CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:
The Socialist Utopia of Federal Insurance
The Social Security Act of 1935
The state cannot aid men without enfeebling their energies and imperiling their self-reliance. Such a condition goes on for a century or so, and by and by the people, who gradually have been losing independence and self-initiative, become an easy prey to the man on horseback....
The Treasury of the United States has been opened wide by distributing money into every part of the country for purposes with which the national government has nothing to do, with the intention of directing the attention of the people to the all-wise providence of Congress and of the Executive. A hundred years ago, our people asked no favors from government, but only for a fair, square deal, each man confident in his ability to win by his own brain and his own hand. To-day, under this paternal rule, everybody is in the habit of looking to the President and Congress for relief from every evil....
Now such government is destructive of public virtue. The function of democracy is not alone to make government good, but to make men strong by intensifying their individual responsibility. The belief that the President or government has the power to make everybody comfortable or happy, and the inclination of the people to depend upon our government as the people of France and Germany depend upon theirs, is a tendency destructive of liberty and individual initiative. Paternalism is the dry rot of government, and as surely brings paralysis through all its members as the law of gravitation controls the universe....
The people must fight their own battles for better conditions. Every time they call upon that great central deity, the Government, to fight an evil, they surrender their God-given right to grow strong by fighting it themselves. By and by, if recent tendencies continue, they will surrender all their duties and all their rights, so dearly bought, to their rulers. By and by the government, like that of Germany, will dog the citizen's footsteps at every turn, provide him with old-age pensions, recompense him for all injuries received through negligence, destroy his manhood while alive, and bury him when dead. Let us go on at the same rate we have been during the last five years, and the sole idea of our country will be a divinely inspired President whose authority, as guardian of the people, insures their general felicity. This evolution will consist in erecting an absolutely central power over the ruins of state and local life.(1)
The above words were written in 1908 by New York attorney, Franklin Pierce, as a warning of what the future would hold for the American people should they continue to allow their leaders to provide for them. What was in his day a mere tendency toward subservience has now, nearly a century later, become a way of life for millions. The shift of the American mindset from self-reliance, or mutual cooperation within small communities, to a dependence upon the Government for subsistence is a striking illustration of how far removed we are from our hardy forefathers who endured disease, starvation, and even death to carve out a new civilization on this continent in the Seventeenth Century. To even attempt to live as though the Government is not Providence itself is to invite social ostracism and even outright persecution as a public enemy. Even the memory of manhood has all but perished in this country and in its place stands an impotent nation of groveling slaves whose gaze is ever fixed eastward to the Potomac for their master's benevolent care.
This slavish mentality is perhaps no better illustrated than by the Social Security system. On 14 August 1935, the Seventy-Fourth Congress passed what is commonly known as the Social Security Act: "To provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws; to establish a Social Security Board; to raise revenue; and for other purposes."(2) There is a blatant falsehood right here in the Act's title: "To provide for the general welfare...." This was a reference to Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which delegated to Congress power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States." This clause applied only to the general welfare of the States within the Union; as such it had no reference whatsoever to the establishment of a welfare program for individual citizens, which the federal Government had no authority under the Constitution to do. In fact, the only contact that the Government had with the Citizen of one of the States was through the general post office, when the Citizen enlisted in the military, or when the able-bodied men comprising the State militias were called into actual service of the United States. In all other instances, the State Citizen was essentially a foreigner to the general Government in Washington, D.C. and he would have looked with horror upon any legislation which proposed to make him anything less than a responsible and self-sufficient provider for his own well-being and that of his family. A "wise and frugal Government," according to Thomas Jefferson, was one "which shall restrain men from injuring one another, [and] leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement."(3) Rexford G. Tugwell, who served the Roosevelt Administration as a member of the "New Deal Brains Trust," commented on this view:
The Constitution was a negative document, meant mostly to protect citizens from their government.... It would have been... fantastic to suggest that individuals ought to be made secure from the risks of their occupations, or to be protected from the hazards of life. Among the Framers there was no concern for the welfare of citizens as welfare is now conceived. Opportunities were open to all, and if they were not taken advantage of, or if an individual lost out to a more enterprising competitor, it was his own fault.... The laws would maintain order but would not touch the individual who behaved reasonably. He must pay taxes to support a smallish government and he must not interfere with commerce; but otherwise laws would do him neither good nor ill. The government of the Constitution was this kind of government.(4)
However, in the midst of the economic crisis of the 1930s, a social welfare program was much more attractive than in the better days of the Republic. In the words of Franklin Roosevelt prior to the passage of the Social Security Act:
Next winter we may well undertake the great task of furthering the security of the citizen and his family through social insurance. This is not an untried experiment. Lessons of experience are available from States, from industries, and from many nations of the civilized world. The various types of social insurance are inter-related; and I think it is difficult to attempt to solve them piecemeal. Hence I am looking for a sound means which I can recommend to provide at once security against several of the great disturbing factors in life — especially those which relate to unemployment and old age.(5)
Like the rest of the "New Deal" package, Social Security was specifically designed to meet the demands of the "national emergency." As before, Roosevelt had a basic outline of what he wanted to implement, and he relied on select advisors to fill in the details. The Committee on Economic Security was thus created by Executive Order 6757 on 29 June 1934, the basis of which was Section 5(b) of the Trading With the Enemy Act. The Committee was composed of five top-ranking members of Roosevelt's Cabinet, all of whom were either former members of the defunct Progressive (Socialist) party or avowed sympathizers with socialism: Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins of Boston, Massachusetts,(6) Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. of New York city, Attorney General Homer Cummings of Chicago, Illinois, Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace of Orient, Iowa, and Federal Emergency Relief Administrator Harry L. Hopkins of Sioux City, Iowa. The Committee in turn appointed a staff of advisors borrowed from other Government agencies to assist it in drafting the legislation which would become the Social Security bill.
