I have just returned from our grocery store where, upon exiting, I was greeted by a young man desirous of telling me of the political virtues of Lyndon LaRouche. I was wearing a button reading “Vote No for President,” in which he took interest. When I suggested to him that politics always diminishes individual liberty, he asked for examples. I responded that wars and depressions have been used by the state to expand its controls over people. I gave, as examples, the “great depression” of the 1930s and World War II. He praised FDR for ending the depression which, I told him, did not end until after World War II came to an end, a war into which Roosevelt had manipulated American involvement. This young man then told me that it was FDR’s policies during the 1930s – of which this man approved – that made it possible for the U.S. to enter that war. “Have you thought of the implications of what you just said?,” I asked. He failed to get my point, so I asked him: “if it was the government’s expanded powers, during the New Deal, that allowed FDR to enter and conduct World War II, do you understand what I meant when I said that crises always lead to an expansion of government authority?” He asked if I thought it was wrong for the U.S. to have participated in World War II. I told him that I thought all wars are wrong. In what he must have thought was a clincher argument, he responded: “but if Roosevelt hadn’t gotten us into World War II, we would be living under a fascist government, run by big corporations.”
You can’t make up this stuff!
