It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong (29 page)

More fundamentally, however, war is the most effective assertion of the primacy of the collective over the individual. As Randolph Bourne notes in his essay “War Is the Health of the State,” in times of peace “the sense of the State almost fades out of the consciousness of men”; we go about our daily lives, subject to no one's will but our own. Moreover, we are naturally concerned with only our affairs as individuals—our jobs, our spiritual development, our families, and our friends. Bourne continues:

With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. . . . The moment war is declared . . . the mass of the people, through some spiritual alchemy, become convinced that they have willed and executed the deed themselves. They then, with the exception of a few malcontents, proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the environments of their lives, and turned into a solid manufactory of destruction toward whatever other people may have, in the appointed scheme of things, come within the range of the Government's disapprobation.

In other words, the state
needs
warfare in order to continue its existence as a coercive force intruding upon our lives. War is the state's way of saying, “I am still important, and am owed your continuing support and allegiance.” Without war, the government would fade away, with no more power over us than Ozymandias's crumbled, long-forgotten statue lying impotently in the desert. War is the state's justification for its own existence.

164

The State's Toolbox: Provocation, Fear, and Hysteria

The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it.

—J
AMES
M
ADISON

FDR's lie to enter World War II was not the first time a president lied to rally support for war, nor will it be the last. A brief examination of our country's short history demonstrates that many presidents have used self-created fear and hysteria to justify war.

To garner American support for the “impending” Spanish-American War, President William McKinley touted the sinking of the USS
Maine
. McKinley claimed a Spanish mine caused the ship's destruction, when in reality, the ship's American captain determined that a coal bin explosion was the cause of the
Maine
's sinking.

Similarly, President Woodrow Wilson created the illusion that his soon-to-be World War I enemy—Germany—fired the first shot at the United States, when in reality, Germany was trying to play fair. The German Embassy in Washington notified Wilson's secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, that the British passenger ship the
Lusitania
carried illegal weapons and would become a German target in open waters. Bryan tried to convince Wilson that he should warn Americans of the ship's danger, but Wilson refused to do so. He saw an “opportunity” in the form of lost American lives, which would present him with a clear and decent motive to enter the war. When the
Lusitania
went down near the coast of Ireland, 114 Americans went down with it. Thereafter, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned.

Scheming like FDR, McKinley, and Wilson, President Lyndon B. Johnson provoked an attack to spark the Vietnam War, claiming that America was shot at first. To carry out his charade, President Johnson pushed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was itself based on false reports of attacks on American naval forces, through a pliant Congress. In turn, Johnson built up American forces in Southeast Asia and eventually collected more than five hundred thousand American troops to fight in that catastrophic war. Millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians were killed and wounded in the conflict, along with fifty thousand dead young Americans. To what end?

165

Turning to the War on Terror, we see that the more things change, the more they stay the same; presidents in the twenty-first century lie just like their nineteenth- and twentieth-century counterparts. Throughout most of his presidency (and particularly after September 11th), George W. Bush purposefully inspired fear and anxiety in Americans through every channel of communication available to him: “We are in imminent danger of attack.” “The terrorists are out there.” “The terrorists want to destroy our way of life.” Bush and his team, not having presented any form of convincing evidence of so-called weapons of mass destruction, lied us into war with Iraq. Professor Robert Higgs elaborates:

The 9-11 attack, then, is to the Bush administration as the Pearl Harbor attack was to the Roosevelt administration: an enduringly evocative pretext for whatever “retaliatory” measures the government chooses to take, even if, as in the present case, the retaliation is aimed in large part at parties who had nothing to do with the initial attack.
⁹

Moreover, if the government truly believed that we were all in grave danger, then surely it would shift all of its resources toward eliminating that threat; protecting Americans' personal freedoms would take precedence above all other government initiatives. However, this has been far from the case. For example, the government enacted an enormous farm bill in 2002 immediately after September 11th which purported to spend $180 billion over the next decade, a 70 percent increase.
¹⁰
This vast farm bill can be coupled with the $40 billion (and growing . . . ) the federal government spends on education along with the $11 billion dished out annually for “community and regional development.”
¹¹
If terrorists are lingering in our airports, what is Congress doing spending money on fertilizer, math books, job training programs, and peonies? Professor Robert Higgs argues convincingly:

166

It is all too clear that either we are not really in grave danger, and hence the government's actions, though sufficiently objectionable in many ways, are not lethally reprehensible, or we really are in grave danger and, given that condition, the government is acting in a completely irresponsible and utterly immoral manner. If semi-organized gangs of suicidal maniacs numbering in the thousands are out to kill us all, the government ought not to be fiddling with kindergarten subsidies and the preservation of the slightly spotted southeastern screech owl.
¹²

In none of these cases were McKinley's, Wilson's, Roosevelt's, Johnson's, or Bush's actions morally, legally, or constitutionally justified. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states that the “President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” Nowhere does the Constitution state the “President may willfully and intentionally fool the people into war.”

