Rushdoony on America's "Big Umbrella"
Benito Mussolini should be given credit for the particular brand of statism that has found such a fertile environment in our own country. His system was not one of direct take-over through revolution, but gradual ownership through regulations and controls. The velvet noose is slowly choking off our productive capacity, restricting our freedom of movement, and swamping us in a sea of paperwork.
Under our increasingly controlled economy, the state becomes a giant umbrella under which each sphere of our lives is regulated. Our property can only be used in certain ways. Our educational systems must be in tune with H.E.W. official dogma. Our business and professional lives are always adjusting to more encroachments on our freedom to exercise our own judgments. Under a statist property system, nothing is allowed to exist outside of, or independent of the big umbrella of central planning.
When everything in our country is planned and run like our postal system, we will have arrived by degrees into this cradle-to-grave security system whereby we are relieved of the responsibility of making any decisions, but also of the "privilege" of eating or, at least, of eating well.
To finance the "big umbrella" that covers our lives requires a tax, and the most efficient arm of this property control system is always the collecting arm. The spending side of government is loose, corrupt, and inefficient, but the extracting side always works well, because it is the life blood of the system.
This is the direction into which we are moving. Pick any area: medical, dental, church, real estate, travel, personal privacy, and the sphere of operating freedom is lessening like a closing vise.
We find ourselves at this juncture. My argument is that basically we have arrived at this point because we wanted to be here. We asked for this, and we got it. I am not saying we like it, but I am saying that we voted for it and are still voting for it. We are not a captive nation, and this system has not been imposed upon us by foreigners. It is of our own making, and although certain aspects of the big umbrella system have become uncomfortable, I am not sure that the discomfort has been enough to impel us to get this statist monkey off our back.
~ R. J. Rushdoony: Larceny in the Heart: The Economics of Satan and the Inflationary State, p. 138f.
Under our increasingly controlled economy, the state becomes a giant umbrella under which each sphere of our lives is regulated. Our property can only be used in certain ways. Our educational systems must be in tune with H.E.W. official dogma. Our business and professional lives are always adjusting to more encroachments on our freedom to exercise our own judgments. Under a statist property system, nothing is allowed to exist outside of, or independent of the big umbrella of central planning.
When everything in our country is planned and run like our postal system, we will have arrived by degrees into this cradle-to-grave security system whereby we are relieved of the responsibility of making any decisions, but also of the "privilege" of eating or, at least, of eating well.
To finance the "big umbrella" that covers our lives requires a tax, and the most efficient arm of this property control system is always the collecting arm. The spending side of government is loose, corrupt, and inefficient, but the extracting side always works well, because it is the life blood of the system.
This is the direction into which we are moving. Pick any area: medical, dental, church, real estate, travel, personal privacy, and the sphere of operating freedom is lessening like a closing vise.
We find ourselves at this juncture. My argument is that basically we have arrived at this point because we wanted to be here. We asked for this, and we got it. I am not saying we like it, but I am saying that we voted for it and are still voting for it. We are not a captive nation, and this system has not been imposed upon us by foreigners. It is of our own making, and although certain aspects of the big umbrella system have become uncomfortable, I am not sure that the discomfort has been enough to impel us to get this statist monkey off our back.
~ R. J. Rushdoony: Larceny in the Heart: The Economics of Satan and the Inflationary State, p. 138f.
