I have attempted to outline that series of forces which have involved our country in a frightening series of dangers. It would be difficult to put one’s finger on a social disease worse than war itself. Yet, costly as World War II has been for us, the tragic consequences have been even worse than the war. If, in the Second World War, we destroyed the Nazi government of Hitler and the Fascist government of Mussolini, we have performed an operation no less destructive upon our own great constitutional Republic.
As a result of the war we won, we have taken a long step backward. This step may be defined as the dismantling of our Constitution, the altering of the fundamental and essential character of our Republic and the drive to push this great, free nation down the dark and dismal road of collectivism in one of its forms. As we view the future from here, it is perfectly obvious that the victor in this violent and disorderly military and social upheaval is neither of our two political parties, but the socialist movement in the United States.
I have labored in these pages to make it clear that it is impossible to organize and operate a socialist society in the United States under the American Constitution. That Constitution recognized and sought to erect a system of government in which the vast and dread power of government would be committed not to one central State, but to a number of separate sovereign agencies—the federal government and the 48 states. And even these powers were strictly limited, not only in the states themselves but, on a far more severe scale, in the federal government. I repeat that here was power—political power—provided on a great scale, but so ordered that no single administration could take into its hands all of the dread authority of government. Furthermore, the greatest caution was taken to prevent any alteration of this important device save by formal amendment of the Constitution. This arrangement, hailed all over the world, remained essentially in its original form until 1933—a period of 144 years.
The tragic transformation of this civilized system, however, has been accomplished without any legal authority and without the American people being aware of the disaster that has overtaken them. The depression of 1929, which was the work of certain lawless elements in our business world, was in no sense due to the government itself or the system of government. That depression had actually spread not only over America but all over Europe under many different government forms. It was, so far as America was concerned, a crime—a crime perpetrated on our society by a group of economic desperadoes in our business world. But the repercussions resulted in creating an atmosphere in which another group of outlaws—political adventurers—were able to assault and wreck the great structure of the American Republic. The mere outlines remain, but the unique and essential elements that gave it vitality are almost gone. A dark alliance among a horde of corrupt politicians, shallow businessmen, a packed Supreme Court and a coalition of socialist and communist revolutionaries has almost completed this evil task.
The result is the erection of a central government which, without any constitutional base, has usurped the authority to carry on the functions of government not only within the federal area staked out by the Constitution, but within the states as well. But, far more serious, it has asserted and used on an immense scale the authority to enter the field of enterprise, to organize and operate practically every kind of business adventure. In other words, the federal government, under the administrations of both political parties, has now definitely been committed not merely to the administration of political power within its constitutional limits, but in the states themselves and, in addition, to the organization and management of business enterprise. We are, as a matter of fact, now more than knee deep in a socialist society. The only question that confronts us is: Will we go forward to complete this infamy or will we return to the Republic of the Constitution?
One of the most terrifying aspects of this whole episode in our history is the fact that, trapped in a dismal failure to produce prosperity, our government turned to the oldest and most tragic boondoggle of history—war. By means of the war and the post-war mess, our government has managed to keep an evil prosperity going, based on continuous confiscatory taxes, endless borrowing, fantastic adventures abroad, a crooked pretense of war on the Soviet which we saved with our military aid and perpetuated with our Treasury, and which we now nurse as an enemy—not because we fear her clumsy system in a military sense but because we need her. We need her as the enemy this corrupt system requires to keep the taxes and the borrowing and the spending going.
There is something tragic in the confident boast of our little rulers in Washington that they have given us a robust prosperity and will continue to do so. There is no doubt we have had employment on an extraordinary scale, with an accompanying huge national income. But by what dangerous means has this “miracle” been worked?
When the European war began in 1939, Mr. Roosevelt had been in office for 6½ years and had not, as we have seen, brought prosperity to this country. There were 44,993,000 people employed, but there were still 11,369,000 unemployed. Then came the war and by the time it ended in 1945 we had 61,653,000 employed. This represented an increase in employment of 16,660,-000 people. This is easily explained. A vast horde of men—and some women—were called into the armed services. In 1929 there were only 255,233 men in the armed services. But when the war got under way, we began with 9,044,000 in the services in 1942, and by 1945 we had 12,123,000. Thus in those years we employed from 9 to over 12 million in the armed forces. But besides that, far more were employed in the munitions plants, the shipyards, the steel, iron and other plants manufacturing weapons, planes, tanks, etc. Unemployment was more than wiped out by war and paid for with confiscatory taxes and incredible mountains of borrowed funds—over 250 billion dollars—still due and growing every year since. Today the interest on the debt alone is well over 6 billion dollars, or twice the total cost of the federal government when Roosevelt took office.
