WEBVTT NOTE War vs. American Freedom 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.200 I want to join with Lew Rockwell in welcoming all of you to the Mises Institute Conference on the Cost of War. 2 00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:15.040 Lew and I first began to discuss this subject probably almost two years ago, and since then, 3 00:00:15.040 --> 00:00:21.280 Lew has worked very hard and has assembled a truly outstanding group of speakers and scholars 4 00:00:21.280 --> 00:00:26.000 to address a subject which is extremely timely and important to American freedom. 5 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:33.240 During the Persian Gulf War, President Bush announced that we were approaching the New 6 00:00:33.240 --> 00:00:39.880 World Order. It is becoming clear that part of what is meant by that is that America is 7 00:00:39.880 --> 00:00:46.400 to become a permanent Garrison state and also the world policeman, sometimes under the cloak 8 00:00:46.400 --> 00:00:53.880 and command of the United Nations and sometimes NATO or some other regional alliance. America 9 00:00:53.880 --> 00:00:58.880 The New World Order could be at war constantly without a declaration of war by Congress. 10 00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:05.880 And if this New World Order is fully realized, American sovereignty will be destroyed. 11 00:01:05.880 --> 00:01:13.880 The historian Charles Beard warned us that this would mean perpetual war for perpetual peace. 12 00:01:13.880 --> 00:01:18.880 And of course, this is the theme of George Orwell's prophetic novel, 1984. 13 00:01:18.880 --> 00:01:29.880 So we need to understand the total cost of war in order to appreciate the dangers that war in general, but the New World Order in particular, posed from individual liberty. 14 00:01:29.880 --> 00:01:42.880 One of my favorite writers is Albert J. Knot. He was a great individualist and a classical liberal. And he wrote, or you might say, a liberal in the classical sense. 15 00:01:42.880 --> 00:02:06.240 He wrote an essay entitled Isaiah's Job. In this he tells a story of the biblical prophet Isaiah who was instructed not to try to convert the masses, but to try to speak to the remnant defined as that small group of people who would understand and appreciate his message and would be there to put things back together when the time was right. 16 00:02:06.240 --> 00:02:19.240 Nock wrote to and for that remnant, which he recognized as being a small group of people who were interested in preserving liberty in America and were working towards that end. 17 00:02:19.240 --> 00:02:30.240 This conference, I think, brings together a part of that remnant, which has been working to keep the torch of liberty lit since the chaos of World War I, 18 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:34.960 ushered classical liberalism or the philosophy of freedom off center stage and out of the theater. 19 00:02:35.920 --> 00:02:42.960 Collectivism in various forms has taken its place. This philosophy I define as classical liberalism, 20 00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:50.560 Ralph Reiko calls it the signature political philosophy of western civilization. An important 21 00:02:50.560 --> 00:02:55.680 part of the remnant has preserved much of this philosophy under various labels including the 22 00:02:55.680 --> 00:03:03.740 The Old Right, Paleo-Conservatism and Libertarianism Non-Interventionism has always been the cornerstone 23 00:03:03.740 --> 00:03:09.760 of classical liberalism and the remnant, not recognized that American citizens had far 24 00:03:09.760 --> 00:03:15.360 more to fear from the rapidly increasing powers of our own central government than from any 25 00:03:15.360 --> 00:03:21.480 threat of a foreign invasion. He further recognized that it is through the war powers granted 26 00:03:21.480 --> 00:03:27.760 and to the president that our freedom is primarily jeopardized, not address the subject of the 27 00:03:27.760 --> 00:03:32.960 total cost of war by stating, I am coming to be much less interested in what war does 28 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:38.320 to people at the time of the war and much more in what it does to them after