Roosevelt's plan was a comprehensive "cradle to the grave" insurance program. In fact, in discussion with members of the Committee, he voiced his desire to issue an "insurance policy" to every child at birth "to protect him against all the major economic misfortunes which might befall him during his lifetime."(7) Supposedly, this would implement "the ideal objective of a government to assure the 'Good Life' in all its phases for all its citizens," and thus, "the term [social security] is even more sweeping, if that is possible, than the term 'welfare state.'"(8) After signing the Act into law, Roosevelt described its foreseen effects as follows: "This law... represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete — a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions, to act as a protection to future administrations of government against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy — a law to flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation — in other words, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness."(9)
Roosevelt's enthusiasm was far from unanimous. For example, in the House debate pending passage of the bill, Representative Allan Towner Treadway of Massachusetts noted, "The Federal Government has no express or inherent power under the Constitution to set up such a scheme as is proposed. No one knows this any better than the administration and the Democratic majority of the committee. They have been working for months trying to give titles II and VIII some color of constitutionality." These attempts, said Treadway, constituted "outright deception." He continued, "Either the Federal Government has the power to set up this compulsory-insurance system or it has not. The Constitution should be either respected or abolished. What is the sense of having it if we are going to spend most of our time trying to devise ways and means to circumvent it?"(10)
Republican Representative Daniel Reed of New York predicted, "The lash of the dictator will be felt and 25 million free American citizens will for the first time submit themselves to a fingerprint test."(11) The prognostication of Representative James Wolcott Wadsworth, also of New York, was equally dire:
I know the appeal this bill has to every human being, that it appeals to the humane instincts of men and women everywhere. We will not deny, however, that it constitutes an immense, immense departure from the traditional functions of the Federal Government... pensioning the individual citizens of the several States. It launches the Federal Government into an immense undertaking which in the aggregate will reach dimensions none of us can really visualize and which in the last analysis, you will admit, affects millions and millions of individuals. Remember, once we pay pensions and supervise annuities, we cannot withdraw from the undertaking no matter how demoralizing and subversive it may become. Pensions and annuities are never abandoned; nor are they ever reduced. The recipients ever clamor for more. To gain their ends they organize politically. They may not constitute a majority of the electorate, but their power will be immense. On more than one occasion we have witnessed the political achievements of organized minorities. This bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as to threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants.
We are taking a step here today which may well be fateful. I ask you to consider it, to reexamine the fundamental philosophy of this bill, to estimate the future and ask yourselves the questions, "In what sort of country shall our grandchildren live? Shall it be a free country or one in which the citizen is a subject taught to depend upon government?"(12)
Within the first decade or so after its enactment, several more voices were raised in opposition to the Social Security Act. It was declared by one U.S. Supreme Court justice that the Act was a direct attack on State rights in that it "was intended to enable federal officers virtually to control the exertion of powers of the States in a field in which they alone have jurisdiction and from which the United States is by the Constitution excluded."(13) Marjorie Shearon, who had served in the Bureau of Research and Statistics of the Social Security Board in 1946, warned two years later that if the Social Security Act was not repealed by Congress, the country would be "entirely engulfed by the legislative program" and that it would usher in "State Socialism and dictatorship via a comprehensive scheme of National Compulsory Social Security for the entire population."(14) Likewise, in his 1946 book entitled Our Enemy the State, Albert Jay Nock wrote:
Heretofore in this country sudden crises of misfortune have been met by a mobilization of social power. In fact (except for certain institutional enterprises like the home for the aged, the lunatic-asylum, city-hospital and county-poorhouse) destitution, unemployment, "depression," and similar ills, have been no concern of the State, but have been relieved by the application of social power. Under Mr. Roosevelt, however, the State assumed this function, publicly announcing the doctrine, brand-new in our history, that the State owes its citizens a living. Students of politics, of course, saw in this merely an astute proposal for a prodigious enhancement of State power; merely what, as long ago as 1794, James Madison called "the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government"; and the passage of time has proved that they were right.(15)
Social Security as a National Identification System
Thirty years after the Act became law, Rexford G. Tugwell, who was an advisor to Roosevelt in the 1930s, admitted that the President had purposefully misled the American public with the "constantly reiterated intention that what was being done was in pursuit of the aims embodied in the Constitution of 1787, when obviously it was in contravention of them."(16) When the Social Security system was originally introduced, concerns were immediately raised that the number would eventually evolve into a national identification number by which the privacy of the citizen would be undermined. Not only did the Government solemnly promise the American people that such would never happen, but up to 1972, all Social Security cards contained the phrase "Not For Identification Purposes" on their face.
