(A version of this article was originally published on December 25, 1966, dedicated to my 9-year-old daughter.)

It’s Christmas, and I have the usual problem of deciding what to give you. I know you might enjoy many things – books, games, clothes.

But I’m very selfish. I want to give you something that will stay with you for more than a few months or years. I want to give you a gift that might remind you of me every Christmas.

If I could give you just one thing, I’d want it to be a simple truth that took me many years to learn. If you learn it now, it may enrich your life in hundreds of ways. And it may save your having to face many problems that have hurt people who’ve never learned it.

The truth is simply this:

No one owes you anything.

Significance

How could such a simple statement be important? It may not seem so, but understanding it can bless your entire life.

No one owes you anything.

It means that no one else is living for you, my child. Because no one is you. Each person is living for himself; his own happiness is all he can ever personally feel.

When you realize that no one owes you happiness or anything else, you’ll be freed from expecting what isn’t likely to be.

It means no one has to love you. If someone loves you, it’s because there’s something special about you that gives him happiness. Find out what that something special is and try to make it stronger in you, so that you’ll be loved even more.

When people do things for you, it’s because they want to – because you, in some way, give them something meaningful that makes them want to please you, not because anyone owes you anything.

No one has to like you. If your friends want to be with you, it’s not out of duty. Find out what makes others happy so they’ll want to be near you.

No one has to respect you. Some people may even be unkind to you. But once you realize that people don’t have to be good to you, and may not be good to you, you’ll learn to avoid those who would harm you. For you don’t owe them anything either.

Living your Life

No one owes you anything.

You owe it to yourself to be the best person possible. Because if you are, others will want to be with you, want to provide you with the things you want in exchange for what you’re giving to them.

Some people will choose not to be with you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. When that happens, look elsewhere for the relationships you want. Don’t make someone else’s problem your problem.

Once you learn that you must earn the love and respect of others, you’ll never expect the impossible and you won’t be disappointed. Others don’t have to share their property with you, nor their feelings or thoughts.

If they do, it’s because you’ve earned these things. And you have every reason to be proud of the love you receive, your friends’ respect, the property you’ve earned. But don’t ever take them for granted. If you do, you could lose them. They’re not yours by right; you must always earn them.

My experience

A great burden was lifted from my shoulders the day I realized that no one owes me anything. For so long as I’d thought there were things I was entitled to, I’d been wearing myself out – physically and emotionally – trying to collect them.

No one owes me moral conduct, respect, friendship, love, courtesy, or intelligence. And once I recognized that, all my relationships became far more satisfying. I’ve focused on being with people who want to do the things I want them to do.

That understanding has served me well with friends, business associates, lovers, sales prospects, and strangers. It constantly reminds me that I can get what I want only if I can enter the other person’s world. I must try to understand how he thinks, what he believes to be important, what he wants. Only then can I appeal to someone in ways that will bring me what I want.

And only then can I tell whether I really want to be involved with someone. And I can save the important relationships for those with whom I have the most in common.

It’s not easy to sum up in a few words what has taken me years to learn. But maybe if you re-read this gift each Christmas, the meaning will become a little clearer every year.

I hope so, for I want more than anything else for you to understand this simple truth that can set you free.

If the Trent Lott fiasco were a movie or a play, it would be panned as an unrealistic farce.

But it has a purpose. It has allowed the politicians to once more divert attention from anything important – getting us to focus on irrelevancies.

After Lott said he wished Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948, the Democrats cried that he had, in effect, insulted all black people. Republican wimps called for him to step down, and the macho Republicans told us the criticism was unfair because Democrats are just as bad.

The truth is, however, that Trent Lott had nothing to apologize for. Rather than grovel, all he had to say was something like this:

I preferred Strom Thurmond to Harry Truman because Thurmond was for smaller government, lower taxes and respect for the Constitution – especially the 10th Amendment which limits the powers of the federal government.

Yes, Thurmond was a segregationist, and so was I, and so was Sen. Robert Byrd, and so were millions of other people in the North and South. Most of us have changed our minds about segregation since then. But it’s still true that Strom Thurmond would have been a better president than Harry Truman was.

Truman never met a government program he didn’t like. He imposed wage, price and credit controls; tried to take over the entire health-care industry; and expanded government in dozens of other ways. He confiscated the American steel industry and said he had a right to seize any industry he wanted.

He tried to draft striking railroad workers into the Army during peacetime, created the military-industrial complex, initiated the wasteful foreign-aid program, and posed as a communist-fighter while stopping the Senate from investigating the hundreds of security risks in his own administration.

