The Cancer Within
The Future of Freedom Foundation
September 2, 2023
Imagine that your doctor finds a huge cancerous tumor on your colon, which has produced a few smaller tumors in the rest of your body. The doctor removes the smaller tumors but leaves the big one alone. A few months later, the doctor finds a few more tumors on other parts of your body, which he then removes. Every few months, the same thing happens.
Do you see anything wrong with this picture? What the doctor should do is remove the great big cancerous tumor on your colon. That’s the source of all the other smaller cancerous tumors that are spreading to other parts of your body. By removing the source of the problem, the doctor terminates the spread of smaller cancerous tumors to the rest of your body.
That’s the situation with the national-security state form of governmental structure under which we have all been born and raised. It is a huge cancerous tumor on the American body politic. It is spreading cancerous tumors to the rest of the body politic. It is taking our country down from within.
The problem, however, is that all too many Americans do not want to confront this discomforting truth. They are in denial and, even worse, they focus on distractions or scapegoats for the many ills that are afflicting our nation. They look in every other direction — toward things like wokism, gays, transgenders, Marxism, capitalism, climate change, corporatism, and and many others — to avoid confronting the gigantic cancerous tumor that is taking our country down from within.
Imagine you live in, say, Chicago, and a gigantic space ship suddenly appears over your city and places a huge dome over the city. After a while, the space ship begins zapping five citizens every day at random. A leftist comes up to you and exclaims, “John, we need to do something about capitalism, corporatism, and climate change.” A right-winger comes up to you and exclaims, “John, we need to do something about wokism, gays, transgenders, and Marxists.” You respond to both of them, “I really think that there is a much bigger problem we need to confront right now.” They say, “No way! These are our biggest problems! We need to discuss them with you.” You walk away.
The national-security establishment has been the great destroyer of our rights and liberties since it was brought into existence in 1947. It continues to be the great destroyer of our rights and liberties. It has nullified the Bill of Rights. It has produced an endless series of forever wars and crises, at least two of which have brought the world perilously close to earth-destroying nuclear war, including today in Ukraine. It is the gigantic cancerous tumor that is spewing out countless smaller cancerous tumors throughout the body politic.
But leftists and right-wingers do not want to face that. They want to continue distracting themselves with extraneous matters or, even worse, look for scapegoats for the ever-deepening woes facing out country. The last thing they want to do is confront the gigantic cancerous tumor that has installed itself on the body politic.
Even worse, many of them view the national-security establishment with love and affection. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA have become their triune god. They refuse to believe that it is the cancer that is rotting the American body politic from within. They have convinced themselves that this gigantic cancerous tumor is keeping them safe.
Consider the power of committing state-sponsored assassinations. Those are just murders, plain and simple, whether they are committed by the Russian national-security establishment or by the U.S. national-security establishment. They are a perfect example of omnipotent government. That’s why the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits U.S. officials from taking people’s lives without due process of law.
Yet, notice something important: The Supreme Court will not enforce that part of the Constitution against the Pentagon and the CIA. That’s because the Pentagon and the CIA are in charge of running the federal government. The national-security establishment permits the Supreme Court (and the Congress and the president) to have the veneer of being in charge of the federal government but all three branches know that the actual power resides within the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. That’s why the Supreme Court and the other two branches of the federal government defer to it.
Look at the national-security establishment’s forever wars and crises that have besieged our nation our entire lives. They just continue running in a never-ending sequence. The Cold War, the Korean War, the war on Cuba, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, the war on terrorism, the war on Islam, the war on Afghanistan, the war on Iraq, the war on Syria, the war on Yemen, the war on Russia, the renewed Cold War, along with sanctions and trade wars against countless nations, including Iran and China, not to mention the countless coups, state-sponsored assassinations of foreign leaders, and other violent regime-change operations.
Martin Luther King called this killer machine the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. Today, we honor the man that the national-security establishment once deemed a communist agent of Russia and a grave threat to national security. But even while they honor King, left-wingers and right-wingers give short shrift to the truth he expressed because it causes them to confront the gigantic tumor that is at the center of the American body politic — the cancer that is rotting our nation from within—the cancer that both the left wing and the right wing believe is their all-powerful, omnipotent, triune god.
There is but one solution to this problem: Eradicate this gigantic cancerous tumor from the American body politic. That means dismantling the national-security form of governmental structure and restoring our nation’s founding governmental system of limited-government republic. One does not reform cancer. One gets rid of it.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.
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