The Mises Institute’s book, The Costs of War, argues that the three wars prior to the New Deal constitute the turning point away from the ideas of our Founding Fathers. All three were won by the U.S. government: the war against the South, the war against Spain, and World War I, and they destroyed the constitutional structure of the old republic created by the framers. The New Deal would not have been possible without those wars clearing the way.
Without these wars, Franklin Roosevelt, in his unprecedented four terms, would not have been able to build the U.S. Imperium through a combination of domestic socialism and dragging America into World War II. He could not have built the Imperium unless the constitutional restraints and policies had been destroyed by the previous three wars. World War I in particular set up the structure and experience and momentum for Roosevelt to create the New Deal. He merely revitalized old government agencies that were created during World War I. But the New Deal would have gradually diminished without World War II, which put it into cement and established, once and for all, the all-powerful government we have today.
Another recent and excellent book is Bruce Porter’s War and the Rise of the State. This is a study of 500 years of Western civilization and what effect wars have had on the rise and fall of states, as well as their enhancement of power. In his chapter on American government, he says that the New Deal “was the only time in U.S. history when the power of the central state grew substantially in the absence of war” (p. 278). He concludes that America’s successful wars have been the primary means by which government power has been centralized: “Throughout the history of the United States, war has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of the central state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular resistance. It has been the wellspring of American nationalism and a spur to political and social change” (p. 291).
FDR is constantly ranked as one of the three great presidents, with Washington and Lincoln. He is pictured in American mythology as a man who hated war and loved peace and promised American mothers and fathers that he would never send their sons into a+ foreign war. He used this slogan for peace to be reelected to an unprecedented third term in 1940, copying Wilson’s “He kept us out of war” slogan which got Wilson re-elected to a second term. Wilson then immediately took America into World War I. I want to investigate this mythology of FDR and I will primarily use the congressional investigation of Pearl Harbor, which took place in 1945 and 1946, to show how the U.S. Imperium was created, and why the myth of FDR is false.
History is like a seamless piece of cloth, and not divided into sections. In order to study one event in time, you have to look at some preceding events and ideas, which make it significant and see how the event came to take place.
First, let’s recall President Washington’s farewell address and his strong warning about not letting foreign governments control or influence our domestic or foreign policy: “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens, the jealously of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.”
Secondly, we need to look back to World War I and Winston Churchill’s vital role in bringing America into that war to help save the British Empire. Churchill was also a decisive factor in working with Roosevelt to bring America into World War II. England has always played a balance of power politics regarding the continent and opposed any nation that appeared to be gaining power. Germany, at the turn of the century, had become the strong man of Europe and so England wanted to curb its power. The same strength of Germany influenced England’s policies for World War II.
When England was at war with Germany in World War I, Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty. The Cunard Steamship Company had received government subsidies to build the Lusitania, the world’s fastest oceanliner. In return for this subsidy, the government participated in the design, which allowed weapons and munitions to be secretly stored, and allowed government to take full control of the ship during wartime.
The author, Colin Simpson, in his 1972 best-seller The Lusitania shows how Churchill used the sinking of the Lusitania to bring America into World War I, because when the Lusitania sank, over 100 Americans lost their lives. Churchill’s Admiralty changed captains on this fateful voyage and substituted William Turner for the usual captain. As the Lusitania drew near its final destination, the Admiralty ordered the usual military escort ship, the Juno, to abandon its mission, but the Lusitania was not told that it was now alone or that a German submarine was directly in its path. Next, the Admiralty ordered Captain Turner to reduce his speed, thereby making the Lusitania an easy target for torpedoes.
At the hearing held in England following this disaster, Captain Turner was made the scapegoat and found guilty just as the American commanders at Pearl Harbor would later be made scapegoats for that disaster.
Another important matter to consider prior to Pearl Harbor is Winston Churchill’s close friend, William Stephenson, who later became famous by his code name, “Intrepid.” Stephenson was a Canadian who made millions during World War I through the miliary industrial complex of Great Britain. He became a close friend and confidante of Churchill during the war, and remained very close to him thereafter. When Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940, a year and a half before Pearl Harbor, he immediately arranged for financing from the Royal Family, without the knowledge of Parliament, for a secret organization headed by Stephenson to be located in Rockefeller Center in New York City.