He constantly lied to the American people – about Republicans, about the government, about almost anything. He was one of America’s very worst presidents.

Why should I apologize for preferring Strom Thurmond to a man like that? Maybe you should think before you open your mouth.

If someone misinterpreting my remark about Thurmond had his feelings hurt, it’s unfortunate. But, frankly, I don’t see how anyone of adult age could have taken my remark as a personal affront. I was comparing Strom Thurmond favorably to Harry Truman. Am I not allowed as an American citizen to prefer one politician over another?

Of course, Lott can’t honestly say much of that, because he isn’t for constitutional government. He has voted several times to expand government control over health care, and he’s voted hundreds of times to expand government in other ways.

But, then, I guess a politician doesn’t have to be honest in such a situation. After all, politicians routinely lie about their beliefs, their voting records and their opponents.

Three-card monte

What’s overlooked in all this is that the Lott fiasco diverts our attention once again from more important matters.

The government is out of control. It’s growing faster than at any time in recent decades. It’s intruding more deeply than ever into our personal lives. It’s risking our lives by bullying other countries.

But what’s the most important issue in the news? Trent Lott’s “insensitivity.”

When it isn’t a stupid issue like this, it’s a debate over the Confederate flag flying in South Carolina, or the posting of the Ten Commandments in a courtroom, or political correctness on college campuses. Anything but the most important issue of the day: getting government off our backs.

Today, government at all levels takes 48 percent of the national income, but let’s not talk about that. Let’s argue over whether Trent Lott is a racist.

Once again Republicans and Democrats have found a way to get our eyes off the biggest problem in America – finding a way to cut an all-powerful, inefficient, tyrannical government down to size. Just by getting us to talk about Trent Lott, the politicians have won another battle.

The Republicans dodge another bullet

There’s an additional silver lining in all this for the Republicans.

If Lott resigns and a Democrat takes his place, this might set the stage for another Republican to suffer an attack of “conscience” and switch parties – giving Democrats control of the Senate. And guess what! The Democrats can then take the blame for all the unconstitutional, big-government programs the Republicans are inflicting on us.

This Sunday, Dec. 15, should be a national holiday.

No, it’s not Earth Day, or Martin Luther King Day, or Flag Day, or Beat-Up-Some-Third-World-Country Day.

It’s Bill of Rights Day.

If there were to be only one holiday in America, that should be it. Contrary to all the blather we here about the unique goodness of the American people or our religious heritage or anything else, the one thing that set this country apart from all others was the Bill of Rights.

This was the first country in history to have a national government that was truly limited. No, the limits weren’t always observed, but for a century they held the federal government more in check than any government in history. At the end of the 19th century, federal, state and local taxes still took only 8 percent of the national income (it’s 48 percent today).

Children know nothing of their heritage

Unfortunately, our children grow up with no concept of limited government. All they learn in school is that the government is the wondrous savior that brought us out of the Great Depression, made the world safe for democracy, holds human greed in check, and stops rapacious corporations from polluting the environment.

They don’t understand that the one unique factor government possesses is force, and that only a strict Constitution can keep that force from getting out of hand. When they study the Constitution, they pore over tedious sections explaining the makeup of the Senate and the House, how judges are selected, and how federal laws are enacted. Needless to say, they aren’t taught the concept and virtue of limited government.

The meaning of the Constitution

And so they don’t understand that the Bill of Rights is the heart of the Constitution – the section that gives meaning to it by holding the government in check. Those 10 amendments say:

1. The government can’t restrict what you say, what you write, what you protest, or what you believe.

2. The government has no authority to limit in any way your ability to defend yourself.

3. The military can’t force you to allow soldiers to stay in your home.

4. No one has the right to search your person or your property without a warrant signed by a judge affirming that there is good reason to believe your belongings are involved in a crime.

5. No policeman or prosecutor can force you to say anything, you can’t be tried again for a crime for which you’ve been acquitted, no one can take your property without due process of law, and the government can’t use your property without paying for it.

6. You can’t be held in jail without being brought to trial or without knowing the charges against you, you can’t be deprived of an attorney, and you have a right to confront anyone who gives evidence against you.

7. You have a right to be tried by a jury of your peers.

8. You can’t be subject to excessive bail requirements, be tortured or receive cruel punishment.

9. The listing of these rights doesn’t mean you have forfeited any other rights, unless those rights are specifically abrogated within the Constitution.

