Over the years, the American government has employed an army of psychologists in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the human mind. They have been trying to find the answer to an important question:

How can we get more money?

Many psychologists have served the State in this project, but perhaps none better than the famous leftist Abraham Maslow. Hailed as a visionary during the height of his popularity during the 1960's, he created a set of priorities called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which defines the motivation of individuals. Let's take a look at the hierarchy:

Physiological: Food, Clothing, and Shelter. Safety: The need to be free from danger and to have confidence about future security. Social: The need to identify with a group. Esteem: The need to have a high opinion of oneself. Self-Actualization: The desire to be fulfilled.

Now let's look at the list again, from the viewpoint of the State:

Physiological: Food Stamps, Welfare, Section 8 Housing. Safety:

Dept. of National Security, Dept. of Economic Security, Dept. of Homeland Security. Social: Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Esteem: Grade Norming, Affirmative Action, And Political Correctness. Self-Actualization: Patriotism, U.S.A. Freedom Corps.

In the State's view, Maslow's great accomplishment was that he identified a set of control points for human behavior, and made it possible for the State to use these points to pursue national objectives. One of these objectives was winning the Cold War.

Young readers may not be familiar with the Cold War, so here is a brief history:

The Cold War was a political battle between Russia and America after World War 2. Both countries wanted to rule the world. Russia had tanks, Communism, and oil. America had Democracy and Capitalism. America, in a bold gamble to outwit Russia, began to transfer her industrial capacity to undeveloped Asian and European countries in an attempt to win their friendship, and also to make them economically dependent on American consumers. As a result, American factories and the jobs that went with them were sent away.

Remembering this is important because free trade economists like Mises are often blamed for America's deindustrialization. In truth, America's industrial decline was a deliberate State action; American jobs were exported as foreign policy.

While this transfer of industry was taking place, the government ran into a couple of new problems:

1. How can we maintain Federal tax revenues?

2. How can we explain the closure of so many factories to the American people?

The first problem was easy. Washington set up a system that forced importers to pay a series of bribes to the Federal Government. The first was an army of expensive Washington Lawyers to lobby congress, the second was Trade Tariffs, and the third was Transfer Taxes.

Explaining deindustrialization to the American people was also easy. As long as economic growth remained strong, pesky details like declining production of goods didn't matter. During the Cold War years of 1948 to 1973, the economy grew at an annual rate of 3.7%. Everyone was happy. What wasn't discussed was the share of non-productive government spending that made up this growth, and the debt behind it.

It was also during this period that the government found that it could match its social programs to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and use these programs to underwrite its own growth. At about the same time, the work of two other psychologists became important in the management of national affairs. The first was a man named Stanley Milgram, who ran a series of behavioral tests in 1964. He found that 60% of all humans will commit torture (and murder) when the order comes from a strong authority figure.

The second psychologist was a man named Philip Zimbardo. He discovered, through a cultural anthropology experiment at Stanford University in 1971, that people derive almost all of their identity from group affiliation. During filming of The Planet of the Apes, the Gorilla actors wouldn't chat with the Orangutan actors.

The reader might ask: Fine, but what does the Cold War have to do with these men?

The answer lies in the fact that Russia has recently regained control of almost all the countries that it held by military force twenty years ago. Now it controls them by restricting the supply of oil and gas. Add to this the fact that Marxists have overrun American schools and universities, and that America's industrial base has moved to China, a Communist country. One is led to an unpleasant possibility:

The American government may have fatally overextended itself in an attempt to win the Cold War.

Almost anyone would say this is impossible, because the Soviet Union has collapsed. But when viewed in terms of geopolitical control of Europe, leadership in manufacturing in Asia, and resurgent Cultural Marxism at home, the idea makes sense. So let's assume that Bush and his partners from the bureaucracy have looked at the problem, and decided that a new plan of action was needed.

