There have been two completely different Americas
in U.S. history.
Let’s examine twelve
ways in which they differ.
1. For more than a century
after the United States came into existence, there was no income taxation or
IRS. People
were free to keep everything they earned and decide for themselves what to do
with it.
Today, income taxation
and the IRS are a core feature of American life. The government essentially
owns everyone’s income and decides how much people will be permitted to keep,
much as a parent permits his children to have an allowance.
2. No Social Security. Earlier
Americans rejected the concept of mandatory charity. People were left free to
decide for themselves whether to help out their parents and others.
Today, Social Security
is a core feature of American life. The federal government forces younger
people to help out seniors by forcibly taking their money from them and giving
it to seniors. Social Security is a classic example of a socialist program, one
in which the government forcibly takes money from people to whom it belongs and
gives it to people to whom it does not belong.
3. No Medicare and Medicaid. Americans had a
free-market healthcare system, one in which there was no government
involvement. The result was the finest healthcare system in the world, one in
which healthcare prices were low and stable, innovations were soaring, doctors
loved what they did in life, and the poor were receiving free healthcare
services from doctors and hospitals.
Today, seniors and the
poor are dependent on Medicare, another socialist program that is characterized
by massive dysfunction, soaring prices, perpetual crisis, and physicians who
hate what they do in life.
4. No centrally managed
economy. Americans
believed that people should be free to manage their own economic activities.
Today, whoever happens
to be president assumes the role of centrally managing the economy, taking
credit when the economy is going well and blaming the Federal Reserve when the
inevitable crashes come. Central planning is, of course, a socialist principle.
5. No Federal Reserve or paper
money. The
official money of the country consisted of gold coins and silver coins. There
was no central bank (i.e., Federal Reserve) to inflate or debase the currency.
Today, the Federal
Reserve continues to destroy people’s money through monetary central planning,
inflation, and debasement. The official money is now paper Federal Reserve
notes, which promise to pay nothing.
6. Very few economic regulations,
including minimum-wage laws. Americans favored a free-enterprise economic system, one in
which economic enterprise was free of government control and management.
Today, economic
regulation, including minimum-wage laws, form a core feature of American economic
life.
7. No immigration controls. Americans
believed in the right of people to freely cross borders in the pursuit of
happiness.
Today, Americans
maintain an enormous apparatus that centrally plans the movements of people
into the United States. To enforce the system, the federal government has
brought a brutal police state into existence in the American Southwest. This
socialist immigration system is characterized by death, suffering, and
perpetual crisis.
8. No drug laws. Americans believed
that people have the right to ingest whatever they want, no matter how harmful
or destructive.
Today’s Americans
believe that it is a rightful role of government to punish people for ingesting
harmful substances, much as a parent punishes a child for putting bad things
into his mouth.
9. No national-security state,
including a Pentagon, military-industrial complex, empire of domestic and
foreign military bases, CIA, NSA, or FBI. Our ancestors used the Constitution
to call into existence a governmental structure known as a limited-government
republic.
Today, the centerpiece
of American life is the national-security state, along with its sordid,
dark-side practices of state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite
detention, kangaroo military tribunals, and mass secret surveillance.
10. No empire, foreign
interventionism, or foreign wars.
Today, military
empire, foreign interventionism, coups, foreign aid, alliances with dictatorial
regimes, regime-change operations, sanctions, embargoes, invasions, and
occupations are an ongoing central part of American life.
11. No public-schooling
systems. Education was, by and large, based on free-market principles.
Today, Americans are
required to subject their children to a state-approved education. There are
compulsory school-attendance laws, government schoolteachers,
government-approved textbooks, government-established curricula, and compulsory
taxation to fund it all. Public schooling is another example of a socialist,
centrally planned program.
12. No gun control. Americans
believed that the right to keep and bear arms is a natural, God-given right
that cannot be controlled and regulated, much like such other rights as freedom
of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.
Today, the right to
keep and bear arms is controlled, regulated, and even nullified in certain
areas of the country.
These twelve major
differences naturally give rise to an important question: Was the abandonment of
America’s sound founding principles the reason for the massive chaos, crises,
and dysfunction that riddle our society today?