it is over. 29 00:03:38.320 --> 00:03:44.720 Of course, the starting point in understanding the total cost of war is the well-known axiom 30 00:03:44.720 --> 00:03:50.760 that when war is declared, truth is the first casualty. History shows us that even in the 31 00:03:50.760 --> 00:03:55.480 that just war fought to oppose the clear and present danger to life, liberty and property 32 00:03:55.480 --> 00:04:02.280 still causes a severe loss of freedom. Even in a successful war, the result is one step 33 00:04:02.280 --> 00:04:07.960 being put forward to defend freedom and then two step backwards to centralize the government 34 00:04:07.960 --> 00:04:13.080 to raise taxes in order to fight the war. This net deficit must be made up after the 35 00:04:13.080 --> 00:04:19.680 war in order to have a net gain for freedom. How many times do we see taxes raised? Governmental 36 00:04:19.680 --> 00:04:40.680 In his book, The Lost Cause states that war is like that cave of bones and carcasses in mythology, into which led many tracks and out of it none. 37 00:04:40.680 --> 00:04:48.040 On the other hand, we are told by the court historians and many political leaders that 38 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:54.280 war is simply an instrument of progress, that it is similar to the purpose of a summer thunderstorm 39 00:04:54.280 --> 00:04:59.360 which clears and cools the air. Those who love freedom must never cease to challenge 40 00:04:59.360 --> 00:05:07.520 that idea. Ludwig von Mises opposed the unjust war, but he was no pacifist. His conference 41 00:05:07.520 --> 00:05:13.320 This conference is not truly an anti-war rally. There are just wars rightfully fought for 42 00:05:13.320 --> 00:05:19.160 honorable purposes of protecting our families, our lives, our liberty and property. For instance, 43 00:05:19.160 --> 00:05:23.240 I think that in this room today there would be a consensus that the American Revolution 44 00:05:23.240 --> 00:05:29.400 was such a war fought for the right purposes. Nor should this conference be construed as 45 00:05:29.400 --> 00:05:34.640 an attack upon any American soldier, or any soldier for that matter. One of the great 46 00:05:34.640 --> 00:05:47.640 One of the main injustices of the Vietnam War was that the abuse was heaped upon the returning veterans rather than criticism being directed to the politicians who caused that war, America's only military defeat. 47 00:05:47.640 --> 00:06:03.640 While I consider World War I the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, in no way do I condemn my father who fought for the American forces in France, nor Ludwig von Mises who fought on the opposing side for Austria on the Russian front. 48 00:06:03.640 --> 00:06:09.640 These two men remain two of my heroes and I admire the individual courage they demonstrated in those wars. 49 00:06:09.640 --> 00:06:19.640 Nor should this conference be understood to advocate isolationism, that pejorative term used by the Roosevelt administration to condemn its critics. 50 00:06:19.640 --> 00:06:27.640 In fact, one of the arguments made by Mises in advocating a non-interventionist foreign policy is that no nation is entirely self-sufficient. 51 00:06:27.640 --> 00:06:35.640 And because of the division of labor and the scarcity of resources, we must have world trade, and war is its greatest enemy. 52 00:06:35.640 --> 00:06:42.640 The great writer of the Revolutionary War period, Thomas Paine, gave a similar economic reason when he stated, 53 00:06:42.640 --> 00:06:48.160 War can never be in the interest of a trading nation, any more than quarreling can be in 54 00:06:48.160 --> 00:06:53.920 the interest of man in business. But to make war on those who trade with us is like setting 55 00:06:53.920 --> 00:07:02.400 a bulldog upon a customer in the shop door." This conference is rather a reaffirmation 56 00:07:02.400 --> 00:07:09.920 of the original and historically unique premises upon which America was founded. Thomas Jefferson, 57 00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:16.320 In his first inaugural address, succinctly restated the American foreign policy first 58 00:07:16.320 --> 00:07:22.240 outlined by the farewell address of George Washington, Jefferson stated peace, commerce, 59 00:07:22.240 --> 00:07:27.120 honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. 