The primary purpose of this organization was to help Roosevelt and Churchill bring America into the war through propaganda and whatever other means were necessary. This organization also had Roosevelt’s blessing to eliminate any enemies of Great Britain in America, including American citizens.
This story is told in great detail by Intrepid himself in a 1976 book, A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson, who spells his last name differently than Intrepid. This is history from the original source, because the book is based on personal interviews with Intrepid himself, and on complete access to all of his original documents.
Intrepid has also been made famous through the fiction of one of his agents, Ian Fleming. Fleming created the fictional British agent James Bond, and these novels have been made into some of the most famous movies of our time. Intrepid is represented by the character “M,” the mysterious boss of James Bond.
FDR had direct communication with Intrepid through his close associate, Bill Donovan and through his son, James Roosevelt. Donovan was the founder of the American spy agency known as the OSS, which was modeled on a plan provided by Intrepid, and which later became the CIA. J. Edgar Hoover was a reluctant participant in this whole scheme, but an important player. The whole plan required Hoover and his FBI to be subservient to Intrepid.
One dramatic incident proudly recalled by Intrepid is the mysterious death of an American citizen by the name of William Rhodes Davis, a wealthy oil man from Oklahoma, whose main business office was also in Rockefeller Center. During the 1930s, Davis had developed strong business ties to the German government and was an important source of oil for it. In the summerof 1941, Davis, age 52 and in excellent health, suddenly died. The FBI stepped in and stopped all local police investigation, labeling the cause of death as “sudden heart seizure.”
Propaganda was also a prime activity. Intrepid created false documents and a false map actually used by FDR in a speech to the nation on October 27, 1941. These documents were allegedly obtained from a German spy and purported to show Hitler’s plans for a secret invasion of South America. Intrepid also created a false document which was put into Hitler’s hands as allegedly stolen from the American government. It was received by Hitler on December 3, 1941, and purported to show FDR’s secret plans to make a surprise attack on Germany. This document played a major role in Hitler’s decision to declare war on America on December 11, 1941, which surprised almost everyone except FDR and Intrepid.
Intrepid also provided ammunition to attack FDR’s political enemies such as Charles Lindbergh and false information was created to make Lindbergh appear to be a Nazi sympathizer.
Now, let’s look at what led to the alleged surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, which killed 3,000 American servicemen and caused massive damage to the Pacific Fleet.
In 1932, as part of the annual maneuvers, Naval planners documented that if there was ever a war with Japan, the Japanese would strike the Pacific Fleet, and Pearl Harbor was extremely vulnerable to a surprise attack by aircraft carriers. The reports showed that in order to prevent such an attack, a large contingent of aircraft would be needed for 360-degree surveillance, to provide sufficient warning to prevent disaster.
Secondly, FDR ordered the Pacific Fleet transferred from its base at San Diego to Pearl Harbor, with virtually no air cover or support. Admiral James O. Richardson, Commander of the Pacific Fleet, was so opposed to this order that he made a visit to the White House and personally protested to FDR. So Roosevelt removed Richardson from command and placed Admiral Kimmell in control.
Next, FDR began to deplete the Pacific Fleet of some of its ships by sending them to the Atlantic to assist England and try to provoke the Germans into firing the first shot against America.
Some of the provocative acts by FDR to get America into the war are shown by the following events:
In the Atlantic, he used American military personnel and equipment to helplocate the German battleship Bismark for the British to sink, and he told Harry Hopkins at the time that if this was ever discovered, he would be impeached.
In the Atlantic, he used ships by the names of Greer, Kearney, and Ruben James as destroyer escorts to British ships. These destroyers helped locate submarines and assisted British airplanes in trying to destroy the subs. Submarines finally retaliated with torpedoes which missed and Roosevelt tried to argue that these were acts of war by Germany justifying America entering the war. Congress would not buy it. Roosevelt also used three ships from the Philippines to try to get the Japanese to fire first, but they would not take the bait there either.
In regard to the diplomatic maneuvers of Roosevelt, he tried to provoke the Japanese by freezing all of their assets in America, and, most importantly, by cutting off all their oil supply and trade.