The first step taken in the direction of changing Social Security into a national identification program was Executive Order 9397, signed on 22 November 1943 by Franklin Roosevelt. This order required all Federal agencies to use the Social Security number (SSN) in order to create "a single unduplicated numerical identification system of accounts." In 1961, the Internal Revenue Service began to use it as a taxpayer identification number and, with the passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1976, State and local tax, welfare, driver's license, or motor vehicle registration authorities were authorized by Congress to use the SSN to likewise establish identities. Over time, Americans have grown accustomed to Social Security and to being branded for life with its number; it is now required in order to register to vote, to obtain a marriage license, a business license, a driver's license, open a bank account, and even in most cases, to obtain employment. Just as its opponents had warned so long ago, nearly every aspect of the individual's life is open for investigation by any governmental agency, or even any interested individual, because of this intrusive welfare system. And yet, most Americans will not think twice before having their own children enumerated by the Government at birth, or shortly thereafter, in exchange for an annual income tax deduction.
It is a fact that the origins and purposes of Social Security are little known, much less understood, by the vast majority of its participants. The stated intent of this Act was to extend the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution to the "persons" who were declared to be "citizens of the United States" in Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment.(17) These were the same "persons" referred to in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, in the Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1865, and in the Civil Rights Act of 1866. As previously discussed, the American people were originally led to believe that these provisions were "war measures" meant to apply only to the former Negro slaves and their descendants. As such, the Social Security Act could not have been other than an enactment of martial rule. This should be obvious when it is remembered that this Act was passed as part of Roosevelt's New Deal legislation in which the "ordinary course of judicial proceedings" were interrupted by the declaration of a national emergency.
There are several notable similarities between the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Social Security Act. The opening section of the Freedmen's Bureau Act stated: "That there is hereby established in the War Department... a bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, to which shall be committed... the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen... under such rules and regulations as may be prescribed by the head of the bureau and approved by the President. The said bureau shall be under the management and control of a commissioner to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate...." The Social Security Act likewise provided, "There is hereby established a Social Security Board (in this Act referred to as the Board) to be composed of three members to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate." In addition, "[t]he Social Security Administration is headed by a Commissioner of Social Security, appointed by the President."(18) Finally, the reader should remember Andrew Johnson's warning that the Freedmen's Bureau Act would create Executive military zones within the several States:
The bill proposes to establish by authority of Congress military jurisdiction over all parts of the United States containing refugees and freedmen. It would by its very nature apply with most force to those parts of the United States in which the freedmen most abound, and it expressly extends the existing temporary jurisdiction of the Freedmen's Bureau, with greatly enlarged powers, over those States "in which the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has been interrupted by the rebellion." The source from which this military jurisdiction is to emanate is none other than the President of the United States, acting through the War Department and the Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau. The agents to carry out this military jurisdiction are to be selected either from the Army or from civil life; the country is to be divided into districts and sub-districts, and the number of salaried agents to be employed may be equal to the number of counties or parishes in all the United States where freedmen and refugees are to be found.
Since the Social Security Act deals with the same subject matter as did the Freedmen's Bureau Act, it would seem logical to assume that the ten regions into which the country is now divided are also military districts under the supervision of the President in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief.
The question may be asked, Why would Roosevelt be so anxious to establish an expensive national welfare program such as Social Security at a time when the U.S. Government supposedly had no money? The answer, of course, is that such a program created yet another revenue source outside of those allotted to it by the Constitution. Those who were formerly beyond the reach of the Government's taxing power are brought therein whenever they accept any of its benefits or privileges. A contractual relationship for the purpose of tax liability is therefore established whenever someone registers or is registered in the Social Security program: "Liability to taxation is... based on the individual's reciprocal enjoyment of the benefits of government... [P]ersons who are clearly beyond the reach of governmental benefits are likewise beyond the scope of the taxing power."(19) In other words, there would be no income tax liability for most Americans if not for the Social Security number. It is interesting to note that prior to the implementation of the Social Security scheme in 1936, only five million tax returns were filed with 2.1 million of those filed reporting income taxes owed. Thus, out of a population of 125 million, a scant four percent of Americans were liable to the income tax, with only 1.6 percent of those liable actually owing the tax. In 1937, after the Roosevelt Administration had sponsored a month-long media campaign to coerce the American people into Social Security, over 22 million citizens were required to file a tax return. By 1944, nearly 80 million tax returns were filed — an astounding 1600% increase in the taxing power of the central Government in just eight years. It is hard to understand how Roosevelt can still be viewed as a national hero today.
The Myth of Social Security as Insurance
It has been historically true throughout history that people are prone to willingly surrender their liberty in exchange for security. The American people have proven themselves not to be immune to this malady. Of course, as revealed before the Joint Economics Committee by W. Allen Wallis, Chairman of the 1975 Advisory Council on Social Security, the "social insurance" offered to the American people in exchange for their degradation is anything but secure:
Many people think that the Social Security taxes taken out of their wages and sent to Washington each month provide for their old-age pensions and other Social Security benefits. This simply is not the case. Those taxes are levied on workers in order to pay benefits to people who have already retired and are drawing their Social Security pensions....