60 00:07:27.120 --> 00:07:31.760 This conference is also a reaffirmation of Ludwig von Mises' philosophy, which he stated 61 00:07:31.760 --> 00:07:37.760 clearly in 1927 in his book entitled Liberalism, wherein he advocated a non-interventionist 62 00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:43.320 Foreign Policy with Trade and Friendship with All Nations. Today, as we stand at the 63 00:07:43.320 --> 00:07:48.520 end of the 20th century in America, we can look back and see that it has been a century 64 00:07:48.520 --> 00:07:53.880 of constant assault on individual freedom, a century of big government and collectivism 65 00:07:53.880 --> 00:08:00.880 under various labels including communism, Nazism, fascism, socialism and the New Deal. 66 00:08:01.880 --> 00:08:07.720 It is the war and welfare century. Now we finally reach the end of the Cold War between 67 00:08:07.720 --> 00:08:13.480 between the two great superpowers, the Soviet Empire and America, a war which lasted 45 years. 68 00:08:13.480 --> 00:08:24.480 Mises had predicted, soon after communism took over Russia during World War I, that it would eventually collapse without market prices with which to calculate supply and demand. 69 00:08:24.480 --> 00:08:34.480 This final collapse of the Soviet Empire leaves America as a staggering giant, weighed down by excessive government. 70 00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:41.680 Taxes have been drastically raised and America has become the world policeman, sending her 71 00:08:41.680 --> 00:08:47.080 sons and daughters to police the Persian Gulf by charging rent for that army from other 72 00:08:47.080 --> 00:08:48.080 countries. 73 00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:54.240 We've sent our young people to Somalia and Africa as an armed welfare agency. 74 00:08:54.240 --> 00:08:58.880 America's armed forces have been stationed in Europe since the end of World War II and 75 00:08:58.880 --> 00:09:08.560 What has become of America in the 20th century? 76 00:09:08.560 --> 00:09:13.240 Let me quote to you the words of the great English historian Arnold Toynbee, reported 77 00:09:13.240 --> 00:09:21.240 in the New York Times on May 7, 1971 as follows, quote, To most Europeans, I guess, America 78 00:09:21.240 --> 00:09:24.640 now looks like the most dangerous country in the world. 79 00:09:24.640 --> 00:09:29.040 Since America is unquestionably the most powerful country, the transformation of America's 80 00:09:29.040 --> 00:09:36.440 image within the last 30 years is very frightening for Europeans. It is probably still more frightening 81 00:09:36.440 --> 00:09:41.120 for the great majority of the human race who are neither Europeans nor North Americans 82 00:09:41.120 --> 00:09:47.160 but are Latin Americans, Asians and Africans. They, I imagine, feel even more insecure than 83 00:09:47.160 --> 00:09:53.040 we feel. They feel at any moment America may intervene in their internal affairs, with 84 00:09:53.040 --> 00:09:58.040 The same appalling consequences have followed from the American intervention in Southeast Asia. 85 00:09:58.040 --> 00:10:06.040 For the world as a whole, the CIA has become the bogeyman that Communism has been for America. 86 00:10:06.040 --> 00:10:16.040 Wherever there is trouble, violence, or suffering, or tragedy, the rest of us are now quick to suspect that the CIA had a hand in it. 87 00:10:16.040 --> 00:10:24.040 Our phobia about the CIA is no doubt as fantastically excessive as America's phobia about World Communism. 88 00:10:24.040 --> 00:10:30.040 But in this case, too, there is just enough convincing guidance to make the phobia genuine. 89 00:10:30.040 --> 00:10:35.040 In fact, the roles of America and Russia have been reversed in the world's eyes. 90 00:10:35.040 --> 00:10:39.040 To date, America has become the nightmare. End quote. 91 00:10:39.040 --> 00:10:44.040 This conference will address the question of how American foreign policy has been transformed 92 00:10:44.040 --> 00:10:48.040 and the dangerous present status poses to our freedom. 93 00:10:48.040 --> 00:10:52.040 We need to revisit briefly our original principles of foreign policy. 