I think the more appropriate title for the talk would be America's Pyrrhic Victories.
And one of the conclusions that I've reached in American history is that we have come from
a very free country at the time of our founding to a point where our liberties are in great
danger today, primarily through the Pyrrhic Victories we won.
We lost the war in Vietnam, I suppose you'd say, and we tied the war of 1812, otherwise
We've got a winning record. All those wars we're taught by history that we fought them to protect freedom and we won those wars.
And so it comes as a very controversial subject to say that, know that we've lost our liberties by winning those wars.
Of course, the word pirates comes from the general who won the war at Aesculum over the Romans in about 275 B.C.
And it's come to stand for the point that you may win the battle and lose the war. And
our war on behalf of freedom has been lost primarily through centralization of government,
which occurs primarily during wartime. To lead into this, the subject which has interested
me most over the past 30, 35 years, sort of a bookworm on the subject, is the subject
of Freedom. And that leads you into all kinds of other subjects, history, psychology, economics,
political science, philosophy. And all of those subjects are interesting to me primarily
from the viewpoint of what effect do they have on liberty. How has liberty been gained?
How has it been retained? And how has it been lost? And I guess you could state that there's
An ancient riddle, and that is, how does an individual maintain individual freedom within a society?
How do you reconcile law with liberty, government with freedom, or, stated another way, how do you grant government enough power
in order to protect freedom without giving it so much power so that government becomes its oppressor?
And that is the great riddle of civilization. And the best answer that's ever been given for that was the founding of America, which was based upon classical liberalism of which Ludwig von Mises is a prime promoter.
That is basically an 18th century idea that you needed to make sure that the central government was very limited in its scope.
So only grant it a few specific delegated powers and retain most of the powers to that government which is closest to the people, the states and the people.
And do this through a written constitution.
And at that time a policy was adopted which lasted for a hundred years.
and that is the foreign policy that recognized that the greatest threat to freedom is the
centralization of power which occurs through war. Therefore, our foreign policy should
be based upon the fact that we will only fight those wars which are a clear and present danger
to America and otherwise we will remain neutral and not allow our government to become centralized
for those purposes and we will get out of the, as I call it, the carton of constant
Conflict in Europe. And so that was the great policy upon which we were founded. Mises agreed
with this completely, and if you look at his book, Liberalism, especially chapter three,
it contains most of his ideas on foreign policy. And he agreed to all the ideas of the founding
fathers. He believed in a, of course, private property, private means of production, free
free trade policy with no protective tariffs, and so forth.
But here's one sentence I want to read to you in that chapter, and he talks about the
foreign policy, but the main thing is this.
Nations must come to realize that the most important problem of foreign policy is the
establishment of lasting peace, and they must understand that that can be assured throughout
the world only if the field of activity permitted to the state is limited to the narrowest range.
The foreign policy of many European countries was of course at that time colonialism, which
meant the foreign policy was based upon gaining colonies, expanding, and of course his was
neutrality. There are certain truths about war that came about as statements made in
opposition to war in America. One is by Randolph Bourne, American writer who opposed America's
in the World War I, where he stated war is the health of the state, meaning that it is
during war that government grows and becomes strong. And it's a very true statement. Another
was made by U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson of California in opposing World War I, and that
is when war is declared, truth is the first casualty. And government takes a position
during war that it can use Plato's royal lie for the good of the people.
And modern wars are fought primarily through conscription and propaganda, propaganda to
control what is the American people know about it and propaganda to try to affect the enemy.
And the problem with that is that propaganda used during the war often becomes the history
of that war because the government still has an interest in promoting the reasons for which
it caused the war.
So there's another adage that winners always write the history.
So that myths and propaganda created during the war become the history of the war.
And that is the reason that revisionism becomes necessary is that it is only when you go back
and look at original documents and diaries and documents that the government says you
Revisionism has gotten a bad name because they think it's something out of 1984 you're trying to change the facts, when in fact the purpose is to overcome propaganda, myth, and legends that were done during the war to see what the real truth facts were, and it is the misuse of Henry Ford's old statement that history is bunk. What he meant by that is that history written at the time of war and so forth is propaganda and it's bunk. It's not that history is bad.
History is our main method for learning the lessons of the past so that we don't repeat
them in the future.
Let me tell you just briefly about how our Project Cost of War came about.
Back several years ago, I did a review of a book for the Institute called Guardian of
Every Other Right, and it's by a law professor at Vanderbilt, and it's a very good book on
on Property Rights, and he liked probably 95% of those people who want to talk about
what's happened to our property rights or liberties in America, they all trace it back
to the New Deal.
That's when everything went wrong.
So in praising his book, I criticized it in the sense that he did not show that almost
every program in the New Deal was merely a renewal, a recreation of those programs that
were instituted first in America in World War I.
And the same people like Bernard Baruch and the War Industries Board took over the same
position in the New Deal.
And he said, well, he hadn't really thought of that, but then he began to talk with Professor
Ivey, and he and I have had a lot of conversations since then.
