Back when America was free…

America has become such an unfree country, with government at all levels micro-managing every aspect of our lives. But America once was a free country. One of the best books describing how America became a tyranny is “Crisis and Leviathan,” by Robert Higgs.

He described a “ratchet effect” whereby, when ever a crisis happens — a war, a depression, a natural disaster — government “temporarily” grows to “solve” the crisis. After the crisis passes, government then scales itself back; it actually becomes smaller — but not smaller than it was before the crisis happened.

So, over time, government bit by bit keeps growing.

Well, how were things when Americans were free? Higgs writes (paragraph breaks added):

There was a time, long ago, when the average American could go about his daily business hardly aware of the government — especially the federal government. As a farmer, merchant, or manufacturer, he could decide what, how, when, and where to produce and sell his goods, constrained by little more than market forces.

Just think: no farm subsidies, price supports, or acreage controls; no Federal Trade Commission; no antitrust laws; no Interstate Commerce Commission. As an employer, employee, consumer, investor, lender, borrower, student, or teacher, he could proceed largely according to his own lights. Just think: no National Labor Relations Board; no federal consumer “protection” laws; no Security and Exchange Commission; no Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; no Department of Health and Human Services. Lacking a central bank to issue national paper currency people commonly used gold coins to make purchases.

There were no general sales taxes, no Social Security taxes, no income taxes. Though governmental officials were as corrupt then as now — maybe more so — they had vastly less to be corrupt with. Private citizens spent about fifteen times more than all governments combined. Those days, alas, are long gone.

Alas and alack.

America no longer is a democracy

Last Monday saw the last gasp of American democracy. After overwhelming opposition by Americans, millions of whom wrote or called their congressmen, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected the Bush-Paulson-Pelosi-Reid $700,000,000,000.00 bailout of the crooks on Wall Street.

On Friday, the brief uprising was over as the House, following the Senate, passed the bailout after sufficient House members were bribed to switch to favoring the ripoff. Neither house of Congress followed the will of the people in the slightest degree. They followed the moneybags from Wall Street.

The crooked bailout was supported by Sens. Obama, McCain, and Biden. So voters have no choice in this November’s election. Either major-party candidate — McCain or Obama — is a crook beholden to Wall Street crooks. There is no choice.

There really is no point even voting this November. It’s all rigged. When Wall Street shouted, “Jump,” McCain and Obama asked, “How high?”

Americans do have one role: Paying the taxes for the biggest heist in history.

If America were a small country, Bush would invade it and impose democracy.

America has government of the crooks, by the crooks, for the crooks.

America as No. 2

How embarrassing.

Since about 1850, America’s economy has been tops in the world.

After World War II, America’s economy comprised 40% of the entire world economy, something even the ancient Chinese and Roman empires never managed.

America’s economy just dropped to No. 2. According to Reuters:

The U.S. economy lost the title of “world’s biggest” to the euro zone this week as the value of the dollar slumped in currency markets.

Taking the gross domestic product of both economies in 2007, the combined GDP of the 15 countries which use the euro overtook that of the United States when the European currency surged to a record high of more than $1.56 per euro.

A decade ago, the Neocons were boasting how America was the “Unipower,” the “sole remaining superpower” that had a mandate to force democracy on all the world.

Now we’re No. 2 and headed to Third World Status. Soon America will be a large version of Belarus, with better weather in some areas.

How did this happen? Simple. Bush followed the Neocons’ imperialist schemes and invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, wars which have cost $3 trillion — so far.

To pay for it — and for Bush’s LBJ-style wild domestic spending — Bush and his Fed flunkeys, Greenspan and Bernanke, debased the dollar. It’s the old trick ancient kings used, in those days by “clipping the coins” (thus saving a little gold or silver off each coin, which could be minted into new coins).

They crashed the dollar, which is crashing the economy.

This allowed the Europeans to zoom upward.

Like other empires before it — the British Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Soviet Empire, the Russian Empire, the French Empire, the Roman Empire — Bush’s U.S. Empire bankrupted itself on foreign wars.

The solution?

Go back to the modest, small-government Republic our Founding Fathers intended America to be. Then our economy will revive.

f the Neocons want to rule an empire, let them play a game of Risk.