94 00:10:52.040 --> 00:10:58.040 I've already alluded to the non-interventionist foreign policy statements of Presidents Washington and Jefferson. 95 00:10:58.040 --> 00:11:00.040 Listen to John Quincy Adams, quote, 96 00:11:00.040 --> 00:11:04.040 America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. 97 00:11:04.040 --> 00:11:08.040 She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. 98 00:11:08.040 --> 00:11:12.040 She's the champion and vindicator only of her own. 99 00:11:12.040 --> 00:11:18.640 She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice and by the benign sympathy of her example. 100 00:11:18.640 --> 00:11:26.840 She well knows that by once enlisting under the banners of others than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, 101 00:11:26.840 --> 00:11:32.640 she would involve herself beyond the power of explication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, 102 00:11:32.640 --> 00:11:39.640 of individual avarice, envy, ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom. 103 00:11:39.640 --> 00:11:47.640 The fundamental maximum of a policy insensibly would change from liberty to force, end quote. 104 00:11:47.640 --> 00:11:53.640 Of course, before he became president, he served as Secretary of State to President Monroe, 105 00:11:53.640 --> 00:11:57.640 and thereby played the major role in forming the Monroe Doctrine. 106 00:11:57.640 --> 00:12:04.640 This doctrine told Europe and Asia alike to stay out of our hemisphere, and we in turn would stay out of theirs. 107 00:12:04.640 --> 00:12:13.140 President James Madison explained why a non-interventionist policy was necessary in order to preserve freedom in America at home. 108 00:12:13.140 --> 00:12:17.140 And he addressed the cost of war with the following statement, quote, 109 00:12:17.140 --> 00:12:27.140 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. 110 00:12:27.140 --> 00:12:44.140 War is the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes, and armies and debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few." 111 00:12:44.140 --> 00:12:50.140 Finally, toward the end of the Old Republic in America in 1852, Henry Clay stated, 112 00:12:50.140 --> 00:12:54.980 By following the policy we have adhered to since the days of Washington, we have prospered 113 00:12:54.980 --> 00:12:59.420 beyond precedent. We have done more for the cause of liberty in the world than arms could 114 00:12:59.420 --> 00:13:05.620 effect. We have shown to other nations the way to greatness and happiness. But if we 115 00:13:05.620 --> 00:13:12.300 should involve ourselves in the web of European politics, in a war which could effect nothing, 116 00:13:12.300 --> 00:13:17.220 where then would be left the last hope of the friends of freedom throughout the world? 117 00:13:17.220 --> 00:13:22.980 More better it is that adhering to our wise pacific system and avoiding the distant wars 118 00:13:22.980 --> 00:13:29.140 of Europe, we should keep our own lamp burning brightly on this western shore and as a light 119 00:13:29.140 --> 00:13:35.460 to all nations than to hazard its utter extinction amidst the ruins of fallen or falling republics 120 00:13:35.460 --> 00:13:36.460 in Europe. 121 00:13:36.460 --> 00:13:44.440 Our founding fathers understood the non-interventionist foreign policy to be a lesson learned by 122 00:13:44.440 --> 00:13:49.880 by History and it was a lesson to preserve individual freedom at home. 123 00:13:49.880 --> 00:13:54.960 They were familiar of course with the first historian Herodotus who wrote about the Persian 124 00:13:54.960 --> 00:14:01.080 armies invading Greece and he marveled at the heroic efforts of the Greeks who were 125 00:14:01.080 --> 00:14:06.600 outnumbered by a ratio of ten to one but still defeated the invaders while at the same time 126 00:14:06.600 --> 00:14:10.920 they resisted any impulse toward empire themselves. 127 00:14:10.920 --> 00:14:16.920 He was repulsed by the arrogance of the Persian leader Xerxes who conducted these imperialistic wars. 128 00:14:16.920 --> 00:14:23.920 The founders of America were also familiar with the great historian Thucydides, who was a warrior himself. 