FDR met with Churchill in August 1941. Later, after America had entered the war, Churchill revealed to the British government that FDR had promised him at this meeting that he would get America in the war against Germany, even if he had to go through the backdoor by provoking a war with Japan. Churchill also bragged to the House of Commons in 1942 that it has been the policy of his cabinet to get the U.S. into the war. As part of his statement, he said, “This is what I dreamed of, aimed at and now it has come to pass” (Morganstern, p. 116).
A member of Churchill’s war cabinet, Captain Oliver Lylleton, British production minister, who knew all of Churchill’s and FDR’s moves before America entered the war, stated in a speech on June 20, 1944, to the American Chamber of Commerce in London: “America provoked Japan to such an extent that the Japanese were forced to attack Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty on history, even to say that America was forced into the war” (Morganstern, p. 116).
In FDR’s cabinet, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary on November 25, 1941, 13 days before Pearl Harbor, and described a cabinet meeting covering the problems with Japan. His diary notes that the meeting occurred at the White House and he states: “There the president...brought up entirely the relations with the Japanese. He brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked, perhaps [as soon as] next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning and the question was what should we do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves” (Morganstern, p. 292).
In an unprecedented diplomatic move by Japan, its Prime Minister, a member of the Royal Family, offered to meet with FDR in American after learning of his visit with Churchill. The Royal Family had never left Japan before for a diplomatic meeting. The Japanese Prime Minister could see the danger of the meeting with Churchill. FDR flatly refused any such meeting.
Now, let’s see how the American Imperium treated its own armed forces and the commanders in Hawaii.
These are the matters known by FDR and George Marshall, his main military contact in Washington, D.C., but not relayed to the commanders in Hawaii, who were later blamed for the tragedy.
On January 27, 1941, American Ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, telegraphed FDR that he had learned from a colleague from Peru that reliable sources had intercepted Japanese military plans to the effect that if Japan was forced into a war with the U.S., they would launch a massive surprise attack on Pearl Harbor (Coverup, p. 53).
America broke the Japanese diplomatic code and actually listened to everything they were saying to each other up to the moment of Pearl Harbor. Here are some of the things they learned:
Japanese spies in Hawaii were regularly reporting the positions of all ships in Pearl Harbor, and this information drastically increased the week before the attack, even including information that ships were not moved. A grid system was set up so they could relay the positions of the ships.
Roosevelt and Marshall learned that the Japanese diplomats stated that if the matter was not settled by November 26, 1941, things would automatically go into operation.
On December 3, 1941, Captain Laurence Safford intercepted the “winds execute” message which translated to mean: “War with America, War with England and peace with Russia” (Coverup, p. 98-100).
Written evidence of this message was mysteriously removed from the naval records before the Pearl Harbor Congressional inquiry in 1945 and never found.
On December 6, 1941, a message was delivered by Naval Commander Lester Schulz directly to FDR and Harry Hopkins was present. It said that the diplomatic code machines were to be destroyed and a major event would occur the next day. FDR turned to Hopkins and stated, “This means war.” There is an apocryphal story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. FDR stated that onSaturday, he spent the evening working on his stamp collection.
During the early morning hours of December 7, the broken code indicated that at 1 o’clock Washington time, an important message was to be delivered by the Japanese diplomats. One o’clock in Washington was dawn at Pearl Harbor. General George Marshall had this message directly in front of him, coupled with all of the prior information, and he had more than two hours in which he could have warned the military commanders at Pearl Harbor. He had a scrambler phone on his desk which he could pick up and talk instantly with Admiral Kimmell and give him all of this information. Marshall testified that he decided not to do that and instead sent a regular telegram which arrived after the attack had already taken place.
Almost immediately after Pearl Harbor on December 15, 1941, FDR appointed a committee to hold secret hearings in Pearl Harbor to determine how this event could have happened. He appointed Supreme Court Judge Owen J. Roberts as Chairman. Roberts had made a speech at Madison Square Garden on August 19, 1941, advocating America’s entry into the war as a means of achieving world government. This commission investigated through secret hearings at which Commanders Kimmel and Short were not allowed to submit any evidence or confront any witnesses and were denied due process completely. The commission concluded that these two commanding officers, Kimmel and Short, were solely at fault for the surprise attack and they were forced to resign in disgrace.
