World War Two was tragic. In watching Ken Burns’ nine part series “War,” one can’t help bringing back all the old feelings of hatred of the Japanese torture, beheading, and starving of their prisoners. As one watches helpless B-17s plummet to earth after having been shot down by German fighter planes, it’s just so numbing to imagine those helpless American kids going to their deaths. The entire war was not “the last good war,” at all, but a desecration of American youth, tens of millions of earth’s inhabitants killed, trillions of dollars of property destroyed, and it happened because a few of the big wigs in the world decided in their eternal lust for power and approval, to take their nations with them. FDR was no exception.
After the war, America was economically un-damaged, other than prices being exactly double what they were before we entered the war. Everything was twice the price it had been before the war, because it was fought with paper money, which miraculously was printed without being backed by gold. How did this happen? It happened because of FDR’s executive order of a few years earlier, which allowed dollars to be printed and backed with government bonds. In other words, backed by other pieces of paper. Our factories were whole, albeit totally worn out from the frantic production of uniforms, bullets, planes, guns, ships, and other armaments. We were exhausted, but happy it was over. Those who had savings, noticed that they bought half of what they had bought before the war, and all the kiddies and adults who had bought war bonds and stamps noticed that they had been a poor investment because of 100% inflation.
Something else had happened to the American psyche, which is still with us, and has become almost a universal belief. So universal has this post WW II thought, philosophy, and belief become, that it is political suicide not to run on this platform. This is “government help,” “government pays,” and government handouts of all sorts and at all levels. This was first obvious, when for the first time in my known history of the world, the vanquished were helped back on their feet by the victors. In spite of the villainous, uncivilized, cruel behavior of the Japanese during the war, stupid America decided to re-build Japan. General Douglas Macarthur wrote their constitution for them, and lo and behold, American dollars sent new, state of the art steel mills to Japan, while ours were not state of the art and worn to a frazzle. George Marshall. the Secretary of State had a marvelous idea…to him anyway… and it became the “Marshall Plan.” The “Marshall Plan” sent well over $13 billion to Europe, beginning in 1947, as a ’loan’ (which of course was never repaid) to re-build it. $13 billion in 1947, was a huge amount! In today’s dollars, it would be over a trillion dollars, all from the taxpayers’ pockets in one way or another, be it from direct taxes or currency devaluation. Never was there anything so absurd as the “Marshall Plan.” The liberals and spenders justified it by requiring that it all be spent in the US (which it wasn’t), and the purchases transported in US ships, which didn’t happen either.
The Germans were tried and hung at the Nuremberg Trials. I have often wondered why there were no trials and hangings of the brutal Japanese who made the Germans look like the Red Cross. The returning soldiers were given the “G.I. Bill,” which allowed any soldier to go to any college with all expenses paid…also out of the taxpayers’ pockets or by currency devaluation. Henry Kissinger went to Harvard at taxpayer expense under the “GI Bill.” America was so glad it was over that they readily forgave their enemies and went nuts economically. This continued FDR’s welfare state at full throttle. It also continued at an increased rate, the destruction of the minds, determination, individuality, and even inventiveness of America and its citizenry. Immediately after WW II, there were no nursing homes, Medicare, food stamps, or other bric-a-brac so common now.
In 1972 I think it was, I well remember someone telling me that government was going to buy food for poor people. WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING? Government buying food for people? Sure enough, it was true. If you were poor, you no longer had to work to eat. I was flabbergasted! That was 35 years ago, and now, no one even thinks twice about food stamps, so far down have we gone. I then also remember the ADA, or the bureaucracy which makes it compulsory for all buildings to be accessible for wheelchairs and cripples. Millions of beautiful, historic, commercial buildings were made useless overnight. I owned a building of two stories. On the second floor was an insurance agency which had beautiful offices and paid a nice rent. They were forced to move elsewhere, even though they had no clients who were in wheelchairs. An elevator was physically impossible, so my beautiful office complex had to be made into apartments at huge cost, and greatly reduced rents. Busses had to “kneel” to allow wheelchairs to board, trains had to have special doors and high platforms with elevators in stations. Thousands of great streetcars, busses, and railroad cars were scrapped because it was impossible to modify them to meet the bureaucratic standards of the ADA. Before the ADA, crippled people stayed at home or were helped by friends and families. Now, businesses had to spend hundreds of billions to meet the specifications of a new bureaucracy, thereby reducing their competitiveness with foreign manufacturers.
After WW II, bureaucracy after bureaucracy came on line, all with the goal of making it convenient and smart for the lazy, inept, poor, aged, or in some way a minority voter to vote for the politician who promised and delivered something they wanted. It was 90% the Democrats who hatched the various giveaways and subsidies, but Republicans voted for them and Republican Presidents signed them into law. In the 1960’s it was the Equal Opportunities bureaucracy, which made women into police and firefighters, neither of which they are suited for either because of a lack of strength or bravery. Everyone had to be equal, no matter who they were, and this goes on today with equal vigor.