And then he said, yeah, that's right, you know, rent control started World War I, this
started and so forth.
He said, yeah, that's right, I wish I could have added that.
And then there was another program here on campus several years ago, a cousin of mine
And I was in charge of, I like very much, Leo Atkins, and it was called the Second World War, quote, colon, a good war? And I thought that that was going to get into some of the things that I'm interested in, so I encouraged her to have a speech by another cousin of mine, Eugene Sledge, who gives about the best account of a frontline soldier in war you can ever read, in hopes that that would answer the question, in some sense, what were the bad points of the war.
and all it talked about was all the wonderful things that occurred by reason of World War II.
All the good things came out of that. Great unity of the people. Everybody came together.
Everybody had patriotic feelings. It was the greatest thing that happened in America.
But nobody talked about the cost of war. So Lou and I frequently have lunches together
and I began to talk about it. I said, you know, maybe we ought to do something about not the benefits of war
War, but the cost of war. And those costs often are long-term, unseen, hidden, that
the people don't know about. And so that's sort of the genesis of this. And if you're
familiar with stock market chartists, they do things called down channels and up channels.
And my theory would be that we've got a down channel on freedom in America. And the dip
First was the American Civil War, and then the next dip was the Spanish-American War,
and then the next dip was World War I, the next dip World War II, and it's a down channel
in this way showing where we lost freedom. And all of the big dips on my chart are all
in wartime except the New Deal, which I maintain is really a product primarily of World War
Let me read you a quote I think is interesting from a prominent historian, British historian
Arnold Toynbee. This is given a perspective from a foreign historian. This is in the New
York Times on May 7, 1971. To most Europeans, I guess, America now looks like the most dangerous
Since America is unquestionably the most powerful country, the transformation of America's image
within the last 30 years is very frightening for Europeans. It's probably still more frightening
for the great majority of the human race who are neither Europeans nor North Americans,
but are the Latin Americans, the Asians, the Africans. They, I imagine, feel even more
insecure than we feel. They feel at any moment America may intervene in their internal affairs
and the same appalling consequences as have followed from American intervention in Southeast
Asia. For the world as a whole, the CIA has now become the bogey that Communism has been
for America. Wherever there is trouble or violence, suffering or tragedy, the rest of
us are now quick to suspect that the CIA had a hand in it. Our phobia about the CIA is
no doubt as fantastically excessive as America's phobia about the world of Communism. But in
In this case, too, there is just enough convincing guidance to make the phobia genuine. In fact,
the roles of America and of Russia have been reversed in the world's eyes. Today, America
has become the nightmare. America that was founded on all the principles of freedom and
a non-interventionist foreign policy has now become a nightmare to others in the world
looking to us.
One of the main provisions put in our Constitution, and I want to go into the reasons for that
The minute is that Presidents cannot declare war on the Congress. But in our history, only
five wars have been declared by Congress. The War of 1812, the Mexican-American War,
the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II. And on over 200 occasions, the American
President has sent soldiers to foreign countries without any declaration of war. And since
In 1945, over 100,000 American soldiers had been killed in under-clad wars on foreign
soil and over 400,000 battle injuries have occurred.
The great examples of the misuse and abandonment of the Constitution recently, of course, of
the Korean War and Vietnam War, clearly not police actions as they were advertised, but
major wars in which they suffered great damage.
But the principal example of violation of the Constitution, in that respect, is the
American Civil War, where Lincoln launched a massive war without any authority from Congress
whatsoever, and it still is unmatched for loss of lives, American lives, of any other
war.
Let me give you a quote from Daniel Webster. I'm picking and choosing about my article
I've written on cost of war. Listen to this. Miracles do not cluster. Hold on to the Constitution
of the United States of America and the Republic for which it stands. What has happened once
The Founding Fathers were well aware of the need for a non-interventionist foreign policy
and Washington and Jefferson stated this, but it was Washington's idea in the Farewell
Address, is it peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with
The founding father, I think, that really gets down to the nitty-gritty is James Madison.
Let me give you two quotes from him.
First on why you need a non-interventionist foreign policy to protect liberty.
Madison states, of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded
because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies.
From these proceed debts and taxes, and armies and debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing about the many under the domination of the few.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
Warfare.
And then another quote from Madison, which was part of his address to the Constitutional
Convention, states why you don't allow the President to declare war and be in charge
of starting wars.
He states this, war is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.
In war, a physical force is to be created.
And it is the executive will which is to direct it.
In war the public treasuries are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense
them.
In war the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied, and it is the executive
patronage under which they are to be enjoyed, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle,
the strongest passions and the most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast, ambition,
Average, vanity, the honorable or the venal love of fame are all in a conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
I think that sort of summarizes why the American policy was started.
One thing that is interesting, there's a great new book out by Forrest MacDonald on American presidents.
He talks about this, about sort of the difference. In the 18th century, people read history for the purpose of learning lessons from history.
