The View From 1776

Liberal-progressive-socialism is a form of slavery, or more accurately, a sort of neo-feudalism in which the individual has no rights independent of the figurative “piece of ground” to which the political state has assigned him.

Assuredly, that is not what motivated members of the Continental Congress in 1776, nor of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. 

President Roosevelt proudly proclaimed his abandonment of our nation’s founding ethos in his January 1944 annual message to Congress.
 

The one supreme objective for the future…can be summed up in one word: Security.…We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all…Among these are: the right to a useful and remunerative job…The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.…The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care…The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education.  All these rights spell security.

Security, however, amounts to selling one’s soul to the Devil for materialistic gain.

Hilaire Belloc described it in his 1912 book, The Servile State. He noted that, while the just-beginning socialist state in Great Britain was doing nice things for workers, it was at the price of their liberty to decide whether to work, when to work, or where to work.  Recipients of unemployment benefits, for example, had to report to employment offices and take whatever jobs were offered to them, or face punishment. 

Gerald J. Russello reviews The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, by Kenneth Minogue, a book which, almost a century later, elaborates Belloc’s thesis.