10. Most important of all, the federal government has no authority to do anything that isn’t specifically mentioned in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which spells out the areas in which Congress is allowed to legislate.

The Constitution isn’t written in Chinese, Swahili or Sanskrit. It’s in plain English. And the first question a president should ask any potential Supreme Court judge is, “Can you read?”

If the judges could read and pay attention to what they read:

• We wouldn’t have national medical programs – and health care would be far less expensive, far more efficient, and far more user-friendly.

• The federal government would have no role in education, and our children would at least have a chance to learn something significant in school.

• None of your money would be sent to foreign dictators.

• The president would have no authority to make war without a specific declaration of war by Congress – and thus there would have been no U.S. invasions of Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Serbia or Afghanistan – and tens of millions of foreigners might not hate us so much.

• There would be no need for an income tax, because the cost of the federal government would be – at most – a third of what it is now.

• And many more benefits would flow to us.

Bring back America

The Bill of Rights isn’t some legalistic fine print. It was written to make our lives freer, more prosperous, and happier. By forsaking it, America has become no better than any other country in the world.

Today every conceivable subject is fair game for legislation to enforce the personal whims of people like Bill Clinton, George Bush and those 535 drunken sailors in Washington.

No, we won’t have a national celebration this Sunday. But we can privately contemplate what we’ve lost – and vow to restore the America that was meant to be.

Thoughts on the American empire …

Is it an empire?

Whenever I say that America has become an empire, someone is sure to say I’m being ridiculous.

But what do you call a government that has tried (usually successfully) to force “regime changes” in Panama, Grenada, South Vietnam, Cuba, Guatemala, Chile, Rhodesia, South Africa, Iraq (in 1963), the Philippines, Serbia, Afghanistan (twice), Iran and several other countries that don’t immediately come to mind?

What do you call a government that has troops stationed in a hundred countries around the world?

What do you call a government whose leader says everyone must play by his rules or risk being attacked?

America the protector?

But then someone is sure to instruct me that “American troops are stationed abroad because those countries asked for them.”

Yes, people in foreign countries want American troops there – just about as much as the Poles enjoyed having Soviet troops in Poland.

American troops are in those countries only because the governments of those countries were bribed with your money to allow American troops in.

How would you feel if there were Chinese troops wandering around your city?

Or even German troops?

So how do you think Germans feel about seeing American troops walking their streets – or Korean or Japanese citizens watching American soldiers commit murders and rapes in their countries without facing local prosecution?

World government

America rules the world – by force.

And that’s ironic. Because for as long as I can remember, conservatives have been railing against the threat of world government.

But now we actually have a form of world government – a government run by George Bush and enforced by the American military – and most conservatives are all for it.

Our government decides what rules Iraq must live by, and if Iraq breaks those rules it can be bombed or invaded.

Our government decides which governments are legitimate and which must be replaced, which dictatorships are evil and which are “our partners in the War on Terrorism.”

North Korea

Some people can’t understand why our government is getting ready to attack Iraq, but is ignoring North Korea – which admits to having nuclear weapons and the ability to fire them at Alaska.

The difference between the two countries is simple: North Korea has the means to hurt us, Iraq doesn’t.

In the past 50 years, our government has attacked many countries – Panama, Grenada, the Sudan, Afghanistan (twice), Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq and others. But it has never attacked a country that had the capability to hurt America.

Russia, China, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Israel – all have nuclear weapons. So we participate in “constructive engagement” with those countries.

But Iraq? No threat to us, so we can bomb it and invade it with impunity.

Fighting terrorism

After 9-11, some people said we should try to find the people responsible, capture them and prosecute them. They were largely laughed at as being unrealistic. Only by bombing and devastating Afghanistan could we be sure to get Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. And our president assured us that they would be brought to justice.

Now it’s a year later. Osama bin Laden hasn’t been captured or killed. Al-Qaida is alive and well. So is anyone concerned?

Of course not. Our attention is directed to Iraq – even though there’s no public evidence that Iraq has anything to do with al-Qaida – and a lot of evidence that they’re enemies of each other. Suddenly, Osama bin Laden is no longer important.

This doesn’t make sense if you think the object is to end terrorism. But it makes perfect sense if the object is to demonstrate the empire’s power to intimidate.

Why do they hate us?

For the past year, we’ve been hearing over and over that the Muslims and others around the world hate us because of our freedoms and our prosperity.