129 00:14:23.920 --> 00:14:29.920 And he tells about the famous Peloponnesian wars, which destroyed the great Greek civilization. 130 00:14:29.920 --> 00:14:38.920 He teaches us the lesson that the love of freedom and justice by the Athenians could not survive their continual warfare with Sparta. 131 00:14:38.920 --> 00:14:50.920 He shows that the Athenians, through their newfound imperialistic tendencies, became as cruel and arrogant and tyrannical as had been the invading Persians or their Grecian enemies far. 132 00:14:50.920 --> 00:14:55.920 He taught that through the constant wars, Athens lost her soul. 133 00:14:55.920 --> 00:15:02.920 He points out that the turning point of the Peloponnesian Wars was the destruction of the great Athenian navy, 134 00:15:02.920 --> 00:15:10.420 which at the time was not defending Athens, but was lost in the harbor of Syracuse while trying to conquer Sicily. 135 00:15:10.420 --> 00:15:18.420 These and many other lessons of history were known and understood by our founding fathers who set out our original policy. 136 00:15:18.420 --> 00:15:22.420 Now let's look at what happened briefly when we abandoned those principles. 137 00:15:22.420 --> 00:15:29.420 This conference will look at the cost of war with special emphasis to be given to three wars, all won by America. 138 00:15:29.420 --> 00:15:35.420 These were the American Civil War, which, more correctly labeled, would be the War for Southern Independence. 139 00:15:41.420 --> 00:15:45.420 Then the Spanish-American War, and finally World War I. 140 00:15:45.420 --> 00:15:51.420 The combination of these three wars repudiated many of the most important principles upon which America was founded. 141 00:15:51.420 --> 00:15:53.420 It changed the structure of the American government. 142 00:15:53.420 --> 00:16:16.420 The destruction of the South, both politically and economically during the Civil War, also abolished the ideas of Jefferson of maintaining a decentralized federal government, and instead allowed the centralizing ideas of Hamilton to take over. 143 00:16:16.420 --> 00:16:31.420 The South, with its minority political position, had attempted to restrain centralization of power into the Federal Government by forming an alliance with the Northern Democrats and by asserting the theories of states' rights, nullification and concurrent majority. 144 00:16:31.420 --> 00:16:37.580 In the South, Iowa became a tax slave to the North through the Protective Tariff, which 145 00:16:37.580 --> 00:16:42.300 was extracted from the South and then used for internal improvements in the North, all 146 00:16:42.300 --> 00:16:48.740 under the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution and all over the protest of the South. 147 00:16:48.740 --> 00:16:54.380 The great historian and advocate of liberty, Lord Acton, was a strong supporter of the 148 00:16:54.380 --> 00:17:00.860 Confederate cause because he saw the issues from a long historical perspective. 149 00:17:00.860 --> 00:17:05.620 He saw that the South represented the preservation of the original purposes of the Constitution, 150 00:17:05.620 --> 00:17:10.860 which basically was to promote liberty by preventing the centralization of government 151 00:17:10.860 --> 00:17:13.100 into the Federal Government. 152 00:17:13.100 --> 00:17:17.580 Acton was no defender of slavery, and he limited the compromise that was reached with slavery 153 00:17:17.580 --> 00:17:18.580 in the Constitution. 154 00:17:18.580 --> 00:17:25.180 But he saw slavery in the context of a historical, religious, and ethical development, an institution 155 00:17:25.180 --> 00:17:30.020 rooted in ideas and circumstances only of a particular era and time. 156 00:17:30.020 --> 00:17:36.000 Lord Acton apparently had convinced William Gladstone that England should intervene to 157 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:42.500 support the Confederacy. But this intervention was cut off by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation 158 00:17:42.500 --> 00:17:48.060 made long after the war began. Lincoln's statement, which purported only to free slaves in the 159 00:17:48.060 --> 00:17:53.620 rebelling states and not throughout the rest of America, was made admittedly by Lincoln 160 00:17:53.620 --> 00:17:59.180 for military and propaganda purposes. The proclamation had the effect, however, of diverting 161 00:17:59.180 --> 00:18:05.180 Fighting the war from its original and stated purpose of preserving the Union to that of eliminating slavery. 