The Danger We Face Is From Within

by Jacob G. Hornberger
Oct. 01, 2014

As most everyone knows, ISIS, not al-Qaeda, is the newest official enemy facing the United States. The truth, however, is that it's not ISIS that poses the biggest threat to the American people. Instead, the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people is the moral rot that lies at the center of America's welfare-warfare state.

Under the welfare state way of life, Americans are waging war against each other. It's a polite war, one waged with smiles and friendliness. But the fact is that a large number of Americans are doing everything they can to get into the pocketbooks of everyone else and take their money. At the same time, they are doing everything they can to protect their own pocketbooks from being looted by others who are doing the same -- by coming up with income-tax deductions, tax credits, and other tax provisions.

The war is being waged across the spectrum. Social Security recipients keep telling themselves that they "put their money into the system" and, therefore, have a right to "get it back." But deep down, they know that their money was never put into a fund or retirement account. It was spent a long time ago. The law is clear: Social Security is nothing but a welfare program, just like food stamps. Money is being taken by the government from the young and productive, many of whom are having a difficult time starting out in life, and being given to seniors who want to retire early. There is little sign that seniors are willing to support the repeal of this socialist program no matter how much damage it is doing to American society.

It's no different with Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, corporate bailouts, foreign aid, education grants, and all the other socialistic tax-and-transfer programs. The recipients of the largess are as adamant as the recipients of Social Security. They honestly believe that they have a right to the fruits of other people's earnings. They are not about to let go of their welfare.

When you tell people that the country is going down the tubes because of the welfare state, their attitude is: Take it away from other people. Don't take it away from me. I have a right to it.

Most everyone who is on the dole has a mindset of total dependency. Once on the dole, people honestly think that they could never survive without the dole. They're convinced that they and others would starve to death or just die in the streets without the dole.

That's what the welfare state has done to Americans -- it has turned them into weak, frightened, dependent people who will do anything to keep plundering and looting other people through federal welfare-state programs. The welfare state has damaged, if not destroyed, the old American traits of self-reliance, can-do, and private charity.

Indeed, because of the welfare state Americans have lost faith in themselves, in freedom, and in God. Their faith is now in Caesar, the governmental apparatus that steals from Peter to give to Paul.

The internal rot generated by the welfare state, however, is nothing compared to the internal rot generated by the warfare state. Every day, imperial forces are bombing and assassinating untold numbers of people in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and other places, with nary a question or concern from many Americans. Their blind faith in America's Cold War-era national-security establishment is complete.

The daily death and destruction is now accepted as a necessary part of America's governmental system. Soldiers don't question what they're doing. They faithfully carry out the orders of their superiors under the belief that moral responsibility can be avoided through obedience to orders.

For their part, many Americans just keep "supporting the troops," thanking them for their "service," and paying homage to them, with nary a thought as to whether what they are doing is morally wrong.

Few Americans care who the bombs are dropping on. Few care how many people are being killed and maimed. All that matters is the blind faith in the Pentagon and CIA that such agencies are only doing what it necessary to "keep us safe."

Meanwhile, soldiers come back all screwed up in the head, and it's all chalked up to PTSD, rather than deep guilt over what they have done.

There are, of course, big winners in all this. That would be the "defense" contractors, who are making a killing as they produce the armaments that are used to do the killings.

Back here at home, the federal government grows ever-more powerful, with secret surveillance schemes monitoring people's most private activities and with military and intelligence officials now wielding the power to arrest and detain American citizens, torture them, execute them, and assassinate them, all without trial or due process of law. Hardly anyone notices that it's what totalitarian regimes do.

Meanwhile, federal spending and debt continue to soar, sending the government ever closer to bankruptcy, even while the Federal Reserve does everything it can to crank up its inflationary machinery, as a way to repay all that debt with debased currency and also in a desperate attempt to achieve one more round of artificial prosperity, one based on irredeemable fiat paper money rather than on genuine savings.

No matter how bad things continue to get, Americans just won't let go of their welfare-warfare state way of life. Indeed, they don't even see that their many political and economic woes are rooted in the welfare-warfare state way of life.

Meanwhile, the internal rot grows larger by the day. It's that internal rot that poses the real danger to America. The same thing happened under the Roman Empire.
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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.