When you pay Social Security taxes you are in no way making provision for your own retirement. You are paying the pensions of those who already are retired.
Once you understand this, you see that whether you will get the benefits you are counting on when you retire, depends on whether the Congress will levy enough taxes, borrow enough, or print enough money, and whether it will authorize the level of benefits you are counting on.
The situation is in no way analogous to putting money each month into a private insurance company which invests it and undertakes to pay you an annuity.
Misunderstanding of the pay-as-you-go nature of Social Security is widespread among journalists and the public. Indeed, this misunderstanding seems to have been deliberately cultivated sometimes, in the belief that it makes the Social Security System more palatable to the public.(20)
After an examination of the Social Security system, the U.S. Supreme Court likewise observed:
[Social Security taxes] are to be paid into the Treasury at Washington, and thereafter are subject to appropriation like public moneys generally. They are not ear-marked in any way....(21)
They enter the Treasury as free funds set apart to no special use and subject to be applied to any congressional appropriation.(22)
After conducting a protracted study of the Social Security program, Bryce Webster and Robert L. Perry even more recently concluded that "every working person faces the same sober fact he or she faced in 1935; you must provide for your own retirement."(23) Moreover, unlike policy holders in a true insurance program, participants in Social Security have absolutely no contractual rights to their "contributions" once they have been collected because Congress "included in the original act, and since retained a claim expressly reserving to it the right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of the act" at its own discretion: "To engraft upon the Social Security System a concept of 'accrued property rights' would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands.... [D]espite their own and their employers' payments, the Government, in paying the beneficiaries out of the fund, is merely giving them something for nothing and can stop doing so when it pleases."(24) Consequently, what the worker of today is really doing is paying for the benefits of the retired workers of yesterday and thus providing for their security, not his own. Candid admissions to this fact are easily located in numerous Government documents, especially the Congressional Record.(25)
A perfect example of the injustice of the system is found in the case of the first recipient of Social Security benefits — Ida May Fuller, of Ludlow, Vermont. After working under the Social Security system as a legal secretary for less than three years, Fuller retired at the age of 65 having paid a mere $24.75 in taxes. Her first benefit check for $22.54 was issued on 31 January 1940, and she continued to draw monthly benefits until her death at age 100 in 1975. In all, she received a total of $22,888.92 — $22,864.17 of which she did not work for and which was unjustly extracted from the wages of other people whom she never met. The same scenario played itself out repeatedly in the earlier days of Social Security, but there were, at that time, more workers paying into the system than those drawing benefits. Today, as more and more of the "baby boom" generation are retiring, the burden placed upon the shoulders of current workers is becoming more and more oppressive.(26) Arthur J. Altmeyer, who is sometimes credited as the "father of Social Security" for his contributions to the early stages of the system,(27) wrote, "The people with larger incomes and larger resources ought to contribute for the people with the lower incomes and resources. While it is important to maintain financing [of Social Security] on a basis that insures adequacy of benefits and adaptability of the benefits to income loss, it is also important to make sure that we accomplish something by way of distribution of welfare among the various economic groups of this country, through a redistribution of some of the income and resources."(28) The system is thus exposed by one of its framers as a massive Government-enforced confiscation of wealth "without just compensation" contrary to the Fifth Amendment.
A Socialist Scheme for the Re-Distribution of Wealth
That Social Security is pure socialism — a redistribution of wealth from one class of citizens (the "haves") to another (the "have-nots")(29) — is beyond reasonable dispute. In his 1936 book entitled Fool's Gold, Fred R. Marvin pointed out that the provisions of the Social Security system mirror the fifth, sixth, and seventh planks of the National Platform of the Socialist Party of 1932 which called for the establishment of "a compulsory system of unemployment compensation with adequate benefits, based on contributions by the government and by employers," "old-age pensions for men and women sixty years of age and over," and "health and maternity insurance."(30) In fact, nearly every aspect of the New Deal legislation followed the Socialist platform very closely while bearing little resemblance to the Democratic platform on which Roosevelt had been elected:
One finds, upon investigation, that not only is the legislation in question out of harmony with the 1932 platform declarations of the Democratic party, but that the persons selected to administer this legislation are not Democrats....
One is forced to the conclusion, after a careful study of the facts, that what is now termed the New Deal party... is but the Progressive (Socialist) party of 1924 seeking to conceal its identity by wearing stolen clothing. This conclusion is forced both by the nature of the legislation adopted, and by the personnel of those holding key positions in the federal government. The number of persons who supported the Progressive (Socialist) ticket in 1924 now on the federal payroll is rather impressive....(31)
Ardent supporters of Social Security, such as Altmeyer, have been unabashed in their admission that the system has its roots in European socialist theory, particularly that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Claude Henri de Saint-Simon.(32) A devout Unitarian, Altmeyer made it very clear in his writings on the subject that he was operating within the philosophical context of humanism — "faith [in] man's infinite perfectibility"(33) — when he advised Roosevelt's Committee in drafting the original legislation. Altmeyer was joined in this task by Representative Thomas Eliot of Massachusetts, who was also a Unitarian.(34) Members of the Committee itself held similar religious and political views. For example, Harry Hopkins, former member of the Progressive party and a Fabian socialist,(35) was vocally pro-Soviet, as was Henry Wallace, another former Progressive. Hopkins was known as Roosevelt's "alter ego"(36) and Wallace would later serve under Roosevelt as Vice-President in 1940.
