Producers vs. Expropriators: America’s Coming Civil War?

[Ed Hudgins]

Producers vs. Expropriators: America's Coming Civil War?

by Edward Hudgins

April 13, 2010 -- America is drifting toward civil war, albeit one that does not yet involve bloody battlefields.

This is not mere rhetoric. It describes a crack in the American community that since Barack Obama's election as president has widened into a deep fissure and might split the nation apart. The divide is not based on regional, racial, or religious differences, factors that often set neighbors at one another's throats. Rather, the conflict is between producers, those who work to earn their own way and prosper through their own efforts, and expropriators, those who survive by taking from others with governments as their agents.

In debt

What motivated hundreds of thousands of Americans to express their ire at government in Tea Party rallies coast to coast while others demonstrated at town hall meetings that saw members of Congress cowering before their angry constituents? What are the targets of outrage of those taking part in the 2010 Tax Day protests?

On top of 2008's $700 billion bank bailout, there was the $800 billion stimulus package with a catalog of stupid and useless projects that could keep late-night comedians in jokes for years and that, by the way, did not stimulate the economy. There was the 2009 federal deficit of $1.4 trillion or 40% of the budget. There was the national debt, which was 50% of the GDP in 2008 and will approach 80% of the GDP in 2012.

And there was Obamacare, the new entitlements that will add at least $1 trillion, maybe $2 trillion—who can tell?—to the nation's debt, with money borrowed from China to cover the overspending.

What's new?

But governments have been redistributing wealth and spending wastefully big time since the New Deal. So what's new today?

To begin with, the magnitude of the spending is unlike anything Americans have seen since a temporary spike during World War II. But today we don't have a spike but, rather, a trajectory that is only going up. Americans know that such unconscionable irresponsibility will be taken out of their hides in higher taxes, higher inflation, and economic stagnation as governments squeeze more and more out of productive citizens and enterprises. The whole country economically will soon look like Greece or California.

Furthermore, Obamacare was rightly seen by productive Americans as a tipping point. The country really could go socialist. Obama brushes off the label, but it will soon be the case that government will openly and outright control over half of the economy.

In the past, statists justified redistribution programs as necessary to help those Americans who temporarily and perhaps through no fault of their own found themselves in dire economic straits. And too many productive Americans whose hearts throttled their brains actually bought this argument.

But with Obamacare statists simply asserted that everyone has a right to have health care paid for by their neighbors. (They don't, by the way.) And everyone will be forced into the system and will obey the dictates of government apparatchiks or go to jail. And the corrupt and thuggish means by which Obamacare was passed gave productive Americans a vision of the government fist in store for their faces in the future.

With Obamacare many productive Americans made a psychological switch, seeing those on the other side of the issue not as opponents but as enemies.

Producer consciousness

What has morally outraged productive Americans—whether plumbers, store clerks, merchants, professionals, or small-business owners—what galls them the most as they pay their taxes is the knowledge that the fruits of their efforts are bailing out those who purchased houses that they couldn't afford and who made risky investments that didn't pan out.

They're outraged that as their jobs are threatened they must pay to prop up the salaries of auto workers who demand more for their services than the sales of the vehicles they make would cover. They're outraged that their earnings pay the salaries of federal workers who now, for the most part, collect more than for similar work performed by private sector workers. And the feds are hiring thousands more IRS agents to squeeze everything they can out of productive Americans.

Their self-consciousness as producers is emerging. They see themselves as suckers and cash cows to be slaughtered by expropriators. They see themselves as the Atlases holding up a world of moochers and deadbeats. And they're damned sick of it!

There is an even deeper divide between producers and expropriators. Most productive Americans not only take responsibility for their own lives and well-being, they also value their independence, their freedom to make their own lives as they see fit, not to make themselves subservient to politicians and government bureaucrats. Now they see their independence taken away from them in the name of those who allegedly can only survive as subjects of charity expropriated from them.

Beyond elections

The election of a Republican majority in the House and Senate might slow the growth of government, but it will not bridge the growing divide between producers and expropriators.

Some suggest that Americans will simply get used to the Euro-style socialism that Obama and his minions are imposing on them the way they eventually acquiesced in Medicare, Medicaid, and a long list of entitlements, with restrictions on freedom attached. And Europeans got used to it, in spite of adverse consequences like chronically high unemployment, low job creation, and high prices for pretty much everything.

This isn't likely to happen in America. Too many Americans still have enough love for their own lives and liberty as well as pride in their achievements so that they will not acquiesce in their own servitude. The problem is that too many Americans also have swallowed the moral poison that their neighbors owe them medical care, an education, a job, a high salary—you name it. But this poison requires a self-blinding lest they see just what moral midgets they've become. They blank out their brains with emotional screams that, because they can't run their own lives, they should be allowed to destroy the lives of those who can.

And here is where the specter of a civil war comes in. Look at Greece, a European country where those who live through expropriation outnumber those who produce. That country is bankrupt, but it is the expropriators who take to the streets blindly defending the current system even as it leads all to destruction.

In the United States the producers, with minds wide open, should take to the streets, Tea Parties, town hall meetings, and ballot boxes to protect themselves and head off catastrophe. But they must fight a long-term battle for moral clarity, for the right of all to live by their own productive efforts for their own rational self-interest and against any claim that others have a right to take from them by government force. Only then will Americans live not as enemies poised for battle but, rather, with good will toward one another, dealing with one another as proud producers based on mutual consent.

