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[thepennyking]

We no longer live in a republic, we no longer live in a democracy under a constitution, instead we live in a centrally planned government controlled autocracy regulated by the military industrial financial mass media complex as evidenced by how we got here below:


The history of the United States in the 20th century provides strong evidence that derogations from private property rights in a liberal democracy occur chiefly during national emergencies and that, once curtailed, private rights seldom regain their previous scope. The pattern should not be surprising. Crisis clearly alters the expected benefits and costs of curtailment of private rights on both sides of the political equation. A fearful public, ideologically predisposed to believe in the efficacy of governmental action, insists that the government “do something” to diminish the threat, perceiving the benefits of such action to be immediately and direct and the costs to be removed and largely external. This public perception is nurtured by those who, for material or ideological reasons, would use the occasion to further their economic or political aims. From a cost-benefit perspective, governmental officials experience reduced political costs and increased political benefits from curtailing private rights in crisis as compared to non-crisis conditions.

As people adjust to the crisis-expanded role of government, many variables change in ways that diminish the likelihood that the post-crisis retrenchment of the government will restore private rights to their previous scope. Private citizens discover that governmental action in a liberal democracy need not lead to the establishment of totalitarianism, as some conservatives have predicted. Governmental officials develop the bureaucratic technology to administer their controls less abrasively and more effectively. Many people find the politically and economically rewarding paths to personal advancement unique to systems powered by discretionary governmental authority. Thus, history is irrevocably altered by the crisis-induced expansion of governmental authority. The change is consolidated and compounded as new generations never experience the broader realm of private rights that once prevailed. For the younger generations, the status quo is the current, high degree of governmental power; for them there is no personal experience and, therefore, no genuine appreciation of the old regime.

The legal legacies of the crisis tilt the polity in the same direction: Statutes, regulations, and judicial decisions expressing and facilitating expanded governmental powers become embedded in the law as well as the public’s consciousness. The plethora of crisis-engendered statutes and judicial decisions attests to the magnitude of this aspect of the politico-economic dynamics. The discretionary nature of governmental powers thereby created provides an easy avenue to their expanded use in future situations that the public perceives, or can be induced to perceive, as “crises.”

Thus, private property rights, historically truncated during national emergencies, remain vulnerable to further erosion during future crises. Attempts to restrain the abuse of emergency powers have not eliminated the ratcheting effect of actual or purported emergency in augmenting governmental power. Only the respite of non-crisis affords time to contemplate and forestall the threat to liberty and private property rights inherent in the emergency psychology of the public and its exploitation by governmental officials.


Footnotes:

http://www.independent.org/tii/news/870100Higgs.html