If that’s true, the terrorists have won – because we’re rapidly giving up our freedoms, and the loss of those freedoms is destroying our ability to prosper.

But, actually, it is only Americans who say that our freedoms and prosperity are the reason foreigners hate us. If you ask the foreigners, they make it clear that it’s America’s bullying foreign policy they detest.

Liberty and security

We’re also told that we must give up some liberty for the sake of security. But that’s not true.

For most of our history, Americans enjoyed both liberty and security from foreign threats.

But, as Tim O’Brien has pointed out, while it’s possible to have both liberty and security, you can’t have an empire as well. Once the American government decided to run the world, Americans were forced to choose between liberty and security – because you can’t have all three. Once you become an empire, either liberty or security must go.

Most likely, however, we will lose both liberty and security. We’re losing our liberties, but innocent Americans will continue to be hurt by terrorists because of what our government is doing overseas.

Hate America?

Whenever I write on these subjects, I invariably get e-mails accusing me of hating America or “blaming America first.”

Quite the contrary. I love America, and I can’t stand quietly by while the land of peace and liberty is being destroyed.

I love the America of the Constitution and limited government – not the America of the Patriot Act and the Orwellian Department of Homeland Security.

I love the America that Washington and Jefferson said should be far removed from all the age-old quarrels of Europe and Asia, while trading benevolently with people all over the world – not the America that has troops in a hundred countries while our own government prohibits us from peaceful trading with dozens of countries.

In short, I want my country back.

The Homeland Security bill is now law – following in the footsteps of all the new government intrusions of the past 14 months. And as concerns are raised about the new powers of the government, we continue to hear the familiar refrain, “If you aren’t guilty, you have nothing to fear. These restrictions are necessary to catch terrorists, but they won’t hurt innocent people.”

Sure.

The well-known phrase, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you,” could easily be reworded to read, “I’m from Congress and this program will turn out exactly as we promise it will.”

Government has failed to educate our children properly, it has made a mess of our health-care system, it can’t balance its budget, it can’t keep its spending in line, it can’t keep drugs out of its own prisons – but we’re assured that it will run a squeaky-clean homeland security program.

It’s bad enough that government wastes so much of our money, but it’s even worse that almost anyone could wind up in prison – even someone who has committed no act of violence against anyone else. Look at the hundreds of thousands of pot-smokers who took seriously the statement that “a woman [or man] has a right to control his own body.”

The guilty and the innocent

Why should we think the so-called War on Terrorism will be conducted with more regard for individual rights than anything the government has done up to now?

And yet, no matter how bad the government’s record, whenever Congress passes a new piece of draconian legislation, we’re assured that only the guilty will be hurt by these laws.

If only that were so. The truth is that innocence is no protection against government agencies that have the power to do what they think best – or against a government agent hoping for promotion and willing do whatever he has to do in order to get it.

In fact, it is almost always the innocent – not the guilty – who suffer most from government’s intrusions.

• Tell the most unprejudiced businessman he has nothing to fear from the piles of forms he must file to prove he doesn’t discriminate.

• Tell a homeowner he has nothing to fear when his property is seized by the government in a mistaken – or contrived – drug raid.

• Tell a taxpayer he has nothing to fear when the IRS drags him into a “taxpayer compliance” audit that eats up a week of his life, costs him thousands of dollars in accounting fees, and threatens him with unbearable penalties.

Being innocent doesn’t allow you to ignore the government’s demands for reports – or to say “No, thanks” when a government agent wants to search your records, your place of business, or your home – or to refuse to observe regulations that were aimed at the guilty, not you.

How laws go wrong

How many times have we seen the following pattern?

1. The press and politicians demand that something be done about violent crime, terrorist acts, drug dealing, gun deaths, tax evasion, or whatever is the Urgent Concern Of The Month.

2. A tough new take-no-prisoners law or policy is put into place.

3. The guilty make it their business to understand whatever new policy might affect them – and they take steps to sidestep the inspections and background checks, and to keep their property out of reach of asset forfeiture laws. The innocent know little about such laws – having been told they have nothing to fear – and are surprised and helpless when some zealous law-enforcement agency, looking to pad its arrest and prosecution records, moves in on them.

4. After the dust settles, the initial “problem” continues unabated, because the guilty have slipped through the net. But the innocent are left burdened with new chores, expenses, and dangers. If they’re lucky, they suffer only from having more reports to file, less privacy, reduced access to products and services, higher costs, heavier taxes, and a new set of penalties for those who shirk their duty to fight in the War On ________ (fill in the blank). But those who aren’t so lucky may wind up in prison – as have thousands of non-drug-using individuals who were convicted on drug charges.

