By Jacob G. Hornberger
The Future of Freedom Foundation
August 29, 2026
Why not just admit the obvious: The welfare-warfare state that 20th-century Americans brought into existence and that 21st-century Americans have kept in existence has failed. Wouldn't that be a lot better than to waste time, energy, and money coming up with ways to save and reform it ? After all, if several generations of Americans haven't been able to make this deadly, destructive, immoral, and dysfunctional system work, what are the chances that people living today will make it work ? No chance at all!
Consider:
1. The federal debt now exceeds $40 trillion. The welfare-warfare state is expensive. Moreover, people love the system but don't want to pay for it. Politicians know that. So rather than raise income taxes, which they know people hate, they just go out and borrow the money.
Moreover, many seniors are hoping to die before the day of reckoning arrives. They want to leave the reckoning to their children and grandchildren. Is that a good and moral thing to do?
Recall all those debt-ceiling debates. Every time, the debt ceiling was reached, the mainstream press breathlessly exclaimed how it was absolutely necessary to raise the ceiling to permit the feds to borrow more money and make the debt even higher. After each "success," they never called for reducing federal spending. They just laughed at their repeated "success" in raising the debt ceiling.
2. There is no reasonable possibility that people will permit public officials to repeal Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidies, bailouts, grants, and other welfare. Once people go on the dole, that's the end of the matter. They become hopelessly dependent on the dole, convinced that they will die in the streets without it.
When he foisted the welfare state onto the American people in the 1930s, without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment, President Roosevelt knew that if he could just get Americans on the dole, beginning with Social Security, the government would own them. He has proven to be right.
Today, even many libertarians say that Social Security and Medicare should be saved and reformed. In this respect, almost everyone, including many libertarians, is now a socialist. They claim that they are being good, caring, and compassionate by supporting the continuation of these massive socialist programs. They are wrong. They are simply being "good" with other people's money-money that has been taken by force by the IRS, one of the most feared and tyrannical agencies in history.
Welfare-state socialism has destroyed people's faith in themselves, freedom, God, free will, free markets, and freedom of choice. It has strengthened our government and weakened our nation. It has destroyed the concepts of independence, self-reliance, voluntary charity, and can-do that once characterized our American ancestors.
3. Americans live under a brutal, ruthless, tyrannical, and oppressive national-security-state government that wields omnipotent, totalitarian-like powers, including assassination, torture, and indefinite detention. It is also the government that kills more people on an annual basis than any other government in the world, including communist regimes. When it comes to killing, the U.S. government has made America Number One. That's nothing to be proud of.
There are invasions, occupations, wars of aggression (in violation of the Nuremberg principles), undeclared wars (in violation of the U.S. Constitution), coups, sanctions, embargoes, blockades, bombings, and other acts of violence against people in various parts of the world.
Americans continue to delude themselves into believing that the national-security state form of governmental structure that came into existence in the 1940s is no different from the limited-government structure on which our nation was founded. The reality is that they are as different as night and day. Under the former, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are in charge and not subject to the constraints of the Constitution, especially the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Under the latter, there is no Pentagon, CIA, or NSA, and everyone in the federal government is subject to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
4. Consider the war on drugs, one of the most evil, immoral, deadly, and destructive federal programs in U.S. history. It's always been just one great big power play-a means of imposing control over the citizenry as well as people around the world. That's why it never goes out of existence but instead is ongoing, never-ending, and perpetual.
5. Consider the war on illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants are simply the scapegoat for the manifest failure of the welfare-warfare state. When the day of reckoning comes as a result of that ever-growing debt, one can easily imagine statists blaming illegal immigrants-or perhaps Muslims, China, Russia, the Reds, the terrorists, or even "capitalism"-for the economic and financial crash. No one will want to blame their beloved welfare-warfare state. In the meantime, the brutal and ruthless immigration police state, which is now being expanded nationwide, continues to inflict death, suffering, and destruction of liberty on both immigrants and foreigners.
6. Consider the income tax and the tariff tax. They are being used to plunder and loot the American people in a last-gasp effort to fund the welfare-warfare state. It won't work because the welfare-warfare state is like a cancer. It just keeps growing faster and faster. Taxes can't keep up. They've got to keep borrowing to make up the difference.
7. Consider the paper-money system and the Federal Reserve, which have long been used to plunder and loot the American people fraudulently and surreptitiously. That's why FDR abandoned the constitutional system of gold and silver coins in favor of paper money. He knew that the welfare-warfare state would always be extremely expensive. Inflationary debasement of the currency would help pay for it, and Americans would never know that the Federal Reserve was plundering and looting them through debasement of their currency.
There are two ways to go: continue this evil and immoral way of life and keep trying to save and reform it, or simply admit that it's been a failure, dismantle it, and restore America to the road that leads toward liberty, peace, prosperity, morality, life, vitality, and harmony with the people of the world. I say: Let's go with the latter course of action.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.