When it comes to State action, there are only four choices:

1. Economic Pressure
2. Diplomatic Posturing
3. Covert Activity
4. Explicit Armed Conflict.

Economic Pressure in the form of tariffs and quotas are no longer very effective, as a result of the decreased purchasing power of the American consumer. Diplomatic Posturing is all well and good, but limited in its persuasive value. Covert Activity just got the Peace Corps kicked out of Russia. This leaves only one option: Explicit Armed Conflict.

So to put it another way, America was beaten industrially by Asia, and geopolitically by Russia. Economic disaster has been forestalled temporarily by expanding the money supply, but that too must come to an end some day. When that day arrives, it will become impossible to maintain the single most politically important government activity: Transfer Payments. The Transfer Payment System is a giant vote-buying scheme that functions by taking money from young poor people and giving it to old rich people. As far as Bush and his men are concerned, a hot war is the only way to counter Soviet geopolitical control of Europe, and to the preserve the Transfer Payment system. They don't care about the cost of the war: The alternative is political revolution.

Now, let's get back to Maslow, Milgram, and Zimbardo. When a government decides to start a war, it needs:

1. Patriotic symbols to enlist the support of the people, this is Maslow;

2. A strong authority figure to command the troops, this is Milgram;

3. A dehumanized enemy who can be justifiably killed, this is Zimbardo.

A citizen subject to this combination of operant conditioning will rejoice in military victory, Pray for the President, and hate the enemy. His identity will transcend all former boundaries; he will become a member of a group that Lenin called the Super-Class. Members of the Super-Class base their self-esteem not on family, religion, or accomplishment; but rather on patriotism and brotherhood.

The plan, however, has a flaw: It represents an abandonment of the financial principles upon which the nation found success: The market economy. Let's look for a moment at the definition of the market economy as provided by Mises: The market economy is the social system of the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production. Everybody acts on his own behalf; but everybody’s actions aim at the satisfaction of other people’s needs as well as at the satisfaction of his own.

Now let's look at the definition of Volkswirtschaft, (or Nationalism) also by Mises:

The Volkswirtschaft is a sovereign nation’s total complex of economic activities directed and controlled by the government. It is socialism realized within the political frontiers of each nation…. The righteous citizen should always place the volkswirtscaftliche interests above his own selfish interests. Volkswirtschaft may be thought of as Economic Nationalism.

The term Economic Nationalism is used in Washington these days to describe Asian economies, because the U.S. government can't admit that it deindustrialized America on purpose. So Washington now claims that Asian Economic Nationalism must be countered by an American equivalent. And to do this, they need to get the people on board. Since volkswirtscaftliche is so similar to Communism, the American people would never agree to it if it were explained openly. It must therefore be implemented secretly, by coercion. This explains why psychology has become the core discipline of modern public relations, and in fact, of the modern State itself. Flags in Kuwait, Flags in New York, Flags in Baghdad.

The use of psychological warfare against the American people represents an attempt on the part of the State to erase the past, in order that it might more easily shape the future. It is certain that somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon, a supercomputer is working overtime to measure and report on the effectiveness of every theory, every campaign, and every new slogan. The American consciousness has become a computer model, and the government, it's programmer. (There is a legend that Ben Goertzel is the father of this effort.)

Little wonder then that the average American feels helpless and nihilistic when faced with such a stunning display of intellectual force. It seems impossible for any one man to counter the accumulated years of research that the government can bring to bear against its citizens. In the view of many, the best that one can hope for is to hold the line against further encroachments, and hope that things will somehow get better. Holding the line, however, is not the answer because the government can redraw the line again and again. And each time the box gets smaller.

What then is to be done? If our movement is to succeed in halting the growth of the State, it will need fighters who see the war of ideas clearly, and who are willing to speak out fearlessly, intelligently, and publicly. It is these people on whom the nation now depends: citizens who can match the intelligence and drive of the left, and who can combine those qualities with a Christian zeal for truth and reason in a time when both are brutally suppressed.

April 26, 2003

The Best of Ron Liebermann