F. A. Hayek was an Austrian economist who became a British citizen to escape Nazi controlled Austria. He wrote a classic book entitled, The Road to Serfdom. In the book, Hayek warned both Britain and America that socialist sympathies could easily lead the United Kingdom and the United States into the same nightmare that Hitler’s National Socialist Party had dreamed up in Nazi Germany.

In his classic work, The Road to Serfdom, Hayek warned of how a democratic nation could be fast tracked into a socialist state by its government’s invoking of War Powers. Whereas government’s usurpation of control over an increasingly dependent citizenry normally requires incremental implementation of piecemeal changes, it can be done in one fell swoop in a time of war, since the invoking or War Powers enables the government, under the guise of protecting and preserving the republic, to nationalize the country’s private industry and to nullify its citizens’ individual rights and freedoms.

Realizing the seductive power of war, cunning politicians often invoke war metaphors to lessen public resistance to intrusions into personal privacy, to confiscations of personal property, and to interference with personal liberties. It’s all done, according to Hayek, with little or no public resistance, since the public is led to believe that it’s necessary for the sake of national security, public safety, and each one’s personal survival.

Hayek goes on to point out that war metaphors are more dangerous than real war, since they are perpetual. Having no “logical endpoint,” Hayek argued that they “may be invoked forever.” They provide cunning politicians with perpetual emergencies, which they can use as never-ending cover for their ever-increasing confiscation of our hard-earned tax dollars, as well as their ever-increasing intrusion into our constitutional rights and privileges.

In light of the above, stop and consider for a moment all of the war metaphors being employed by America’s modern-day Machiavellians. For instance, we incessantly hear about our government’s ongoing wars on such things as poverty, drugs, terror, climate change, systemic racism, gun violence, and the coronavirus pandemic. All these “wars” are supposedly being courageously fought by our government for our good, at the same time our government digs its hand deeper and deeper into our taxpayer pockets and limits our individual liberties more and more. Yet, the American people, or should I say sheeple, are ever more beholden to a brave and benevolent Uncle Sam, who is ever-tightening his iron-fisted grip on us, in order to guard us from every ghoul and goblin he can conjure up.