The roots of the Soviet Communism which both these men held in such high esteem went deep into the same soil from whence sprang socialist theory — the Humanist religion of the evolution and self-perfectibility of man.(37) In fact, both Karl Marx and Vladamir Lenin viewed socialism as "a transitional state" between Western capitalism and full-blown communism.(38) Wallace, "the most controversial figure of the regime,"(39) was also an admirer, if not a member, of the Theosophical Society, an occult group founded on the esoteric teachings of a nineteenth-century Russian spirit-medium named Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.(40) It would be naive to think that the philosophical and religious presuppositions held by these men did not have a significant impact upon their work.
One critic of Social Security described the system as "merely a political mechanism designed for persons who can be lulled into believing that the police power of government is the proper moral and financial base on which to build a sound retirement program."(41) Altmeyer himself, quoting with approval the communist dictum, "From each according to his ability and to each according to his need," claimed, "A society successfully built on that foundation would be a rather fine one in which to live."(42) However, as we have seen, Social Security is not "merely a political mechanism" to bring about this promised utopia, because it is also religious to the core and involves at least an implicit worship of the State as the embodiment of Rousseau's "collective soul" of divine humanity: "The golden calf now is the Welfare State — or Big Brother. Pay your taxes, make your sacrifices, and have unquestioning faith. Do your worshipping and your prayers will be answered. The checks will roll out for everyone. Above all, do not doubt the gods in Washington.... The State sees all, knows all, and has eternal life."(43) As such, Social Security — and socialism in general — stands in direct opposition to Christianity, which views God alone as the rightful recipient of faith and worship, and the God-ordained mandate of honest work as the only legitimate means of daily subsistence.
It is therefore not surprising that Socialists in the past have usually been very candid in acknowledging their antagonism towards Christianity. For example, in a statement uncannily reminiscent of the cry of the heathen in the second Psalm, the International Congress of Socialists which met in Geneva in 1868 declared:
God and Christ, these citizen-Providences, have been at all times the armour of Capital, and the most sanguinary enemies of the working classes. It is owing to God and to Christ that we remain to this day in slavery. It is by deluding us with lying hopes, that the priests have caused us to accept all the sufferings of this earth.
It is only after sweeping away all religion and after tearing up even to the roots every religious idea, Christian and every other whatsoever, that we can arrive at our political and social ideal. Let Jesus look after his heaven. We believe only in humanity. It would be but to fail in all our duties were we to cease, even for a second, to pursue the monsters who have tortured us. Down, then, with God and with Christ! Down with the despots of Heaven and Earth! Death to the Priests! Such is the motto of our grand crusade.(44)
More recently, Emelyan Yaroslavsky, President of the League of Militant Atheists of the Soviet Union, declared, "Remember that the struggle against religion is a struggle for Socialism!"(45) It should be kept in mind that when Socialists and Communists attack "religion," it is primarily Christianity that they have in mind. In the Christian worldview, social and economic inequality is inescapable because not all men have the same abilities and talents, the same level of intelligence, or even the same drive to work hard; in the Socialist worldview, this inequality is the ultimate evil and must be eradicated. Those who have acquired wealth by industry and thrift must surrender it to those who have failed to acquire wealth through slothfulness or have squandered it through foolish spending and waste. Upon this premise is founded the Social Security system in this country:
[S]ocialism runs directly counter to all the dominant human instincts which cause men to produce. In the name of equality it destroys the freedom which is necessary for effective activity; in the name of co-operation it puts an end to that healthy competition which is the bracing air of industrial activity, and the main means by which the community secures efficient service; in the name of community it deprives men of the capacity to acquire property, and so removes the chief incentive to labour; in the name of nationalisation it appropriates successful private businesses, and thus damps down energy and initiative; in the name of public assistance it discourages both thrift and self-help; in the name of readjusted taxation it institutes a vindictive spoliation of those who, by diligence and self-restraint, have managed to save; in the name of capital levy it projects an orgy of legalised loot. In short, all the principles and all the devices of socialism seem to be as carefully contrived as though they had been designed in Bedlam, to depress labour, discourage enterprise, damp initiative, discountenance forethought, prevent the accumulation of capital, encourage recklessness and extravagance, foster parasitism, ruin industry. In the supposed interests of the proletariat, socialism tends to drag the whole community down to one disastrous level of laziness, incompetence, and destitution.(46)
A Test Run For Compulsory Global Socialism?