And they went back and read the original historians. Here's what MacDonald states.
History, to most of the authors of the Constitution, was more valuable than political theory because it was more real.
were real. As Bowling Book put it, history was philosophy by example. 18th century Americans
read widely in history, thought historically, and cited history as authority. John Dickinson
expressed a prevailing sentiment when he said, quote, experience must be our only guide for
reason may mislead us. Well, who were the historians that they read and who influenced
Two of them, they studied Greek and Roman history and they read those historians.
I was impressed when Charles Adams spoke to us about how he goes back and reads the original
historians.
And those historians wrote for the purpose of telling a story and teaching you a lesson
of why history, the mistakes in history should not be repeated.
The first historian who wrote it told us about the Persian Wars where the Persians outnumbered
and the Greeks ten to one. And they invaded Greece and the Greeks repelled them over and
over with great courage and honor. And he was impressed by the fact that, he wrote it
as, was impressed by the fact that as the Greeks repelled the Persians, the Greeks never
tried to impose empire on anyone else. They protected themselves and repelled their enemies
and never saw empire themselves. And the next historian that probably teaches us the most
And he was a warrior himself and had fought in the Greek wars and he tells us the story
and the lessons from the Peloponnesian Wars and in that he talks about that Athens lost
her soul and her freedom through constant warfare, that the Athenians in their constant
Warfare with Sparta became as power-seeking and as arrogant as the prior invading Persians,
and that he teaches you that you must stay away from wars in order to protect your freedom.
And he points out that the real turning point in the Peloponnesian War was when the great
Athenian Navy, which was their main strength, was almost totally destroyed in the Syracuse
Harbor in Sicily, not trying to protect Athens or Greece, but trying to conquer Sicily. And
his is probably the greatest statement against empire, that you lose your own freedom through
empire. There's another influence, I think, on the founding fathers from Shakespeare.
He tells about what I would call the oldest trick in the trade of governance. And that
is if you want to distract your domestic critics, get a foreign war going. If you want to limit
the sin against you, get a foreign war going. It's an old trick of tyrants and kings, and
Shakespeare talks about that in Henry IV. And, of course, the language I'll give it
Walter says you should busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels. In that the king is dying
and his son is there and he's telling his sons about the Machiavellian use of power
and this is how you'd be a good king. He says first of all let me tell you this, you remember
the long crusade we had to go to the Holy Land? Well that was all a political ploy. I
was trying to silence my local critics and that's what you have to do and Harold Goddard
Shakespeare critic says his advice boils down to this. He says, quote, make war, dear boy,
and God grant that your reign may be a peaceful one. The language Shakespeare uses is this,
and had a purpose now to lead out many to the Holy Land, lest rest and lying still make
Let them look too near into my state. Therefore, my Harry, be at thy course to busy, giddy
minds with foreign quarrels. That action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the
former days." It's a very eloquent statement of foreign policy.
There's another lesson gained to the founding fathers through the Spanish conquest of the
of the Aztecs and the Incas, and I don't know if I've indexed that here, but it, this
occurred of course before the founding of America, and the lessons in that is that the,
can't find it, but basically it was this, that the Aztec and Inca society was found
They seem to have lost their freedom primarily through two means.
Their rulers promised them security from want and security from foreign invasions
if they would simply give them their freedom.
It was the war and welfare state.
And that lesson was available to the founders of America.
So they learned lessons from history,
and they formulated American policy
of the American Government based on the lessons of history.
Let's get into the American Civil War.
I have no, I'm not a military star and I have no interest in the battles of the Civil
War.
My interest is mainly and simply what was the cause of the war, what was the real cause
and what was the real effect.
And the myth is and what we are all taught is that the abolition of slavery was the purpose
and Cause of the War.
And when you bring this up with people and argue about it,
so well, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued during the war, right?
Yeah.
And the 13th Amendment was passed at the end of the war, right?
Well, abolition of slavery was the cause of the war, wasn't it?
No.
Why wasn't it?
I said, and my answer to them is, I said, when it rains, the streets are wet, aren't they?
Yeah.
After the rains over, the streets are wet, aren't they?
Did the wet streets cause the rain?
And they say, well, that's some trick of a trial lawyer.
And they say, no.
Those things occurred, but they occurred as a result of the war
and not the cause of it.
And the question of slavery that existed
was not whether slavery should be abolished in the states
where it existed, but whether it should be expanded or extended
into the other new states and territories.
And the purpose was control of Congress.
and the whole Constitution was formed by trying to equalize the balance by counting slaves
as three-fifths of a vote and other things like that to keep the South from being a minority.
And that's what continued to be the question as slavery was extended into other areas.