162 00:18:05.180 --> 00:18:11.180 Acton wrote to General Lee at Appomattox, after Appomattox and stated, quote, 163 00:18:11.180 --> 00:18:19.180 Therefore I believe that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization. 164 00:18:19.180 --> 00:18:27.180 And I mourn for the state which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo. 165 00:18:27.180 --> 00:18:37.180 The writer, Gore Goddard, in his study of the American Civil War and of Lincoln in particular concluded that Lincoln was America's first dictator. 166 00:18:37.180 --> 00:18:45.180 He stated, quote, the memory of Lincoln was and is a constant stimulus to the ambitious Chief Magistrate 167 00:18:45.180 --> 00:18:55.180 and knows that once the nation is at war, his powers are truly unlimited while the possibilities of personal glory are immeasurable, end quote. 168 00:18:55.180 --> 00:19:00.640 Secretary of State William Henry Stewart and Lincoln's top military advisor, General 169 00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:06.380 Winfield Scott, both strongly advised the president to abandon Fort Sumter rather than 170 00:19:06.380 --> 00:19:12.540 reinforce the federal troops in Charleston Harbor. He was advised that such reinforcement 171 00:19:12.540 --> 00:19:18.780 would serve no military purpose and would be a useless act that would probably provoke 172 00:19:18.780 --> 00:19:25.020 an unnecessary war. Lincoln's act of reinforcing Fort Sumter and thereby provoking the South 173 00:19:25.020 --> 00:19:30.520 into firing the first shot set an example for later presidents to follow such as Wilson 174 00:19:30.520 --> 00:19:35.420 in concerning the events surrounding the sinking of the Lusitania as well as Roosevelt and 175 00:19:35.420 --> 00:19:42.620 the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Others have labeled Lincoln as America's Rhodes Pierre, not primarily 176 00:19:42.620 --> 00:19:47.500 for the conduct of the war towards the south but rather for his unconstitutional and tyrannical 177 00:19:47.500 --> 00:19:52.740 treatment of American citizens in the north. Lincoln's repressive policy in the north was 178 00:19:52.740 --> 00:20:04.740 was made a crucial issue in the 1864 presidential election. In areas far removed from the war zone, such as in New York, where the court system was fully operable, 179 00:20:04.740 --> 00:20:15.740 Lincoln allowed martial law to be declared and American citizens to be arrested without warrants, tried before military judges, without a jury or without counsel, 180 00:20:15.740 --> 00:20:21.460 and convicted in sentence without an appeal, some merely upon suspicion of disloyalty to 181 00:20:21.460 --> 00:20:28.380 his cause. He also unconstitutionally suspended the writ of habeas corpus, a time-honored 182 00:20:28.380 --> 00:20:34.580 basic right of Anglo-American history. In a recent book entitled The Fate of Liberty 183 00:20:34.580 --> 00:20:40.660 by Mark Neely, who by the way is the director of the Lincoln Museum, he discloses a full 184 00:20:40.660 --> 00:20:45.980 A full study of the question of civil liberties at the hands of President Lincoln. 185 00:20:45.980 --> 00:20:52.820 Lincoln neatly carefully reviewed the records of some 13,000 of these unconstitutional trials 186 00:20:52.820 --> 00:20:59.420 and concludes that while he is unable to refute Gorevodov's charges, nevertheless, he concludes 187 00:20:59.420 --> 00:21:05.980 that Lincoln should and will be absolved from blame by history because the ends justified 188 00:21:05.980 --> 00:21:06.980 the means. 189 00:21:06.980 --> 00:21:11.980 However, he concludes his book with his final and true statement, quote, 190 00:21:11.980 --> 00:21:16.980 War and its effect upon civil liberties remain a frightening unknown. 191 00:21:16.980 --> 00:21:20.980 With the destruction of the political ideas of the South, 192 00:21:20.980 --> 00:21:25.980 the American government lost both its restraining anchor and its stabilizing rudder, 193 00:21:25.980 --> 00:21:29.980 and set sails with the winds of centralization of power. 