The Death of a Nation

"The question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it:
    1.  The few plunder the many.
    2.  Everybody plunders everybody.
    3.  Nobody plunders anybody.
We must make our choice among limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three."  - Frederic Bastiat


What’s wrong with the State providing it’s citizens a social safety net?  Plenty. Social safety nets

• reward failure and sloth
• reinforce the victimhood paradigm
• are the political tools of vote buying demagogues
• eventually bankrupts the nation
• destroy wealth through transfer payments
• have a corrosive effect on the merits of citizenship
• fail to adequately take into account human nature
• accelerate societal decay
• enable the feckless to plunder those who behave responsibly
• hold hostage the productive members of society
• are State sponsored theft
• undermine the legitimacy of the government

Ignoring for the moment the Constitutional argument against social engineering, funding for the safety net can only come through enforcement of revenue laws - which of course means at gunpoint.  It never ceases to amaze me that people blithely support progressive causes while the formidable powers of the State are used to implement their policies.  All of this will ultimately lead to the death of our nation.

The Hidden Dangers of Social Engineering

“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”  George Orwell

One of the central purposes of this blog is to expose the progressive machine for what it really is:  Statism.  Socialism and Statism are two distinct political philosophies – Socialism is a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.¹ 

Statism on the other hand is defined as ‘the principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty’.²  This definition leads us to the conclusion that all progressives are statists.  Furthermore, all statist policies and programs are funded by legal plunder, as the following example by Leonard Read demonstrates in his essay ‘Accent on the Right’:

Examples of Legal Plunder

 [We] should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this [country], as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people and make them pay the price.  Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. – Thomas Jefferson, 1782

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy. – Thomas Jefferson, 1802

We have briefly discussed legal plunder in general terms, but perhaps now is the time to provide some specific examples of state sponsored theft.  Many of you may not realize this, but our federal government encourages plunder!  A state sponsored website here, boldly proclaiming ‘Your path to government benefits’, provides the citizen a series of browser links to the various federal agencies that provide ‘benefits’ of one kind or another.  There are 407 general ‘benefits’ specified on the website, which are managed by 28 (!) federal agencies.  Below is a list of benefits from a single federal organization, the Health and Human Services Agency:

AIDS Research Loan Repayment Program

Adoption Assistance Adoption Assistance

Advanced Education Nursing Traineeships

Alcohol National Research Service Awards

Alcohol Research Career Development

Assets for Independence

Assistance for Victims of Trafficking

Assistance in Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam

Assistance to Torture Victims

Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Research and Research Training

Biological Response to Environmental Health Hazards

Cell Biology and Biophysics Research and Research Training

Chafee Foster Care Independent Living

Child Care Resource and Referral

Child Care and Development Fund

Child Support Enforcement

Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Programs

Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Resource Center

Clinical Research Loan Repayment Program

Clinical Research Loan Repayment Program for Individuals from Disadvantaged Backgrounds

Community Based Child Abuse Prevention Grants

Community Food and Nutrition Program

Community Mental Health Services Block Grant

Community Services Block Grant

Consolidated Health Centers

Contraception and Infertility Research Loan Repayment Program

Disaster Assistance for Older Americans

Drug Abuse National Research Service Awards

Drug Abuse Research Career Development Awards

Extramural Clinical Research Loan Repayment Program for Individuals from Disadvantaged Backgrounds

Family Planning Services

Family Violence Prevention Services

Foster Care

General Research Loan Repayment

Genetics and Developmental Biology Research and Research Training

Head Start and Early Head Start

Health Disparities Research Loan Repayment Program

Health Professions Pregraduate Scholarship Program for Indians

Health Professions Preparatory Scholarship Program for Indians

Health Professions Recruitment Program for Indians

Health Professions Scholarship Program

Immunization Grants

Indian Health Service Loan Repayment Program

Intramural Research Training Award

Job Opportunities for Low-Income Individuals

Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)

Matching Grants to Tribes for Scholarship Program

Medicaid Program

Medicare Prescription Drug Plans

Medicare Program

Mental Health National Research Service Award

Minority Access to Research Careers

Minority Biomedical Research Support

NIMH Mentored Career Development Program

National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program

National Center on Physical Activity and Disability

National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program

National Health Service Corps Scholarship Program

National Limb Loss Information Center

National Research Service Awards

National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

Native Employment Works Program

Native Hawaiian Health Systems

Nurse Anesthetist Traineeship

Nursing Education Loan Repayment Program

Nursing Workforce Diversity

Pediatric Research Loan Repayment Program

Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biological Chemistry Research and Research Training

