Our Threatened Freedom

What is the Cost of Civil Government

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 49-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 049

Dictation Name: Vol. D - Part 08 – What Is the Cost of Civil Government

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] What is the cost of civil government? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

Let us look again at some data I cited not too long ago. The U.S. News and World Report published some data on spending by federal, state and local areas of civil government. The total for 1980 came close to a trillion dollars, or nine hundred and twenty six point seven billion. This represents a twelve point six percent increase in twelve months, and the amount will be greater in 1981. This statist spending came to about forty percent of the total value of all the goods and services produced in the United States in 1980.

As I stated previously, if this outlays are divided by the number of families in the United States, it comes to eleven thousand seven hundred and fifteen dollars for each household. However, this is only the financial cost.

The economic cost has been a steady stifling of the economy, so that we are less and less able to compete in world markets. American capital and labor once represented the world’s most productive force, now, saddled by the costs of big civil government, we are less and less competitive on the world markets.

There’s also political cost. When the power state of today controls forty percent of the economic wealth annually, it is out of control. The power state controls the people, not the people the state. As a result, we see administrations change, but not the ongoing bureaucracy in its drive for more power.

There is also a human cost. More and more people are disillusioned with the political process, and regard it as an empty façade for power elite.

People of varying political opinions have come to this conclusion. Such a cynicism concerning the political process is a dangerous and potentially revolutionary fact.

There’s also a moral cost. The more power and money that the state takes from us, the less responsibility we have, and exercise. The result then is an erosion of character and a decline of freedom.

Obviously we are paying too high a cost, too high a price, for civil government. That price is more than money, it includes character and responsibility. The solution to this problem does involve a steady limitation of the proliferating bureaucracy of the power state. This, however, is not enough.

What is even more necessary is the development of the character in us, the people, which is more congenial to freedom. We cannot criticize the subsidies others get, without also criticizing our own. Someone in the John F. Kennedy administration, some years ago, very aptly described the critics of Washington D.C. The typical critic when to public schools, riding in a county bus on a public highway, he went to college on the G.I. bill, bought a house with an F.A.J. loan, started a business with a loan from the small business administration, made money, retired on social security, and then sat back to criticize the welfare program, demanding that the freeloaders be put to work. In other words, if freedom and independence do not begin with us, we cannot demand them of other men.

Freedom suffers and a country declines in moral responsibility if what we want from Washington D.C. is a necessity, and if what others want is pork barrel legislation.

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.