194 00:21:29.980 --> 00:21:35.980 And finally, after three decades shipwrecked at the beginning of the 20th century 195 00:21:35.980 --> 00:21:48.980 The war and welfare century was about to begin. The Spanish-American war at the turn of the century in 1898 was labeled by John Hay as that splendid little war. 196 00:21:48.980 --> 00:21:59.980 Although the cost in lives and taxes was relatively small, it was the war that repudiated our non-interventionist foreign policy, which had served America well for over a hundred years. 197 00:21:59.980 --> 00:22:06.780 That war with Spain was completely unnecessary is shown by the fact that Spain agreed to 198 00:22:06.780 --> 00:22:12.700 all of the terms proposed by America for settlement of the issues two days before President McKinney 199 00:22:12.700 --> 00:22:18.260 delivered his war dress to Congress, a small detail he failed to disclose. 200 00:22:18.260 --> 00:22:23.660 The war gave America its first taste of an imperialistic world power and gave America 201 00:22:23.660 --> 00:22:30.300 A Foot Hold in Asia in the Philippines, thereby violating its own Monroe Dock. 202 00:22:30.300 --> 00:22:35.420 However, Mark Twain, at the time, saw that the full significance of this drastic change 203 00:22:35.420 --> 00:22:40.300 in policy and recognized the ominous threat to freedom when he said, quote, we cannot 204 00:22:40.300 --> 00:22:46.180 maintain an empire in the Orient and maintain a republic in America. 205 00:22:46.180 --> 00:22:51.300 The break in the dike of American foreign policy or non-interventionism became a flood 206 00:22:51.300 --> 00:22:57.780 with the World War I. By engaging in the European cauldron of constant conflict, the entangling 207 00:22:57.780 --> 00:23:04.020 alliances of the European nations served as tripwires to cause one single assassination 208 00:23:04.020 --> 00:23:09.940 to erupt into a world war, thereby demonstrating the wisdom of the Founding Fathers to avoid 209 00:23:09.940 --> 00:23:15.560 such alliances. America's unnecessary and late entry into World War I completely upset 210 00:23:15.560 --> 00:23:22.560 World War I immensely fortified a universal faith in violence. It set in motion endless adventures in imperialism, endless nationalistic ambition. Every war does this, to some degree, roughly corresponding to its magnitude. 211 00:23:45.560 --> 00:23:51.560 The Final Settlement of Versailles, therefore, was a mere scramble for loot. 212 00:23:51.560 --> 00:23:59.560 In a book by an English attorney, Frederick J.P. Veale, he traces the history of warfare and shows that the, quote, 213 00:23:59.560 --> 00:24:04.560 civilized code for war was completely abandoned in World War I. 214 00:24:04.560 --> 00:24:09.560 Veale traces the optimistic faith of Western civilization during the 19th century, 215 00:24:09.560 --> 00:24:13.700 in the 19th century, where it appeared that the Industrial Revolution and the outstanding 216 00:24:13.700 --> 00:24:19.840 achievements in science and technology would bring unlimited progress to the world. 217 00:24:19.840 --> 00:24:25.000 This optimistic dream was shattered when Western civilization leaped into total warfare in 218 00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:30.000 World War I with all of its new scientific weapons of mass destruction. 219 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.540 Veale entitled his book, Advance to Barbarism. 220 00:24:34.540 --> 00:24:39.280 When we look at the rampant violence in America today, we are, I believe, also looking at 221 00:24:39.280 --> 00:24:45.280 Part of the Cost of War. I think it is instructive to remember that near the end of World War II 222 00:24:45.920 --> 00:24:50.240 and six months before the atom bombs were dropped on two Japanese cities, 223 00:24:51.120 --> 00:24:57.600 that the Japanese government had offered to surrender on virtually identical terms which 224 00:24:57.600 --> 00:25:03.360 were accepted one month after the bombing. The surrender terms were documented in a 40-page 225 00:25:03.360 --> 00:25:11.160 Memorandum from General MacArthur to FDR, dated January 20, 1945. 