It was not until after the war and the death of FDR that a joint committee of Congress investigated in 1945 and 1946. All of the information I have related to you is contained in the sworn testimony of those hearings. At the end of this article are all of my bibliographical sources. Get the books and read them for yourselves, and see the testimony that developed over Pearl Harbor. The findings went basically along Republican and Democratic lines with the Republicans finding gross misconduct and guilt on the part of FDR and George Marshall.
The evidence is so overwhelming that FDR was at fault at Pearl Harbor that many of his defenders have now changed their tactics and no longer deny that he tricked America into the war. A good example is the following quote from Professor Thomas Bailey: “Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly deceived the American people during the period before Pearl Harbor.... If he was going to induce the people to move at all, he would have to trick them into acting for their best interests, or what he conceived to be their best interest. He was like the physician who must tell the patient lies for the patient’s own good.... The country was overwhelmingly non-interventionist to the very day of Pearl Harbor and any overt attempt to lead the people into war would have resulted in certain failure and an almost certain ousting in 1940, with aconsequent defeat for his ultimate aims.” (Coverup p. 64)
One final word about this “good war” against tyranny. In addition to Great Britain, our other ally was Soviet Russia. Joseph Stalin was already, by the end of 1938, the greatest tyrant and murderer in all of human history. I recommend two books by Robert Conquest: The Harvest of Sorrow and The Great Terror. They cover the two separate periods of terror launched by Stalin against his own people. The first was during the period of 1929-1934 where he intentionally killed 11 million of his own people, and the second was 1936 to 1938, where he murdered three million more. Just prior to World War II, he killed 40 thousand Soviet officers and 50 out of 57 of his core commanders as a purge of non-loyal military. You will recall that Hitler did not purge his military and some of the regular army generals attempted to kill him before the war was over.
Instead of allowing Hitler and Stalin, the two great tyrannies who were at war with one another, to simply fight it out, we entered the war and sided with the greatest tyrant and murderer in all of history. The alleged good war was supposedly fought because Hitler invaded Poland, but it must be recalled that Stalin invaded Poland at the same time in alliance with Hitler.
At the end of the war, instead of freeing Poland, we turned it over to Stalin along with all of Eastern Europe, and Stalin continued his murders by the millions. We also turned over China to the communist. The end result of World War II was the destruction of Nazism, but the dramatic enhancement of communism throughout the world, leading to a 45-year cold war that got hot in Korea and Vietnam.
In the correspondence between Lord Acton and Robert E. Lee after the Civil War, Acton asked Lee to describe the significance of the war and Lee predicted that “The consolidation of the states into one vast Republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.”
The problem with building a huge military and stationing 1.5 million men in over a hundred countries is that you also create a massive government at home which must become oppressive. Let’s fast forward up to our present time and look at the U.S. Imperium at work at Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Randy Weaver was not the Unabomber. He had been charged by the BATF with possession of illegal guns whose barrels were slightly too short. He lived with his wife and family in the mountains. On August 21, 1992, three federal agents ambushed Weaver’s 14-year old son, Sammy, and a family friend named Kevin Harris. One government agent shot the boy’s dog, and when the boyfired back, a fire-fight ensued in which Agent Degan was killed. Sammy Weaver left the scene and while running back toward his home, another government agent shot him in the back and killed him.
The next day, FBI snipers arrived, having received the official rules of engagement that declared that, “any armed male adult observed in the vicinity of the Weaver cabin could and should be killed.”
Within an hour of the snipers’ taking position, every adult in the cabin was either dead or severely wounded, though they had offered no resistance whatsoever. FBI sniper Lon Horiughi shot Randy Weaver in the back as he stood outside his shack and then fired the head shot that killed his wife, Vickie Weaver, as she stood in the cabin door holding their 10-month old baby.
The Justice Department and FBI launched a massive coverup and even destroyed critical documents which were detrimental to the government.
Seven months after Ruby Ridge, the BATF was scheduled for its budget hearings before Congress on March 10, 1993. A command decision was apparently made to have a sensational, successful event prior to that budget hearing in order to increase the budget for the next year. This fact is the key to the whole Waco event.