Prescription Drug and Other Assistance Programs

Prevention of Complication in Patients with Thalassemia

Prevention of Hemophilia Complications

Preventive Health and Health Services Block Grant

Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH)

Promoting Safe and Stable Families

Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness

Refugee and Entrant Assistance - State Administered Programs

Refugee and Entrant Assistance - Targeted Assistance

Refugee and Entrant Assistance - Voluntary Agency Programs

Refugee and Entrant Assistance - Wilson/Fish Programs

Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students

Services for Persons Living with HIV/AIDS (Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program)

Social Services Block Grant

Special Diabetes Program for Indians

Special Improvement Project

Special Minority Initiatives

State Children's Health Insurance Program

Street Outreach Program

Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Disaster Relief Information

Support Services for Runaway and Homeless Youth - Basic Centers

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Transitional Living Program for Homeless Youth

Tribal Family Assistance Grants

Tribal Recruitment and Retention Program

Undergraduate Scholarship Program for Individuals from Disadvantaged Backgrounds

Urban Indian Health Program

Without a doubt some of these ‘benefits’ are meeting legitimate needs, but many of these programs are nothing more than the pet projects of one advocacy group or another.  Regardless, the real needs of an individual or a group of people can only be legitimately met by charitable organizations, where the threat of violence (taxation at gunpoint) is not used to provide funding for their services.  Furthermore, one can readily see how hopeless it is for the average citizen to keep tabs on a government that can provide so many benefits through so many agencies – due to the shear size of the federal behemoth we have been effectively disenfranchised – we are no longer masters over the State.  It is no small wonder then that the State is no longer responsive to the cries for lower taxes by the productive members of society – the federal government has grown beyond our reach.

But it gets worse.  I will concede that some of these government benefits are financed by payroll taxes (social security, medicare, etc.), but most are financed through the general fund of the U.S. Treasury – which means general tax revenue pays for these ‘benefits’.  Given that 45% or so of American wage earners contribute nothing to the general fund, (i.e., pay no federal income tax¹), none of these so-called ‘benefits’ can be considered benefits at all – benefits imply a thing earned.  Citizenship does not legitimately entitle one to unearned benefits, irregardless of the legal status afforded such ‘benefits’ – how much more so for that citizen who has not contributed a dime to the general fund.

It is bad enough that our children and grandchildren are currently subject to taxation without representation (via borrowing to pay for current federal spending), the political insanity of voters not being required to pay for their share of government services is a flagrant conflict of interest.  If you have no skin in the game, you are far more likely to vote for candidates who promise largess from the federal treasury than you would support a candidate who promotes austerity and common sense fiscal policies.  The inevitable consequences of this political dynamic are self-evident:

‘The road to serfdom is paved with rights and benefits. People want more of whatever someone else will pay for. The casualty in this assessment is personal responsibility and liberty.’ ²

This is the fatal flaw of nations past – the opening up of the national treasury to the ‘needy’ who are not required to finance the spending.  This approach to governance has an inherent positive feedback loop – as more and more people opt for government assistance, their percentage of the electorate increases until a tipping point is reached whereby the parasites outnumber the producers, thereby bankrupting the nation.  Furthermore, how is it just for the rest of us to pay for the burden of national defense and other legitimate federal functions when nearly half of all wage earners contribute nothing at all?  I couldn’t agree more with conservative talk show host Michael Savage when he calls modern liberalism a ‘mental disorder’.

This sort of political nonsense makes one want to quit pulling the wagon and jump in with the moochers and parasite class.  If you are an able bodied citizen and are feeding at the public trough, you are a parasite – a leech.  My accusation does not apply to those in genuine need (the lame, widows, orphaned children, etc.), but to those who game the system and pick the pockets of their fellow citizens via the coercive power of the state.  Ever wonder why your taxes are so high?  The blame lies at the feet of the political process that ‘wastes the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them’.

¹ See here and here.