What were some of the real causes? An interesting book that Lew recommended to me is called
for Albion Seed. Albion is in the White Cliffs of Dover. It's about who settled America,
what were the seeds planted in America by the English who came over here. Part of that
book talks about two of those groups, the two main groups that founded America, were
the two groups that fought the English Civil War. And those were the Puritans who settled
Massachusetts and the Cavaliers who settled Virginia. And they were fighting when they
When they came over here, they were fighting, while they were here, they were fighting the
Civil War during this whole period of time.
So we imported the English Civil War into our area.
And that book goes into the various differences of the cultures, the ideas on religion and
so forth.
And it was as though two separate countries came here during a war and settled our country.
Another thing is the basic difference in ideas between the North and South back before the Civil War.
Let me read what Lord Acton, the great historian of liberty, was a champion of the Confederate cause because he saw it as the battle for liberty.
He wrote this at the time of the war.
It seems clear to me that if slavery had never existed, a community divided by principles,
so opposite as those of Jefferson and Hamilton, will be distracted by their antagonism until
one of them shall prevail.
And that was the basic conflict that existed from the time of the Constitution, the Federalist
and the Anti-Federalist, the Centralizers and the Decentralizers.
And that came over and became exaggerated and emphasized, enhanced by industrial revolution.
You had an agricultural society and an industrial society, and you had ideas that to protect
a growing industrial society, you would have a protective tariff, which would protect those
industries from competition from abroad and allow you to sell your products to the South
Charles Adams, who was here, gives a great statement about all this. He says, in 1832,
When national debt was paid and there was no justification for import taxes at high rates,
except to promote a monopoly in the hands of northern industries to raise prices for
southern consumers, the South exported about three-quarters of its goods and in turn used
the money to buy European goods, which carried the high import tax.
This means that the South paid about three-quarters of all the federal tax, most of which was
spent in the North.
If the South did not pay for the foreign goods and instead pay the high taxes, the alternative
was to buy Northern manufactured goods at excessively high prices.
Either way, the Southern money ended up in the North.
There's a brand new biography I would recommend, especially to the Civil War buffs, on Admiral
Simms, who's by the son of General Maxwell Taylor, John Taylor, and it's called Confederate
Rater. And Sims was not a Southerner. He was a career naval officer. He had no slaves,
had no interest whatsoever in slavery. And he resigned his commission and joined the
Confederate Navy. And his reasons for supporting the Southern cause are summarized by John
Taylor. Let me read this to you because it sort of brings this all together. This is
This is Taylor's summarization of Sims' views.
Since the Mexican War, Sims had come to identify more with the South and less with the United
States.
It was much more than the sectional loyalty of a newcomer to Alabama.
Rather, it grew out of his study of economic trends and the constitutional doctrines.
An avid reader, Sims was convinced that the South was a victim of economic oppression
by the North, that policies determined in Washington had resulted in a transfer of wealth
from the South to the North.
He placed much blame on the recently departed Henry Clay. Clay's American system had provided
for tariffs to protect fledgling New England industries. Yet the effect of the tariff legislation,
Sims concluded, was a stifled foreign competition, compelled the southern consumer to pay artificially
high prices for manufactured goods. In Sims' view, the problem went beyond economic policy.
He saw the North and the South as inherently antagonistic. Thinking in the North was dominated
by New England Intelligentsia, which in turn was drawn from the intolerant descendants of
the Puritans. From religious intoleration, it was but a short step to constitutional
obstructionism. Recalling New England's opposition to the War of 1812, Sims concluded, as long
as they were in the minority, the New England state stood strictly on their state rights
in resisting such measures as were unpalatable to them, even to the extremity of threatening
secession, which of course they did in the Hartford Convention of 1814. It was only when
Then they found themselves in the majority that the New Englanders had abandoned their
states' rights doctrine.
Thus, Simms saw the United States as composed of incompatible societies.
The result could only be disastrous for the Southern minority.
He quoted with approval the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, who for two decades
earlier had compared the states of the hostile nations under one government.
The tyranny of the majority of which de Tocqueville had won was at hand.
One of Simms' heroes was Patrick Henry, who had opposed ratification of the Constitution
on the grounds that the more populous North would eventually come to dominate the South.
And for the volatile issue of slavery, Simms dismissed anti-slavery agitation as a red
herring, an issue that Northern politicians exploited in order to isolate and weaken the
South.
Those who opposed the spread of slavery were not humanitarians, rather they feared the political
repercussions from the formation of new slave states, and he quotes Simms, quote, the fat
That southern goose could not resist being plucked as long as things stood. But it was
feared that if slavery was permitted to go into territories, the goose might become strong
enough to resist being plucked. It's a pretty good explanation of his theories. His wife
did not agree with him, and so she took their three daughters and moved to Ohio at the beginning
of the war. All three of their sons fought for the Confederacy, and his brothers fought
for the Union. So, he is a man who simply looked at the issues and chose sides based
on the issues.
Let's look at one more question from Lord Acton in his statements. He said, slavery
was not the cause of secession, but the reason for its failure. In other words, that's not
This is not what promoted the war, but it is one of the main reasons that the South lost.