There is one other illustration that will aid the reader in understanding the enormity of the policy by which this fraudulent prosperity has been created. In 1954, the total cost of the federal government was $67,-772,000,000. How was it spent?:
On armaments |
$46,522,000,000 |
On international affairs |
1,553,000,000 |
On veterans’ services |
4,249,000,000 |
On interest on the debt |
6,382,000,000 |
TOTAL |
58,706,000,000 |
Thus, on the ordinary functions of government, the federal administration spent $9,066,000,000, but $58,-700,000,000 on armaments, international and veterans’ affairs and interest on the war debt—and this, 9 years after World War II had ended.
There is a school of radical economists and social doctrinaires highly placed in Washington whose theories follow closely those which dominated the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. They hold that public debt need not be feared and that it is the most powerful fertilizer of the national economy. It is true that borrowing by either government or business can, within rational limits, be used with great and salutary effects. But no sane man can defend the principle of endless borrowing, taxation and spending to produce prosperity. There is a promise from Washington that the budget will be balanced in 1956. This, however, is a mere sleight-of-hand performance. The promise is based on the hope of the government to borrow so much in 1955 that it will have some surplus with which to operate in 1956.
The debt, as we have seen, has been rising steadily. It was 266 billion in 1952. It is 278 billion as of April, 1955—an increase of 12 billion dollars. At present the interest charge on this is close to 7 billion dollars. But the interest rate is constantly rising. This means that it will not be long before a great deal of the short-term, low-interest bonds will be maturing and must be refunded at higher rates. The total interest charge, sooner or later, will be not less than 9 or 10 billion dollars. It is difficult for those of us who are not accustomed to deal with such fantastic sums to realize the gravity of this fact. Perhaps we will be able to grasp it if we recall that the entire cost of operating the national government and all the state, county and municipal governments in the United States before Roosevelt did not exceed by very much this huge sum.
Let no one comfort his soul with the fatuous hope that we can keep this wicked half-war going or that we can keep this dangerous boom afloat on the evil system of militarism which, like most of the balance of our New Deal, we have copied from the bedeviled politicians of Europe. Yet this is precisely what our government seeks to attempt in search of an enterprise on which to spend continuous floods of taxes and borrowed money. The President has already declared his desire to establish here the system of Universal Military Training, which he borrows from the wrecked and bankrupt pre-war governments of Germany, Italy, Austria, France and other European countries. The President, perhaps, does not know that militarism in those countries was not a mere pet institution of the military caste. It could never have been established in any of these countries but for the immense economic effects it produced—taking millions of men out of the labor market and providing them with uniforms, food, barracks and weapons, all paid for by the governments out of confiscatory taxes and crushing debts. The end of it for all of them was approaching bankruptcy. And from this they sought escape in the war of 1914.
To the intolerable and growing interest charge on the debt, the President now seeks to add the further burden of permanent militarism as a substitute for war—which will mean endless additions to the national debt until we sink down in some grave and terrifying economic catastrophe. Every country in Europe that turned to this evil institution did it for precisely the reasons that move the President. But, by 1914, every country that adopted it, along with welfare and social services and various socialistic experiments, was on the verge of bankruptcy and turned in desperation to outright war as an escape. For America, too, there is a day of reckoning ahead. It is to alert the American people to that moment that I have written this book.
Of course the politicians interested in public money and our noisy and treacherous Leftists will ask: Do you want to go back? Of course not. We want to go forward. But we have reached a road block in our civilization and have wandered off on a fork in the road. We have been stumbling under the guidance of hotheaded socialist revolutionaries and corrupt politicians into a wilderness. We must go back in order to go forward. We must return to the great highway of the American Republic.
Obviously the nation faces a tremendous reconstruction job on our mutilated Constitution and on our sadly battered Republic. Whatever we do, this must stand first in the order of reconstruction—to restore to its historic shape and dimensions the Constitution of the United States. We must redefine its purpose—to chart a government for an assemblage of free republics, not to assume the role of guide, repairman, financier and policeman of any other part of the world. The exception to this, of course, would be our adherence to the Monroe Doctrine, to keep the imperialist nations of the Old World out of this hemisphere. Our objectives must have for their essential features the following proposals.
The first and most challenging enterprise is to return the federal Constitution to its historic limits as construed by the Supreme Court for 145 years. No proof is necessary of the bold design of President Roosevelt, guided by the audacious crew of socialist and communist revolutionaries who surrounded him. That design was to alter the Constitution by judicial interpretation. The amendment of the Constitution can be legally effected by only one method—and that is set out in the instrument itself. Unable to carry out this revolutionary alteration of the government by lawful methods, Roosevelt turned to an outrageous assault upon the judges of the Supreme Court for the purpose of driving them off the bench and replacing them with compliant political judges—some of them social revolutionists—who could be depended on to torture the words of the Constitution into such meanings as would literally alter the whole shape and nature of our federal system. This assault was made possible by the lawless mind of the President, the boldness of the conspirators who surrounded him, and the disturbed and troubled state of the public mind under the influence of the depression.
