What I am describing is the only realistic option Americans have. (That is, it
would
be their most realistic option if anyone in our government would actually offer it to them.) The alternative consists of an ever-growing financial burden, more police state measures, and an endless string of wars, pitched to Americans on the basis of now-familiar propaganda and financed by more borrowing, higher taxes, and more money printed out of thin air. The collapse of the dollar will not be far behind.
The empire game our government has been playing is coming to an end one way or another. This is the fate of all empires: they overextend themselves and then suffer a financial catastrophe, typically involving the destruction of the currency. We are already seeing the pattern emerging in our own case. We can either withdraw gracefully, as I propose, or we can stay in our fantasy world and wait until bankruptcy forces us to scale back our foreign commitments. Again, I know which option I prefer.
Will it be difficult? Perhaps, though not nearly as much as some people think. We would finally begin to pull ourselves out from the crushing burden of debt and unfunded obligations that have hung over our economy for far too long. Our country would enjoy far more robust economic performance than we have seen in many decades. Rich and poor alike could once again look to the future with confidence, instead of a sense of foreboding.
Doing nothing would be far more difficult. In my travels around the country I have discovered that young people are waking up to reality faster than anyone else, since they realize that the cosmetic changes our political class is calling for will do nothing to prevent the financial catastrophe they now fear they will inherit. What decent parents would want to do such a thing to their children?
Ours is not a fated existence, for nowhere is our destiny etched in stone. In the final analysis, the last line of defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.
If freedom is what we want, it is ours for the taking.
Let the revolution begin.
A Reading List for a Free and Prosperous America
These are some of the books that have influenced me over the years. Naturally, some are more suited to the beginner than others. Some of the monetary texts, for instance, are for the advanced student, so I recommend beginning a study of monetary economics with Murray Rothbard’s short book
What Has Government Done to Our Money?
(listed below), a classic that has been translated into countless languages.
A
RMENTANO
, D
OMINICK
.
Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure
, 2nd ed. Oakland, Calif.: Independent Institute, 1990.
B
ACEVICH
, A
NDREW
J.
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
B
AMFORD
, J
AMES
.
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies
. New York: Anchor, 2005.
B
OVARD
, J
AMES
.
Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil
. New York: Palgrave Mac-millan, 2004.
D
I
L
ORENZO
, T
HOMAS
J.
The Real Lincoln
. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003.
E
NGDAHL
, F. W
ILLIAM
.
A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order
. London: Pluto Press, 2004.
F
LEMING
, T
HOMAS
.
The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I
. New York: Basic Books, 2004.
———.
The New Dealers’ War: FDR and the War Within World War II
. New York: Basic Books, 2002.
F
LYNN
, J
OHN
T.
As We Go Marching
. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1944. Flynn, an accomplished journalist, analyzes fascism in Italy and Germany and concludes by considering the state of America in his day.
F
OLSOM
, B
URTON
W., J
R
.
The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America
. Herndon, Va.: Young America’s Foundation, 1993.
G
ARRETT
, G
ARET
.
The People’s Pottage
. Caldwell, Id.: Caxton, 1953. This is a persuasively argued and compellingly written early critique of the New Deal policies of the 1930s.
G
IBBON
, E
DWARD
.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
. New York: Modern Library, 2003 [1776–88].
G
RIFFIN
, G. E
DWARD
.
The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve
, 4th ed. Westlake Village, Calif.: American Media, 2002.
H
AYEK
, F
RIEDRICH
A.
The Road to Serfdom
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944.
H
AZLITT
, H
ENRY
.
Economics in One Lesson
. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1988 [1946]. This classic text has helped millions of Americans understand basic economics and the free market in just a few hours. (An indication of how the world has changed: Hazlitt once wrote editorials for the
New York Times
.)
H
OFFER
, E
RIC
.
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
. New York: Harper & Row, 1951.
H
OLZER
, H
ENRY
M
ARK
, ed.
The Gold Clause: What It Is and How to Use It Profitably
. iUniverse, 2000.