5. Needless to say, the ineffectual law is never repealed.

When government force is used to solve social problems, we all suffer and nothing good is ever achieved. But coercion is wondrously effective at harming the innocent. All our lives are diminished.

Even worse, every year, a few million innocent people suffer special burdens – greater than those the government places on all of us. The dismantling of the Bill of Rights allows the government to disrupt their lives, confiscate their property, or even kill them – even though they’ve committed no crimes.

I hope you never become one of them. But no one can guarantee that.

This past Saturday in the New York Times, John J. Miller condemned Libertarians for taking votes away from Republicans and allowing Democrats to win important elections.

He cited three recent U.S. Senate races in which Libertarian candidates won more votes than the margin of victory for the Democrats. And he said:

Libertarians are now serving, in effect, as Democratic Party operatives. The next time they wonder why the Bush tax cuts aren’t permanent, why Social Security isn’t personalized and why there aren’t more school-choice pilot programs for low-income kids, all they have to do is look in the mirror.

Perhaps it never occurred to him that Libertarians are more interested in reducing government than in “Bush tax cuts” that simply redistribute the burden of ever-growing big government. Libertarians want complete freedom from a bankrupt, compulsory retirement scheme – not some campaign-pledge sop from politicians who have done nothing to set them free.

And as for “school-choice” programs, most Libertarians have no desire to give the federal government the power to control private schools – the way it now uses vouchers and grants to control government schools and private colleges.

Let’s look at the record

Mr. Miller cites John Thune’s loss in the South Dakota U.S. Senate race this month. Thune lost by just 524 votes, while the Libertarian candidate won more than 3,000 votes. To Mr. Miller, this is a disaster. But if you examine John Thune’s record, you can see it was no disaster at all.

At Mr. Thune’s website, he details some of what he calls his “accomplishments” as a Congressman:

• “Since he has been in office, federal spending on special education funding has more than doubled.”

• “John’s seat on the Agriculture Committee enabled him to secure millions of dollars in dedicated funding for value-added ventures, such as ethanol plants and other processing facilities.”

• “John led the fight for and secured House approval of $500 million in Community Development Block Grants for South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota to respond to the devastating blizzards and floods of 1997.”

• “As a result of his work, the state is receiving approximately 60 percent more annually [in highway subsidies] than prior to his service in Congress.”

These are just some of his “achievements” that Libertarians are supposed to be grateful for. And, of course, not one of them is a constitutional function of the federal government. So why should Libertarians be ashamed of not voting for John Thune?

A bankrupt party

In the same way, we’re told that George Bush almost lost the presidency because Libertarians didn’t vote for him.

But why should they have voted for him?

Do you have any idea what kind of bills he has been signing – new laws that take away more of your money and more of your freedom, while shredding the few remaining tatters of the Constitution?

Take a look at a website that lists some of W’s “accomplishments.” And don’t try blaming these on the Democrats. I’m not aware of a single bill that George W. Bush has vetoed.

Bush and Thune are not atypical. In fact, they could be poster boys for the “Republican revolution” – which is about speaking in favor of freedom while doing everything possible to take it away, talking about fiscal responsibility while voting for every spending bill that comes down the pike, speaking reverently of the Constitution when campaigning and violating it when in office.

We’re told that, with all their faults, the Republicans are the “lesser of two evils.” But where Republicans and Democrats are concerned, there is no lesser of two evils.

The Democrats talk about civil liberties and peace, but vote for any monstrous new invasion the Republicans want. The Republicans talk about economic freedom, fiscal responsibility and gun rights, but vote for every new boondoggle the Democrats want – as well as the Brady Bill and other restrictions on your ability to defend yourself from thugs.

There’s only one difference between them:

• When Democrats are in control, the Republicans at least make noises about the dangers of big government (even while they’re voting for it).

• When the Republicans are in control, all political opposition to big government ceases.

Where’s your self-esteem?

Do you realize what you’re voting for when you vote Republican or Democratic?

Obviously, John J. Miller doesn’t. He probably doesn’t see the problem when he looks in the mirror. He probably doesn’t even realize that his support of the John Thunes and George Bushes of the world has turned him into a Democratic Party operative.

World War II is supposedly the one “just” war America has fought. Even critics of the Vietnam War or the so-called War on Terrorism feel obliged to say that World War II was necessary.