Present law prohibits the use of army helicopters and tanks against U.S. citizens, except in the case of a drug raid. Therefore, the search warrants falsely charged that the residents of the church community in Waco, Texas, had drugs, rather than just supposedly illegal weapons. Several members of the community were gun collectors and sold guns at shows. Local law enforcement officers, including the sheriff, had frequently investigated the compound to see if any illegal activity had taken place and they found none. Lies were obviously told that this was a drug raid, so as to use Fort Hood facilities for the training of the operation and to use army helicopters and machine guns for the raid which initially occurred on February 28, 1993.
The BATF employed a pr expert to deal with the press so as to get the best coverage for the event. It is because of this press agent’s contact with the press prior to the event that apparently word leaked out to the people in the community that a raid was to take place and the element of surprise was lost. As the trucks pulled up with armed federal agents and helicopters flew overhead, firing down into the home, the people inside fired back and several government agents were wounded and killed. A 51-day siege then took place and the FBI took control of the matter.
During this 51-day period, some of the women and children were allowed toleave, but the people in the community saw that they were slapped into chains and arrested. Finally, Janet Reno ordered the attack on April 19, 1993, resulting in the death of at least 76 men, women, and children inside.
A truly fantastic, independently-made movie entitled “Waco: The Rules of Engagement” has been produced. It presents the actual pictures of the events and then covers the Congressional hearing and the sworn testimony before the joint committee. It is presented in a very balanced way, but the conclusion is inescapable that the FBI agents lied under oath.
The most telling thing about the movie is to see the federal agents testify under oath that they were not firing into the community and never used machine guns. The government used high flying aircraft and special film which shows heat, and the purpose was to show that the tanks did not cause the fire. However, the film not only picks up the fire, but it shows rapid machine gun fire coming from positions where only FBI agents could have been located behind the tanks as they moved in and around the compound. There was one particular area in the building that was more secure, and this was known to the FBI agents. It was known that the women and children had gathered in this area for protection and this is where the tank and machine guns delivered their most brutal attack.
To me Waco is worse than Tiananmen Square in China. At least those brave Chinese students voluntarily placed themselves in harm’s way to protest tyranny, and they were freedom fighters willing to die for the cause of liberty. At Waco, we simply have peaceful individuals, including women and children in a religious community that has been there for five decades. They have been living peacefully with their neighbors and harming no one. They were no threat to the government and they were not placing themselves voluntarily in harm’s way. They were viciously murdered by our government.
The cover story for the April 28, 1997, issue of Time Magazine was “What’s Wrong at the FBI?” The article begins by pointing out that the FBI was the idea of a man named Charles Joseph Bonapart, a descendant of the French emperor. As you might imagine, the FBI was created in the big government push of the progressive era in 1908. Bonapart was attorney general for Teddy Roosevelt. The article goes on to point out that initially, there were strong suspicions and objections that this central government police force would become as secretive and oppressive as the Czarist police force. The author of the article then concludes, “It did precisely that.”
The article continues with specifics of the horrible incidents at Waco, Ruby Ridge, Filegate, Richard Jewell, and the fiasco with the crime lab. However, part of the problem has been that no politician is willing to attack the FBI directly or to cut its budget, since the public has indicatedits great concern about crime or perhaps because of the files the FBI has long kept.
No one wants to mention that there is a problem of crime in the government either. The article points out that under Clinton, some agencies have been reduced, but the FBI’s budget has jumped by 25% to $2.9 billion. Congress has paid for 3,600 new employees and new computers. Law and order Republicans, as well as leftist Democrats, have joined in the support of the FBI, in spite of its despotic actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge. The agency has gone international now with offices even in Moscow. The FBI may spin completely out-of-control like the CIA. It has become an integral part of the American Imperium.
Crime inside a government is far more dangerous to individual freedom than crime outside the government, because it is done under the appearance of legitimacy and has the full force of the government to sustain it, as well as the ability to hide the facts from the people. Government propaganda can be very persasive on the population.
Let me mention one other government agency, the one most likely to come into contact with us and most likely to be oppressive to us. It is the Internal Revenue Service, an agency created by the federal government during the Civil War.
As Lord Acton is famous for saying “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This has certainly proven to be true nationwide and agency-wide with the IRS. I want to recommend an excellent new book entitled Unbridled Power written by Shelley Davis, who was an insider to the IRS. She was actually hired away from the Defense Department to be the first official historian of the IRS. She did her job well, studied documents, interviewed witnesses, and attended Congressional hearings, which exposed the whole operation.