J
ASTRAM
, R
OY
W
ILLIAM
.
The Golden Constant: The English and American Experience, 1560–1976
. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978.
J
OHNSON
, C
HALMERS
.
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
, 2nd ed. New York: Henry Holt, 2004.
K
WITNY
, J
ONATHAN
.
Endless Enemies: America’s Worldwide War Against Its Own Best Interests
. New York: Congdon & Weed, 1984.
L
ANE
, R
OSE
W
ILDER
.
The Discovery of Freedom
. New York: John Day, 1943.
M
AC
K
AY
, C
HARLES
.
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1869 [1841].
M
ISES
, L
UDWIG
VON
.
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949.
M
UELLER
, J
OHN
.
Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them
. New York: Free Press, 2006.
N
APOLITANO
, A
NDREW
P.
Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws
. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006.
———.
A Nation of Sheep
. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007.
P
ALYI
, M
ELCHIOR
.
The Twilight of Gold, 1914–1936: Myths and Realities
. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1972.
P
APE
, R
OBERT
.
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
. New York: Random House, 2006.
P
ASTERNAK
, B
ORIS
.
Doctor Zhivago
. New York: Pantheon, 1997 [1958].
P
ATERSON
, I
SABEL
.
The God of the Machine
. New York: Putnam, 1943. A classic work of libertarian political theory.
P
OWELL
, J
IM
.
Wilson’s War
. New York: Crown Forum, 2005.
R
AND
, A
YN
.
Atlas Shrugged
. New York: Random House, 1957. I consider all of Rand’s novels worth reading, in spite of my strong disagreements with her on important matters.
R
EAD
, L
EONARD
E.
The Love of Liberty
. Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y: Foundation for Economic Education, 1975.
R
EES
-M
OOG
, W
ILLIAM
.
The Reigning Error: The Crisis of World Inflation
. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1974.
R
OBERTS
, P
AUL
C
RAIG
, and L
AWRENCE
M. S
TRATTON
.
The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice
. Roseville, Calif.: Prima, 2000.
R
OCKWELL
, L
LEWELLYN
H., J
R
.
Speaking of Liberty
. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2005.
R
OTHBARD
, M
URRAY
N.
America’s Great Depression
, 5th ed. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000.
———.
What Has Government Done to Our Money?
Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1990. The entire text is available for free at
http://www.mises.org/money.asp
.
R
UEFF
, J
ACQUES
.
The Monetary Sin of the West
. New York: Macmillan, 1972.
S
CHEUER
, M
ICHAEL
.
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror
. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2004.
———.
Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America
, rev. ed. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2004.
S
ENNHOLZ
, H
ANS
F.
Age of Inflation
. Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1979.
S
OLOMON
, N
ORMAN
.
War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
. New York: Wiley, 2006.
S
TERN
, J
ESSICA
.
Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill
. New York: HarperPerennial, 2004.
T
ANSILL
, C
HARLES
C
ALLAN
.
Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933–1941
. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952.
T
OCQUEVILLE
, A
LEXIS
D
E
.
Democracy in America
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002 [1835, 1840].
T
UCHMAN
, B
ARBARA
J.
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
. New York: Ballantine, 1985.
W
EAVER
, H
ENRY
G
RADY
.
The Mainspring of Human Progress
. Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1953.
*
I do not claim that pollution consisting of a few undetectable particles must be prohibited, or that no airplanes would have the right to travel high above people’s homes. These are legitimate matters for the courts, where such matters have been properly decided in the past.
(back to text)
*
I am indebted for much of this discussion to Charles Whitebread and Richard Bonnie,
Marihuana Conviction: The Legal History of Drugs in the United States
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1974).
(back to text)
*
John Adams is often misquoted as saying that one third of Americans supported the revolution, one third opposed it, and one third were indifferent. Historians have repeated this incorrect quotation time and again. Adams was in fact speaking of American support for the French Revolution. Historian William F. Marina has shown convincingly that a majority of Americans supported the American Revolution.
(back to text)