And that war provided a justification for all sorts of military adventures afterward. In fact, whenever I write that Americans shouldn’t be bombing Iraq or Serbia or Afghanistan or some other hapless Third World country, I get e-mails from critics saying such things as:

• “You would have turned the other cheek after Pearl Harbor.”

• “Munich showed you have to stop a dictator before he’s too strong to resist.”

• “If you’d been in charge in the 1940s, we’d all be speaking Japanese or German today.”

World War II has always been of great interest to me. I’ve known for decades that it was just one more war the politicians suckered us into. But I still learned a great deal from reading Richard Maybury’s new book “World War II: The Rest of the Story.”

Maybury provides no startling new evidence. But he sifts through the known facts – which nearly all historians agree on – and assembles the evidence to show irrefutably that:

• The U.S. could had stayed out of the war, because Hitler had no chance of conquering England – let alone America. (His doom was sealed the moment his troops invaded Russia in August 1941.)

• The Pearl Harbor attack was neither a surprise nor “unprovoked.” (The Japanese code had been broken 16 months before, and Roosevelt had bullied the Japanese in order to provoke a war. On Nov. 26, 1941, Secretary of War Stimson wrote in his diary, “The question was how we should maneuver them into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”)

• There was no military reason to drop atomic bombs on Japan. They were used as terrorist weapons – killing innocent people to influence other people. (Japan was already offering to surrender, their homeland was blockaded, and the Japanese couldn’t have survived six months even without an invasion.)

There’s much more, of course. But the main point is that America should never have intervened in the age-old quarrels of Europe and Asia. If our politicians had minded their own business, 292,131 Americans wouldn’t have died – died thinking they were defending American freedoms, but actually sacrificing for the benefit of politicians.

The Roosevelt myth

Why did America get in the war?

Because Franklin Roosevelt thought it was to his personal advantage.

In 1939, most people considered the New Deal to be an abject failure. The unemployment rate was still at 17 percent, with no end in sight to the Depression.

Roosevelt still managed to be re-elected in 1940 because he had great personal charisma, and because he was running against a typical me-too Republican, Wendell Wilkie – a man with no solution for the economic crisis. Roosevelt insisted he would keep America neutral, proclaiming “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

But in reality, Roosevelt saw getting into the war as a way to redeem his reputation and join the ranks of the “great” presidents – wartime leaders like Washington, Lincoln and Wilson.

Making the world logical again

Maybury writes in a lucid, easy-to-follow style. He explains how Hitler made impressive early victories in the war, but still never had a chance once he decided to invade Russia. His sources of information are the same available to anyone else, but many of his insights and conclusions are original and refreshing.

He ties what happened in World War II to what is happening today in the so-called War on Terrorism. In fact, he shows that today’s crises are simply an extension of one century-long war.

Reading this book may help you see the world as a logical place again. It answers a question that might concern any lover of liberty: Why did a nation devoted to freedom and small government – blessed by being isolated from the age-old turmoils of the Old World – cross two oceans, sacrifice a quarter-million Americans, and become embroiled in everyone else’s affairs?

The answer: It was done to satisfy the personal ambitions of politicians – not to save America from tyranny.

It’s too much to expect tens of millions of Americans to understand that our wars are just a political racket – not when their historical knowledge consists of the one-liners fed to them in government schools. But it is important that you understand – if you hope to be effective in restoring liberty to America.

If you want to know more about World War II, I urge you to read “World War II: The Rest of the Story,” which you can obtain at Maybury’s website.

As a result of Tuesday’s elections, we can expect the growth in government to continue unabated – and probably to accelerate.

We can be reasonably sure that the new Congress will pass a flood of bills that intrude government ever-more-deeply into our lives, as well as make government more costly (and even more inefficient).

How can I be so sure?

Because the winners in the congressional races are virtually all advocates of big government. The winning incumbents have never bothered to introduce a single bill to reduce government in any significant way, while they have been reliable supporters of all sorts of new big-government schemes.

The few new congressmen and senators come from the same mold. In their campaigns, they told us about their grand plans to “fix” the nation’s schools, get government involved in prescription drugs, and use your money to take care of anyone who says he needs it.

Big government, big government, big government.

Mea culpa

And now I must offer a confession.

I wrote this article Monday evening, before the elections.

And yet, I stand by every word of it.

It doesn’t matter whether the Republicans or the Democrats won control of the Senate. Government will get bigger, more intrusive, more expensive, and less efficient.