I will only mention one of the many examples in the book showing total corruption. This involves two competitors for a major clothing contract in New York. One company contacted the head of the criminal division of the IRS, Ronald Saranow, and offered him a bribe in the form of a lucrative job and other benefits if he would launch a criminal investigation of the competitor, which he did. This investigation went on for three and half years and turned up absolutely nothing; but, in the meantime, the competitor was almost ruined financially.
You will be relieved to know, however, that once the IRS found out about this total corruption, they took immediate and direct action. They fired the historian, Shelley Davis, and banned her from ever coming inside the IRSagain.
This is the U.S. Imperium at its finest hour. This fall, Congressman Ron Paul reported, with great lament, that the budget of the BATF was increased by 14% and the IRS by 8%.
The U.S. Imperium, the all-powerful government created primarily by successful wars of the American Government is, as Robert E. Lee predicted it would be, both “aggressive abroad and despotic at home.” Our task is to begin dismantling the Imperium, which must occur before we can rebuild and improve the constitutional republic created by the framers. Two of the big mistakes made by the advocates of freedom, especially in the 20th century, have been the reliance simply on the ballot box coupled with the failure to recognize the need for and the value of intellectual support in the battle for public opinion.
F.A. Hayek wrote a brilliant essay published in 1949 in the Chicago Law Review entitled “The Intellectuals and Socialism.” He concluded that the vast majority of intellectuals have favored socialism and collectivism, especially in the 20th century. He defined intellectuals to include all of those who shape public opinion, such as professors and journalists. He points out that socialism was not originally a mass movement but was created by intellectuals.
Murray Rothbard wrote an even greater essay entitled “The Anatomy of the State,” published in Rampart Journal in 1965, and pointed out that the alliance between the state and the intellectual is an ancient one going back to the time of the joinder of church and state. He states that the job of the intellectual has often been to convince the masses to support the state.
He says in particular that, “Promoting this ideology (support of the state) among the people is the vital social task of the ‘intellectuals.’ For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, or indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. The intellectuals are, therefore, the ‘opinion-molders’ in society. And, since it is precisely a molding of opinion that the State almost desperately needs, the basis for the age-old alliance between the State and intellectuals becomes clear. “It is evident that the state needs the intellectuals; it is not so evident why intellectuals need the State. Put simply, we may state that the intellectual’s livelihood in the free market is never too secure; for the intellectual must depend on the values and choices of the masses of his fellow men, and it is precisely characteristic of the masses that they are genuinely uninterested in intellectual matters. The State, on the otherhand, is willing to offer to intellectuals a secure and permanent berth in the State apparatus; and thus, a secure income and the panoply of prestige. For the intellectuals will be handsomely rewarded for the important function they perform for the State Rulers, of which group they now become a part.”
John Maynard Kaynes and John Kenneth Galbraith come to mind as examples of these sycophantic intellectuals.
When the believers in individual freedom saw the vast support of the intellectuals for big government and collectivism in the 20th century, they falsely concluded that all intellectuals were against them but that they could win the battle for public opinion through political leaders at the ballot box. They didn’t believe intellectual support was necessary or available. The state has a vast array of resources for propaganda, distortion, and hiding the truth. Intellectuals who support freedom can serve as the essential method by which one can cut through the myths and falsity and expose the disastrous ideas that have created the American Imperium.
Returning to F.A. Hayek’s essay, he makes a vital point: “We need intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence and who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote. The practical compromises they must leave to politicians.... Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation, a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark.”
That was 1949. I believe the prospects for the success of freedom are greater today than at any time in the 20th century. The fall of the Soviet Empire and the dramatic demonstration of the failure of central planning of an economy under socialism have impressed the entire world. But American universities remain the most promient stronghold of intellectuals who still support collectivism and socialism. And this is a major problem for developing intellectuals who will support freedom.
Another exciting and encouraging note for the future is the existence and work of the Mises Institute, which is dedicated to developing those types of individuals Hayek mentioned, who will support the ideas of a free market economy and private property. We will need these intellectuals to help dismantle the U.S. Imperium in order to rebuild the American republic.