It was then decided that Americans needed to emulate Europe and make health care the job of government. Medicare was born, and instantly health care cost twice as much, because of the paper shuffling, and thousands of bureaucrats. Medicare and Medicaid keeps people alive forever it seems, way past their normal or useful lifetimes, and they are tucked away in nursing homes to vegetate in misery at taxpayer expense. Millions and millions of Americans say in their wills that they never want to be placed in a nursing home, but they probably will. Doctors have to hire extra employees to fill out the forms for governments, in order to be paid at sub-standard levels, for the services they perform.
Racism got into high gear in the early 1960’s, with white Americans being forced to go to school with, and live in the same neighborhoods as negroes. Racism was gradually declining, and would have probably totally vanished in a few decades, but this was not to happen. Racism was attenuated and fomented by the FHA granting no down payment, no qualifying loans to minorities, who delightedly moved into all white neighborhoods and usually destroyed what they had ’bought’ with nothing down, and no qualifying. I witnessed it personally in West Philadelphia. West Philly had tens of thousands of neat, well maintained row houses on tree lined streets, owned by factory workers, clerks, tradesmen, and middle to lower income white families. I watched ’white flight’ totally destroy West Philly. A visit there in 2004 appalled me. Wrecked deserted homes, littered streets, and abandoned cars was West Philly a couple of years ago. I owned 17 buildings in Philadelphia in the 1960’s, including 10 ice cream parlors, plus 2 homes and five small apartment buildings. I sold them in 1971, and moved to Colorado. By 2004, most were either wrecked or demolished. Government had decided that people could not pick their neighbors, associates, or even friends, at home, work, or entertainment. I remember the late grace Kelly’s brother jogging down East River Drive one morning, when he was attacked and brutally beaten by a band of blacks, who as they were pummeling him said, “We’ll teach you to be white.”
As Lord Acton said that, ’democracies always fail when the voters learn they can vote largess from the public treasury.’ Politicians have learned that they can’t be elected unless they make promises of spending to benefit various classes of voters. We are failing because the citizenry had lost the ability to govern their own lives, live or die by their own mistakes, misfortunes, luck, skill, energy, inheritance, or abilities. Cradle to the grave government is what we have on our hands, and this has been especially true since WW II. We are merely a few years away from total nationalized health care, which will mean that no one will have good care. Skilled doctors have migrated to America to escape the mind numbing bureaucracy and harassment found in nations with nationalized health care. Where can they go from here when it becomes an accomplished fact? Now, government paid for drugs and prescriptions are in the sight of the politicos. Remember, government can give you nothing, till it first takes it from you, and charges a 50% handling fee.
Automobiles cannot be manufactured without extreme safety appurtenances such as air bags everywhere, seat belts, no pointed corners, low emissions, and the list is long. Toys cannot be made unless approved by government, and neither can beds, kids clothes, furniture, ladders, paints, and even buildings. Electrical, plumbing, and fire codes are understandable, but only if administered by local governments, not the D.C. Gang. The NTSB bureaucracy has tens of thousands of people who check out each plane, train, truck, or bus accident. My goodness, how did we ever get along without them? Railroads ran their own safety systems, maintained their own track, signals, and governed their own speeds for over 150 years before government entered into their business, at huge expense. An airline can easily tell why their plane crashed without the aid of the NTSB. FEMA is a very expensive idiocy which is never there when needed, and I can go on about various bureaucracies.
Each state built and provided its own highways for over a hundred years. Pennsylvania built the Pennsylvania Turnpike before WW II, and it showed a profit. The federal government, under Eisenhower, decided that the highways weren’t good enough, so the bureaucrats got into the highway business with the interstates. This caused thousands of businesses and railroads to go broke, and allowed truckers to destroy the new highways while paying a but fraction in license fees for the damage their heavy trucks cause. Passenger trains left the scene with the advent of the interstates, only to be taken over by government in the form of AMTRAK, which annually loses hundreds of millions of dollars, while serving bad food in the dining cars on paper plates and coffee in paper cups.
The socialization of America began in earnest after FDR’s WW II. The populace thought that it is fine for government to ’help’ out every group who asks for it, even though that is impossible without stealing it from someone else and decaying everyone’s dollars at the same time. No one it seems, has even a modicum of economic knowledge or even common sense, or they wouldn’t live under the assumption that government can ’give’ a handout without a consequence, either immediate or far reaching. Throughout history, civilizations have failed, due to out of control government. Governments which spent more than they took in, or engaged in destructive wars, always self destructed. History always repeats itself, or so it seems. More Wednesday about post WW II destructive happenings.