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Hudgins directs advocacy and is a senior scholar at The Atlas Society, the center for Objectivism.

For further reading:

*Edward Hudgins, "Obama's Grab-Bag Socialism." April 4, 2009.

*Edward Hudgins, "Protest of the Producers." September 20, 2009.

*Edward Hudgins, "Going Galt 2009 Tea Party Video." April 15, 2009.

[James Heaps-Nelson]

The first thing we need to do is get rid of any congresscritter who voted for Obamacare in the next elections. The next thing we need to do is get rid of Obama himself in 2012. No one should forget this outrage perpetrated on American freedom. March 21 will live in infamy.

Jim

[Bryce]

I believe that people are outraged. But my inclination, contrary to yours, is that their outrage is misplaced. Most people - especially those you describe as producers - see themselves as producers but those they buy from as expropriators. And while they may claim that they want freedom, their words and actions do not corroborate it. Consider the recent buzz words, "Wall Street and Main Street". Though government is always in the spotlight, it's scrutinized for it's failure to remedy economic woes (seemingly caused by big Wall Street businesses) through regulation much more than for subjugating business. And consider that companies now advertise their advocacy for their consumers and social responsibility (and probably believe in it). So for now, everyone's living in denial. Most need to admit to being socialists and most of the rest need to admit to wanting parts of socialism.

Edited April 14, 2010 by Bryce

[BaalChatzaf]

I believe that people are outraged. But my inclination, contrary to yours, is that their outrage is misplaced. Most people - especially those you describe as producers - see themselves as producers but those they buy from as expropriators. And while they may claim that they want freedom, their words and actions do not corroborate it. Consider the recent buzz words, "Wall Street and Main Street". Though government is always in the spotlight, it's scrutinized for it's failure to remedy economic woes (seemingly caused by big Wall Street businesses) through regulation much more than for subjugating business. And consider that companies now advertise their advocacy for their consumers and social responsibility (and probably believe in it). So for now, everyone's living in denial. Most need to admit to being socialists and most of the rest need to admit to wanting parts of socialism.

I am (sadly) compelled to agree with you. The American people, long ago bought into the notion that the government is (properly) the provider of last resort. The voters have consented to social security (so-called) and State programs of welfare and schooling for over two generations perhaps three.

I suspect what you are seeing is the ire of the independent voters who resent the high-handed manner in which the Democrats and their Prince, Lord Obama has decreed matters pertaining to our medical care. If John McCain had pursued a similar measure but in a more cordial mode, the people would have bought it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

I believe that people are outraged. But my inclination, contrary to yours, is that their outrage is misplaced. Most people - especially those you describe as producers - see themselves as producers but those they buy from as expropriators. And while they may claim that they want freedom, their words and actions do not corroborate it. Consider the recent buzz words, "Wall Street and Main Street". Though government is always in the spotlight, it's scrutinized for it's failure to remedy economic woes (seemingly caused by big Wall Street businesses) through regulation much more than for subjugating business. And consider that companies now advertise their advocacy for their consumers and social responsibility (and probably believe in it). So for now, everyone's living in denial. Most need to admit to being socialists and most of the rest need to admit to wanting parts of socialism.

I am (sadly) compelled to agree with you. The American people, long ago bought into the notion that the government is (properly) the provider of last resort. The voters have consented to social security (so-called) and State programs of welfare and schooling for over two generations perhaps three.

I suspect what you are seeing is the ire of the independent voters who resent the high-handed manner in which the Democrats and their Prince, Lord Obama has decreed matters pertaining to our medical care. If John McCain had pursued a similar measure but in a more cordial mode, the people would have bought it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The rot is worse than even you say. This country has existed on philosophical inertia since the Founding Fathers. Public education took hold way back deep into the 19th C. I don't believe Jefferson's beloved University of Virginia was ever a private school. The role of public education especially for the lower grades is to make good citizens made cannon fodder for the war between the States, WWI, and WWII through Vietnam. (One reason we no longer have a draft is fewer people are needed to fight wars thanks to technology, but we're still fighting them.)

--Brant

[Ed Hudgins]

Jim - Quite right that the election will be the necessary start to reversing the current situation.

Guys- Productive Americans have mixed moral premises and those who attend Tea Party events are a mixed group as well. But remember, changes in the ideas and morality of individuals rarely take place overnight. I see the flame of self-interest emerging and growing in more people now than at any time in the recent past. The flame must be fanned but it is there with the potential to grow and to help fuel the return to liberty.

I deal with these issues and folks every day so I'm well aware of the depth of the problems we face. But I haven't reached the point yet where I consider the complete destruction of our freedom and lives to be inevitable. I won't go quietly and, thus, hopefully won't have to go at all.

[BaalChatzaf]

I deal with these issues and folks every day so I'm well aware of the depth of the problems we face. But I haven't reached the point yet where I consider the complete destruction of our freedom and lives to be inevitable. I won't go quietly and, thus, hopefully won't have to go at all.

So far, we United Stateseans have proven to be proficient "muddlers through". I am not certain how long or ability to doge the consequences of our decisions or our luck is going to last. I won't be forever though. A point must come such that if we pass it, we are done for. For the nonce I am assuming successful "muddles" are still available to us.

Ba'al Chatzaf