It doesn’t matter whether the Democrats or the Republicans won control of the House. Government will get bigger, more intrusive, more expensive, and less efficient.

Nothing has changed in the past 75 years.

• We elect a Republican Congress – and government gets bigger.

• We elect a Democratic Congress – and government gets bigger.

• We elect a Republican president – and government gets bigger.

• We elect a Democratic president – and government gets bigger.

• Congress passes a “tax cut” – and government gets bigger.

• Congress makes “tough budget cuts” – and government gets bigger.

Despite what they tell you, there really is no significant difference between the two major parties. They are both devoted to power, to big government, and to rewarding those with the most political influence.

Your culpa

If you voted for a Democrat or a Republican, you didn’t waste your vote.

You used it to congratulate your candidate for all his big-spending schemes. So you can take part of the credit for the coming increases in government.

You may have thought you were voting to limit the damage – to prevent the “greater of two evils” from being elected. But that isn’t the way your vote will be interpreted.

Your candidate will look at his victory and say, in effect, “The public has endorsed my plan to ‘fix’ government schools with a new government program. The voters have said they like my ideas to involve government in prescription drugs. The people have spoken, and they have endorsed every vote I’ve made in Congress and/or every new government program I outlined in my campaign.”

Oh sure, your candidate may have said that government is too big or too intrusive. But that doesn’t mean he’ll do anything to stop it.

Republicans complain loudly about Democratic spending programs – and then vote for them.

Democrats complain loudly about invasions of civil liberties and a reckless foreign policy – and then vote for them.

And your vote has told them that you endorse what they’re doing. Whatever you thought your motivation was, nothing says ‘I love big government’ like your vote for someone who is supporting big government in Congress.

In other words, when you vote for the “lesser of two evils,” you shouldn’t be shocked when what you get is evil.

No, a vote for a Republican or Democrat isn’t a wasted vote. It’s a self-destructive vote – a vote for the very things you’ve spent the past two years complaining about.

No culpa

If you voted Libertarian, you at least know you didn’t endorse big government. Since Libertarian vote totals usually aren’t announced on election night, you may not have been able to make any kind of “statement.”

But at least you don’t have to blame yourself for endorsing big government.

The future

It may seem that you have to vote for the lesser of evils among the major-party candidates.

But since government grew just as rapidly with Ronald Reagan as president as with Bill Clinton in the White House, and since the Republican Congress expanded government at the same speed as the Democratic Congress, it’s obvious that your vote doesn’t change anything.

There is no lesser of evils between the two major parties.

Your vote achieves only one thing: It tells the people you voted for that you love big government – that there’s no program they can support that’s so bad that you won’t vote for them anymore.

Your vote provided a big boost for big government.

Is that what you wanted?

After the sniper suspect and his companion were captured last week, I saw a TV political talk show in which two hosts queried two attorneys about the case.

One host asked whether the defendants could get a fair trial in the face of so much publicity. One attorney said it should be possible to find 12 jurors who could treat the case impartially.

Then the host asked whether one could mount a successful defense in such a case. The attorney called attention to the acquittals of Terry Nichols on a murder charge, some of the Watergate defendants, and John Connally – in situations where feelings and prejudices had been equally strong.

At this, the other host expressed shock. He didn’t see how the defendants could be acquitted in the face of irrefutable ballistic and fingerprint evidence.

I then turned the show off so as not to hear any more mangling of the American ideal and the Bill of Rights.

What is a fair trial?

In the first place, a “fair trial” doesn’t mean an impartial jury. There’s no such thing. We all have prejudices and preconceived opinions. We hope to have a truly “fair trial” in order to offset these weaknesses.

A fair trial is one in which the rules of evidence are honored, the accused has competent counsel, and the judge enforces the proper courtroom procedures – a trial in which every assumption can be challenged.

Why we need a fair trial

How does the TV host – or anyone else – know that the ballistic or fingerprint evidence in the sniper case is irrefutable?

Maybe the police “experts” who tested the ballistics and fingerprints made mistakes.

Maybe the evidence was planted. Perhaps while the defendants were sleeping in their car, the real sniper put the rifle and other evidence in the trunk of their car.

I’m not saying these things happened – only that they could have happened. And if they could have happened, it is the prosecution’s burden to prove that they didn’t happen. Otherwise, innocent people might be wrongly convicted.

Perhaps the defendants are bad people anyway. So it might seem to be no big deal if they’re wrongly convicted.

But it would be a terribly bad deal to convict the wrong men, because the real culprit would remain free to continue causing trouble.