Let's look at some of Abraham Lincoln's statements made before the war.
First, when he was a Whig and ran for the Illinois Legislation,
this is from one of his first speeches I found in one of Emmy Mel Bradford's books.
This is Lincoln. I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have
been solicited by my many friends to become a candidate for the legislature. My politics
are short and sweet like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank, in favor
of the internal improvement system, and in favor of a high protective tariff. And that's
That's the way he started his political career.
In his first inaugural address, he says this,
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists.
I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
And then he says, but I have in regard to collecting taxes and impost, beyond what may be necessary for those objects, there will be no invasion, no use of force.
In other words, he's saying, I will use force for that purpose, but not to eliminate slavery.
During the war, and in August of 1860, Horace Greeley, who was editor of the New York Tribune,
wrote an editorial encouraging Lincoln to take the war beyond this protected union and
give it some high moral purpose.
And so Lincoln wrote back a letter to the editor which was published on August 25, 1862.
states this, my paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either
to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would
do it. And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. I don't know how much
more specific you can get that the war was not fought for the purpose of abolishing slavery.
Some of the interesting study you can find is done by people who are promoting the Northern
View and you have to read the footnotes and go read the bibliographical essays. But there's
a book, two recent books, one called Lincoln the War President and another called Union
in Peril. But it talks about the cabinet meetings before the war started. And in one of those
In those meetings, the prime military advisor was General Winfield Scott, and the Secretary of State was Henry Stewart.
And they specifically advised Lincoln not to reinforce the troops at Fort Sumter, because they said it would be a useless act that would promote an unnecessary war.
But Seward went further, and in the diary of Gettys and Wells, you will see where he says they had a meeting on April 1, and in a written memo,
Seward told Lincoln that, you know, don't do anything about the South because, you know,
we don't want to destroy their economy, that's what we're living off of.
But I know you need a war, promote a war with France or Spain, much preferable.
And Lincoln thought that was too risky.
And then later he began to make, Seward began to make statements indicating they may start
a war with England.
and the book Union in Peril which is written by the head of the history department of Alabama.
He goes into the English documents and that's the way apparently you're going to be able
to find much of the good information about that because they were sympathetic to the
South and they were not trying to destroy documents or promote propaganda.
I mean it's back to the old Shakespearean advice of busy giddy minds with the foreign
and War is what Sue had preferred rather than an internal struggle that would kill the South's
economy which would hurt their own economy.
Well how did the Emancipation Proclamation come about?
Long after the war had started and you will find in the Union in Peril the conclusion
reached that it was a proclamation used as a military necessity to prevent British intervention.
Lincoln himself admitted that it was strictly a military measure that was used, and he states this,
Things had gone, this is Lincoln, things had gone from bad to worse until I felt we had reached the end of our rope
on the plan we were pursuing, that we had about played our last card, and I must change our tactics or lose the game.
I am now determined upon the adoption of the Emancipation Policy.
Lincoln also said after issuing the policies, the character of the war will be changed.
It will be one of subjugation. The Old South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and ideas.
Let me move along a little bit more and get some of the cost of the war.
Of course, the cost of the war was this. It was in effect holding a new constitutional convention.
It held it on the battlefields and was settled by bullets.
And it completely changed the American government
from one of limited powers to a consolidated government
with hardly any checks and balances on the power.
Lord Acton wrote a letter to Robert E. Lee
after the Civil War and said this,
I saw in states' rights the only availing check
upon the absolutism of the sovereign will
and secession filled me with hope,
not as it did the destruction,
but as to the redemption of democracy.
The FYD and you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization.
And I mourn for the state which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that
which was saved at Waterloo.
Gore Baddall, in his book, Lincoln, says that Lincoln is America's first dictator.
And he says this, the memory of Lincoln, and this is in an essay called United States Essays,
the memory of Lincoln was and is a constant stimulus to the ambitious chief magistrate
who knows that once the nation is at war, his powers are truly unlimited while the possibilities
of personal glory are immeasurable, right out of James Madison, his first McDonald's
assessment in his book on American Presidency.
Many people then and later criticize Lincoln's conduct as excessive.
The abolitionist Wendell Phillips called Lincoln an unlimited despot, and Justice Benjamin
Curtis wrote that he had established a military despotism when William Whiting solicited the
The Federal Department published a book called War Powers Under the Constitution, in which
he maintained that in wartime the President's actions are subject to no constitutional restraints
whatever.
Senator Charles Sumner thundered that the doctrine and Lincoln's behavior under it was
a pretension so irrational and unconstitutional, so absurd and tyrannical as to deserve no
respect.
The doctrine when followed would change the federal authority from one of government of
law to that of a military dictator.
20th century historians and political scientists routinely characterized Lincoln's presidency
as a Dictatorship or as a Constitutional Dictatorship, sometimes using the word in the benign Roman
sense, sometimes in its sinister modern sense.