² Herbert London, www.humanevents.com, 24 Feb 2010

Abandoned Principles

‘A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering.  Then begins indeed the bellum omnium in omnia which some philosophers, observing [it] to be so general in this world, have mistaken… for the natural instead of the abusive state of man.  And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt.  Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.’  (Thomas Jefferson, 1816)

The debt problems plaguing our country have been in the works for a very long time.  The federal debt has been an ongoing concern since the FDR administration first used deficit spending as a policy tool to stimulate our economy.  Federal debt existed before the Great Depression, but the 1930’s saw a dramatic increase in federal debt which has grown steadily since that time, only to explode in the 1980’s.  Prior to the 1980’s, the federal debt was a problem that could have been dealt with relatively painlessly had there been sufficient political willpower to do so. 

However, as anybody in this country can observe for themselves, not only has the can been repeatedly kicked down the road by previous elected officials (of both parties), our federal debt has recently grown to crisis proportions - especially since the stock market crash of late 2008.  It has been quite popular to blame the politicians for our debt woes, but the blame is misplaced.  We need to collectively look in our mirrors to find the true culprits.  The People themselves are to blame on at least two levels:  1) we elected the leaders who brought us to this point and 2) we elected those leaders to ‘bring the bacon home’ to our districts.  The latter consists almost entirely of legal plunder in one form or another.  Granted, plunder is not entirely to blame for our fiscal woes - our excessive expenditures on policing the world through the use of our military has contributed significantly to our deficit spending and must be addressed as well - but this is a subject for a future post.

Legal plunder is a fact of life here in America as well as abroad.  I grew up with it, accepting it without question.  But the inherently immoral nature of the system is eventually discovered by those who are courageous enough to think for themselves.  It is then that a sense of moral outrage sets in - a sense of injustice takes hold.  The outrage has nothing to do with greed or selfishness, but stems from a legitimate sense of injustice done to the productive members of society at the hands of morally myopic do-gooders.  Social spending in the form of entitlement programs - the heart and soul of progressive causes - is not only unsustainable financially, it is morally at odds with our natural rights.  We cannot continue down this path of collectivism without ultimately destroying the economic viability of our country - not to mention the very legitimacy of our government.

I will concede that most of us are busy with our lives and seldom find the time for proper reflection regarding political matters - therefore we rely heavily on our elected leaders to do what is right and proper.  But this approach has proven disastrous for our nation.  Our lack of critical thinking skills, a general disregard for our civic duties, and the increasing influence of moral relativism in our society has led to a dangerous political climate.  Furthermore, Americans no longer think for themselves as Leonard E. Read, founder of the ‘Foundation for Economic Education’ demonstrates in the following excerpt from his essay “Accent On the Right”:

And what counsel can you and I offer individuals who are doing no thinking for themselves?  So, let's explore the two significant questions this deplorable situation seems to pose.  To assess the political consequences, view the American populace as a market.  Suppose, for instance, that the consumer tastes in literature have deteriorated until there is demand for pornography only.  Pornographic authors and publishers will spring up by the thousands; authors and publishers of ethical, moral, and spiritual works will fade away for lack of a market.  Reverse the market situation and assume only highly elevated tastes in literature.  Authors and publishers of pornography will then be displaced by authors and publishers of high-grade literature.  One needs no poll to determine the literary tastes of a people.  Merely observe the kind of literature that is gaining in favor and profit.  We can infer from this that it is useless to blame commentators, authors, and publishers for purveying trash.  They are merely irresponsible responses to the general taste - the market – whatever it is.¹  The market determines who are to be the successful purveyors. 

Market demand also determines the kinds of persons who vie with each other for political office.  Assume a people who do no thinking for themselves.  Theirs is a stunted skepticism.  Such people only react and are easy prey of the cliché, the plausibility, the shallow promise, the lie.  Emotional appeals and pretty words are their only guidelines.  The market is made up of no-thinks.  Statesmen - men of integrity and intellectual stature - are hopelessly out of demand.  When this is the situation, such statesmen will not be found among the politically active.  And who may we expect to respond to a market where thinking for self is absent?  Charlatans!  Word mongers!  Power seekers!  Deception artists!  They come out of their obscurity as termites out of a rotten stump; the worst rise to the political top.  And when our only choice is "the lesser of two evils," voting is a sham.

Is this not an accurate description of politics in America today?  We the People have brought our current calamity upon ourselves.  Our system of government cannot work unless the People are about the business of governing themselves.  If we are not careful, we will soon have squandered the heritage of a profoundly wise and just system of government, proving once and for all that man is incapable of governing himself.