Of course, the proponents of government-enforced socialism will never be satisfied until they have eliminated the inequalities of human society from the entire world. They insist that this plan will necessarily involve the termination of national sovereignty and the subjugation of all countries to some form of centralized global government. Most of the industrialized nations of the world already have in place some form of compulsory social security and it requires little imagination to foresee a day when these programs, which are already very similar to one another, may be merged together under the administration of a single "health and human services" organization that will dictate to the erstwhile nations how they can and will provide for their citizens:
The Humanist is truly global in his concern for he realizes that no man is a separate island and that we are all part of the mainland of humanity. Thus the idea of mankind as a whole and of one world, is a profound moral vision that sustains and nourishes the Humanist morality. And this can be achieved only by some degree of rule of law, some measure of peace and economic well-being and cultural enrichment for all men, who may share experience and a sense of brotherhood with others.... We nevertheless recognize the need for the human race to transform blind social force into rational control and to build a world community.(47)
The problems of economic growth and development can no longer be resolved by one nation alone; they are worldwide in scope. It is the moral obligation of the developed nations to provide — through an international authority that safeguards human rights — massive technical, agricultural, medical, and economic assistance, including birth control techniques, to the developing portions of the globe. World poverty must cease. Hence extreme disproportions in wealth, income, and economic growth should be reduced on a worldwide basis.(48)
At this point in time, the United Nations is the only likely candidate for such a job of enforcing global socialism. However, the American people at present would not tolerate on an international scale the socialism which they already embrace on a national scale, so that day may yet be far in the future. What should concern us now is the serious threat that Social Security poses to what is left of our individual liberties as Americans. While it is technically a voluntary system in that no one is yet required to get a number,(49) those who have conscientious objections to Social Security — whether they be political or religious in nature(50) — are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the most minimal participation in modern society without this "voluntary," "not for identification" number. One is immediately reminded of a similar situation which was faced by Christians in the First Century. In the Book of Revelation, the ungodly Roman empire and the wicked person of Nero Caesar, were alternately described as a "beast" which, in claiming for itself the worship which belongs to God alone, "opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven" (Revelation 13:6). All those who lived under the military jurisdiction of Rome were required by law to publicly proclaim their allegiance to Caesar by burning a pinch of incense and declaring, "Caesar is Lord." Upon compliance with this law, the citizens and subjects were given a papyrus document called a libellus, which they were required to present when either stopped by the Roman police or attempting to engage in commerce in the Roman marketplace. According to Scripture, Caesar "causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name" (Revelation 13:16-17). In this way, Roman society became, for all intents and purposes, closed to anyone not willing to adhere himself and his family to the established religion of Caesar-worship (statism). In addition, such refusal carried the death sentence (Revelation 13:15). Consequently, Christians by the hundreds were torn apart by wild animals in the Roman Coliseum and used as living lanterns in the gardens of Nero because they refused to offer up even a tiny pinch of incense in his name and proclaim that he, not Christ, was Lord. Lest the idea seem ridiculous that modern America is well on her way to mimicking ancient Rome in this regard, the skeptic would do well to remember the words of King Solomon: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us" (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10).
Endnotes
1. Pierce, Federal Usurpation, pages 128, 132, 133, 134-135.
2. Social Security Act, Public Law 74-271 (14 August 1935).
3. Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801; in Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume I, page 323.
4. Rexford G. Tugwell, "Rewriting the Constitution," The Center Magazine (Los Angeles, California: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, March 1968), Volume I, Number 3, pages 19-20.
5. Roosevelt, address to Congress on 8 June 1934; quoted by Arthur J. Altmeyer, The Formative Years of Social Security (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), page 3.
6. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. described Perkins, the Committee Chairman as follows: "Brisk and articulate, with vivid dark eyes, a broad forehead and a pointed chin, usually wearing a felt tricorn hat, she remained a Brahmin reformer, proud of her New England background... and intent on beating sense into the heads of those foolish people who resisted progress. She had pungency of character, a dry wit, an inner gaiety, an instinct for practicality, a profound vein of religious feeling, and a compulsion to instruct...." (The Age of Roosevelt: The Coming of the New Deal [Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1958]). Perkins herself stated that she had come to Washington "to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen." In previous chapters, we have seen what disastrous results were wrought by such New England "reformers" with their "religious feelings" when they took up the cause of the "workingmen" of the antebellum South. They, too, sought to "beat sense" into the heads of "foolish people who resisted progress" — Southerners who saw in Abolitionism a resurrection of the theological and sociological heresies of eighteenth-century French humanism. As will be shown, this is precisely the ideological foundation of the Social Security system.
7. Altmeyer, Formative Years of Social Security, page 5.
8. Altmeyer, ibid.
9. Roosevelt, speech delivered 14 August 1935; in J.B.S. Hardman (editor), Rendezvous With Destiny: Addresses and Opinions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (New York: The Dryden Press, 1944), page 310.
10. Allan Towner Treadway, Congressional Record — House, 2 April 1935, page 5530.
11. Daniel Reed, quoted by Altmeyer, Formative Years of Social Security, page 38.
12. James W. Wadsworth, quoted by Altmeyer, ibid.
13. Steward Machine Company v. Davis (1937), 301 U.S. 618.
14. Marjorie Shearon, testimony before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor on 30 January 1948; quoted by William Haber and Wilbur J. Cohen, Readings in Social Security (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1948), page vii.
15. Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy the State (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1946), page 5.
16. Tugwell, "Rewriting the Constitution," page 20.
17. Reference: Title 26, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 36.3121(1).
18. Charles I. Schottland, The Social Security Program in the United States (New York: Meredith Publishing Company, 1963), page 73.
19. Arnold G. Ginnow and Milorad Nikolic (editors), Corpus Juris Secundum (St. Paul, Minnesota: West Publishing Company, 1988), Volume LXXXIV, Section 59, "Taxation."
20. W. Allen Wallis, quoted by Irwin Schiff, The Social Security Swindle (Hamden, Connecticut: Freedom Books, 1984), page 131.
21. Helvering v. Davis (1937), 301 U.S. 619.
22. Stewart Machine v. Davis, at 548.
23. Bryce Webster and Robert L. Perry, The Complete Social Security Handbook (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1983), page 297.
24. Flemming v. Nestor (1960), 363 U.S. 624. See also Title 42, United States Code, Section 1304.
25. The following exchanged occurred in 1965 between two members of the House Ways and Means Committee:
Mr. Byrnes, So that fundamentally what we are doing here is not prepaying, but what we are doing here is having the people who are currently working finance the benefits of those currently over 65?
Mr. Myers. I think it can be viewed that way, just as the old-age and survivors insurance trust fund can, or else you can also view that it is prepayment in advance on a collective group basis, so that the younger contributors are making their contributions with the expectation that they will receive the benefits in the future — and not necessarily with the thought that their money is being put aside and earmarked for them, but rather that later there will be current income to the system for their benefits.
Mr. Byrnes. In other words, on the theory that if I am going to be asked to pay for a tax today for a benefit that is available to people over 65, then when I get to 65, somebody who is then working ought to do the same thing for me? Is that it?
Mr. Myers. Yes. I would say that is the way it is, and this is a reasonable group prepayment basis, I think you can call it, because of the compulsory nature of the tax for now and for all time to come on people in covered employment (House Ways and Means Committee Executive Hearings on Medical Care for the Aged [Eighty-Ninth Congress, First Session], Part I, page 20).
26. In 1937, no one paid more than $30.00 in F.I.C.A. taxes; within thirty years, that amount had increased ten times. Since Congress is constantly raising the level of benefits for current recipients, the level of "contributions" extracted from current workers must also continue to rise.
27. Altmeyer was one of the chief advisors to the President's Committee on Economic Security that drafted the original legislative proposal in 1934. He was also a member of the three-person Social Security Board created to run the new program, and thereafter served as Chairman of the Board and Commissioner for Social Security from 1937 to 1953.
28. Altmeyer, quoted by Abraham Ellis, The Social Security Fraud (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1971), page 55.
29. Reference: W. Barnard Faraday, Democracy and Capital (London: John Murray Publishers, Ltd., 1921), page 236.
30. Fred R. Marvin, Fool's Gold: An Expose of Un-American Activities and Political Action in the United States Since 1860 (New York: Madison and Marshall, Inc., 1936), page 10.
31. Marvin, op. cit., pages 16, 17.
32. Reference: Arthur Altmeyer, essay: "Ten Years of Social Security," in Haber and Cohen, Readings in Social Security, pages 80, 81.
33. Altmeyer, op. cit., page 80.
34. It should be remembered that Unitarianism was the driving theological force behind the Northern Abolitionist movement of the Nineteenth Century.
35. The Fabians accepted the basic premises of Marxism, but rejected violent revolution as the necessary means to implement them, believing instead that socialism should and could be achieved peacefully through legislation and endless taxation:
Step by step, land, mines, railways, ships, banks, shops — everything — will be nationalised, municipalised, socialised. Private enterprise will be slowly but completely squeezed out of existence; competition will be imperceptibly but entirely eliminated. And the funds to achieve these ends will not be seized by lawless force; they will be quietly but remorselessly extracted from private enterprise and competitive industry themselves by a graduated system of predatory taxation. Nothing will be confiscated; everything will be purchased and paid for. The members of the possessing classes will, by some ingenious device or other, compensate one another, until (again gradually) their funds run out, when they will, to their great advantage, be compelled to resort to work, even if it be only to "earn a precarious livelihood by taking in one another's washing." Meantime the proletariat will rejoice. They will all be servants of the beneficent state; their wages will go up, for they will fix them themselves through their elected representatives; their hours of labour will go down, for they will no longer have to maintain capitalists and landlords in luxury; they will begin to draw large old-age pensions whilst they still have youth and energy to enjoy them; education, medical attendance, amusements, recreations, transport — all will be free and unrestricted. In the end, every one will be a blessed pauper, paying away all his earnings in rates and taxes, and in return being luxuriously maintained (so long as he does not display any recrudescence of individualism) on outdoor relief (F.J.C. Hearnshaw, A Survey of Socialism: Analytical, Historical and Critical [London: Macmillan and Company, Ltd., 1929], pages 298-299).