One of the best books you can read about the destruction of civil liberties during the
Civil War is written by the director of the Lincoln Museum, Mark Neely, wrote a book called
Fate of Liberty.
And he goes through, he studies 13,000 of these unconstitutional trials where military
Law was declared in the North, in New York and Illinois and other places. People were
tried before a military judge, without a jury, without a lawyer, without a right of appeal
and sentenced to death, in many cases, only on suspicion. Lincoln was fighting the copperheads.
He sentenced a fellow, Van Landingham, who criticized him, out of the North, said you
had to go to the South, and he eventually went to Canada. Took over newspapers, railroads.
War and the Rise of the State
In connection with the war, the Lincoln administration attempted to intervene in areas of national
life and economy that the federal government had never touched before.
Prior to 1861, the national government had been a minor purchaser in the American economy.
During the war it became the largest single purchaser in the country, a catalyst of rapid
growth in key industries such as iron, textile, shoe manufacturing, meat packing. The Civil
War spawned a revolution in taxation that permanently altered the structure of American
Federalism and the relationship of the central government to the national economy. Prior to
the war, over 80% of Federal revenue had come from customs duties, but despite the numerous
upward revisions of tariffs during the war, those could provide only a fraction of what
was needed to sustain the Union armistice. On August 5, 1861, the first income tax in
U.S. history came into effect, followed by the Internal Revenue Act of 1862, which levied
a whole series of new taxes, stamp taxes, excise taxes, luxury taxes, grocery street
taxes, inheritance tax, value added tax, manufactured tax on goods. The latter act also created
the Bureau of Internal Revenue, perhaps the most effective vehicle of Federal power ever
created. The formation of an Internal Revenue system was part of the largest Civil War
Revolution and the Nature's Financial Structure. In February 1862, Congress enacted the Legal
Tender Act, authorized the Treasury to issue 150 million in notes of greenback dollars,
not covered by hard specie. Creation of the national currency forever altered the monetary
structure of the United States. All these measures had some link to the war effort.
It was vital to retain western support against the south, to protect industry from competition,
and to obtain cheap labor from abroad. But the long-range thrust was to favor industrial
Growth, Westward Expansion, and the interest of Eastern Urban Capital over those of Agriculture.
Appomattox thus represented not just the defeat of the South, but the defeat of the whole
Southern economic and political system, and the triumph of the state-fostered industrial
and financial complex in the North.
You've got the birth of the military-industrial complex right there.
Let me hurry on to the Spanish-American War and quickly cover that.
called the Splendid Little War by John Hay because it lasted only 229 days.
The cause of that war, in my opinion, rose out of these facts.
In 1890, the national census indicated that the Western frontier had been conquered or
closed.
In 1893, a famous essay by Frederick Jackson Turner came out and his conclusion was that
the economic growth of America has taken place because we've had this whole continent to
Conqueror, and so forth. And now that's coming in. America's simply got to take a new course,
and that is we need colonies, we need foreign markets. Well, of course, the pretense under
which the war was fought was to free Cuba, and there was a doctrine at that time that
if a foreign power had a colony near you and they couldn't maintain order, then you had
the right to go in and to restore it. So we launched that war primarily to free Cuba from
the Spanish. And remember, the main became the cry that was promoted by the Hearst Papers
and the Pulitzer Papers. In 1976, a study by the Navy called the Rickover Study shows
conclusively now that that explosion of the battleship Maine occurred from inside the
ship, could not have been set by the Spanish. And as a great quote from, of all people,
Justice Black talking about the role of newspapers because the Hurston Pulitzer Papers promoted
The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press could remain
forever free to censor the government.
The press was protected so it could bear the secrets of government and inform the people
only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.
And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part
of the Government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die
of foreign fevers, foreign shot, and shell.
I mean, it's not only a recognition that the government does that, but that's the role
the press is supposed to perform to keep us from being deceived.
What really happened in the Spanish-American War, though, was that we tried to get Spain
McKinley claimed the islands for America and acquired our coaling station for the purpose of going to China.
Let me read this. McKinley became the first imperialist American president to conquer foreign land.
He cited the same war powers for his right to rule the world.
McKinley claimed the islands for America and acquired our coaling station for the purpose of going to China.
A fearless American president who conquered foreign land.
He cited the same war powers for his right to rule Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines
for several years after the war had ended.
A scholar of military government stated in 1904, quote, In America, we were supposed
to have started out with an executive with care to define powers, but we are now developing
one with the prerogatives which must be the envy of crowned heads.
Mark Flane hit the nail on the head and said we cannot maintain an empire in the Orient
and maintain a republic in America. American foreign policy at this point then was changed
180 degrees from non-intervention to intervention so that up to this point we have changed the
whole American government through the Civil War to a centralized power and in the Spanish-American
The Peloponnesian War, we've changed the foreign policy 180 degrees.
We're about out of time and I haven't gotten to World War I.
In my opinion, World War I could turn out to be the Peloponnesian War of modern times.
Because it absolutely rejected the whole premise upon which America was founded.