226 00:25:11.160 --> 00:25:16.920 The memo was then secretly delivered later by Chief of Staff Admiral Leahy to journalist 227 00:25:16.920 --> 00:25:22.560 Walter Trohan of the Chicago Tribune because the admiral rightly suspected that the peace 228 00:25:22.560 --> 00:25:27.760 officer would be ignored and he wanted history to record the truth. 229 00:25:27.760 --> 00:25:33.180 Furthermore, President Truman later admitted to former President Herbert Hoover that by 230 00:25:33.180 --> 00:25:41.380 By early May 1945, he was aware of the Peace Off and that further fighting was unnecessary, 231 00:25:41.380 --> 00:25:44.500 and yet he still authorized the bombing. 232 00:25:44.500 --> 00:25:51.660 Trohan first published this information in the Chicago Tribune on August 19, 1945, and 233 00:25:51.660 --> 00:25:59.020 Harry Elmer Barnes revealed more about this horrible story in National Review on May 10, 234 00:25:59.020 --> 00:26:00.020 1958. 235 00:26:00.020 --> 00:26:05.300 Just like Churchill's bombing of Dresden, this massive destruction and wholesale slaughter 236 00:26:05.300 --> 00:26:09.380 of innocent men, women and children was not a military necessity. 237 00:26:09.380 --> 00:26:14.940 It can be little doubt that this dreadful violence committed by the American government 238 00:26:14.940 --> 00:26:20.060 has had an adverse impact upon our culture as well as the standard of morality for all 239 00:26:20.060 --> 00:26:22.220 mankind. 240 00:26:22.220 --> 00:26:26.620 America thus has forfeited its original claim to serve as a beacon for justice and peace 241 00:26:26.620 --> 00:26:28.300 to the world. 242 00:26:28.300 --> 00:26:33.300 We've now had over 100 years of experience with our original non-interventionist foreign 243 00:26:33.300 --> 00:26:38.740 policy and nearly 100 years of experience with our present policy. I believe that the 244 00:26:38.740 --> 00:26:44.780 empirical evidence clearly shows which policies should be adopted for the future. 245 00:26:44.780 --> 00:26:49.960 Let me close by reminding you of a speech Ludwig von Mises gave at Princeton University 246 00:26:49.960 --> 00:26:55.660 in 1958, which is now in a pamphlet entitled Liberty and Property, published by the Mises 247 00:26:55.660 --> 00:27:01.360 Mises Institute, I noticed on the shelf in the back. He said that time that the main 248 00:27:01.360 --> 00:27:07.140 beneficiaries of a true free market are the consumers or general population rather than 249 00:27:07.140 --> 00:27:12.660 businessmen and that the general population, consumers, rather than businessmen should 250 00:27:12.660 --> 00:27:17.820 be its champion. He pointed out that many powerful business interests oppose the free 251 00:27:17.820 --> 00:27:23.620 market and prefer a government regulated market where they can avoid competition and are able 252 00:27:23.620 --> 00:27:35.720 I think that the same is true in regard to the issues of war and peace. It is the general 253 00:27:35.720 --> 00:27:41.180 population who lose their lives, their wealth, their property and their liberty and pay the 254 00:27:41.180 --> 00:27:47.060 total cost of war. I think that history also proves that certain powerful economic interests 255 00:27:47.060 --> 00:27:52.040 or the merchants of death promote and support wars in general in order to gain unjust and 256 00:27:52.040 --> 00:27:56.360 and the immense profits that they could not obtain through a true free market. 257 00:27:56.360 --> 00:28:02.440 The roll call of those who oppose the free market as well as those who oppose peace often 258 00:28:02.440 --> 00:28:05.080 contain the same names. 259 00:28:05.080 --> 00:28:10.640 In a rare moment of candor for modern American presidents, General Eisenhower in a farewell 260 00:28:10.640 --> 00:28:15.120 address lifted the curtain of the section slightly and warned us about the military 261 00:28:15.120 --> 00:28:17.560 industrial complex. 262 00:28:17.560 --> 00:28:22.840 While this conference is a gathering of part of Knox-Rineland, our ultimate purpose is 263 00:28:22.840 --> 00:28:27.920 to eventually reach the general population who benefit the most from peace and who pay 264 00:28:27.920 --> 00:28:33.280 almost the total cost of war. And it is only when those total costs of war are fully and 265 00:28:33.280 --> 00:28:38.280 widely understood that liberty can be safely protected. Thank you.