With this description in mind, it is apparent that Washington, D.C. has become the bastion of modern-day Fabianism with Social Security as its crown jewel.
36. Flynn, Roosevelt Myth, page 11.
37. The religious nature of Humanism is easily established. For example, in the preface to the Humanist Manifestoes I and II, noted Humanist Paul Kurtz wrote, "Humanism is a philosophical, religious, and moral point of view" (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1980, page 3). In its 1961 decision in Torcaso v. Watkins (367 U.S. 488), the U.S. Supreme Court included "Secular Humanism" in a list of "religions in this country which do not teach what would be generally be considered a belief in the existence of God...." Four years later in United States v. Seeger (380 U.S. 163), the Court granted Daniel Seeger conscientious objector status on the basis of his "religious belief" — which Seeger himself identified as Humanism.
38. Reference: Kenneth Neill Cameron, Marxism: The Science of Society (Boston: Bergin and Garvey, 1985), page 85; Vladimir I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1980), Volume XXV, page 468.
39. Flynn, Roosevelt Myth, page 11.
40. In her book entitled, The Secret Doctrine (Pasadena, California: Theosophical University Press, 1963), Blavatsky taught that mankind's evolution is being directed by "Ascended Masters" from their highly-advanced plane of existence called "Shamballah," located in the Tibetan Himalayas. At the head of this "hierarchy" is an entity which Blavatsky frequently identified as "Satan," the "God of Wisdom," (Secret Doctrine, Volume II, page 237), "the most wise and spiritual spirit of all" (page 378), and the great benefactor of mankind who led our Edenic parents to spiritual enlightenment, contrary to the wishes of the evil "Jehovah," the true "adversary of men" (page 387). Blavatsky insisted that the spiritual evolution of which she wrote may rightly be labelled "satanic" because "it is owing to the prototype of that which became in time the Christian Devil — to the Radiant Archangel who wanted Man to become his own creator and an immortal god — that men can reach Nirvana and the haven of heavenly divine Peace...." (pages 245-246).
Blavatasky's writings heavily influenced the mind of Adolph Hitler and provided the philosophical basis of the Nazi's fascination with the "Aryan superman." The Secret Doctrine also supplied German National Socialism with its most cherished symbol — the swastika — which Blavatsky believed was "pregnant with real occult meaning" (page 587). Occultists such as the Theosophists certainly know the importance of symbolism in communicating their ideology to an unsuspecting public. It was Henry Wallace, the disciple of Blavatsky, who was mainly responsible for the inclusion of the so-called "reverse" of the Great Seal on the back of the $1 Federal Reserve Note. Though it had been ignored since its creation in the Eighteenth Century, Wallace saw in the design a symbolic depiction of what the Roosevelt Administration was attempting to do through Social Security and other New Deal legislation. He pointed in particular to the two Latin phrases, Annuit Caeptis and Novus Ordo Seclorum. The first phrase is translated, "He favors our undertaking." This phrase was taken from Virgil's epic poem, The Aeneid, and refers to the pagan sun-deity, Jupiter, which is represented by the "All-Seeing Eye" overseeing the construction of a novus ordo seclorum ("New Order of the Ages"), symbolized by the unfinished pyramid. Michael Howard wrote, "Wallace's reasons for wanting to introduce the Great Seal onto the American currency were based on his belief that America was reaching a turning point in her history and that great spiritual changes were imminent. He believed that the 1930s represented a time when a great spiritual awakening was going to take place which would precede the creation of the one-world state" (The Occult Conspiracy: Secret Societies and Their Influence and Power in World History [Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1989], page 95).
Both Wallace and Roosevelt were Thirty-Second Degree Masons; Homer Cummings and Henry Morgenthau, Jr., two other members of the Committee which concocted Social Security, were also Freemasons. For an exposition of the occult religion of the Masonic Lodge and its self-proclaimed connection to pagan sun-worship, see Greg Loren Durand, Communion With the Gods: The Pagan Altar of Freemasonry (Dahlonega, Georgia: Crown Rights Book Company, 2005).
41. Dr. Dean Russell, quoted by Ellis, Social Security Fraud, pages 70-71.
42. Altmeyer, "Ten Years of Social Security," page 81.
43. Ellis, Social Security Fraud, pages 115-116.
44. Manifesto of the International Congress, held in Geneva in 1868; quoted by Marvin, Fool's Gold, page 170.
45. Emelyan Yaroslavsky, quoted by Elizabeth Dilling, The Roosevelt Red Record and its Background (Kenilworth, Illinois: self-published, 1936), page 14.
46. F.J.C. Hearnshaw, Democracy and Labour (London: Macmillan and Company, Ltd., 1924), page 171.
47. Paul Kurtz, The Humanist Alternative (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1973), page 179.
48. Raymond B. Bragg, Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson, Humanist Manifesto II (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1980), page 22.
49. Title 42, United States Code, Section 405(c)(2)(B)(i) requires the issuance of Social Security Numbers only to resident aliens who are seeking employment within the United States and applicants for benefits under any program which is financed in whole or in part by Federal funds.
50. Reference: David Stevens v. Stephen Berger (1977), 428 F.Supp. 896.
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