So I am watching the new series based on the Philip K Dick novel of the same name. The story supposes that the Germans and Japanese won World War 2 and partitioned the United States between them. It is the 1960’s and a whole generation is growing up that does not remember a free United States. Within the story, a small resistance tries to keep the knowledge of freedom alive by passing around bootleg copies of a movie that shows the Allies winning the war. Admittedly, I am not far into the series and have not read the book. But it gave me an idea.  A question really.  Who actually won World War 2?

The question might seem ridiculous. Ostensibly the answer is easy. Western democracy won out over European and Japanese militarism and fascism. But did it?  The war might have been one of the first modern wars of ideology – wars fought for ideas. And if that is the case, the winner may not be so clear-cut. Because, in fact, the same seeds that blossomed in Italy as fascism and in Germany as Nazism took root in the US as well and had been growing since well before the war. These seeds have continued to grow until we face a future that might be described as “soft” totalitarianism.

1. The growth of the security and surveillance state,
2. The intrusion of government into nearly every aspect of your life,
3. The blending of the two parties until regardless of which way you vote, you get more of the same,
4. The merging of government and corporate interests,
5. The replacement of free speech with acceptable speech,
6. And the education and conditioning of the masses to find this condition acceptable.

This assault on the underpinnings of the world’s first free republic began in the late 1800’s as the progressive movement began to gain steam. Early changes strengthened the federal government, turned a shy republic into a global empire, created a central bank, and made constitutional changes designed to weaken the power of the states vis a vis the federal government. It saw the implementation of eugenics schemes whose impact are still felt to the present day. During its first heyday, FDR set out purposely to dismantle the constitutional restraints placed on his office and the federal government as a whole.

Trade, charity, fraud, or force are the only four ways that humans can interact economically.  Or for that matter, in any realm.  Either you trade value for value, or you provide value where there is none out of your benevolence, or somebody tricks you out of your value (including false charity where your benevolence is preyed upon by those who would make you feel guilty), or your value is stolen from you.  The only moral way to receive value from another is through trade – by giving value in return.  Receiving charity is at best morally neutral and, if it is a lifestyle, it is immoral.  And of course, receiving value through fraud or force is openly immoral – even when you vote for somebody else to carry out the fraud or force for you.

Trade is why humans invented money. It makes transactions easier because it allows for multi party trading. In a society of only force and fraud, money is worthless.  Somebody must produce because gold, while pretty, does not make for very good food or shelter. To some extent, people can be forced to produce but it does not work well in the long run. That is why the Soviet Union failed.

“’So you think that money is the root of all evil?’ said Francisco d’Anconia. ‘Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value….'”
—  Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

In my last post, I discussed my perspective that those who choose to risk their lives defending their liberty in the military are neither serving others nor sacrificing. The trade of one value for a higher value is not a sacrifice. As mentioned, this does not apply to conscripted soldiers who, by definition, are in a state of involuntary servitude and, if killed, were sacrificed against their will.

Let us suppose for a moment that you have angered a biker gang. And they are coming to your house at midnight to beat you up and possibly kill you. Do you have the right to go to your neighbor’s house and roust him from his bed at gunpoint and force him to fight for you? Of course not. That is called kidnapping. And your right does not change in this regard even if the stated intention of the gang is to burn down the whole neighborhood. You have no right to force your neighbor to risk his life on your behalf or even on his own. Legitimate government derives its legitimate authority from the authority its citizens would have in a state of no government. It no more has the authority to kidnap its citizens and force them to fight than you do.

But what happens when liberty-loving soldiers are tasked to fight a war that, in fact, has little or nothing to do with defending their liberty? Arguably, this has been the case for many, if not most, of the wars undertaken by the United States. I would propose that in a free country, each citizen is under no obligation to risk his life for a value which he does not hold to be higher than the value of his own life. I would also suggest that there are very few such values possible to a rational person.

In order to fight such wars, whether aggressive or at the behest of special interests, nations develop cultures of national service and cults of sacrifice. They then build upon these ideas to convince, to coerce, to shame, or, if necessary, to compel citizens to risk their lives for causes which, if rationally and individually evaluated, would be worth less to those citizens than their own lives. Some nations have excelled at this more than others but none are so inherently contradictory than a nation supposedly dedicated to liberty sacrificing some of its citizens against their will.