Give Us Liberty

Truth is an existential threat to the US government

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD July 13, 2015

The United States is not a constitutional republic. It is an oligarchy controlled by wealthy financiers who hire politicians to pass legislation beneficial to them and employ journalists to keep the citizens ignorant and compliant.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans believe in democracy. It is simply an ideological contest between two different forms of totalitarianism based on big government, where they represent only themselves in their pursuit of personal power and profit.

Over the last hundred years, the Democrat Party has moved farther and farther to the left, evolving from populism to Marxism and developing an operational model resembling that of the mafia. Its leaders are a gaggle of coffeehouse communists and unindicted felons, who seek the lifestyles of the rich and famous while practicing the politics of Joseph Stalin.

The Republicans are democratic only in the sense that they are willing to sell their votes to the highest bidder, where their political power and, ultimately, compensation from their rich donors increase proportionally with the expansion of government.

The federal government is now an industry competing with the private sector for revenues and resources, but, unlike the private sector, government is unconstrained by regulation and the rule of law.

The cost of public-sector pay and benefits, for example, which in many cases far exceed what comparable workers earn in the private sector, combined with hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities for retired government workers, are weighing down the economy.

The fundamental problem is public-sector collective bargaining. It is appropriate in the private sector, where workers bargain with private, profit-making corporations and where market forces provide an independent check on both sides' demands.

Yet there is an unholy alliance and a mutually beneficial relationship for money and votes between Democrats and public sector unions, which, in terms of government services, translate into higher costs, lower efficiency and, worst of all, less democracy.

Why are such illogical and dishonest policies allowed to continue? Because it is profitable.

To foster big government from which they personally benefit, the Democrats nurture a Marxist-type victim class, while the Republicans serve the affluent, both at the expense of the Middle Class, whose propensities toward liberty and accountability represent a threat to the hopelessly corrupt status quo that the two major parties and the media endeavor so vigorously to protect.

Ergo, the War on the Middle Class, now pursued by both Democrats and Republicans, albeit for different reasons.

As a consequence and, not surprisingly, today the main the activity of the federal government is lying. Barack Obama lied to get elected, lied to enact his policies and lied when those policies failed. In response, the Republicans added cowardice to their own set of lies.

As George Orwell noted: "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

That is why the political establishment and the media find Donald Trump so frightening; the danger that the truth might be spoken.

There is, however, a greater peril - when blatant and outrageous lies are no longer sufficient to soothe the electorate into complacency, such a government must begin to curtail liberty and oppress the people in order to sustain itself, an approach with which both Democrats and Republicans find agreement.

The United States is on the cusp of a second civil war, one to determine who should control the federal government. It is not a contest between the Democrats and Republicans or liberals and conservatives, but a battle between the entrenched power and tyranny of the bipartisan political-media establishment versus the rights and liberties of the American people.

Only the truth will set us free.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of "Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution ". He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.