Our heritage

The Bill of Rights sets forth some of your protections and some of the rules of evidence:

• You are to be safe from “unreasonable searches and seizures,” so that officious government employees can’t go rummaging through your home, your bank account, your personal life.

• You can’t be tried twice for the same crime, so that vindictive government employees can’t keep persecuting you after you’ve been acquitted.

• You can’t “be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against” yourself, so you don’t have to speak to a policeman or prosecutor who might be eager to use your words out of context, to twist them, or to browbeat you into confessing to something you didn’t do.

• You can’t “be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,” so that no government official can set himself up as judge, jury and executioner over your life.

• You “shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial,” so that you can’t be held in prison indefinitely without getting your day in court.

• You’re entitled “to be confronted with the witnesses against” you, so that the witnesses’ misimpressions or prejudices can be exposed – and so that no one’s statement can be used without finding out whether he really said it and exactly what he meant by it.

• You shall “have the Assistance of Counsel for [your] defense,” so that you have the help of someone capable of dealing with law-enforcement people on an equal basis.

There’s much more, of course, but you get the point.

These protections were unique in the history of the world. No other country had written them into the basic law of the land.

Forsaking our heritage

And every one of them has been discarded all too frequently.

Today, thousands of government officials rummage through your life, looking for evidence with which to hang you. Overlapping federal and state laws allow you to be tried twice for the same crime – and then again in civil court.

Federal agencies act as judge, jury and executioner – exercising life or death powers over American companies. And the government is holding hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base with no counsel or trial.

There are conscientious policemen and prosecutors who care about finding the truth. But how do we distinguish them from the law-enforcement officials who are eager to pad their arrest and conviction records?

We have no way of doing so. That’s why Americans once guarded the Bill of Rights and the rules of evidence so zealously.

But 150 years of government schools and politicians dedicated to increasing their own power have made Americans ignorant of their heritage and protections.

And they are left to rely on TV hosts and journalists who are just as ignorant as they are.

Note: In my Statue of Liberty article last week, I misquoted Emma Lazarus in a couple of places, because I relied on my imperfect memory. The correct words are:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these – the homeless, tempest-tossed – to me;

I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.

This Monday, Oct. 28, should be a national holiday.

In addition to being my wife’s birthday, it is the anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886.

As with most parts of American history, very few Americans are aware of the Statue’s background.

It was a gift from the French people to the American people. And when I say, “French people,” I mean it. It wasn’t paid for with French taxes – the money was raised through voluntary donations, given freely by French people as a token of friendship to the United States.

Why would they do that?

Because at that time the United States was truly unique. It was the one country in the world where individual liberty was prized far above “national greatness.” And it was the one major country that didn’t embroil itself in the endless wars the European people were so used to.

How times change

In the 1880s, people all over the world looked to America for inspiration. Its very existence was proof that it was possible to have a relatively free and peaceful country. No income tax, no foreign wars, no welfare state, no intrusions on civil liberties.

Of course, that’s no longer the case. We now have all those things – and more. And, worse yet, most Americans have come to accept them as necessary evils. Government schools make no attempt to show children that it wasn’t always this way – that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Liberty alone

When the Statue arrived in the U.S., Americans donated the money – again, voluntarily – to build the pedestal and assemble the Statue on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor.

The great monument isn’t called the Statue of the World’s Superpower, or the Statue of National Greatness, or the Statue of the World’s Policeman. Because individual liberty was America’s one possession so prized by others, the monument was named the Statue of Liberty.

It is an impressive sight. Notice that Lady Liberty faces outward – toward the world, not toward America. With her torch held high, she is reaching out to the world as the symbol of liberty – bringing light and inspiration to people everywhere.

The statue’s message

At the time of her creation, she was saying:

Whoever you are, wherever you are, if you can just get to America, you can be free. No matter what your station where you are now, you’ll be equal before the law here.

No one will ask for your papers.

No one will fasten a number on you.

No one will extort a percentage of your income as the price of earning a living.

You’ll be free to pursue the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Emma Lazarus summed it up in those lovely words that are inscribed on the base of the Statue:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to be free,

The wretched refuge of your teeming shore.

Send these – the homeless, tempest-tossed – to me.

I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.

That is the America we once had – the beacon of liberty, providing light and hope and inspiration to the entire world – the America we have forsaken for a mess of tasteless pottage.

That is the America we should have.

And I am determined that it is the America we will someday have again.