People came here to get away from the cauldron of constant conflict.
Conflict.
It was in that war that we sent American troops and upset the balance of power in Europe and
caused the Carthaginian peace treaty, Versailles, to be imposed on Germany, which gave rise
to Nazism and which brought us on the end of the Second World War.
The study of Winston Churchill is interesting in this.
Ralph Reiko does his column, which I hope he will.
He points out that Churchill is the personification of the war and welfare century. He started
welfare in England by adopting the beverage system, and he was very instrumental in starting
the World War I and World War II as far as America's intervention is concerned. Just
a little about the sinking of the Lusitania, and there's some good books out on this now,
And that is that it was a British liner which was off limits for German submarines.
The German Embassy came to William Jennings Bryan, the Secretary of State, and told him
that they had gotten a copy of the manifesto, a cargo list, and it showed that illegal weapons
were there.
And under international law, that allowed them to launch and attack submarines on the
Lusitania and sink it.
William Jennings Bryan took the information of Woodrow Wilson and asked him to warn American
citizens, which he refused to do.
The German Embassy even put ads in the New York papers warning American citizens not to sail.
Winston Churchill at that time was Lord of Admiralty and he switched the captains on the ship on the day of the sailing,
changed the course so as to put it in direct conflict with the submarine attack and over 100 lives were lost by the sinking of the Lusitania.
The war didn't happen until a year or so later, but that was the cause by which Wilson was
able to whip up a motion in America that over 100 American lives were lost due to the vicious
submarine attack of the Germans, which he could have prevented, had the knowledge and
and refused to act because he wanted to busy-getty minds with foreign quarrels.
About out of time.
Yeah, it is a big subject.
I don't know if I can cut this down to now.
Let me give you this.
This is Schaeffer's book on America and the Great War.
Potentially the most important result of all was the lesson deposited in the American historical record.
Overseas wars can be beneficial to American business, for the profits that they generate and for the security and stability a war welfare state affords to those in a position to take advantage of it.
Another quote from John Keegan, who is probably the foremost authority on war, the history of war, he says this,
The First World War fought almost exclusively between American states, terminated European dominance of the world, and through the suffering it inflicted on the participant populations, corrupted what was best in the civilization, its liberalism and its hopefulness, and he's using liberalism there the same way Mises does, classical liberalism of the philosophy of freedom, and conferred on militarists and totalitarians the role of proclaiming the future. The future that the militarists and totalitarians wanted brought about the Second World War, which completed the ruin
initiated by the first. It also brought about the development of nuclear weapons and the
logical culmination of the technological trend in western way of warfare. Let me just try
to read one thing to you. Gosh, well, Wilson on civil liberties is really, I'm going to
touch on that. I hate to give that up. President Wilson followed Lincoln's example of ruthlessly
Crushing Civil Liberties. The Espionage Act was passed in 1917, Sedition Act 1918, and
then he issued an executive order on April 13, 1917, creating the Committee on Public
Information, which was funded by his executive funds without any authority from Congress.
Its purpose was to disseminate false propaganda to aid the war effort. Quoting Schaeffer in
America's Great War, Wilson felt compelled to follow Lincoln and John Adams and limit
and the freedom of ordinary citizens to dissent, a time of war, the president said, must be
regarded as wholly exceptional.
It was legitimate regard to these things which would, in ordinary circumstances, be innocent,
is very dangerous to the public welfare.
One example among thousands you can find is the prosecution of a lady called Rose Pastor
Stokes who had this letter to the editor in the Kansas City Star which said, quote, no
No government which is for profiteers can also be for the people and I am for the people
and the government is for the profiteers.
She was found guilty under the espionage and sedition acts and sentenced to ten years in
the penitentiary.
And the judge who sentenced her stated this in his order, quote, the only protected free
speech which is, the only protected free speech was that which is friendly to the government,
friendly to the war, friendly to the politics of the government, and then Wilson authorized
the prosecution of the publisher of the paper for treason.
He also, Wilson also favored the Peace Time Sedition Act in his late 1920s.
He vetoed a bill which would have abolished the Espionage Act.
I'm going to close with this.
This is some of the economic costs of World War I.
In virtually all cases of state building since the Renaissance, war-induced taxation was
the wedge by which state power advanced. The United States and World War I conformed to
this historical pattern, and this is from Porter's The War and the Rise of the State.
The income tax amendment ratified in 1913 had been a minor source of federal revenue
until Congress passed the Wartime Revenue Act of October 1917. Never before had the
The Federal Taxation affected so many Americans, so directly.
Revenue Act of 1918 went further, increasing the total income tax load on American citizens by nearly 250% over the 1917 Act.
The top bracket reached 77%, while the normal tax bracket rose to 6%.
The burgeoning tax burden also included corporate income taxes, award states tax, excise tax, import tax, excess profits tax.
The taxation legislation of World War I permanently altered the structure of American taxation.
