. . . I’m not so sure that I can recall any government official pleading the constraints of law or the constraints of reality to what can and cannot be done. No aspect of life is untouched by government intervention, and often it takes forms we do not readily see. All of healthcare is regulated, but so is every bit of our food, transportation, clothing, household products, and even private relationships. . . . This nation, conceived in liberty, has been kidnapped by the fascist state. — Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., “The Fascist Threat”, Mises Daily, October 7, 2011

When it comes to ethics and morality and open borders, Llewellyn Rockwell’s extreme libertarian positions give us pause. However, his economic analyses, stemming as they do from the Austrian school, are worth closer examination.

Forget what the textbooks tell us, asserts Rockwell. The Constitution is practically a dead letter:

I wouldn’t say that we truly have a dictatorship of one man in this country, but we do have a form of dictatorship of one sector of government over the entire country. The executive branch has spread so dramatically over the last century that it has become a joke to speak of checks and balances. What the kids learn in civics class has nothing to do with reality.

The executive state is the state as we know it, all flowing from the White House down. The role of the courts is to enforce the will of the executive. The role of the legislature is to ratify the policy of the executive.

Further, this executive is not really about the person who seems to be in charge. The president is only the veneer, and the elections are only the tribal rituals we undergo to confer some legitimacy on the institution. In reality, the nation-state lives and thrives outside any “democratic mandate.” Here we find the power to regulate all aspects of life and the wicked power to create the money necessary to fund this executive rule. [All emphasis added]

The existence of an unconstitutional central bank — the Federal Reserve System (neither “federal” nor a “reserve” but definitely a “system”) — has made the supersizing of government possible:

Let’s just mention the reality: No government in the history of the world has spent as much, borrowed as much, and created as much fake money as the United States. If the United States doesn’t qualify as a fascist state in this sense, no government ever has.

None of this would be possible but for the role of the Federal Reserve, the great lender to the world. This institution is absolutely critical to U.S. fiscal policy. There is no way that the national debt could increase at a rate of $4 billion per day without this institution.

For a fascist state to retain its hold on a society, according to Rockwell, the “warfare state” must aggressively and perpetually pursue overseas interventionist adventures:

Obama was supposed to end [foreign wars]. He never promised to do so, but his supporters all believed that he would. Instead, he has done the opposite. He has increased troop levels, entrenched wars, and started new ones. In reality, he has presided over a warfare state just as vicious as any in history. The difference this time is that the Left is no longer criticizing the U.S. role in the world. In that sense, Obama is the best thing ever to happen to the warmongers and the military-industrial complex.

As for the Right in this country, it once opposed this kind of military fascism. But all that changed after the beginning of the Cold War. . . . At the end of the Cold War, there was a brief reprise when the Right in this country remembered its roots in non-interventionism. But this did not last long. George Bush the First rekindled the militarist spirit with the first war on Iraq, and there has been no fundamental questioning of the American empire ever since. Even today, Republicans elicit their biggest applause by whipping up audiences about foreign threats, while never mentioning that the real threat to American well-being exists in the Beltway.

Rather than urge a return to constitutional government, however, Rockwell defaults to his pet theory of anarcho-capitalism:

Back in the 1930s, and even up through the 1980s, the partisans of the state were overflowing with ideas. They had theories and agendas that had many intellectual backers. They were thrilled and excited about the world they would create. They would end business cycles, bring about social advance, build the middle class, cure disease, bring about universal security, and much more. Fascism believed in itself.

This is no longer true. Fascism has no new ideas, no big projects — and not even its partisans really believe it can accomplish what it sets out to do. The world created by the private sector is so much more useful and beautiful than anything the state has done that the fascists have themselves become demoralized and aware that their agenda has no real intellectual foundation.

. . . It also seems to me that the old-time romance of the classical liberals with the idea of the limited state is gone. It is far more likely today that young people embrace an idea that 50 years ago was thought to be unthinkable: the idea that society is best off without any state at all.

As usual, Rockwell correctly diagnoses problems but fails to offer any realistic solutions. At any rate, he does give us food for thought.