Does It Matter Who Is Elected President?

by Jacob G. Hornberger
Sep. 11, 2015

For the next year, we are all going to have to endure the presidential campaign and its accompanying blowhard speeches, insipid commentaries, and vapid debates.

At the same time, many people will be terribly excited over the opportunity they get every four years to elect the person who will wield omnipotent power over their lives. It’s really not surprising that people get so excited about the presidential race because it’s the only time when the person who will rule over them will be nice and deferential to them. Once Election Day comes, everything changes for the next 3 years. The president will be back in his role as ruler and the citizens will be back in their role as deferential, submissive serfs.

Untold amounts of money will pour into the presidential race. That’s because the governmental system that we now have in the United States — a welfare-warfare state — is a money-making racket for hundreds of thousands of people who are on the dole, either directly or indirectly. Much of the big money that will pour into the presidential campaign coffers will be accompanied by the hope of getting a share of the trillions of dollars of welfare-warfare state largess that is provided by the taxpayers.

Throughout the process, the same mindset that has guided people since the inception of the welfare-warfare state in the 1930s and 1940s will guide American citizens today. People will be convinced that if they can just get the right person into office, America will be restored to greatness and to economic prosperity. That mindset is often expressed during the off-years as “We’ve just got to get better people into public office.”

The reason that that’s important to people is because of the incessant and ongoing crises that have afflicted the United States ever since the inception of the welfare-warfare state and that continue to bedevil the country today.

World War II, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, the JFK assassination, 9/11, the war on terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, ISIS, al Qaeda, Latin America, Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, Medicaid, federal spending, federal debt, the dollar, the Federal Reserve, the drug war, immigration, and much, much more.

Everywhere you look for the past 80 years of the welfare-warfare state, there’s been chaos and crises and there still is, on an ongoing basis.

What have presidents done to deal with all this chaos and all these crises? They have all invariably centralized power within the federal government, not only in the departments, agencies, and bureaucracies that deal with domestic matters (e.g., the DEA, the Department of Labor, the Department of Agriculture, HUD, Social Security Administration, and Homeland Security), but also and particularly in the national-security branch of the government, mainly the military establishment, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

Voters have always hoped that if they can just get the right person into the presidency (and the right people into Congress), they will finally — after eight decades of the welfare-warfare state — finally bring an end to all the chaos and all the crises and restore greatness and prosperity to America.

At the risk of raining on this presidential parade, it just ain’t gonna happen. No matter who is elected to be president in 2016, the chaos and the crises will continue.

There is a very simple reason for this: The reason for all the chaos and all the crises is the welfare-warfare state apparatuses that were grafted onto our federal governmental structure back in the early part of the 20th century.

Americans living at that time had the same mindset that Americans today have. They thought that a welfare-warfare state would bring economic prosperity and security to the United States. What they failed to realize — and what people fail to realize today — is that it’s the exact opposite — that a welfare-warfare state apparatus brings economic impoverishment and insecurity, as manifested by such things as economic booms and busts, inflationary debasement of the currency, infringements on civil liberties, torture, coups, wars of aggression, invasions and occupations, and formal programs of assassinations, including against American citizens.

No matter who is elected president, the chaos and the crises will not only continue, they will also continue to get worse. That’s because the president will “do something” about the chaos and the crises, which inevitably will worsen the situation, centralize power in the federal government even more, and bring about a greater destruction of American liberty and prosperity.

To get back on the right track — the track toward freedom, peace, and prosperity — the answer lies not in electing the right person to be president. Instead, the solution to America’s woes is a structural one: Dismantle (i.e., don’t reform) the welfare-warfare state apparatus that has been grafted onto our original federal governmental structure, and the chaos and the crises that arise from that apparatus go away.

That means the repeal (not the reform) of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, farm subsidies, foreign aid, the income tax, and every other program that takes money from people and gives it to others. It means the repeal of all laws that regulate peaceful behavior, including drug laws, immigration controls, and trade restrictions. It means the abolition of the IRS and the income tax, The Federal Reserve, the Departments of Labor, Agriculture, Education, HUD, DEA, the Federal Reserve, and every other welfare-state and regulatory department and agency. It means the dismantling of America’s standing army, the military-industrial complex, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, Homeland Security, and the closure of America’s empire of foreign and domestic military bases.

As the Founding Fathers and the Framers clearly understood, as manifested by their rejection of a welfare-warfare state apparatus when they brought the federal government into existence, that’s the only way to attain a society of peace, prosperity, and harmony. There is no other way. Delay will only bring what it has brought for the past 8 decades—ever-worsening chaos and crises.

When the day comes that the American people restore their original governmental system by dismantling the welfare-warfare state apparatus that has been attached to it, it really won’t matter much who is elected president.
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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.