Will Authoritarianism Come to America?

Dedicated to Lauren Taylor Ellis, who is a fellow advocate for freedom, and friend, and has sacrificed her time to help with the various projects I have embarked on.

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Alec Scheer, Contributor
Activist Post

Throughout our nation’s history, Americans have forever held onto the belief that our government – along with the people’s willingness to accept drastic measures – would never attempt to propel the nation it is deemed to have authority over, into despotism.

Americans have long held the belief that history repeats itself, which is entirely accurate. However, when it comes to the world history of authoritarianism repeating itself, Americans dispel such a notion as a conspiracy theory.

From as far back as the Roman Empire, we have seen nations experience great growth under capitalism, which was followed by heightened government intervention in such things as the economy. Moreover, the increasing regulations were followed by a gradual slide into despotism.

As seen from history, once tyranny swallows a nation, two actions usually precede within: A collapse, or a revolution.

We have been taught that the atrocities experienced by the people under the regimes of Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler and Stalin would never come to fruition in the United States – for we are the nation swelling with freedom.

Of course, a moment’s investigation into the absurd claim that we are a free nation would refute its fallacy. All the more likely, this claim could be fashioned into the compelling libertarian argument that while there is government, there is no divine freedom, for the government’s very nature withholds a monopoly on force (taxation, military) and thus violates the crux of libertarianism: The non-aggression axiom.

Nonetheless, I am afraid that I have an obligation, having learned from history, to announce to you that we are, in fact, repeating history at this very moment. The repetition commenced 100 years ago with the establishment of the Federal Reserve.

Before proceeding, it would be rude of me not to tell you, in a short manner, why the Fed was the commencement point at which the United States took the path of authoritarianism.

As G. Edward Griffin pointed out in his staggeringly well-documented book The Creature from Jekyll Island: A second look at the Federal Reserve, the Fed is a private bank founded by a group of prominent men, who, at the time, filled the executive roles of primarily the oil, railroad, and banking industry during the early 1900s.

In addition, the Fed is a central bank. Its job, being a central bank, is to inflate the supply of fiat paper currency. The Fed’s job is to also print or issue the currency of the government they have an agreement with, which is a power generally granted to central banks by the government.

Typically, the process of monetizing government debt securities (bonds) results in inflationary effects due to the mass printing of worthless, non-commodity backed dollars.

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In their entirety, central banks, such as the Fed, are polar opposites of the free market because they would not be able to inflate the currency, which is what occurs when a gold currency is in use because it is subjected to the forces of the free market such as competition and demand.

We are now so far down the path of repeating history that we have reached the pinnacle of a nation’s preliminary authoritarian changes. The pinnacle I refer to is more of a stage within a subtle, but rapidly deteriorating, authoritarian society: The choice between full-on despotism or taking action against the despots, and not repeating the history of tyranny.

Sadly, a plethora of nations, throughout the world, have chosen not to do the latter. Instead, they chose brutal despotism.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, this slide point from preliminary authoritarianism to full-on destitution has become readily apparent. Now, calls for disarmament of the nation have become widespread. In attempting to remedy the hysteria caused by the massacre, the legislation put forth and called for by lawmakers in legislatures of both state and national levels is centered around banning guns themselves.

On top of that, President Obama has granted himself the authority to indefinitely detain any American citizen on the pretense of suspected terrorism with the passage of the 2012 NDAA, and reauthorized that power in 2013.

The list of legislation and executive actions that are along the lines of despotism is far out of the scope of this article. They range in the thousands (regulations included), and could fill volumes of books explaining how they are unneeded or are not the direction a free society wants to go in.

To keep this pronouncement short, I have left to only say that when the government starts to consistently push for the disarmament of “its” people, you can rest assured that drastic tyranny perpetuated by the government will come into fruition after such a thing is signed into law.

We have long traveled the road of authoritarianism . . . however; I believe we are reaching the end of our travels.

The stage at which we choose full blown despotism or freedom is now upon us.

Thomas Jefferson once said,

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms, is as a last resort, to protect themselves again tyranny in government.

The time to protect ourselves against tyranny in government is right around the corner; that is, if we do not attempt to make a few more peaceful charges against the ever-increasing despotism.

Despotism, or freedom. Which do YOU choose?

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Alec Scheer is the founder of We Are 1776, a news organization dedicated to facts and documents, advocating the philosophies of Voluntaryism, free markets, and freedom. Their goal is to post high caliber articles, videos, podcasts, and many other forms of content. Please visit his Facebook Page for the latest in activist solutions.

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