Recommended reading: ‘The 5000 Year Leap’ (National Center for Constitutional Studies), a thoroughly enlightening account of the rise of the American Republic and the Founders’ views of the proper role of government.

¹ Read makes the following exception:  Men of virtue and talents - the natural aristocracy, to use Jefferson's term - would never irresponsibly respond to the lure of either fame or fortune should the response contradict their concept of righteousness.  Man cannot stoop below his goodness.

Legal Plunder Defined

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.  It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.  The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

What is legal plunder?  You won’t find the phrase in a dictionary, but the following working definition should prove useful:

Legal plunder (n):

a. legalized theft

b. wealth redistribution through legislation

c. a destabilizing political force

d. a cancer infecting the free-markets

e. an estimated 52% of the federal government budget

Before discussing further the nature of legal plunder, perhaps we should begin with a civics lesson.  In order to fully comprehend the criminal nature of legal plunder, we must have in our minds a firm conviction of what the legitimate purpose of government is.  We need only to remind ourselves of the famous words penned by Thomas Jefferson in one of our most cherished American state papers, The Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

In other words, governments are instituted among men to protect their God given rights – nothing more.  Step outside the bounds of legitimate government and you cross over into tyranny and despotism.  Frederic Bastiat’s ‘The Law’ provides further insight into the proper role of government:

Each of us has a natural right – from God – to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.  These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other.  For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality?  And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

If every person has the right to defend – even by force – his person, his liberty, and his property, then if follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly.  Thus the principle of collective right – its reason for existing, its lawfulness – is based on individual right.  And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute.  Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force – for the same reason – cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.¹

Simply stated, the common force (i.e., the State) can only perform acts that the citizens comprising that common force are morally and legally permitted to act upon.  The flip side of that coin is that if an act committed by an individual is criminal, it should be self-evident that the State has no right or authority to commit a similar act.  Citizens can organize to protect their rights, but cannot join hands to violate the rights of others.  Therefore, the State – the common force organized to protect rights - cannot legitimately violate the rights of others.

Generally speaking, legal plunder is the act of coercively taking private property from one individual and giving it to another.  The most common mechanism used today to plunder the citizenry is through the collection of taxes – granted, some of the collected revenue is for legitimate purposes of government, but much, if not most, represents government sanctioned theft.  While taxation is the mechanism used to plunder the People, it is legislation that gives legal plunder the façade of legality.  However, ‘legal’ does not necessarily mean ‘legitimate.’  Use of the political process in this fashion is very dangerous in that legalized plunder blurs the distinction between justice and injustice.  Stealing from someone is always and everywhere unjust.  Why then is it not equally unjust if the State plunders its citizens?

What are some examples of state sponsored theft?  Primary examples include welfare, food stamps, school lunches, and any other government program designed to ‘redistribute the wealth’ of a nation.  Social Security must also be included, to the extent that an individual withdraws more funds than he or she has paid into the system.  All of these programs are at their core coerced charity.

There are other, more indirect and insidious² forms of plunder that are generally more difficult to identify but correspondingly more dangerous to the body politic.  Medicare and Medicaid are more akin to insurance programs, but these are in reality indirect forms of legal plunder as the programs are structured by design to subsidize healthcare costs for those who cannot afford to pay for them – but someone does indeed pay for this care:  other taxpayers.  So in effect, Medicare and Medicaid are cleverly disguised forms of wealth redistribution, which, as we have noted in our working definition, is nothing more than legal plunder.  Other more sinister examples of indirect plunder include fractional reserve banking and our fiat currency unit we call the US Dollar – the widespread pillage associated with these forms of indirect plunder will be addressed in more detail in future posts.

Let us turn once again to Frederic Bastiat, where he defines “spoliation” (the French equivalent of the word plunder) this way:

When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it – without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud – to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.³

Bastiat continues:

I say that this act is exactly what the law is supposed to suppress, always and everywhere.⁴

Indeed, the law now regularly commits acts of plunder in the name of philanthropy.  The statist may say that for the good of the poor and the elderly shared sacrifice is necessary, and that the state is the only viable method to consistently help those in need.  However, legal plunder is morally repulsive on many levels, and can only be justified through obfuscation and emotional appeal.  In a scathing exposé of collectivism (a form of legal plunder), Lyle H. Rossiter lays bare the moral bankruptcy of progressive causes:

But the social pathology of collectivism extends well beyond the economic realm.… beyond their regressive consequences, these policies adversely affect social order by generating, among other negative conditions, various degrees of class conflict between the recipients of welfare benefits and the productive individuals whose assets are confiscated to support them. Examples of this type of conflict include ongoing disputes over the funding of welfare, Medicare and Social Security programs. Liberal government policy pits producers against non-producers, the well against the sick, the young, against the old, and one race against another as the liberal agenda's federal programs usurp the community's authority and preempt its resources for charitable assistance to its own poor, sick and elderly citizens through voluntary efforts. What is promoted as "compassionate" in these programs can be seen in reality to be divisive and destructive, as the politicians incite conflict with the propaganda of victim-hood, all the while alienating the citizens from their own community's resources and discouraging voluntary cooperation. ⁵

Atlas Shrugged anyone?  Most people genuinely desire to help those who are less fortunate than themselves.  But helping others can be a messy business – all of that ‘holding people accountable for their actions’ nonsense can be very tiresome and problematic.  Wouldn’t it be easier if we simply let the government take care of the needs of the poor?  What possible harm could come from this magnanimity?  After all, aren’t we our brothers’ keepers?  Here’s what Bastiat has to say about the law and charity:

You say: “There are persons who have no money,” and you turn to the law.  But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk.  Nor are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source outside the society.  Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in.  If every person draws from the treasury the amount that he has put in it, it is true that the law then plunders nobody.  But this procedure does nothing for the persons who have no money.  It does not promote equality of income.  The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons.  When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder. ⁶

The danger in combining charity and law is that ALL taxes are ultimately collected at gunpoint.  Where is this side of the moral debate?  Governments are instituted among men to secure their God given rights, not violate those rights by depriving one man the fruits of his labor and arbitrarily giving it to another.  This legalized pillaging not only destabilizes and undermines the legitimacy of the government – it will ultimately lead to revolt.  The state therefore cannot be the means of plunder without undermining its very purpose – to secure our God given rights.  From this we can draw the following conclusion:  that any official act of a governing body that operates outside of the legitimate scope and purpose of government constitutes an abuse of power.

1. Bastiat, Frederic, “The Law”, Foundation for Economic Education, page 2.

2. Dictionary.com provides a felicitous definition of the word insidious:  “Operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect.”

3. Bastiat., page 22.

4. Bastiat, page 22.

5. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D., ‘‘The Liberal Mind:  The Psychological Causes of Political Madness’’, 2006, pp 71-72.

6. Bastiat, page 27.

Opening Salvo

“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” Thomas Jefferson

Why a blog on legal plunder?

Without question, the United States is in steep decline.  A significant portion of my free time over the past three years has been devoted to understanding the underlying causes of the impending collapse of our nation. Our problems are fundamentally spiritual in nature - and our Founders recognized the dangers associated with a spiritually moribund citizenry:

‘A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.’ ¹

Our moral foundations are crumbling beneath us, and one profound consequence of that moral decay is the general acceptance of legal plunder at all levels of government – federal, state, and local.  What is legal plunder?  Stated succinctly, it is state sanctioned theft.  The aim of this blog is to strip the façade of legality off of the innumerable examples of legal plunder in our body politic and expose the plunder for what it is – theft.

Our nation is in desperate need of remediation regarding the proper role of government.  While I am cautiously optimistic about the future of the American Republic, I am also a realist – a nation cannot long endure self-destructive behavior without suffering the consequences of its folly.

The spontaneous rise of the Tea Party in response to an out of control Federal Government offers some measure of hope and optimism that the American experiment will endure.  But even the Tea Party, with its platform of limited government, free markets and fiscal responsibility, has yet to identify the most intractable and divisive source of our current debt crisis – legal plunder.

The extreme political divide in this country can be directly attributed to the struggle between the two major political camps for the spoils of legal plunder – which partially explains why citizens have begun to conclude that there is not a whit of difference between Democrats and Republicans.  Both practice legal plunder – the only difference between the camps are the beneficiaries and the victims of the plunder.  It is my hope that virtue and common sense prevail in future political debates relative to the proper role of government, without which, at a minimum, our nation's de facto state of bankruptcy will become an accomplished fact.

Recommended reading: ‘The Law’, by Frederic Bastiat – the essay provides much needed moral clarity on the topic of legal plunder.

1. The 5000 Year Leap ‘Principles of Liberty’, The National Center for Constitutional Studies.