Land of the Free? Barely

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

—J
AMES
M
ADISON

Now that we have seen that throughout our history the state has used warfare merely as a means of expanding its power and control, we must next ask, In what way do wars encroach upon our own freedoms and thus violate the Natural Law? While war is being fought in the name of “freedom” abroad, war is bringing the opposite effect to Americans back home; we are
less
free because of war. While this statement may seem contradictory, the irony becomes clearer as we helplessly witness losses of liberty brought on by our power-hungry government in the form of higher taxes, greater government debt, increased government intrusion in markets, more pervasive government surveillance, manipulation, and control of the public.
¹³
Every single one of these reactions to war restricts our freedoms and fundamental liberties as human beings. Our Founding Fathers would be appalled.

167

The most tried and true way of limiting Americans' freedom during times of war is the draft. Whatever happened to the
inalienable
right “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”? President Wilson drafted almost 2.8 million men during World War I.
¹⁴
This involuntary servitude (violating all natural rights) was found to be constitutional by the Supreme Court at the time, a prime example of how crisis allows people to pull off unconstitutional measures. Draft supporters will argue that conscription fundamentally “unifies the country,” “levels the classes,” and offers the opportunity to “share in our national fate.”
¹⁵
This rationale, however, is empty and completely counters the individual freedom our Founding Fathers had in mind for their new, burgeoning, and free nation. The Founders' thoughts are relevant in every age and at every encounter between the government and any individual:
Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government
?

Repressive and freedom-limiting actions by the government continued during World War I in the form of jailed draft objectors. Resisting conscription led to the arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of Americans throughout the Great War. Of the 450 conscientious objectors found guilty of evading the draft at military hearings, 17 were sentenced to death, 142 received life sentences, and 73 received twenty-year prison terms!
¹⁶
Similarly in World War II, more than 10 million men were drafted to fight. Those who chose to stand up to the government and refuse to fight due to their religious affiliations were jailed just as they were in World War I (the government just does not seem to learn). The state locked up 6,000 of these conscientious objectors, most of whom were Jehovah's Witnesses.
¹⁷

But the most shocking and dehumanizing restrictions during World War II took the form of concentration camps for Japanese Americans. In the wake of the Pearl Harbor attacks, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast of the United States.
¹⁸
This executive order took away civil liberties on a whole new level. It singled out a group of people based upon their race, accused the group of sabotage and espionage without consideration of the presumption of innocence or due process of law, and then locked them all up as a “security measure.”

168

Born in California, Fred Korematsu was an American citizen of Japanese heritage. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, he was convicted of being in one of the areas restricted under the Civilian Exclusion Acts. In the appeal of his conviction,
Korematsu v. United States
(1944), the Supreme Court held that the government could ship Japanese Americans off to internment camps in the name of national security, and that protections guaranteed under the Constitution could be curtailed based on race—or perceived collective guilt—when national security was at stake. Along with Korematsu, more than 112,000 men and women were kidnapped from their homes and forced to inhabit concentration camps without due process of law, in reaction to the attacks on Pearl Harbor. The Court believed that “pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions.” In other words, during war—a “special circumstance”—the government can use an end to justify the means.

Justice Frank Murphy believed that no such vague showing of public necessity could ever justify government racism. In his dissent, he responded that “racial discrimination [by the government] in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States.” Those principles are the Natural Law, and Justice Murphy was absolutely correct.

More “Covert” Freedom-limiting Rules and Regulations

Civil and economic liberties always suffer when it comes to the lengthening list of laws, regulations, and agencies implemented during times of war. From Woodrow Wilson's Espionage Act of 1917 to George Bush's Patriot Act of 2001 to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security to governmental business controls, the government continuously finds ways to violate our freedom under the guise of “it's for your own security.”

169

The government implemented the Espionage Act of June 1917 to silence critics of the draft. Penalizing willful obstruction of enlistment services with fines of ten thousand dollars and imprisonment as long as twenty years, the federal government stripped away civil liberties at the most fundamental level: Both freedom of speech and religion. The feds censored all printed materials, deported aliens, and encouraged warrantless searches and seizures. People were even arrested for reading the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in public.
¹⁹

How far have we come since World War I? Not very far. Almost a century later, the Patriot Act creates some of the same consequences as the Espionage Act. It lets the government snoop around your private communications and personal records. It expands the size and power of federal agencies and allows searches and seizures of your property without a warrant or probable cause. It permits the president to detain you without counsel for indefinite periods. And all of this conduct can be accomplished without the scrutiny of a judge. Whatever happened to the freedoms the Constitution was written to guarantee?

Controls on business during both World War I and World War II also severely restricted Americans' economic freedoms. The feds “nationalized the railroad, telephone, domestic telegraph, and international telegraphic cable industries,” asserting control over prices, people, and corporations.
²⁰
Regulations in the forms of manipulation of “labor-management regulations, securities sales, agricultural production and marketing, the distribution of coal and oil, international commerce, and markets for raw materials and manufactured products” highly constricted private enterprise and free market practices.
²¹
These economic controls must not be disregarded as simply unimportant economic liberties (as opposed to civil liberties).
²²
The penalties for violation of economic controls were severe, ranging from fines to prison.