The escape from the consequences of this great crime against our society is perhaps the most difficult of all the problems that confront us. The infamy which characterizes this adventure, however, justifies a bold counterstroke to correct it. But it is a stroke that can be carried out within the clear meaning of the Constitution. I urge a constitutional amendment, and suggest the following wording:
The decisions of the Supreme Court between 1937 and the date of the final adoption of this amendment, rendered by a Court designedly packed to alter by interpretation the clear meanings of the Constitution, are hereby declared to have no force and effect as precedents in judicial or other proceedings in determining the meaning of the words, sections and provisions of the Constitution of the United States.
Next in order should come a complete repudiation of the United Nations and the removal of that organization, if continued by other countries, from this hemisphere.
The repeal of the 16th Amendment (the Income Tax Amendment) to the Constitution should hold a high place in this great project of reconstruction. The men who proposed the adoption of that measure never envisioned the shocking abuses that would be fostered and legalized under it. As of this moment the nation stands on the verge of bankruptcy because of this amendment, which was not effected until after more than a hundred years of the Republic and then by men who never dreamed it would be subjected to such incredible abuses. I suggest an outright repeal of the 16th Amendment. It is at the root of almost every abuse which has brought this nation into so much distress and involved us in difficulties all over the world.
Next in order should be the adoption of what is known as the Bridges-Byrd Amendment to the Constitution to protect the people, their institutions and their liberties from the outrageous abuses of power in the hands of a federal administration armed not only with the immense power to tax without limit, but to borrow without limit. It is this dangerous weapon that has been used to bring the government to the brink of bankruptcy.
Senator Styles Bridges and Senator Harry Byrd, both eminent leaders in their respective parties, have proposed an amendment aimed at ending this great abuse. It would prohibit the federal government, except in time of actual, declared warfare, from spending more than it can collect in taxes. In other words, the federal government would be required to pay as it goes and to put an end definitely to the destructive policy begun by President Roosevelt of borrowing and borrowing and spending and spending. This amendment should stand high in the proposals of any political or social group interested in the restoration of the American system of organized life and the protection of the people from lawless central government.
For 20 years the federal government has, by every devious device, attempted to evade and defy the plain provisions of the Constitution limiting its powers. Now a new proposal has been offered by President Eisenhower to evade the clear limitations imposed by law on the borrowing power, the taxing power, and the executive authority of the government by creating a corporation. It would resemble any other business corporation, and could borrow funds on the faith of its own credit and engage in activities within the states utterly outside the constitutional functions of the federal government. It would not have to go to Congress for funds, but would raise them by the issuance of its own bonds and would finance its operation by the collection of taxes and tolls in its own name. The federal government would be a mere stockholder in this giant octopus. If the federal government can do this to build roads inside the states, wholly outside its constitutional authority, it can do anything.
The fact that such a bold and preposterous proposal should come from the President of the United States is a clear evidence of the fact that there is in this country a cabal whose intention is to wipe out our federal system and slowly reduce our Constitution to a mere shadow.
A constitutional amendment should be adopted without delay asserting that no bureau or department or corporation in which the federal government holds any part of the shares can perform any act which the government itself is forbidden to perform in its own name.
Another proposal essential to the safety of the American Republic is known as the Bricker Amendment, pending, as I write, before the United States Senate. Recently a strangely bold assertion of power in the Executive has been put forward, the purpose of which is to enable the Executive to bypass the Congress and the Constitution in the imposition of laws and regulations on the American people by means of a treaty. The claim is made that the Executive can enter into a treaty with a foreign power which, if approved by the Senate alone, can become effective as law in the United States even though it conflicts clearly with the Constitution; this means that it can become effective as internal law even if it conflicts with the Bill of Rights.
Senator John Bricker of Ohio has proposed an amendment to the Constitution to put an end to this outrageous claim. There have been several versions of this amendment, but its essential clauses are as follows:
1. A provision of a treaty or other international agreement which conflicts with this Constitution, or which is not made in pursuance thereof, shall not be the supreme law of the land nor be of any force or effect.
2. A treaty or other international agreement shall become effective as internal law in the United States only through legislation valid in the absence of international agreement.
Let no fearful soul declare that these great and essential measures cannot be passed. This is the counsel of timidity. One virtue, at least, we ought to copy from our enemies and the enemies of the Republic. The incredible work of distortion and disruption and bankruptcy and endless global dangers was imposed on our government by a very small clique of revolutionary conspirators, most of whom were utterly unknown and without any political influence when this evil enterprise began. They represented minorities and in some cases small minorities—but minorities ablaze with conviction and resolution. The proposals suggested here have, beyond all doubt, the support of vast and overwhelming numbers of the American people. All that is lacking is leadership.
In the last 25 years we have seen all the advances in human freedom, won through so many centuries though in different degrees, wiped out in Europe in what might be called a great retreat from freedom. Now we see the initial steps in that retreat here in the United States of America. Americans have a great ideal to be for. That ideal is not to restore freedom to Europe, which is all through with the quest for freedom, or to support socialist regimes all over the world. Our ideal must be to rebuild our own great Republic in America.