Not only did this legislation greatly elevate the importance of income tax, but it made
the principle of the progressive tax a permanent fixture of the nation's tax system.
On the eve of entering the war, personal and corporate income tax is constituted of only
24% of the entire revenue figure.
This figure rose sharply during the war and remained high afterwards, averaging 75% throughout
the 1920s.
World War tax receipts never again drop lower than five times the pre-war level. World War
I thus catalyzed the transformation of the income tax, the most direct, intrusive of
all forms of revenue extraction, into becoming the mainstay of federal financing. The bureaucratic
growth that resulted from World War I was the obvious long-term import for the structure
of the U.S. government. By the enhancement of power of the Presidency, the accompanied
Expansion was even more significant. A series of legislative measures passed in 1916 and
1917 gave Wilson administration unprecedented authority to intervene in the national economy.
The National Defense Act compelled factories to sell their products to the government on
a priority basis at prices determined by the Secretary of War. The Army Appropriations
Act authorized the seizure of transportation. Taking a page from Lincoln, Wilson used this
Thank you very much, John. I appreciate it. Hopefully these ideas might get us on one of these up channels for freedom in the future.
Well, I hope so.
Do you want to just quickly tell the story about what happened to your, was it your great uncle?
My father's first cousin was a lawyer in Birmingham, a well-known trial lawyer, and he was at a
dinner party, among what he thought were his close personal friends, and he made the statement
that the so-and-so, Wilson, has tricked us into the First World War.
And so he was indicted under the Sedition Act, which made it illegal to make any statement
and a critical of the president and he was tried and defended by my grandfather and two
other lawyers and was acquitted but it was on a technical basis that the statement was
made about two days before the act was passed.
So that's just an example of the type of prosecution that took place so that freedom of speech
was only that which was friendly to the government.
And a great thing, the NIA Commission investigated the First World War, unlike there was no
investigation after the Second World War, and showed all of the drastic misstatements
that were made and the economic reasons that America got into the war.
And that resulted in the neutrality laws, which were passed in the thirties, which almost
prevented us from getting into the Second World War.
But those were, it was a brutal time of civil liberties and a brutal time on economic rights.
John, I agree with what I'm doing. The whole focus of your discussion, but the only criticism I have is that it seems to me that a very common in the American government is to not only declare war, it's kind of a declare war internal.
Right.
And you see things like the war on poverty and certain war on drugs and so on and so forth also when you use this sort of side behind which you see continued orientation on privilege.
Right. And I think that's become the motive is you declare war. And then that gives rise to all kind of, you know, necessity is the excuse of tyrants.
And, you know, if you take conscription and say that's a legitimate thing of government, well, what isn't?
I mean, once you accept that, that your son's going to be drafted, then why shouldn't I have to pay 77% of my income to help the war?
You know, anything, any sacrifice is not enough.
Which struck me was that's the reason something that was meant to be the door of al-Qaeda criticized violence and the love of your friends.
And that's what had happened here.
It happens in America frequently.
It's been nice to know they were sent to prison for that.
Right.
In the war conference I know of, Eugene Sledge, your cousin, and Paul Fussell had both talked about their experiences in World War II.
and it struck me in Bustle's speech especially that Vietnam with all the things that we hear about it about, you know, friendly fire and all the tragedies it's supposed to keep on, this wasn't uncommon in all the previous wars, it wasn't known and I find your comment about the media kind of interesting because to what degree has technology being able to put you right there on the spot had impact both making propaganda worse and at the same time
Well, I think it helped us get out of Somalia the first time. You know, when they show that
picture of dragging the American through the streets had a tremendous effect, I think,
on American people. So it has its good and its bad as far as the methods by which the
news media is used either to promote or to fight war. You know, the problem with discussing
War is it especially if you've got a son or father or someone you've lost in a war.
And it's almost too much pain to bear to try to investigate that war and see and come to
a conclusion if that war was unnecessary then you know that loss is even more severe.
And once you criticize war you're almost always considered being unpatriotic because that's
the thing that you know we're going to fight for our freedom.
and so it's, you almost have to find little windows of opportunity, like right now we don't have a major war when you talk about things like this, I may be prosecuted later for this, but it is a subject that's considered, quote, anti-patriotic or unsympathetic or something, but war is the essential, centralizing power and that, in my opinion, centralization power is the essential enemy of freedom. So, you know, it's, when you write
The fight about the New Deal as being the event that changed America, I think it's compressing history a little too short in Spain.
I know a lot of you have got to go. I don't want to keep anybody from a class.
If war is the principal architect of centralization of government, is peace the principal architect of erosion of power from the central authority?
Well, I think that peace gives you a chance. I mean, it's only in peacetime if we could
probably have this talk right here. I mean, if there was a Vietnam going on right now
and, you know, we would have this talk right here, we'd be considered un-American primarily.
So I think peace gives you an opportunity, not necessarily lead to freedom, but it certainly
reduces the restraints on which you can act to try to promote freedom.