I. How War Has Transformed the American Dream into a Nightmare

The first World War and American intervention therein marked an ominous turning

point in the history of the United States and of the world. Those who can remember "the

good old days" before 1914 inevitably look back to those times with a very definite and

justifiable feeling of nostalgia. There was no income tax before 1913, and that levied in

the early days after the amendment was adopted was little more than nominal. All kinds

of taxes were relatively low. We had only a token national debt of around a billion

dollars, which could have been paid off in a year without causing even a ripple in

national finance. The total Federal budget in 1913 was $724,512,000, just about one per

cent of the present astronomical budget.

Ours was a libertarian country in which there was little or no witch-hunting and few of

the symptoms and operations of the police state which have been developing here so

drastically during the last decade. Not until our intervention in the first World War had

there been sufficient invasions of individual liberties to call forth the formation of special

groups and organizations to protect our civil rights. The Supreme Court could still be relied

on to uphold the Constitution and safeguard the civil liberties of individual citizens....

In our own country, the traditional American foreign 'policy of benign neutrality, and

the wise exhortations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and

Henry Clay to avoid entangling alliances and to shun foreign quarrels were still accorded

respect in the highest councils of state.

Unfortunately, there are relatively few persons today who can recall those happy

times. In his devastatingly prophetic book. Nineteen Eighty-Four, (2) George Orwell

points out that one reason why it is possible for those in authority to maintain the

barbarities of the police state is that nobody is able to recall the many blessings of the period

which preceded that type of society. In a general way this is also true of the peoples of the

Western world today. The great majority of them have known only a world ravaged by war,

depressions, international intrigues and meddling, vast debts and crushing taxation, the

encroachments of the police state, and the control of public opinion and government by

ruthless and irresponsible propaganda. A major reason why there is no revolt against such a

state of society as that in which we are living today is that many have come to accept it as a

normal matter of course, having known nothing else during their lifetimes....