By Chris Basten

  GM advertises one of its behemoth vehicles with the motto: "It's not more than you need. It's just more than you're used to." Indirectly, this is the same slogan that the government tends to rely on. If there is a need somewhere in the world, Washington will hire a few hundred incompetent boobs and call it a Department of Such-and-Such. It doesn't have to be efficient or cost-effective. It just has to exist. This way the government can say that they're doing something about it (whatever it may be).

The Department of Homeland Security, for instance, was created after 9/11 and will exist until the day Washington crumbles. It already has made everything, especially transportation, more expensive and less user-friendly. Only the government could create such a monster of ineptitude.

In reference to a post-9/11 world, Lew Rockwell states that, "insurance companies provide the valuable service of securing our lives and property against accidents, and did far more to achieve their aims than the Office of Homeland Security, which in fact has no real stake in the security of anything but its own budget." Instead, the FAA provides security and provides it poorly. Guns are prohibited in cockpits and pilots are therefore disallowed to protect their own property and well-being.

Moreover, lusty terrorists are not bred in the lines of busy airports. Fanatics are spawned by a Western Empire that sanctions those third-world countries it disapproves of. Suicide bombers are not generated from thin air as the media and the White House would like us to believe. Decimating a country's economy and expecting democracy to flourish is an insult to the free trade we pretend to espouse. And yet American government continues to support the sanctioning of certain countries as if the practice was going out of style.

Imagine how furious and distraught you would become if you watched your family starve to death and you had no economy in which to find a job. This is the typical outcome of sanctions. They do not punish corrupt leaders who eventually see the error of their ways. Sanctions just make an already stagnant economy die off entirely. In these countries, the underground world flourishes as it is with strict Muslim laws. People become desperate and violent when they cannot lead normal lives with some degree of prosperity. When it goes on as long as it has in the Middle East, 9/11 should surprise no one.

The real astonishment is that further attacks have not occurred on American soil despite our government's idiocy. Security is tighter after 9/11 but how can we truly trust the government to protect us when they couldn't even guard their own Pentagon? No one seems to ask this important question.

Perhaps it is because the market continues to excel despite regulations, taxes, and war. However, the rug is being pulled out from under us as we speak. Artificially infusing the American economy with low interest rates by the Fed cannot last forever. In fact, once the presidential election is over, look for rates to continually increase. In all likelihood, the State will say it is for the good of our country and enough people will support it for the government to justify their immorality. History always repeats itself.

How much longer can the American government last when it is this large and out of control? When it has trillions of dollars at its disposal and enough weaponry to eviscerate all of humanity, surely something must give. It cannot continue to lie to our faces and attack citizens, here and abroad, without repercussions. It cannot continue to rob us of our earnings, socialize our medicine, and make our airports and airways unsafe without anticipating angry responses. It cannot continue to condemn our property and seize it without expecting some sort of revolution. It cannot survive if it keeps rescuing bad businesses and making deals with those that are corrupt. It most assuredly cannot last if it takes away all incentive for civilians to be responsible for their lives and productivity. A State is only as powerful as the economy it must steal from. But with all good economies come scarcity. The government cannot keep taking what is no longer available.

The essence of society is peacemaking and the federal powers that be cannot provide it because government is built on a foundation of force. Force, as our bloody human history shows, never brings about tranquility. You can dress it up in stars and stripes and sterilize it with propaganda but this does not change the fact that it is still force. Because the State is incapable of keeping its nose out of private and international concerns, its tentacles grip every area of life. This is not conducive to peacemaking. The federal tentacles will either keep growing and gripping tighter or we will start battering and hacking away at them. I only hope there comes a time when they are cut out entirely so that individuals can take care of themselves in the privacy of their own property and communities.