smuggle entire trucks of contraband across the border.

Recently, major financial institutions got into trouble and the solution was to put the government in charge of them. But have you seen the way the government conducts its own affairs? Folks, this is putting the fox in charge of the hen house! Government spends money it doesn’t have, runs up insane debt, and raids supposedly secure accounts that were set up for a specific purpose. Some say what happened recently is a failure of the free market. That is laughable. We don’t have a free market in this country any more. We have big business joined at the hip to big government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-chartered firms and are the root cause for the housing bubble and our current woes. They never should have been created in the first place.
If AIG made stupid decisions and sold credit default swaps as insurance for risky investments, then they should go out of business. That is what happens in a free market. They say that letting AIG fail would have meant a total collapse of the entire financial system. I don’t know if that is true, but if it is, I say LET IT COLLAPSE. It would be far more favorable to go through two years of hell than have the complete government takeover of banks, financial institutions, auto companies, and expanding its power beyond anything we have ever seen. That will have repercussions that will be far worse in the long run. Free exchange will rebound the economy. People will still want goods and services. Other banks that made good decisions will move in and supply credit. This is the way things are supposed to work. What is happening is just a typical example of the vicious cycle of socialism: government causes a problem, and then we need more government to solve it.
The current legislative environment is designed so that companies cannot survive, then the government can take them over and have them do the politicians’ bidding.

The Trillion Dollar Pork Stimulus Spending Spree includes things like $34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters, perhaps with new wallpaper. This for a building that should not exist in the first place. In tough economic times, individuals must make the choices necessary to balance their spending with their income. They do not go on a shopping binge. We will have to borrow more from the Communist Chinese at a high interest rate, which is a genius move, but they have already said they are hesitant to buy any more of our debt. That leaves printing money, in which case your savings and income will have less and less purchasing power. We The People will pick up the check one way or another.

There is a proposal for Government Run Health Care that on its face is so patently absurd, I cannot believe we are actually discussing it. All you have to do is look at what is happening in Canada and Britain. We can summarize it like this: Imagine getting your health care from the DMV.

Another proposal is Cap and Trade of carbon dioxide. Every pillar of the global warming alarmists’ argument has been debunked. All they have left is computer models that are at their core based on seriously flawed assumptions and they have been wrong over and over again. This is junk science. On the other hand, if you plot solar activity and Earth temperature on the same graph, you see a direct correlation. But no, it can’t be the SUN affecting temperature fluctuations of the planet. Folks, carbon dioxide is plant food. They take it in and emit oxygen. This lunacy will destroy our economy...and have no benefit! Since energy goes into everything we buy, this is going to raise the price of everything substantially. Also, we are already driving industry out of this country due to ridiculous taxation and regulation. This will be the final nail in the coffin. If you want to see the mass exodus of manufacturing from the United States, just pass this global warming nonsense.

I would like to say something about all of our brave soldiers throughout the many years. They fought and gave limbs and indeed their very lives to defend America. They did not confer that sacrifice so that we could pay ridiculous levels of taxes to the government, or so that Albemarle County could tell us where we are allowed to build driveways on our own property. They sacrificed so that we could be FREE! We dishonor their memory when we allow the scourge of big government to decimate the liberty for which they battled. We fought communism for 40 years. Does it make any sense to now adopt their policies? (By the way, the truth is we were adopting them slowly the entire time). The best way to honor our fallen soldiers is to restore liberty.

Now back to the frog in the pot. The Socialists, who have in the past been very patient people, have made a terrible error. They turned up the heat too fast here in the last few months. The frog has been awakened. We will jump out of this pot; we will not let the politicians boil us alive.

So we have identified the problems, now what do we do?

1) Like it or not, we must become politically active. People often think, “I’m sure somebody is watching it.” or “I don’t have time”. No more. We must take the time to let our voice be heard. I have seen on some of the Tea Party websites the theme, “Silent majority no more”. I say, Absolutely!

2) We must elect people who truly believe in liberty. Those who show disdain for the founding principles of this nation are unfit for public office. Electing socialists must stop and we cannot simply accept the statement “I am for limited government” from candidates at face value. The American people have already been burned, and burned to the third degree. We are going to have to pry a little deeper. When you are evaluating candidates for public office, go to the town meetings and ask them, “Do you believe that the Constitution is written in plain English and means what it says, or is it O.K. for the federal government to be meddling in education and health care?” Ask them, “What government monstrosity will you eliminate?” Judge candidates on their past actions, not just their words. Even after elected, we must hold their feet to the fire. The non-partisan group DownsizeDC.org has a fantastic, very easy way to contact your representatives on many subjects and I highly recommend you go to their website and do this.

Now, wouldn’t you like to vote FOR someone for a change, instead of picking the lesser of two evils? We need to enact Instant Runoff Voting. It is no different than holding a runoff election. It’s as simple as ranking your choices 1,2 and 3. Let’s look at the example of Bill, Steve, and Judy. Bill is a lunatic who wants to grow government. Steve and Judy are small government types who disagree on several issues. Bill the lunatic receives 45%, Steve 30% and Judy 25%. Because no one has a majority, Judy is stricken from the list. Most of the people who voted for Judy listed Steve as their second choice. Now the vote is tallied again and Bill the lunatic has 45% and Steve has 55%, so Steve is elected. This would completely eliminate the FEAR component of voting for one person so someone else doesn’t get elected. The whole ‘Wasting Your Vote’ argument goes away.

3) We also need to support good legislation such as the Enumerated Powers Act. This great bill would require all legislation introduced in Congress to "contain a concise and definite statement of the constitutional authority" empowering Congress to enact it.

For this movement that all of you here represent to succeed we must do more than just stop the impending bad ideas currently in the pipeline. It will also not be enough to eliminate what was has been passed in the last year, or the last ten years. This problem started 150 years ago. Trimming the fat around the edges will not suffice. We need to cut it out like a cancer. It is the ONLY way, or it will just grow back. So I would take it one step further. We need a Small Government Amendment that says “The 10th Amendment , which limits powers of the federal government, actually means what it says. (That in and of itself should be good enough, but it would continue…) The federal government is prohibited from being involved in education, finance, retirement savings, crime control, transportation, health care, ...” (I would list them for clarity).

This scares people. They have become so accustomed to Social Security and Medicare that they believe we cannot live without them (although we did for 170 years). Well, these two behemoths are going bankrupt, period, and they are going to take us down with them unless we act now. It would be better to provide a small annuity for those in or near retirement and a straight line declining amount for those at about age 55, but otherwise eliminate it and let individuals save and invest their own money (which is 12.4% of our income). Medicare must end. If grandpa does a terrible job saving for medical expenses later in life, then you could help him with the costs (remember, health care costs will drop by 80% when we get the government out of it and restore a free market). Why is it such a bad thing to take care of our own ailing parents? We did it before medicare and we will do it again.

The “Read the Bills Act” would require that bills before Congress be read aloud in the chamber before passage. Shocking. It would also post the bills online for a specific number of days so people could read and understand them. Radical.

The “One Subject at a Time Act” will prevent Congress from bundling unrelated bills into one piece of legislation.

“Restore Honest Money” is three separate outstanding proposals. Term Limits are a good idea. A Balanced Budget Amendment is also fantastic.

Thomas Jefferson said ,“…let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” We will save our nation and assure that the blessings of liberty survive for those who come after us when we once again limit government to what it is supposed to do: protect life, liberty, and property, and absolutely prohibit it from violating those rights.

Thank you.

Issues:

Property Rights

Taxes

Education

Local Government & Global Warming

Keep & Bear Arms

Instant Runoff Voting

War on Drugs

Rights

Limited Government